Box Score
I cannot recall ever anticipating a June Brewers game as much as the one played today. June has historically represented the month when the Brewers fell hopelessly out of any form of contention. In contrast, today was a match-up between two Cy Young winners with first place hanging in the balance. Being a baseball fan does not get much better than this.
Despite giving up three runs and a homer, Greinke was mostly brilliant. He struck out nine in seven innings and walked none. He's now 6-1 on the season and has 60 strikeouts to only 7 walks. I'm going to go out on a limb and say the Greinke trade has worked out well for the Brewers. More importantly, I like watching pitchers that win games and have excellent K:BB ratios, thus the trade has worked out very well for me.
Also of note, John Axford had a dominant, and thus stress-free 9th inning. He had total command with of his curveball, and when that happens the opposition is essentially helpless. I'm hoping that today's outing was a sign of things to come.
The winner of tomorrow's game will have sole possession of first place. In the grand scheme of things tomorrow's game is not all that important. The Brewers have 97 games remaining and play the Cardinals 9 more times. That said, in an even grander, "How often are the Brewers in this position?" sense, the game is quite important. Brewers fans support the team insanely well and are rarely rewarded. A win tomorrow would be the type of victory that makes the "sports is 99% suffering, 1% glory*" ratio worth it.
*Special thanks to Steve Czaban for that poignant truism.
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