Last night's Brewer game

I was planning on posting about this from work today, but the workload was overwhelming. I want to get this in before we're too far into tonight's game. I'm writing while watching, so I'm sorry if it's a little disjointed.

Last night's game was nationally televised on ESPN and obviously had a lot of off-field story concerning the death of Cardinal reliever Josh Hancock.

Since that's a story we've all heard, I'm sticking with the game itself.

Prince Fielder had a solo HR, his 6th HR of the season. It was Jeff Suppan's first complete game since 2003.

I was fairly impressed with last night's commentators. They were extremely complimentrary to the Brewers, especially the pitching. They hooked onto our new rotation of Derrick Turnbow setting up in the 8th and Francisco Cordero closing out the 9th. They made the point that having those two on their game effectively shortens the game to 7 innings for any opponent.

I had this discussion with my boyfriend earlier. Ideally, Turnbow will face 3 batters as will Cordero. That's two pitchers for 6 outs. Brian Shouse is our lefty reliever. He never faces more than 2 or 3 batters. That's a lot of roster space and a lot of salary money for 9 total batters. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, as they are all pitching well and making a big difference. But it's something to think about.

It was definitely an interesting game. The Josh Hancock spectre hung over the game, obviously, but there were just some weird plays. Albert Pujols walked on just 3 balls. No one caught it at the time, but the announcers went back and counted the pitches. Pujols threw his bat toward the dugout and started to first, so I guess the ump just went with it.

Kevin Mench scored with only a hit that didn't pass the pitchers mound. He hit a blooper that bounced and scooted toward third. The pitcher finally tracked it down and made an ill-advised throw to first that was about 4 feet to the second base side of the first base bag. Mench got to second on the error. Mench then stole 3rd without a throw even being made. Finally, he scored on a balk by pitcher Kip Wells. Strange play.

There were a lot of good tidbits thrown out in last night's commentary:

*Going into last night's game, Jeff Suppan had thrown just 6 walks in 35 innings this season

*Last season's Brewer's starting pitchers won just 48 games all of last season. They've won 13 already this year.

*Our record after last night's win is 16-9, good for a tie for the NL's best record. Heading into May last year we were 14-11. By mid-May we were below .500 and never saw a winning record again.

*Last year we were 27-54 on the road. This year we've already won 3 road series. In fact, we've only lost one series all season - at home, to the Cubs.

*Brewers starting pitchers are 9-1 through the last 14 games with a 3.21 ERA.

*Bill Hall was in some elite company last season. He hit 35 home runs, had 85 RBIs, scored 101 runs and hit 39 doubles. He led the Brewers in all categories.
There were only 3 other guys ( I didn't catch if this was in the NL or in all of MLB) that hit more than 35 HR and 35 doubles: Beltran, Aramis Ramirez and Alfonso Soriano)

* Jim Edmonds, a career .289 hitter, hit just 6 of 134 against the Brewers last season (.044)

* David Eckstein struck out just one time in the month of April

* With the win, Jeff Suppan made history. He and Chris Capuano both managed four wins in the month of April, the first time any two Brewers pitchers have done so.