Sure, the playoff odds for the Milwaukee Brewers get slimmer by the hour, but they continue to do everything in their power to stay alive and continue to give us something to watch in the final days of the regular season. After last night’s win over the St. Louis Cardinals and Colorado’s win over the Dodgers, the Brew Crew finds themselves two games out of a wild card spot with two games to play.
While the odds are not good, the Brewers probably wouldn’t even have a mathematical chance if it wasn’t for Chase Anderson’s clutch performance against their division rival. While the Rockies were busy blowing out the Dodgers and erasing the magical number to one, Anderson was busy tossing seven innings of one run ball.
Anderson threw 101 pitches on the night, 68 of which were strikes, and while he wasn’t blowing guys away with the strikeout, he was still extremely effective. In the 21 outs he got, 14 came via the groundball and 5 came by way of the K.
The Brewers jumped out to an early 1-0 lead in the second inning, but the real story came from the mound. Anderson gave up a single to Greg Garcia to start the game before getting three straight groundouts, this will be a common theme throughout, to end the first frame.
Fast forward to the fourth inning and Anderson had retired 10 straight batters since the leadoff hit. He fell behind on the next hitter and Paul Dejong made him pay with a long ball. The 29 year old right hander adjusted and retired eight more in a row before that heavy hitting Dejong showed up again.
Dejong singled, but Anderson got, you guessed it, a ground ball that resulted in a double play to silence the threat before getting another grounder from Stephen Piscotty to end the seventh.
Anderson came back out for the eighth but walked Magneuris Sierra before being pulled. His final line read 7 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 5 SO, 1 BB. He was nearly perfect if you take away the singular mistake to Dejong.
Jeremy Jeffress pitched a solid eighth inning and manager Craig Counsell wanted to take no chances in the ninth. Even though it was not a save situation, Counsell opted to bring in that dominant closer of his.
While the idea was for Corey Knebel to seal things up with the four run lead, the Cardinals offense, Jose Martinez in particular, had a different idea, Martinez jacked a two run dinger over the left field wall just to prove that Knebel was human.
Still, it was not enough. Knebel toyed with the Cardinals but would strike out Luke Voit in the next at bat to end the game. One night after an exceptional performance from the Brewers bullpen, they get a starter to step up. The Brewers have been counted out since day one, but they are pulling out all of the stops to give us an exciting last weekend race. Many thanks to the Brew Crew pitching staff.
