The Year of Injury continued this weekend as the Brewers dropped two games to their personal whipping boys from Pittsburgh. The Sunday lineup was a far cry from the one the team and its fans expected to see. With Ryan Braun and Aramis Ramirez both out of the lineup nursing injuries the team sent out this starting nine:
- Aoki
- Morgan
- Hart
- Green
- Weeks
- Ransom
- Conrad
- Maldonado
- Fiers
Now, Sundays are often a day where teams trot out odd lineups to squeeze some extra rest in for their regular players. But Taylor Green batting fourth with his 5 RBI and 0 HR for his career just isn’t going to cut it very often.
With a golden opportunity to build on their fantastic road trip, the team came up short by getting bombed in a terribly lackluster performance on Friday before regrouping and using another strong outing from Shaun Marcum to bomb their way to victory in a game nobody could see.
Then came Sunday when Fiers was on his way to another gem before losing an epic battle to Andrew McCutchen and the bullpen couldn’t hold the Pirates in check while the bats tried to get back in it.
The Brewers are far from the only team battling injuries. The defending champion St. Louis Cardinals were no-hit on Friday and have likely lost Lance Berkman and Chris Carpenter for the season. They have lost five in a row and have dropped all the way back to .500.
Unfortunately, the Reds have not fallen off lately and now sit 6 ½ games ahead of the Brewers. The team takes today off to prepare for the 18-35 Chicago Cubs. They have lost 15 of their last 18 games and will be playing a game in San Francisco Monday afternoon assuring that they will get into town late while the home team licks their wounds.
Yovanni Gallardo and Zach Greinke will be on the mound the first two games and anything less than a sweep will be a disappointment. The weekend brings the lowly San Diego Padres to town. They are 18-37 and were swept by the Cubs last week.
Thanks to a wasted weekend a sweep is needed against the Padres as well. The team hasn’t won more than four in a row all year so this may be asking a lot. But the fact is the team isn’t the only one battling injuries and they need to start finding ways to win games in bunches while the schedule is sending in teams this bad.
