If the Milwaukee Brewers thought a team lead by Kirk Gibson was just going to roll over, play dead and get swept, they better think again.
Faced with the prospect of elimination, the Diamondbacks decided to show the Brewers what their version of Beast Mode looked like and wasted no time in doing it. Miguel Montero and Paul Goldschmidt teamed up to drive in two runs in the first inning to give the D’Backs their first lead of the entire series and never looked back. Josh Collmenter took care of the rest as he and two relievers combined to limit the mighty Milwaukee lineup to just one run on three hits, with Collmenter fanning six in the process.
Not wanting to give the Brewers even a glimmer of hope of clawing back into the game, Paul Goldschmidt put the game out of reach with a fifth inning grand slam that chased Shaun Marcum. And just like that, the Snakes are back in this NLDS series. In fact, one could argue that Arizona has the Brewers right where they want them.
Milwaukee is still very much in the driver’s seat in the series, but with the way this game unfolded, they now have some legitimate cause for concern. As great as the Brewers might have looked at home the first two games of the series, they looked just as bad on the road tonight, a problem that has carried over from the regular season. Lest we forget, the Brewers were a paltry 39-42 on the road this season, making them the only playoff qualifier with a losing record in away games. A big part of those road struggles come from several of their key offensive contributors like Prince Fielder and Rickie Weeks carrying some pretty disparate home/road splits. That’s pretty bad news for the Brew Crew if they are hoping this power outage was just a one night fluke. Now the Brewers will have to regroup and hope that they can close out the series tomorrow with journeyman hurler Randy Wolf on the mound for them. If not, Milwaukee will be headed back home with all the pressure on them to no blow the series and they’ll have to do it against Cy Young contender Ian Kenndey.
But the concerns don’t stop there. In the event that Milwaukee does win this series, they now have to wonder what Shaun Marcum is going to give them the rest of the post-season. He got hit hard early and often tonight and it comes on the heals of Marcum not looking right the entire month leading up to the post-season, especially when he got shelled by the Pirates in his final regular season start. Milwaukee has little choice but to keep him as part of their post-season rotation, but if he keeps pitching this poorly, he could very well submarine Milwaukee’s championship hopes.
As for the Diamondbacks, they must be ecstatic to have lived to play another day and even more excited that Kirk Gibson seems to have learned his lesson about playing Lyle Overbay instead of Paul Goldschmidt. Now if they could just do something about their baserunning blunders and this series could be even before we know it.
