The Milwaukee Brewers will look to avoid a sweep at the hands of their potential National League Division Series opponent, the San Diego Padres, this afternoon. It hasn’t been an inspiring series for the Brewers, who’ve dropped three straight despite winning the National League Central on Sunday. Still, with a loss by the Philadelphia Phillies on Tuesday, the Brewers’ magic number for the top seed in the National League has fallen to two.
The Brewers reshuffled their pitching rotation a bit this week and today’s starting pitcher will be Chad Patrick, not the originally scheduled Quinn Priester. The likely reason for this is to avoid giving the Padres an extra look at Priester, who will be starting one of those NLDS games. Milwaukee has also designated yesterday’s sacrificial lamb Bruce Zimmermann for assignment, and brought back Carlos Rodriguez. Patrick wasn’t bad in his last start, but he threw only 56 pitches, so Rodriguez may be in line to “piggyback” on Patrick’s start this afternoon.
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The Padres still have plenty to play for; they could still win the NL West, as they sit two games behind the Dodgers in the loss column (and 1.5 in the standings) at the start of play today. The Dodgers, though, do hold that tiebreaker, as they won nine of 13 meetings with their southern rivals this season. So for the Padres to win the NL West, they’d need to win at least three of their remaining four games and for the Dodgers to lose at least three of their remaining five games. Unlikely, but not impossible. Since that’s still in play, the Padres aren’t trying to avoid letting their top guys pitch against the Brewers, and Dylan Cease will start today.
In addition to today’s roster move, there are also a bunch of updates regarding the Brewers’ beleaguered pitching staff today. Some of the updates are good: Trevor Megill and DL Hall are all hoping to pitch in the Cincinnati series this weekend in order to prove that they’ll be available for the postseason, and Jose Quintana is also at a point where he’s trying to make himself a postseason option. Megill threw a bullpen session yesterday that, according to him, went “way more decent” than the last one. Take that for what you will! Quintana also threw in the bullpen yesterday, and Logan Henderson has been working off a mound hoping to be a potential bullpen option. We still don’t really have an update on Brandon Woodruff, but we might soon: he met with his surgeon in Dallas yesterday.
William Contreras starts today’s game on the bench, as Danny Jansen will cover catching duties and Christian Yelich will be the designated hitter. Jake Bauers and Andrew Vaughn are both again in the starting lineup, with Bauers in left field. Andruw Monasterio also gets the start at shortstop; it’s fair to wonder if the Brewers will consider giving Monasterio a postseason start over Joey Ortiz, who is clearly a better defender but is in as bad an offensive slump as he has been in all season. Which is saying something. Monasterio, meanwhile, has a .991 OPS since August 1st.
Today’s first pitch is at 3:10 p.m. central time on FanDuel Sports Network Wisconsin and, for out-of-market viewers, on MLB Network. Of course, as always, it’s also on the Brewers Radio Network.
