W: Ted Lilly (1-0)
L: Doug Davis (0-2)
After the Brewers managed to win in one of Doug Davis’ disaster starts, I guess it was only fair for the Brewers to lose the first game in which Davis looked like the “good” Doug Davis. Oh, ye cruel baseball gods.
Sharpie was strong by his standards, going 6.1 innings, giving up 2 runs on 6 hits, striking out 6, and only walking 2. The Brewers were unable to get anything going against Ted Lilly in his first start of the season, though — Lilly threw 6 shutout innings and only surrendered 3 hits. The Brewers were able to score a run off Carlos Zambrano in the 8th to avoid getting shut out.
The Brewers have now only managed 2 runs in the 18 innings since scoring 20 on the Pirates, and while I’m sure a lot of people will repeat those numbers until the offense breaks out again, the only thing it proves is the fact that Ryan Dempster and Ted Lilly are a lot better than anyone on Pittsburgh’s roster.
Instead, my main concern is with the way Chris Narveson has pitched out of the bullpen. Despite struggling in a relief role, his name keeps coming up in the “Who Should Replace Suppan?” discussion, but as some people said on Twitter, perhaps we shouldn’t have bought into the small sample size of Narveson’s success in September last year and spring this year. He gave up 3 runs in 2 innings of work tonight while also walking 2. Narveson has a 2.40 WHIP in 8 innings pitched so far this season and hasn’t had a clean outing since April 12 (coincidentally, he also pitched 2 innings of relief in a Doug Davis start against the Cubs in that game).
It’ll be up to Dave Bush to stop the sweep tomorrow afternoon. Getting swept stinks, getting swept by the Cubs stinks even worse, but getting swept by the Cubs at home after everyone sold their good seats to Cubs fans flat out sucks.
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