By any measure, the St. Louis Cardinals have overachieved this season. Their trip to Milwaukee would be viewed by many as a measuring stick to determine how competitive this young team is compared to the NL Central division leaders. If the first two games are the measuring stick, the answer is not very as the Brewers hammered the Cardinals again Tuesday night shutting out St. Louis 6-0.
Michael McGreevy gave the St. Louis Cardinals a reasonable start for the first 4 innings, but he received no run support and the 5th inning would be his undoing as it has been for many of the St. Louis starters lately. You won’t see any offensive highlights from the Cardinals here, but the Brewers provided more than their share. The first would come in the bottom of the 4th inning when Michael McGreevy made one too many mistakes to Jake Bauer who crushed a 394 foot solo home run into the right field seats giving the Brewers their first lead at 1-0.
The infamous 5th inning would be one that Michael McGreevy would not finish. It started with a Christian Yelich double followed by walks to Chourio and Turang to load the bases. William Contreras would quickly unload them when he blasted a double to the right-center field wall upping the Brewer lead to 3-0. That would end Michael McGreevy’s night with his final stat line being 4 innings allowing 7 hits while striking out 6 and walking 3 giving up 5 earned runs. That final earned run would cross the plate when Ryan Fernandez started his relief effort by giving up a 3-run bomb to Garrett Mitchell that traveled 421 feet careening off the center field overhang giving Milwaukee a commanding 6-0 lead.
The Cardinals bats made Brewers starter Kyle Harrison look like Cy Young. To his credit, he pitched well throwing 6 complete innings allowing a measly 4 hits and no earned runs to St. Louis with no walks and two strikeouts.
One minor subplot late in the game was Abner Uribe’s exaggerated gesture after he struck out Alec Burleson (confirmed strike on appeal). The managers apparently discussed the issue in between innings. Quite possible we’ll be hearing more about this in the near future.
The Cardinals will try to avoid a sweep Wednesday afternoon when Dustin May takes the mound for St. Louis. The Brewers starter is to be determined at this point. First pitch at American Family Field in Milwaukee is set for 12:40pm central time and the game will be watchable on Cardinals.tv.
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