Cheerin’ the team on!

"Rickie’s Rookies," the fan club of Milwaukee Brewer Second Basemen Rickie Weeks, chairs on the hometown team during a home game at Miller Park. (photo by Harry Kemp)

The Brew Review

Inconsistency will be the title of Brewers disappointing season

by Gerald Winters
The recurring theme of the 2006 baseball season for the Milwaukee Brewers has been the team’s inconsistent play.

The team shows flashes of what it is capable of doing with regards to winning baseball games, as is evident by its sweep of the Colorado Rockies last week. It also has shown that it is capable of slumping just a quickly, as they did over the weekend, losing three in a row to the Florida Marlins. Both the Rockies and the Marlins are teams the Brewers are battling with regard to the Wildcard race.

Good showing against the Rockies; against the Marlins, not so much. They will try to salvage the finale of the four game series on Monday.

There’s a word that keeps coming up whenever the Milwaukee Brewers club is mentioned-consistency, on in this case, the lack of it. They were .500 for the week, so of course that is consistent, but not the kind of consistency the players are looking for, not to mention the fans.

Everyone is still waiting for the long winning streak, or the stretch of 15 of 19 that hasn’t come yet. Now, all of a sudden, "yet" becomes a very big word because of the length of time left in the regular season.

Even as recently as a month ago when you said something hasn’t happened yet, it felt like there was a lot of time left in the season. We are about to turn the calendar to September in a few days, and when we turn the page, "yet" may not be enough.

Once again, there is a silver lining. The National League Wildcard seems to be a position that nobody wants.

The Cincinnati Reds, who currently lead the wildcard race, actually have their sights set on the NL Central division crown. Meanwhile, the St. Louis Cardinals, who currently sit atop the NL Central, are apparently not interested in staying there (although they did just sweep the Chicago Cubs over the weekend).

With all this going on in the NL central, the Brewers have actually gained a game in the wildcard standings, but lost a spot in the standings. The Houston Astros have taken over third place in the Central by a half game.

But it appears that no one wants to go to the playoffs in the NL except the New York Mets, who lead the NL East by a mere 14.5 games over the Philadelphia Phillies and have run away and hidden from the rest of the pack. Everything else is up for grabs in the national league.

So what can we say about this year’s version of the Milwaukee Brewers? The one thing that can be said is that they are pretty consistent at being inconsistent. They have 3 very good starting pitchers, and appear to have found a new closer. They have a budding power-broker at firstbase, a versatile player who has found his power stroke, and a potentially spectacular secondbaseman who is on his way to becoming an all-star, if not a superstar.

They also have solid players that are filling their roles nicely. Those elements apparently are not enough to get them on a roll of some kind where they are able to make a dent in the wildcard standings.

They are consistently 4 to 5 games out of the race, and that’s with everyone else playing at essentially the same pace.

This week’s schedule will wrap up the four-game series against the Marlins, and then take them to Houston, where they will play a three-gamer against the Astros, and give them the opportunity to re-take third place in the Central.

Then they get to come home and try to exact some revenge against the Marlins, who come into town for the weekend. It should be of no surprise that both teams are in the hunt for the wildcard along with the Brewers, since only the Cubs, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Washington Nationals are the only teams in the NL that are NOT in the playoff hunt.

This week should give the Crew an opportunity to make that dent in the wildcard hunt. The biggest question is will they be able to take advantage of the opportunity? After all, it is there for the taking.