Brewers look to score some runs vs rival Cubs

Milwaukee, W.I. ~ In the two teams previous meetings, the Chicago Cubs have owned the Milwaukee Brewers. It seems that in the eight games they’ve played, the Brewers simply can’t catch a break against the Cubs. The Brew Crew have the most wins in the National League, but have gone a mere 1-7 against their division rivals, the Cubs.

However, only one of these games have been blowouts, and that was their first meeting of the season. Other than that 8-0 beat down on the Brewers, the largest margin is three. So even if Milwaukee isn’t winning a lot of games against the Cubs, they have stuck with them and have played in winnable games.

The one problem for the Brewers; they haven’t been scoring runs against Chicago. In their seven losses, they have been shut out five times. You can not win ball games if you don’t score any runs.

The Cubs are on the rise, having gone 7-2 in June so far, and have won eleven of their last fourteen games. Their offense is as good as expected,ranking third in the NL in runs scored and third in batting average. Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Kyle Schwarber, and Javier Baez have led the way on offense for Chicago.

Meanwhile, the Cubs pitching have allowed them to win more games as of recent. Their bullpen has been especially been hard to score against. Brandon Morrow has 15 saves, as Steve Cishek, Pedro Strop, and Justin Wilson all have at least one save and five holds. It should be fun to watch two great bullpen’s go at it against each other this series.

After this series the Brewers won’t meet with the Cubs again until August, and then two potential huge series in September. While the Crew have not yet beat the Cubs consistently this season, they are still in a great position, and taking two out of three in the series would be amazing.

Monday – Jose Quintana vs. Junior Guerra

It seems two out of the three only good starts of Quintana’s season has come against Milwaukee. He as yet to allow a run while pitching to the Brewers and has only allowed five hits in 13 innings. He is coming off of a good outing against the Philadelphia Phillies, wen he gave up two runs in 5.2 innings.

Tuesday – Tyler Chatwood vs. Chase Anderson

While Chatwood was a good free agent signing for the Cubs, and his ERA has dropped, he still is a big concern. He isn’t able to consistently throw strikes, which has been a problem. He has walked more batters than he has struck out. He has walked 58 in 56 innings pitched.

Wednesday – Mike Montgomery vs. Jhoulys Chacin

Montgomery has replaced Yu Darvish in the starting rotation. He has only allowed two runs in 17.2 innings since Darvish has gone on the DL. However, Montgomery has had a hard time pitching against the Brewers. He pitched twice against Milwaukee in 2017 and both were disasters – He allowed nine runs in 4.1 innings.

The bottom line in this series is that the Brewers need to score runs. If they do, the pitching should handle the rest.

By Jacob Szczap