The Brewers Bar Weekly Hangover 5/22/16

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Each Sunday evening we will review our favorite and least favorite events of the previous week, and share our perspective on how the team is doing. Please enjoy responsibly.

Cheers! (Something good that happened)

Brewers Win a Cubs Series: We may not get to enjoy beating the Cubs much this season, so we might as well wring every last drop of relish we can out of this.  Chase Anderson put up seven no-hit innings against Chicago on Tuesday, and ultimately fell just one strike short of a complete game shutout.  On Wednesday, the Brewers followed that dominating performance by squandering numerous opportunities and ended up losing in the 13th inning by walking the pitcher.  That’s the kind of loss that makes fans throw up their hands and believe the Cubs were going to come in the next day and easily win the series.

Luckily, the Brewers’ best pitcher Junior Guerra was on the mound and he wasn’t messing around. He followed up his best career start against the Padres (six shutout innings and first career base hit) with a new best career start (seven innings with 11 strikeouts).

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Because nothing is easy, Michael Blazek and Tyler Thornburg had to work around all sorts of traffic in the eighth and ninth innings, including this awful scare. Listen to those blasted Cubs fans, they think their team just took the lead…

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But in the end, the good guys won and sent all those Cubs fans home grumpy. The Brewers don’t play the Cubs until after the All Star break.  That’s plenty of relish time.

Buzzkill (Something forgettable that happened)

Another Week, Another Non-Quality Start from Wily Peralta: He was so close, too.  Peralta only gave up one run in the first five innings in New York, and then surrendered a two-run homer to Michael Conforto.  It didn’t even look like that bad of a pitch.  He later got a double play and needed one more out to log only his third quality start of the year.  Peralta then hit a batter and issued a walk, and that was the end of that.  He did bring his ERA down under 7.00, which is…a pretty lousy upside, frankly.  A 6.99 ERA does not seem like a milestone many big league pitchers would aspire to.  At this point, it would surprise no one if Peralta is looking forward to Matt Garza’s return, just so everyone has a different pitcher to be disappointed about.

Here’s to You (Standout player(s) or play(s) of the week)

This Awesome Double Play: You know a movie or TV show is truly funny when it makes you laugh out loud even when no one else is around.  Similarly, you know a play is brilliant when no one is around and you still shout “Suck it, Cubs!” at the TV.  This was that kind of play.

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Back on the Wagon (Thoughts on the week ahead)

This week the Brewers face two teams with worse records than they have. Could we be on the cusp of a season-high winning streak?  Or are we going to feel like the Cubs fans at Miller Park on Thursday thinking, “I can’t believe we lost to these jokers?”

The first set of jokers is the Atlanta Braves, who have the second-worst record in MLB and already fired a manager.  At the start of play today, the Braves ranked last or second to last in the NL in homeruns, runs scored, slugging percentage, OPS, total bases, and fielding percentage.  Their run differential was -66.  This is a very bad team, and the Brewers should beat them.  Still, weird crap happens in Atlanta, like Ron Roenicke making a pitching change when no one was warming up.  So you never know.

Then back home to face the Reds, a team that the Brewers already have a couple of fun comeback wins against this year. Thanks to the Reds, the Brewers are not a last place team.  The race to stay out of the cellar continues next weekend!

(Image: Morry Gash/AP)

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