The Pirates and Brewers met 18 times last season, and the Pirates won 5 of those games, a .278 winning percentage, that's not very good. Two of those losses ended in scores of 20-0 and 17-3, which helped the Brewers outscore the Pirates 125-80 in the 18 games.
The good news is, it's not last year anymore. The Pirates have a chance to start anew against their rivals. Tonight the Pirates send Kevin Correia to the hill to face Shaun Marcum, whom the Brewers acquired as a free agent this offseason.
Marcum is a very good pitcher, last year he posted a 3.64 ERA with 13 wins in 31 starts. He's a good strikeout pitcher, he's averaged over 7 strikeouts per 9 innings in his career. Tonight will be his 3rd start of the year. In his first start he lasted only 4.2 innings and gave up 3 earned runs against the Reds and took the loss. He walked 5 batters in that start. He rebounded nicely in his 2nd start and went 6 strong innings allowing only 2 runs and earning the victory over the Braves.
That brings Marcum's early season ERA to 4.22 with 11 strikeouts in 10.2 innings. Correia number's are superior to Marcum, as he has jumped out to an incredibly hot start to the 2011 season. In 2 starts, Correia has allowed only 2 earned runs while pitching 13 innings. He also made an appearance in the 9th inning of Saturday's game, and retired all 3 batters he faced. That brings his season ERA to a tidy 1.29. He'll have to be effective again tonight to beat the Brewers, who have one of the best offenses in the National League.
The starting pitching has been pretty good for the Brewers thus far. They have a staff ERA of 3.19 from 4 starters (Yovani Gallardo, Chris Narveson, Randy Wolf, and Marcum). The bullpen has been pretty bad for them and has cost them a couple games. Their closer, John Axford is off to a really slow start, he's given up 4 earned runs in 4.1 innings pitched which gives him an ERA of 8.31, despite having 3 saves already.
So far this year, the Brewers are 5-5 and scoring 3.8 runs per game. That's a pretty slow start for an offense that scored 4.63 runs per game in 2010. The two big bats of Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder have been doing their job early on. Fielder is hitting .400 with 2 homers and 11 RBI. Braun has 4 homers of his own and has driven in 8 runs while hitting .353 in the first 10 games. There hasn't been many other players contributing besides those two, and that's why the offense has struggled a bit. Casey McGehee, who had a surprisingly big year in 2010, is hitting just .229 early on.
The Pirates are going to have to take advantage of the Brewers early offensive struggles and pitch well if they want to win this series. The key will be how often they can get to the tandem of Braun-Fielder with the bases empty. Those two have hurt the Pirates big time the last few years, especially Braun, who has hit .319/.395/.608 with 16 bombs in 57 games against the Pirates. That means that Braun hits .28 home runs per game against the Pirates, which would result in 45 bombs in a 162-game season. Let's hope the Pirates can keep him in the yard this series, nobody likes seeing that guy round the bases.
The only gleam of positivity I can see on this Brewers squad (aside from the fact that they are a pretty good baseball team) is Nyjer Morgan. That's right, Morgan plays for the Brewers. They acquired him very late in spring training. He's played in all 10 games for this Brewers squad and has gotten 19 at bats. He's got 9 hits in those 19 at bats which brings his average to an impressive .474; I'd expect Morgan to start a game or two in this series.
Nyjmo doesn't seem to be the same fun-loving carefree guy we knew in Pittsburgh. He's been involved in his share of incidents the last few years, remember this?
While we're on youtube...
In another note, Jeff Karstens will be pitching Thursday's game, he was one of the main player's in the incidents a couple years ago after plunking Braun, who proceeded to cry about it for the next 4 days.
We'll have the gameday and liveblog up soon, check back around gametime to chat with us. Let's Go Bucs.