FanGraphs:

As far as I can tell, this was an atrocious game to watch, and thankfully, I wasn’t able to. However, I’m afraid people might interpret that Dave Bush pitched well in this start, due to the fact that that he only allowed two earned runs in six innings.

That would be an incorrect interpretation.

Dave Bush walked five batters and only struck out three batters. He did induce nine ground balls, but the Astros also hit 10 balls in the air. Major League pitchers simply can’t survive giving up more walks than strikeouts. Even though his ERA for the game was only 3.00, his FIP comes in at 4.70. Bush’s saving grace today was that 5 of the fly balls he allowed stayed in the infield.

No, Dave Bush did not have a quality start today. Dave Bush had a start that looks good because the Astros hitters are terrible. This is a lineup that came in with all of three above average players. Pedro Feliz and Oswaldo Navarro are among the worst hitters in the major leagues. Carlos Lee is far past his prime. The Astros haven’t scored many runs this season for a reason – they’re not very good.

Just because Dave Bush got lucky against a terrible lineup does not mean that he is a good pitcher nor that he deserves to stay in the rotation. Despite this start, he remains one of the worst pitchers in the Major Leagues and should be kicked out of the rotation upon Doug Davis’s return.

FanGraphs, click for more:

Along with Ryan Braun, the true stars of this Milwaukee Brewers team are Yovani Gallardo and Prince Fielder. Today, they showed why, leading the team tonight in the victory over the Astros.

You could actually make the argument that this was Gallardo’s worst start since April 10th against St. Louis, given the lack of quality hitters in the Astros lineup, although this start against Cincinnati and this one against Florida were probably worse. When a five strikeout, two walk start with one home run in six innings is possibly a pitcher’s worst start in three months, that pitcher is an ace. He still managed to do enough against the Astros to keep the Brewers ahead.

Perhaps more amazing was Gallardo’s third home run of the season to put the Brewers up 1-0. Prince Fielder added two home runs of his own. Entering the game, ZiPS projected Fielder to finish the season with 36; today’s performance makes a 40 home run season all the more likely.

The Brewers really controlled this game the whole way, although the Astros made it interesting for a few points. Pedro Feliz continues to hit the tar out of the ball, which is just one of those unfortunate things that a team can run into in a short series. Lance Berkman also got to John Axford in the ninth, but that’s not all that surprising, as John Axford is human. Axford still struck out two Astros to convert the three run save, and the bullpen recovered nicely from last night’s collapse, with Kameron Loe, Zach Braddock, and John Axford – in my mind, the best three relievers on the Brewer, with Carlos Villanueva close behind – shut down the Astros for the last three innings.

Tomorrow, the Brewers go for the series victory, with Dave Bush making what could be his last start as a Brewer against Wandy Rodriguez, who has been a shell of his former self this year. Expect some scoring tomorrow afternoon.

Click for more from FanGraphs

The story of this game is simple. Todd Coffey couldn’t shut the door against a terrible Astros team. Yes, Casey McGehee made an error, but it was possibly the hardest hit error that I’ve seen all year – Coffey’s not completely off the hook there. He’s simply not a shut down reliever – and never really has been – but unfortunately, Parra’s short, if decent, start put us in a bad situation.

Rickie Weeks and Corey Hart continued to hit, but Prince Fielder had a poor game, going hitless against the myriad of Astros pitchers the Brewers saw tonight.

This loss really hurts, as both the Cardinals and the Reds won tonight.

Eventful weekend; here’s some recaps!

Game 1: BREWERS 8, Mariners 3
FanGraphs (click for more):

Ryan Rowland-Smith showed for the first three innings why he’s been a moderately intriguing pitcher. In the fourth, he showed why he isn’t an above average pitcher in the Major Leagues – the punishment for missing with an 88 MPH fastball is simply too much. That says a load about why the Brewers pitching staff has been struggling this year as well, but this time Milwaukee was on the winning end as Jonathan Lucroy and Carlos Gomez hit back to back home runs to go up 4-3. The rest of the game was a mere formality; the Brewers pen continued to perform well while the Brewers touched up the Mariners’ pen, scoring another run off Rowland-Smith and tacking three more on against Garrett Olson and Chad Cordero. Gomez and Lucroy were clearly the offensive stars of the game. On the mound, Dave Bush wasn’t terribly impressive but did enough to keep the Brewers ahead, while Kameron Loe, Carlos Villanueva, and Trevor Hoffman threw scoreless innings for Milwaukee.

Game 2: Mariners 5, BREWERS 4
FanGraphs: (click for more)

I was at this game – I’ll throw up some pictures on the Facebook page within the next couple of days. As far as the game goes, it wasn’t terribly exciting. Randy Wolf worked extremely slowly and poorly, and Doug Fister wasn’t much better. There was some decent power on display – Milton Bradley, Jose Lopez, and Prince Fielder all hit monster home runs. Unfortunately, one of the most ridiculously poor catching plays on Corey Hart’s double wasn’t enough to put the Brewers over the top. Brian Sweeney and his changeup shut the Brewers down in the last four innings and George Kottaras’s fly ball with two outs in the bottom of the ninth against Brandon League just didn’t have enough to go for the game tying home run.

Game 3: BREWERS 3, Mariners 0

The Mariners are 31-44 because they can’t hit, plain and simply. They’ve scored 111 fewer runs than the Brewers after this season, and they were starting Josh Wilson and Mike Sweeney at first base. That’s simply not a winning combination. Chris Narveson isn’t a great pitcher – he’s probably average at best. But he managed to induce 10 swinging strikes out of this Mariners lineup, and 7 strikeouts and a couple of clutch double plays to keep the Mariners off the board. Weeks continued to slug, with his 13th home run of the season, and Hart and Fielder combined to bring in the second and third runs. John Axford picked up another save by striking out the side in the 9th.

Click for more from FanGraphs

We can’t really say enough about Yovani Gallardo’s season to date. We have to go beyond the basic stats – his 6-3 record and 2.59 ERA are solid, but then again, Barry Zito is 7-4 with a 3.45 ERA, and we know quite well that he’s not that good. Gallardo simply has been doing what pitchers need to do. His FIP entering today’s start was 3.10, thanks to an excellent job of keeping the ball in the yard and, as always, striking out over a batter per inning.

Is it sustainable? Probably not at this level, as not even the best of pitchers can give up only 0.5 HR/9 over a full season. Still, it’s hard to argue with his pitching, especially after this afternoon’s masterful start against the Twins. Gallardo shut out the AL Central leaders, who despite giving Joe Mauer a day off, carried what is likely a league average lineup into the game against Milwaukee. The Twins wouldn’t reach base until Drew Butera singled against Gallardo in the sixth inning – it was one of only five hits against a whopping 12 strikeouts for the Brewers ace.

Gallardo wasn’t great at avoiding contact today, drawing only 7 swinging strikes in his 122 pitches. However, he located his pitches exceptionally well, throwing 80 total pitches for strikes – that’s a 65% rate, above the ML average of 62 and well above his 59.8 season average. Particularly impressive was the control with the curveball – 23 strikes in 33 pitches, which is right in line with his season average. However, this is a pitch that typically does its work out of the zone, drawing whiffs and living down out of the zone. Gallardo’s curveball still lived low and out of the strike zone today, but instead did its work drawing foul balls and some of the 10 ground balls he induced on the day.

Don’t expect Gallardo to be this successful without drawing whiffs on his curveball – it usually draws a swing and miss 25% of the time as opposed to 0% – but hitters still weren’t able to make solid contact on it, and the fact that his fastball and curveball give him two extremely reliable out pitches makes him one of the better pitchers in the league.

Particularly impressive about this game is the fact that Gallardo didn’t walk any batters over a complete game victory. After tonight’s start, Gallardo’s K/9 will be above 10 and his BB/9 will be below 4 for the first season with over 100 IP in his career. Those are impressive numbers, and even though Gallardo won’t be in the Lincecum-Halladay-Lee level elite unless the walk rate drops even more, there’s no denying that this young pitcher is one of the best assets in Major League Baseball – he’s around until 2015, Simply put, Yovani Gallardo is a reason, if not the reason, why long-term success in Milwaukee is still a possibility.

Click for more.

First of all, I’d just like to file one nugget from today’s game under “Things I Don’t Care About,” namely the fact that the Brewers tied a franchise record for wild pitches today with five. What that tells me is that Manny Parra and Kameron Loe, who combined for 7 strikeouts on the night, have nasty sinker/splitter/two-seamers. Nothing to worry about, except maybe Lucroy had an off game. On to what actually matters.

Tonight, it’s all about the pitchers. Manny Parra continued to pitch excellently, handling a very good Twins lineup quite well through 5.2 IP. Parra also continued to draw ground balls, with 9 of the 18 balls hit in play against him staying on the ground. Since rejoining the rotation against the Cardinals on June 6th, here’s what Parra has done.

23 IP, 29 K, 9 BB, 3 HR – or, if you prefer, 11.35 K/9, 3.52 BB/9, 1.17 HR/9

Those are absolutely fantastic numbers for a starting pitcher. It’s only been four starts, but they’ve been against four excellent lineups, and I really, really want to believe that this is the step forward that we’ve been waiting for.

Then we have the bullpen. The part of the Twins lineup that Zach Braddock faced – Jim Thome, Denard Span, Orlando Hudson, Joe Mauer, and Justin Morneau – was just made for Braddock. Braddock handled Thome, Span, and Hudson with ease – striking out all 3 – before giving up two hits to Mauer and Morneau, which is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. He managed to keep the bases empty before facing them, which is they key to facing the Twins lineup.

Kameron Loe continued his utter domination of right handers, striking out Michael Cuddyer to end the threat in the seventh. Seriously, that two-seamer is one of the single nastiest pitches I can remember seeing. Watch the video here.

Carlos Villanueva continued to pitch well – quietly, it seems. He managed to get around Jason Kubel, Delmon Young, and Nick Punto, despite allowing contact to all three hitters. He was certainly helped by an excellent throw to gun down Young on a steal attempt which wasn’t even close.

Finally, the Ax Man cometh. Once again, it was the gauntlet of left handed hitters, and Axford put himself in a poor situation by walking Matt Tolbert – a bad left handed (switch) hitter – to open the inning. Still, he managed to get Span and Hudson out, making Mauer’s double relatively unimportant. Still, it brought the tying run to the plate in the form of Justin Morneau. Morneau, however, was no problem for the Ax Man, who spotted everything on the corners and struck Morneau looking on a 95 MPH fastball.

It’s great to see Parra becoming a valuable part of the rotation, and with Axford, Loe, Braddock, and Villanueva, the Brewers have a potential top-half of the rotation starter and the core of a good bullpen on hand. All of these pitchers are 28 or younger. Finally, in Milwaukee, there’s a reason to be excited about young pitching.

Jim Edmonds and Ryan Braun were both 3-4, Casey McGehee hit a three run home run, and Chris Narveson recovered from yet another awful first inning to keep the Brewers in the game, but, quite obviously, the star of the game was one John Axford. Axford converted the two inning save, entering in the eighth inning with a two run lead and a runner on second, with a Leverage Index (LI) of 2.34 – that is, 2.34 times more important than the average situation.

John Axford faced seven hitters – Jim Thome, Nick Punto, Jason Kubel, Denard Span, Orlando Hudson, Joe Mauer, and Justin Morneau, and retired all but Punto (walk) and Mauer (single). All of them are left handed hitters and only Punto isn’t at least an average hitter. Mauer, Morneau, Thome and Kubel all rank as “excellent” in my book. That’s a remarkable gauntlet to face, especially for a right handed fastball specialist, and Axford came out of it with barely a scratch.

There is no reason that Axford can’t do this more often. This bullpen has struggled this season because bad or mediocre pitchers have had the ball at important times. John Axford has shown on a few occasions that he is capable of getting more than three outs at a time. Perhaps the six out save can’t be a staple, but in a pinch in the 8th inning, Axford is more than capable of finishing the inning and then the game.

John Axford looked and pitched like Rollie Fingers tonight. Ken Macha was very brave in allowing his relief ace to go two full innings and record a big time save against our “natural rivals.” He shouldn’t be afraid to stray from the conventional closer role more often – in my mind, there’s no question that the Brewers would benefit from continued outside-the-box bullpen usage. Please, Mr. Macha, keep letting John Axford pitch multiple innings.