Milwaukee Brewers are seeing great success this year. They are one of the surprise in baseball, but Brewers have a team whose been kryponite for them thus far in Pittsburgh Pirates. For the season, Brewers are 3-5 with only one win coming at PNC Park. Meanwhile, Chicago Cubs won their fourth straight game moving only 3.5 back of Milwaukee. It’s early to scoreboard watch, but there’s a feeling that Brewers need to take advantage. Pittsburgh came up with timely hits when they needed it.

Player of the Game (Brewers) – Orlando Arcia: This is a very faulty POG with Arcia being the reason Pittsburgh had a chance for their second run of the game when he threw one wide of home as the first run scored. Arcia did have a good day at the plate with two hits, an RBI and three stolen bases. Hopefully, he’s getting hot again.

(Not) Player of the Game – Tyler Webb: The newest Brewer continues to struggle with his role. Why Brewers brought him out in a high leverage situation is beyond me, but I get wanting to protect Jacob Barnes for games where the team actually needs him. Webb can’t keep doing this kind of thing with many youngsters ready to roll.

Player of the Game (Pirates) – Gregory Polanco: What a night for the young right fielder finishing with four hits including the RBI double that scored the first run for Pittsburgh. Then he hit another double off Josh Hader to give Pirates, the 3-2 lead which they never lose in this one.

Negative: Brewers’ defense is slowly becoming the real problem of this team – Last night, Brewers defense accounted for at least one of Pittsburgh runs when Arcia tried to gun down the first runner at home leading to a wild throw that advanced Polanco to second. Ryan Braun misplayed a ball when he tried to come up throwing from left. Milwaukee has to find a way to shore up their defense.

Negative: Offensive power outage – You could make a case that Brewers are becoming too reliant on the home run ball. This is not a good thing with seven of your next 10 games being in what are considered pitching friendly environments. Brewers need to figure how to timely hit again. It’s been lacking from the team since the return of the break.

Next up: Brewers will send Junior Guerra to the mound after he went on a quick DL stint to fix a bruised shin. Brewers will have to make a move, and my guess is that Webb might be the early hook here. Guerra has been pretty bad this season, yet, he did turn in a good one versus Pittsburgh in May. Pirates send Ivan Nova who Milwaukee jumped on quite a bit when they were in Milwaukee last month.

Charlie.