Phillies Battle Back Against Brewers In Memorial Day Weekend Showcase

All those diamonds in Sam's park were bound to lead somewhere like this. 

This was a series that, while a split, could have been a series win for either manager. Sam came close to a win in Game 1, I came close to a win in Game 3. Ultimately, a series with this many power hitters and this many subpar relievers resulted in a 2-2 stalemate, but that says more about how well we match up honestly. 

Here now the details:

Game 1- Brewers 3, Phillies 2

W: Pierce Johnson

L: Orion Kerkering

SV: Michael Kopech

This game was the closest thing to a pitching duel we had during this series. Both Graham Ashcraft and Max Scherzer had pretty on-target days. Ashcraft allowed 5 hits, but only 2 runs on some smooth contact from Corbin Carroll and Bryce Harper in the fourth. Scherzer was untouchable; only Gavin Lux got any hits against him, and nobody could get him home. This one would ultimately come down to whose bullpen was worse, and the Brewers 'pen surprisingly held the fort down, with great innings from Pierce Johnson and Sam Moll. The Phils bullpen, meanwhile, wasn't so lucky; Orion Kerkering, despite getting two immediate outs in the 8th on a Nick Fortes GDP, put on my bottom two batters and gave up a homer to Jackson Chourio. It was now a whole new ballgame, and the 'pen, including an excellent save from Michael Kopech, silenced any notion of a comeback. 

Game 2- Brewers 11, Phillies 0

W: Yu Darvish

L: MacKenzie Gore

When I agreed to join this league, I was honestly unsure of how well I'd do. Y'know, you're given a bad team without a ton of true keepers, you hope you can outlast some better planning, it's kind of a crapshoot. A game like this was a pie-in-the-sky scenario for me. Shutting out a team that's above .500 with a mediocre pitching card on the mound for me. Regardless of how the rest of the series would go [and...it wouldn't go as well], I was proud of this one.

Here is Yu Darvish's line for his second game of the season: in 7 IP, he gave up 3 hits and 2 walks, and struck out 3. No runs scored. There were men on base, but three of them were caught stealing in the first 3 innings. "Travis d'Arnaud's looking like Johnny Bench back there" was Sam's reaction. You wouldn't know it from the score, but the MKE offense was pretty quiet for a bit. Chourio made it home on an error in the third, Kevin Pillar slapped Kyle Stowers home with a single. Little stuff like that. My lineup of lefty-killers, sans Heliot Ramos for the series, wasn't accomplishing much.

In inning 5, after Carlos Santana singled aboard, Michael Conforto, he of the 9,000 strikeouts, finally got his first homer of the season. And as Darvish cruised, and as Sam faced a 4-0 lead before his bullpen even got there, he figured letting Bryse Wilson take the rest of the game was the better option, considering the alternative would have been to risk better relievers on something that could still be a loss. Wilson came aboard in the 6th, and after a relatively quiet inning [Pillar was caught stealing in the midst of a two-steal day], the bloodshed truly began. In the 7th, Bogaerts singled aboard before J.P. Crawford homered them both home. In the 8th, Pillar stole his way to second before Chourio would rocket his 2nd bomb of the day out of CBP. In the ninth, even after the game was essentially over, Wilson put two men on for Kyle Stowers, up since last series, and HE went yard. Eleven runs, all unanswered, and all seasonably put away by the Brewers bullpen, despite some sticky situations for Ryan Fernandez in the 8th. These are the wins we hope for in the darkest moments. 

Two notes at the midway point of the series. One, to this point, Sam had yet to garner a single home run, or even a diamond, in his diamond-friendly home ballpark. Two, mid-conversation, Sam switches out his dice. The blue/purple ones weren't working, so he switched in some solid neon green and yellow ones. Considering that Milwaukee is famously the land of green and yellow, I was initially puzzled by this. But he was playing superstitious. "It must be the dice," he insisted. 

Wouldn't it be funny if it was that simple? Anyway,

Game 3- Phillies 11, Brewers 10

W: Matthew Liberatore

L: Kyle Finnegan

Once again, 11 was the magic number, but a very different story here. Sam did have the offensive edge from the very beginning, scoring 9 in the first 4 innings off of Ben Lively. This included a leadoff homer from Francisco Lindor, Dylan Crews hitting two RBI triples, Bryce Harper hitting a two run bomb and an RBI single from Jacob Stallings, who'd been very quiet this series thus far. Unfortunately, Sam had Aaron Nola on the mount. The first three Milwaukee runs of the game were scored on some gimmes, like a Paredes double play bringing Chourio home, and a Chourio double bringing home 2 guys, one of whom was one of two batters two reach base on an error in the 2nd inning. In the fourth, we would get some stuff that we can solely chalk up to Nola, like three straight singles from my bottom 3 guys and a 3-run bomb from the super-hot Jackson Chourio, now leading my team in dingers. Through 4 it was 9-7 Phils, and this would mean the bullpen would need to really hunker down to prevent any spoilers.

Well...Inning 6, Gavin Lux singled Blake Perkins home [Perkins was 3-3 with 2 runs, reaching base all 4 times he was up], and in inning 7, Nick Fortes singled home two baserunners. This made it 10-9 Brewers in the 7th, and I could hopefully put together the same magic I did in the first 2 games to put the Phils away and win the series.

Except I'd already made my fatal flaw. In the 5th, because I needed a good reliever to quiet the bats after Lively left, I put in Michael Kopech. Kopech has been a good choice at closer, but I was thinking I'd leave that to Kyle Finnegan for the inning mileage and just get the outs where I could. Kopech was on point, striking out 5 of his 6 batters. But when it came time for the 9th, and Finnegan took over with the game on the line, he gave up a solo homer to Bryce Harper, a single and a steal to Dylan Crews, and an RBI double to Jacob Stallings to walk it off. If I had let Finnegan go in during the 5th and left Kopech for the 9th, we perhaps may not have been in this situation.

But as such, Jacob Stallings, or as I later referred to him, 'the bane of my existence', spoiled what could have been a crucial win for me. At least we scored 10 runs. 

Game 4- Phillies 9, Brewers 5

W: Ranger Suarez

L: Bailey Falter

Round 2 for the notorious Milwaukee lefty-killers. Notably, we did strike first, with an RBI single from Conforto in the first frame and more RBIs from the back third of the lineup to make it 3-0. Falter managed to get out of the first cleanly, which never happens. Ultimately, the 2nd was the rough time for him in this game; Falter gave up back to back homers to Jacob Stallings [the bane of my existence, now d'you see why?] and Nick Castellanos [some calamity must have gone down the day of the game]. The next batter up, Brandon Nimmo, was plunked. And plunked again his next at-bat. I don't speak for Bailey Falter, he does what he wants. Despite 2 more people getting caught stealing on D'Arnaud, 2 more runs scored in the third on some contact hitting. I made the wise move of letting Harper score in order to get out Stallings on the basepaths, which was 100% a revenge move.

Through 4 innings the score stood, 4-3. I tried to use my best relievers to try and keep it close, and in the 8th I went with Sam Moll, recently called up. This did not go well. Yet another Jacob Stallings homer brought 3 runs in, Dylan Crews made it to third on a steal and a catcher error [my first error of the series], and Brandon Nimmo brought him home. Then Lindor singled home Nimmo. 5 runs in one inning. What was once a close game was now broken open, and Jordan Montgomery was brought in to at least stop the bleeding. 

I will give my team credit- facing a 6 run deficit in the bottom of the ninth, we did not keel over and die [like usual]. Travis d'Arnaud, vindicating himself after the error, hit a 2-run home run, his fifth dinger in 7 games, to bring the score to 9-5. Even if we did lose, which...we did, I would have been happy if we at least showed some semblance of fight, and we absolutely did. 

And so, the Brewers get out of Philly with a split, despite that one game that's gonna haunt me for a while that should have been a win. Both wins were well-managed, and both losses were at the very least not complete runaways. Sam and I are pretty evenly matched, and it was a fun as hell series to play. Memorial Day weekend to me means barbecues, beers and baseball [pretty sure that was Conan the Barbarian's answer to 'what is best in life?'], and rolling this morning was a great way to kick it off. 

In conclusion, it was the dice. It was 100% the dice. I think the next course of action, in regards to superstition, is holding a viking funeral for the dice used in Game 1 and 2. 

Jacob Stallings has been a big offensive boost for the Phillies this season.