June 17- MIL 9 CLE 8
37-29, 1 game up on STL
Hoffman Let's Cleveland Climb Back Into It
In all fairness, 2 of the 4 Indian runs that scored in the 9th were charged to McClung. Pitching in the unfamiliar situation where he inherited runners, Hoffman gave up Victor Martinez' RBI single, a walk to Shin-Soo Choo (who seemed to be starting a rally every time he came up in this series) and then a 3 run double to Ryan Garko that tied the score at 8.

Hardy continued to recover from his slump as he went 2-3 with 2 runs, 2 RBI and a home run, but his biggest swing of the night was the sac fly in the 11th that won it. Hart also had a good night at the plate with a tater and going 3-5 and in other slumping news, Bill Hall homered for his only hit of the night to get the Brewers back on top in the seventh.

Missing out on the win was Jeff Suppan who worked 6 innings and allowed 3. Would like to see him go deeper to save the pen a bit, but at least there is a day off in Detroit on Thursday. Mike DiFelice got the W with 1.1 innings of relief and Mitch Stetter got the save (his first ever) by striking out Choo and Ben Francisco with men on to end it. It was Stetter's 11th consecutive out by strike out and broke the record of 10 by Ben Sheets.

June 16- MIL 7 CLE 5
36-29, 1 game up on STL
Sumpers Pitch in on Win
J.J. Hardy had to RBI and Cameron and Hall pitched in a RBI a piece in support of Yovanni Gallardo who once again struggled with a high pitch count. While I don't want to discount saving one of the most promising arms in the Brewer's organization, there was a great article on SI.com between Bill James and another columnist who argued that the 100 pitch count is such an uninformed number. That decisions on a multi-million dollar arm is being based entirely on a round number that sounds official. Perhaps I'm just bitter because of the way the bullpen is getting worked and even though Gallardo didn't have the ball after 5 innings, he was still able to keep the Tribe to 2 runs, and who knows what his arm could handle. Couldn't a pitch count be specific to a pitcher?