Brewers 3, Cardinals 2: Flip Flip, Skip and Craig?

Jaime Garcia started off on the right track Tuesday night, striking out three of his first four batters — on the strength of six swinging strikes — but Casey McGehee drilled a liner off Garcia to derail El Gato’s momentum. Felipe Lopez followed with a couple of errors, Garcia with a couple of walks, and that was all that the Brewers needed as they won Tuesday, 3-2.

The turning point — McGehee’s smash off Garcia’s backside — unsettled both Garcia and his defense. After the trainer check at the mound, Garcia took a couple of wild practice throws. Then it was Lopez’s turn to throw wildly, though he composed himself and appeared to be in solid position to make the play. El Gato ultimately escaped unscathed, but Lopez’s second error led to another confrontation with McGehee that the Cardinal lefty lost again. It was a case in which the three runs that Garcia allowed did seem to warrant their unearned classification, partly because of the errors, one of which led to an intentional walk, but also because home-plate ump Tony Randazzo pinched him on low strikes, something that Garcia needs to survive but that Randazzo called few of. The first two pitches to McGehee were borderline balls, and when Garcia brought the ball up to comply with Randazzo’s high zone, McGehee smacked it out of the park.

The two blunders overshadowed some otherwise plucky defense. Even in Lopez’s case, the errors weren’t for lack of trying. Brendan Ryan, in particular, made what will likely be one of the team’s top 10 defensive plays of the year when he laid out for a ball up the middle then glove-flipped to second to start a 6-4-3 double play. Ryan also teamed with rightfielder Allen Craig to execute a textbook cutoff: With the speedy Rickie Weeks running from first, Craig charged a groundball and came up throwing to third, where Ryan cut and relayed to second a split-second too late to get Weeks, who thought better of going first to third. Craig hustled all over the place, even going hard toward the stands for a foul well beyond his reach. Which raises a reasonable question: Would the team be better off with Lopez playing second base, Skip Schumaker playing right field and Craig playing third base? As the club’s fifth-best-hitting starter (in OBP and wOBA), Lopez is clearly too good of a hitter not to start. One other option would be to flip Flip and Skip at third and second. However, while Schumaker may fit a third-base mold — less range but strong arm — a mid-season tutorial at yet another position he’s never played would likely be disastrous. Assuming that the personnel doesn’t change, we like Schumaker back in the outfield and Lopez back at a position he can handle.

In one of the Cardinals’ few scoring opportunities, Yadier Molina grounded into another double play. If Tony La Russa doesn’t take us up on our idea to bat YaMo last, he at least needs to deploy the hit-and-run, just about every time Molina hits with a runner on first. Yamo leads team and is fourth in the league in contact rate on pitches outside the strike zone (79.2%) and leads the team in overall contact rate (87.1%). In the worst-case scenario, the opponent pitches out and nabs the runner. In terms of run-expectancy, one out with none on isn’t much different from none out with a runner on first but a highly susceptible double-play candidate batting.

Other notes:

• On an evening when farm director Jeff Luhnow spoke to the media about the team’s draft-pick signings, it was encouraging to see Zack Cox’s name listed in the 40-man roster drop-down in our scoring software.
• Hitting in the #2 hole ahead of Pujols, Jon Jay showed a lot of patience — perhaps too much. With runners on the corners with two outs in the third, Jay drew a 3-0 count, then watched three strikes. Then in the eighth, with runners on, he struck out looking again. In fairness, he fell victim to Randazzo’s somewhat erratic strike zone. Hitting second ahead of the best player in the game is a plum job, but even that requires some learning. We appreciate Jay’s willingness to take pitches and give the big man a chance, but he’ll soon pick up on the fact that pitchers would rather face him than the Human Rake.
• On the other hand, Matt Holliday seemed a bit jumpy at the dish. In his plate appearances, he saw only two, three, four and three pitches each, bouncing out reaching for a 2-0 pitch in the eighth with runners on first and second. Milwaukee reliever John Axford had just intentionally walked Pujols, and it seemed he wasn’t uncomfortable walking Holliday, too. It made sense to pitch around him, since the same logic that applied to walking Pujols would have to apply to Holliday even moreso, with rookie Allen Craig on deck.
• Curiously, Ken Macha turned to his closer Axford in the eighth inning when the occasion — Jay batting with runners on the corners — called for a LOOGy. Macha went old school, realizing that sometimes, a platoon advantange doesn’t outweigh a talent advantage.
• Dave Bush showed why he was once a promising pitcher. Before the game, we wondered just how many more years in the majors he had ahead of him: Two, maybe? It’s a fun game to play — of the starters last night, we’d bet that the player with the shortest remaining career is still Bush, and the longest is Colby Rasmus.
• Molina has always been a fan favorite, but we’ve noticed even more love from the local rooters in the wake of his facing down Brandon Phillips. It’s fun to see the fans picking up on the rivalry.