Game 9 Recap: Cardinals 7 Brewers 0

TOP PLAY (WPA):
You might have thought that Grichuk’s home run was the top play of the game. Well, unfortunately, it’s not but we’ll get to that quite soon.

The top play of the game instead went to Matt Carpenters double in the second inning.

Wily Peralta was in his usual bad form today, leaving the ball in the middle of the plate and giving up a lot of hard contact. Grichuk opened the frame lining a single to left field. Yadier Molina followed with a double putting runner on second and third. Kolten Wong then hit a sacrifice fly to left field, to score Grichuk and putting the first run on the board. After Aledmys Diaz flied out, for the second out of the inning, opposing pitcher Jaime Garcia singled putting runners on the corner with two outs and Matt Carpenter at the plate. Carpenter is famous for grinding out at-bats and this one was no different, as, on the seventh pitch of the at-bat, he took the Peralta offering to right field on a liner for a double, scoring two runs and giving the Cardinals a 3-0 lead early on.

WORST PLAY (WPA):
When the opposing pitcher gets more hits than your entire team, you know it’s been a pretty bad day. Ya, if you missed this game, Garcia got more hits than he allowed.

On the bright side, Martin Maldonado made this pretty sweet play.

Ok, so Jeremy Hazelbaker probably shouldn’t have been stealing in that situation. Maldonado’s one of the best defensive catchers in the game and he’s got a pretty damn good arm, plus with Halliday at the plate, Peralta pitching and only one out, the Cardinals might have wasted a good opportunity to get ahead early on. Of course, though, none of that really mattered.

Key Moment:

You probably know what’s coming here. After striking out Matt Holliday and walking Brandon Moss, Wily Peralta gave up this homer to Randal Grichuk.

Keon Broxton almost, and probably should’ve had that but that wasn’t the weirdest part of this play.

Ya, Grichuk passed Moss who was tagging up at first base.

It’s one of those plays that makes people say, “I’ve never seen anything like that before and I’ve been watching baseball for X years.”

That’s a pretty weird play indeed. But, again the play itself wasn’t the strangest part of the events that unfolded. The strangest part was that A) the umps missed it and didn’t call Grichuk out, and B) worst of all the Brewers also missed it and didn’t ask for the play to be challenged.

No excuses from #Brewers on missing Grichuk passing runner on HR. Counsell: “All our eyes missed it. Everyone missed it.”

— Tom (@Haudricourt) April 14, 2016

Counsell did note that 1B umpire John Hirschbeck also missed obvious call on Grichuk: “His job is to watch that.”

— Tom (@Haudricourt) April 14, 2016

TREND TO WATCH:

If the plan to start Wily Peralta on opening was done to give him more confidence, well then Counsel is going to need to come up with a new plan, and quickly.

Peralta has made three starts thus far, in the first start he pitched four innings and a third and gave up 6 runs. In his second start he performed slightly better giving up five runs in four innings pitched, and finally today, he went five innings giving up five runs. If quick with your math, that’s good for a 10.13 ERA and a 7.45 FIP.

In other words, Peralta’s off to a rough start. The question now is, how long to the Brewers stick with this performance. They have options in the minors with Zachary Davies and Jorge Lopez. Lopez hasn’t gotten off to a strong start in Triple-A but Davies is sporting an ERA of 2 after his first two starts.

If Peralta keeps up this type of performance, then the Brewers might be looking to give one of these young starters a chance sooner rather than later.

UP NEXT:
The Brewers will be back in action Friday against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Jimmy Nelson will get the start for the Brew Crew and will look to keep up his solid performance.

The Brewers will be facing Jeff Locke who’s gotten off to a good start with his 1.50 ERA.