Haudricourt: After two 'different' games against Cubs, Brewers now must focus on Cardinals

CHICAGO – The mixed blessing of baseball – depending on how your club did today – is that you get a new chance tomorrow.

Unless it's an off day,

That format worked well for the Chicago Cubs on Wednesday afternoon at Wrigley Field. Not so much for the Brewers.

Just as Brewers-killer José Quintana got roughed up the previous day, Brewers starter Junior Guerra was treated rudely in Chicago’s 8-4 victory. Never mind Guerra’s career 1.74 earned run average against the Cubs.

“It seemed like two different games,” said Guerra, who certainly didn’t pitch great but also was the victim of three shift-beating groundball hits and some sketchy defense.

So, the teams split the two games, leaving them right where they were. The first-place Cubs’ three-game lead was restored over the Brewers, whose bigger concern at the moment is the hard-charging St. Louis Cardinals, who entered their game later in the evening against Washington just 1 ½ games behind them.

And the Brewers’ next series just happens to be in St. Louis, a three-game set beginning Friday. This is the way it is in the wide-open National League playoff races, with one big series followed by another.

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“Where the National League is, as a whole, has kind of moved up the day when it’s the ‘biggest’ game of the year,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “The games are important.

“You’re going to see a lot of teams beating up on each other because the National League doesn’t have a lot of teams that are out of it. It’s going to be a fun six weeks.”

And, at times agonizing. Brewers fans so excited about the 7-0 thumping of the Cubs the previous day wondered why Counsell left Guerra in to allow nine hits and seven runs (six earned) over 3 2/3 innings. And why the Brewers didn’t challenge a safe call at first base in the third that appeared wrong and led to another Chicago run.

This is how it goes this time of year. Teams, and their fans, live and die on nearly every play. Emotions race up and down more than an elevator in the Empire State Building. Yesterday’s hero is today’s goat, and vice versa.

As indication of how fortunes can flip from day to day, Ryan Braun – the two-homer hero of Game 1 – exited Game 2 with a tight right ribcage. That affliction has bugged him, off and on, throughout the season but couldn’t have come at a worse time, with Braun swinging the hottest bat on the team (.388, four HRs, 12 RBI in his previous 16 games).

“Hopefully, it’s not too bad; hopefully, we caught it soon enough,” said Braun, reduced to trying to bunt for a hit before coming out of the game. “Anything in the ribcage is always kind of touch and go. You know more about it the next day. I’ll take treatment on it as much as I can tomorrow and we’ll see where we’re at Friday.”

With so many teams in the playoff races in the NL, what the Brewers need now is a hot streak to create some separation from other contenders. They haven’t been hot since the outset of July, when they swept three games from Minnesota and took three of four from Atlanta at home.

Then, came the dreadful 1-7 trip to Miami and Pittsburgh entering the break, followed by a 3-3 home stand against the Dodgers and Nationals, then a 5-3 trip to San Francisco and Los Angeles. Next came a 3-3 home stand against Colorado and San Diego (including two ugly losses to the last-place Padres), then this trip, which began with losing two of three in Atlanta and splitting two at Wrigley.

At this point it’s not who you beat so much as how many you win. The Brewers have 68 victories. They’re probably going to need 20-22 more to at least claim a wild card. They’ve got 39 games remaining, so you do the math.

“That’s the beauty of the game; that’s what makes it fun,” Braun said. “You want the games to be meaningful. You want to feel that emotion every day, win or lose.

“When you get to this point of the year, you don’t want to feel like the games don’t matter. You get to this point of the season, the wins feel better and the losses hurt more. You just continue to move forward and look to the next game and hope there are more enjoyable feelings at the end of the day than miserable feelings.”

Let the roller-coaster ride continue. Everybody buckle up.