As the Milwaukee Brewers jockey with the Cubs atop the NL Central, they pay a visit to the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field for the first time since Craig Counsell swapped uniforms. The bench-clearing Brewers have seen their fair share of flare-ups this season. Will this series add to the tension?
If there is one series that has the potential to outstrip the hostility that erupted in the one from which the Brewers recently emerged, it is the one they are about to enter. Craig Counsell will face a challenger for the first time in his management career. His decision to join the Cubs came early enough in the offseason that he and others expected tempers to cool as the winter progressed, but all of the buzz around his choice appears to indicate otherwise. The Cubs were despised by Brewers fans before assisting the apparent betrayal of a once-adored symbol. With both teams battling for the Central Division lead, this series has the potential to heighten the animosity.
It’s fair to say Joe Ross got FIPed to death in his penultimate start, but in his most recent one, he was genuinely smoked by an unrelenting Yankees lineup. The path forward to see Ross as a sustainable big-league starter feels less certain after he yielded seven runs in five innings, but he’s getting decent swing-and-miss rates; he’s getting a decent amount of ground balls; and he’s suppressing a decent amount of pop off the bat. In short, he’s performing like a reasonably solid middle-of-the-rotation starter who’s run into some really bad luck.
More bad luck looms for Ross, as he finds his counterpart at the outset of what looks like a brilliant season. Wesneski came up as a long relief option, but he moved into the rotation on the back of his slider and the deepening of his repertoire. After being knocked around he was shifted back to the pen, but after sharpening his stuff was stretched back out and now sits as a valuable arm in the back of the Cubs rotation. The sub-1.00 ERA is perhaps a disproportionately glittering statistic, given that he’s pitched just over 10 innings, but he’s also struck out six while walking only one, and he’s getting batters to chase at an elite level. If he can even come close to maintaining this production, the Brewers (and the NL Central in general) have much to fear in this young arm. It’s still more likely that he has some growing pains ahead, though. Perhaps the Brewers can inflict them.
At only 25 years old, the Brewers are Myers’s sixth franchise, and the one with which he made his major league debut. On the back of an elite four-seamer, he authored a great debut against the Pirates and then proceeded to endure a walloping by the Yanks. The ups and downs of a fledgling career offer little in the way of prognostics, but the front office has determined that for the time being, Myers has earned his way into the rotation. Let’s see if he has what it takes to stay there.
