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Gallardo returns to form in Brewers romp
CHICAGO — With the Brewers putting up 26 hits against the Cubs, the offense stole the show in Monday night’s 18-1 win. But right-handed starter Yovani Gallardo was pretty impressive in his own right.
Gallardo went six strong innings in his third outing since coming off the disabled list, giving up just one run on two hits. More impressively, though, Gallardo tied a career high with 12 strikeouts.
“I thought Yo threw the ball pretty well,” said Brewers manager Ken Macha. “He had good command on his low [outside pitches] in particular.
“He was hitting that little box down there, down and away, with consistency.”
After rolling through six innings, Gallardo was removed after just 95 pitches, due in large part to the Brewers’ 13-1 lead at the time.
Macha noted that the need for some of his relievers to get some work played a part in the decision as well.
“We’ve got to get [LaTroy] Hawkins going again,” said Macha, referring to the veteran right-hander, who has recently returned from a 2 1/2-month stint on the disabled list. “[Trevor] Hoffman and [John] Axford both hadn’t pitched in five days. So we needed to get both those guys in there.”
Gallardo’s outing was particularly impressive, considering the way his previous start — against the Reds — had gone.
Last time out, Gallardo struggled, giving up six earned runs on 10 hits in 2 2/3 innings of work.
“Every time I help the team win, it’s a pretty good day at the ballpark,” Gallardo said. “Obviously, my last start wasn’t very good. You can’t worry about one [bad] start, we’re all going to have them. You’ve just got to bounce back and keep moving forward.”
At the plate, Gallardo reached base after being hit by a pitch in the third, but finished as the only player in the Brewers’ starting lineup without a hit.
That was just fine with Gallardo.
“I’ll take how the day went today,” he said. “Any time I get up there and get a hit, it’s a bonus. Let the hitters do their job and I’ll do the pitching.”
That formula worked pretty well for the Brewers on Monday.
Utility man Inglett throws scoreless inning
MILWAUKEE — Brewers manager Ken Macha does not like to use position players as pitchers. A week ago, Macha went so far as to call it “embarrassing.”
Yet with the Brewers trailing the Reds, 12-4, on Tuesday, Macha asked utility man Joe Inglett to pitch the ninth.
Inglett was the first Brewers position player to pitch since infielder Trent Durrington threw on April 17, 2004, in Houston. Five other position players have taken the mound so far this season, including Felipe Lopez and Joe Mather for the Cardinals on April 17 and Jonathan Van Every on May 8 for Boston. Former Brewers utility man Bill Hall also pitched for the Red Sox on May 28, and he was joined by Houston’s Kevin Cash the same day, who pitched for the Astros against the Reds.
“It’s really the first time I’ve ever used a position player, even when I managed in the Minor Leagues,” Macha said. “It was interesting. He was throwing 51 [mph] and got them out.”
Inglett was effective, retiring the top of the Reds’ lineup in order. Brandon Phillips, Orlando Cabrera and Joey Votto had combined to go 11-for-15 (.733) before facing Inglett, driving in four runs with seven runs scored.
Against Inglett, the top of the Reds’ order managed a popup to third, a groundout to second base and a long flyout to center field.
“One, two, three. That’s all I can say,” right-handed starter Yovani Gallardo said of Inglett. “I was pretty impressed. For him to go in there and get three outs, he made it seem easy.”
Inglett touched 56 mph on the radar gun once, with his average pitch speed at 54 mph.
While the pitches registered as knuckleballs on the pitch tracker, catcher Jonathan Lucroy said Inglett was just throwing the ball to the glove.
“I put down fastball, but it wasn’t fast,” Lucroy said. “It’s just flipping them in there. That’s all it is. Just trying to save our pitching staff for tomorrow.”
Macha said that the status of his pitching staff was the reason he called for Inglett on the mound. After Gallardo went just 2 2/3 innings, Macha used Todd Coffey for one-third of an inning to close out the third.
Long-reliever Chris Capuano pitched three innings, followed by David Riske for the seventh and Trevor Hoffman for the eighth.
While Macha had four pitchers — Kameron Loe, John Axford, Carlos Villanueva and lefty Zach Braddock — remaining in the bullpen, none were available.
“Loe needed another day. I wasn’t going to use Axford. Capuano, I used him, so I needed a lefty [Braddock] for tomorrow,” Macha said. “I thought it would be ill-advised if I used Villa. But when your starter doesn’t get three innings in, that happens.”
Inglett, who did not want to talk about his Major League pitching debut after the game, was volunteered by his manager.
“I asked him if he’d pitched before,” Macha said. “He said, ‘I’ll go do that.'”
Injured Gallardo won’t pitch in All-Star Game
MILWAUKEE — Brewers ace Yovani Gallardo will not pitch in the All-Star Game next week in Anaheim, manager Ken Macha said Monday.
After being named to the National League All-Star squad earlier in the day, Gallardo left Sunday’s game in the bottom of the third inning with a strained left oblique muscle.
Gallardo was still holding out hope of a quick return before a Monday visit with the team doctor, but Macha inserted a dose of reality. Macha said Gallardo would probably not make another first-half start and would definitely not pitch in next week’s All-Star Game.
“Throwing in the All-Star Game? No,” Macha said. “I’m saying that, best-case scenario, he’s probably going to be doing no baseball activities for at least 10 days. … He’s not going to pitch in the All-Star Game. You can’t have a guy walk off the mound one week and then put him in [All-Star] Game the next. No.”
The Brewers summoned outfielder Lorenzo Cain from Triple-A Nashville, and he was making his way to Milwaukee on Monday morning. According to Brewers general manager Doug Melvin, the idea behind bringing Cain to Milwaukee sooner rather than later was to avoid any potential logistical issues if Gallardo were to go on the 15-day disabled list.
Gallardo was evaluated by team physician William Raasch on Monday afternoon, and the strained left oblique muscle was confirmed. Officially, the team has listed Gallardo as day-to-day and the Brewers determined they would not make a roster move Monday.
If the doctors had determined that Gallardo would have to go to the DL, then the team would have activated Cain.
In that scenario, Gallardo would be eligible to return from the DL beginning July 20 and would miss a minimum of two starts.
“That’s the tough thing, whether to put him on the DL or not,” Melvin said. “If you don’t put him on the DL and you use the days, he could be ready the day after the All-Star break. But if you don’t pitch him this week, you’ve got seven days and you’ve got [three] days at the break, that’s [10] days.
Gallardo said he was feeling better Monday morning, though he described the oblique as still feeling tight. He described it Monday as feeling initially like a “cramping” sensation just before he exited the game Sunday.
Even if he’s unable to pitch, Gallardo said he planned to make the trip to Anaheim for All-Star festivities.
“He’s feeling decent, but this is something that’s [to be taken seriously],” Macha said. “I had Tim Hudson and he would get them every once in a while, and it’s a long process coming back if there is a tear in there.
“So [the doctors] have to figure out what’s going on in there [with Gallardo].”
Though he is sidelined by injury and may be forced to watch from the dugout, Gallardo remained enthusiastic about his first All-Star Game.
“I’m still excited about it,” Gallardo said. “It’s one of those things that we all look forward to. Hopefully I’m available, but we’ll see.”
Jordan Schelling is an associate reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
Brewers beat 6/30
Fielder puts slow start behind him
MILWAUKEE — Prince Fielder has quickly made his slow start a thing of the past.
Fielder is just trying to do what works best for him, and it’s working pretty well right now. On the Brewers’ current homestand, Fielder has four home runs and eight RBIs, increasing his season totals to 17 homers and 35 RBIs.
With his recent power barrage, including a pair of long balls Tuesday night, Fielder leads the Majors with 10 home runs in the month of June. The key, according to Fielder, is just doing what he’s always done.
“I’m just trying to swing like I swing,” Fielder said. “I’ve never been a guy to swing easy. When you’re not getting results people want you to do different things.
“The only thing I’ve been trying to do different is swing the way I swing. I’ve never been a guy that hits singles to left field. That just happens.”
Fielder remains fifth on the team in RBIs with 35, but it has more to do with timing than with Fielder’s production. While he has 10 homers this month, he also has just 16 RBIs.
Including a two-run shot in the third inning on Tuesday, only four of Fielder’s 17 home runs this season have come with runners on base. None of them has been with more than one runner on base.
By comparison, out of Fielder’s 46 home runs in 2009, nearly half (24) came with runners on base, including nine with two or more runners on base.
Still, with Fielder hitting home runs, the Brewers’ offense, which leads the National League in home runs, total bases and extra-base hits entering Wednesday’s game, is only going to get better.
“His RBI total has gone up, too,” Brewers manager Ken Macha said. “However he wants to knock them in — solo homers, base hits — it’s OK with me.”
Milwaukee pitchers providing some offense
MILWAUKEE — Facing the Brewers, the No. 9 spot in the batting order is hardly an easy out. Yovani Gallardo reaffirmed that on Tuesday night, going 1-for-1 with a solo homer and a walk.
With a .219 batting average, Brewers pitchers lead the National League. Milwaukee’s pitching staff is tied for first with 33 hits and 14 runs. Brewers pitchers also rank first in home runs (3), RBIs (14), doubles (8), on-base percentage (.261), slugging percentage (.331), and OPS (.592).
Along with their success, the Brewers staff has even coined a phrase to describe it.
“These guys have got a quote in here in the dugout,” said Brewers manager Ken Macha. “They say, ‘Pitchers rake.'”
While the hurlers’ ability to swing that bat has come in handy quite a bit of late, Macha would like to see them improve on another aspect of the game at the plate: bunting.
The Brewers rank last in the NL with just eight sacrifice bunts, while they have more than four times as many hits.
“We’ve been working on our bunting,” Macha said. “We’ve got more hits than we do sacrifice bunts. So we’ve been putting some time in on the bunting, because eventually we’re going to need to move [a runner] up.”
Still, on the current homestand, Brewers pitchers have been even better at the plate than their season average of .219. More than double that even.
With eight hits in 18 at-bats, the pitching staff had posted a .444 batting average entering Wednesday’s final game of the homestand. Along with that .444 mark, the Brewers have gotten two RBIs, five runs, a walk and a home run out of the pitcher’s spot.
Each of the Brewers’ five starters — Gallardo, Randy Wolf, Dave Bush, Chris Narveson and Manny Parra — has contributed at least one hit, while all of them except Bush have either scored a run, driven in a run, or both.
“We have some pretty good [hitting] pitchers,” Gallardo said. “We have a lot of fun up their hitting. [Wolf], [Bush], Narveson and Manny, we take it serious. For certain situations, you can only help yourself out. I think that’s what we try to do.
“We joke around out there when we hit BP, but you never know when it’s going to come in handy.”
Offense struggles with shadows at home
MILWAUKEE — The shadows aren’t going anywhere, deal with it.
That quote, from Rickie Weeks in 2009 about the shadows during Miller Park day games, was recalled by manager Ken Macha on Wednesday when asked about the effect they’ve had on the Brewers’ offense.
Even so, the Brewers have not hit well during the day at home.
In 14 home day games, the Brewers have just a .238 team batting average, with just 51 runs scored and 15 home runs.
“Get it out of your mind and go up there and bear down the best you can,” Macha suggested before Wednesday’s game. “I hate the saying, but it is what it is. The other teams play in the same thing.
“Does it make it tougher? Yes, it does. But there are shadows in Anaheim, there are shadows in Boston, almost every stadium’s got the shadows.”
On the season, the Brewers have been nearly 30 points better overall than in home day games, with a .267 batting average. With 96 home runs in 77 games, the Brewers average 1.24 homers per game.
That rate goes up slightly at night, as they hit 1.29 per game. During the day, however, it dips to just 1.07 homers per game.
Some hitters, however, perform even better during home day games. Weeks and Casey McGehee are hitting .320 and .308, respectively, during home game days. Even more impressive is Carlos Gomez at home during the day, with a .303 average, compared to just .239 overall this season.
Most affected by the shadows seems to be left fielder Ryan Braun. In 53 at-bats during home day games, Braun has just eight hits, good for a .151 batting average.
Braun entered Wednesday having not hit a home run at home during the day, while collecting just three doubles for a .208 slugging percentage. With a .207 on-base percentage — boosted by three walks — Braun has just a .415 OPS in home day games.
Of all hitters with at least 25 at-bats in home day games, Braun’s average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage and OPS rank last.
With that in mind, day games at Miller Park may seem like a good time for a rare day off for the Brewers’ left fielder. For Macha and the Brewers, however, the current roster situation and recent pitching matchups have not allowed for such a move.
“At a later date I might give him a day off when we have a day game,” Macha said. “Today, we’ve got a lefty going. The last day game, they had a lefty going.
“My roster is what it is, too.”
Davis has successful rehab outing
MILWAUKEE — He was not as dominant as in his last rehab start, but Doug Davis was effective on Wednesday as he took the mound for Class A Wisconsin in Appleton.
Davis tossed seven strong innings, surrendering just one run on six hits. He hit a batter, walked three and recorded four strikeouts. The lefty tossed 96 pitches — four shy of his targeted total of 100 — with 63 going for strikes.
Following the start — Davis’ last rehab outing — he will meet the Brewers in St. Louis. Davis is expected to pitch again during the Brewers’ four-game home series with the Giants next week. On normal rest, his next start would coincide with that of right-hander Dave Bush.
Jordan Schelling is an associate reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
Brewers go airborne to soar past Astros
MILWAUKEE — Yovani Gallardo stole a page out of Prince Fielder’s book on Tuesday night. According to Fielder, it’s the other way around.
Gallardo didn’t have his best stuff on the mound, but he sure made up for it at the plate on Tuesday, sparking the Brewers’ offensive outburst in a series-evening 7-5 victory over the Astros at Miller Park.
On the mound, Gallardo (8-3) gave up four runs on seven hits over six innings while striking out five and walking two. It was just the fourth time in 17 starts this season that Gallardo has given up four or more earned runs.
But he belted a solo homer in the second inning to put the Brewers on the board. Gallardo did his best Fielder impression, belting the first pitch he saw from Astros starter Brett Myers off the bullpen wall in left-center field.
Gallardo’s home run was his third this season, which gives him — by himself — more than any other pitching staff in the Majors. It was the seventh of Gallardo’s career, which extended his franchise record for home runs by a pitcher.
Three batters later, Fielder crushed a two-run home run to right.
“No, I’m taking one out of his,” the first baseman said when asked if Gallardo was taking a page out of his book. “He’s pitching good and hitting homers. He’s locked in all the way around.”
Fielder added his 17th homer of the season, a solo shot to lead off the fifth, for his 19th career multi-homer game. It was also Fielder’s 177th career home run, moving him ahead of Ben Oglivie for fifth on the Brewers’ all-time leaderboard.
After a slow start, Fielder now has 10 home runs in the month of June, including four on Milwaukee’s homestand.
“When I see the ball and I take my swing at it, good things usually happen,” Fielder said. “It’s just how baseball is. The only thing I’ve been trying to do different is to swing the way I swing. I’ve never been a guy to hit singles to left field.”
Rookie catcher Jonathan Lucroy got in on the act in the sixth, leading off with his second career home run. With Lucroy’s blast, the Brewers matched a season high with four homers in a game — the fifth time they accomplished the feat.
Myers (5-6) surrendered all four homers — a career high — as he gave up a season-worst seven earned runs on nine hits with two walks and five strikeouts over six innings pitched. The veteran entered the game having allowed just two home runs all season.
“I think we just hit the mistakes, I guess,” Fielder said. “I don’t know the exact formula we used. But I think we were able to just hit the mistakes and hit them hard.”
In the fifth inning, though, Brewers manager Ken Macha started to get a feeling of déjà vu.
With a 5-0 lead through four, Gallardo opened the fifth by giving up a leadoff double to catcher Jason Castro and followed with a walk to shortstop Oswaldo Navarro.
After a sacrifice by Myers, center fielder Michael Bourn ripped a two-run single to center on a 1-0 curveball.
“The game started to look eerily similar to last night,” Macha said, referencing Houston’s 9-5 comeback victory. “We got off to a big lead, and they got their first two guys on in the fifth inning and they got three hits, all of them on a breaking ball off of Yo.”
Following Bourn, a grounder to short got Gallardo within an out of escaping the inning, but a Lance Berkman single plated another run, putting the Astros within two.
Gallardo finally got out of it, coaxing Hunter Pence into a fielder’s choice to end the inning. Leading off the sixth, though, Gallardo gave up a leadoff home run to Pedro Feliz on a 2-0 fastball.
“It just got out of hand there for a little bit,” Gallardo said. “That one to Feliz, falling behind in the count, it’s a fastball situation. You’ve almost got to be perfect with the fastball, and I just left it up over the zone.”
But just as Gallardo let the Astros back in the game, Fielder and Lucroy gave the Brewers some extra breathing room with home runs leading off the fifth and sixth.
Like Gallardo, closer John Axford didn’t appear to have his best stuff in the ninth, surrendering a run and putting two runners on for Pence with two outs, but he shut the door and converted his eighth save in as many chances. The win gave the Brewers the chance to win their third consecutive series, and a win Wednesday would make it a 7-2 homestand.
“It would mean a lot,” Gallardo said. “It’s very important these last couple weeks before the All-Star break. We have a bunch of games here at home and we’re going to take advantage of it.
“All the guys are out their playing hard doing everything they can. So hopefully we just continue this, enjoy the win today and show up tomorrow and win the series.”
Jordan Schelling is an associate reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
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