April 28- Milwaukee 6 Pittsburgh 5 Record: 10-10 3½ GB St. Louis
Rickie gets it Done Again and Hoffman Closes it Out
Now that the Crew is at .500, I will include their divisional placement in the blog. Years of losing seasons have made me believe that just getting over .500 is a goal in and of itself and if you can do that, then you can start worrying about winning the division. Well, thanks to the Pirates losing their 14th in a row to the Brewers (and their 17th consecutive at Miller) the Crew can start thinking about maybe climbing up the NL Central ladder.

I couldn't get this game on MLB radio for some reason, a problem that I hope was a one time event, so I had to keep checking Gameday while marking up the 9 at work. What I observed before I went into the control room was Bush had some troubles and the Crew squandered a few situations early on, including Fielder flying out with the bases loaded in the 3rd and grounding out with Braun on 2b in the 5th against tough lefty Pat Maholm.

Meanwhile, the Pirates were able to get 5 in 5 against Bush, 4 earned thanks to Weeks 5 error of the season. Weeks made up for it with a 2 run, go ahead tater in the 6th that also included a Bill Hall solo shot. Weeks is now hitting .268, which seems lower than it should be since he seems to be doing MUCH better at getting hits. He's had the difference making RBI 2 nights in a row now.

The night was wrapped up with Trevor Hoffman's first save as a Brewer, getting a 4-6-3 DP to end it with the bullpen of Julio, Stetter, Coffey and Hoffman working scoreless from the 6th on and giving up only 1 hit. I was especially happy to see Julio have a good outing and lower that obscene ERA to single digits after several days of work with Bill Castro.

April 27- Milwaukee 10 Pittsburgh 5 Record: 9-10
Braun Starts Bad Blood with Buccos and Hoffman's 1st Appearance
The surprise Bucos came into this game with a staff ERA of 2.97, best in the majors, but dingers by Braun, Weeks and Cameron gave the Crew their biggest run total of the season. Looper was a little rusty out of the gates, letting 4 Pirates reach base in the 1st, but he limited the damage and left with a 5-3 lead after 5. Unfortunately, Carlos Villanueva coughed up another lead, otherwise, it was a good night by the bullpen that included Trevor Hoffman's debut as a Brewer, coming in in a non-save situation and getting a 1-2-3 inning.

The game also included a questionable plunking of Braun by Jeff Karstens, possibly in retaliation for Braun's dinger in the 1st. I'm not sure who Jeff Karstens is and what his reasoning was, but Braun certainly thought it was intentional. The homeplate ump immediately warned the benches, leaving little opportunity for retaliation but I loved Braun's interview with Corey Provus after the game. In it, he said, "Tell Mr. Selig. We'll see what happens. It's going to be interesting." Even a day later, Braun was talking about it, saying he thinks the pitch was ordered by manager John Russell because Karsten didn't even look at Braun after he did it. Braun didn't show boat on his dinger and was pretty pissed when he saw how close the pitch was to his head.