Rastall Ramblings: Surging Brewers Giving Life After Listless Start
There’s that old saying about how you shouldn’t pay much attention to the MLB standings until Memorial Day. Just over a week since the unofficial start to summer, the Milwaukee Brewers are catching fire and giving life to a season that was starting to feel worryingly listless.
At the time of writing, the Brewers were owners of a seven-game winning streak after a statement road sweep of a Philadelphia Phillies team that came into their series with the best record in the National League.
The vibes in Milwaukee have done almost a total 180 compared to barely over a week ago, when the Brewers looked like they were about to lose for a third time during a four-game series against the cellar-dwelling Pittsburgh Pirates to fall to 25-29.
Instead, the Brewers salvaged a split thanks to back-to-back RBI doubles by Caleb Durbin and Brice Turang for a 6-5 win on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. That was followed by a home sweep of the Boston Red Sox that featured two straight walk-off wins in extra innings, including Christian Yelich launching a grand slam for the first walk-off home run of his career.
All of that was well and good, but the weekend sweep of a team with serious World Series aspirations like the Phillies — especially a Saturday drubbing that saw the Brewers take a 12-0 lead through four innings — certainly carried more weight and gave cause for optimism that they may have truly turned a corner.
Even though a rash of pitching injuries were the biggest cause for alarm early in the season, it was the Milwaukee offense that was the greatest source of frustration. Jackson Chourio cooled off after a hot start, Christian Yelich was not finding the form he had before season-ending back surgery last year and most of the rest of the team often felt like they were struggling just to get the ball out of the infield.
The Brewers were often a team trying to play small ball while also not being good at that, which made them awfully laborious to watch. Headlined by a phenomenal last week and a half from Yelich — who left Sunday’s game in Philadelphia after getting hit in the hand by a pitch but seems to have escaped serious injury — the Brewers have found a much greater offensive punch during this winning streak.
After failing to sweep an opponent for nearly the first two months of the season, they’ve now swept their last two series. Hopefully by the time this column is out there, they’ve run that winning streak closer to the magic number of 12 for free George Webb burgers. But even if not, they’ve shown enough during this winning streak to rekindle hope that Mark Attanasio’s dream of another summer of entertainment and passion might become reality.
