Results tagged ‘ Brewers ’
4/10 Cubs vs Brewers, ppd
Wednesday’s game between the Cubs and Brewers was postponed because of inclement weather and rescheduled for July 30 at 1:20 p.m. CT as part of a day-night doubleheader.
Tickets for Wednesday’s postponed game will be good for admission to the make-up game at 1:20 p.m. CT. The regularly-scheduled 7:05 p.m. contest will follow. The game was postponed because of the forecast for rain and sub-freezing wind chills throughout the evening.
– Carrie Muskat
3/22 Carlos & Yo
Carlos Villanueva wanted to avoid seeing his former Brewers teammates until he took the mound on Friday. He doesn’t believe in fraternization between teams. But Milwaukee’s Yovani Gallardo did a sneak attack.
“Someone mentioned to me [that he doesn’t like to talk on the field],” Gallardo said. “I was like, ‘Oh, I have to talk to him on purpose now and see what he does.’ We said hello before the game. He was a good friend of mine, and he still is. It’s good to see him doing well.”
Gallardo started by sending his former teammate text messages around 7 a.m. Friday.
Villanueva left Mesa before the Cubs’ team bus, and was hoping to avoid seeing anyone from the Brewers. But when he got to Maryvale Baseball Park, there was Gallardo, waiting for him. The two hugged.
“Of course, he’s warming up right there,” Villanueva said of Gallardo. “I couldn’t just push him away. Pitchers, I’m OK with.”
Villanueva and Gallardo were together on the Brewers from 2007-10, and good friends.
“Me and Yo, we were tight when I was there,” Villanueva said. “There was a lot of trash talking back and forth for the last couple days. I have a lot of friends on that team, but when it comes down to business, it’s business, and they know it.
“We’ll be facing them a lot during the season and sometimes it’s a good thing I know a little bit about them because that way I can maybe use some of that against them, but hopefully those two years I was away [playing for the Blue Jays], they forgot a little bit.”
Villanueva threw six scoreless innings, while Gallardo gave up one unearned run over 5 1/3 innings. Gallardo did offer a scouting report on Villanueva.
“He looked pretty good to me,” Gallardo said. “He’s got good stuff. Even when he was here, he’s got four plus pitches, commands the ball very well, and any time you have the off-speed like he does, you’re one pitch away from getting out of a tough inning.”
Villanueva’s Cubs got the upper hand on Friday, rallying to beat the Brewers, 4-1. They’ll meet again April 8-10 in the Cubs’ regular season home opener at Wrigley Field.
– Carrie Muskat
12/4 Who shot Sveum? Yount
Don’t expect Robin Yount to be added to Cubs manager Dale Sveum’s staff. The Hall of Famer accidentally shot his former Brewers teammate in the right ear while hunting quail in Arizona.
“The bird went up in front of [Yount] and I was about 50 yards up on the hill,” Sveum said Tuesday, explaining the freak incident. “He got the bird up and lost track of where I was and pulled the trigger and was like, ‘Uh oh.’ I was looking for birds myself and he was behind me. I got drilled with pellets in the back and the ear.”
Sveum’s reaction was expected and unprintable. Was there blood?
“Oh yeah, there was blood,” Sveum said.
The Cubs manager didn’t need stitches.
“You don’t get hit very often,” Sveum said. “It’s not that big a deal.”
He said they usually don’t fire that close to each other but there have been times in the past when they’ve had 6-shots fall on them. We know Yount shot Sveum. What about the quail?
“He got the bird,” Sveum said.
– Carrie Muskat
9/20 Ramirez ties Santo
Aramis Ramirez hit a milestone home run on Thursday that meant much more considering the other name in the discussion. With his 337th career home run as a third baseman, Ramirez tied Hall of Famer Ron Santo for sixth place on the all-time list for homers from that position. The two became close after Ramirez was traded in 2003 to Chicago, where Santo was the Cubs’ radio analyst.
“I was a big fan of Ron Santo all my years in Chicago,” Ramirez told reporters in Pittsburgh. “He was a great guy, always in the clubhouse trying to give me advice, make me a better player. I admire the way he treated young players in Chicago.”
Santo was posthumously inducted to the National Baseball Hall of Fame this summer, an honor Ramirez called, “deserving.”
Ramirez actually has 340 career home runs — he also homered twice as a pinch-hitter and once as a designated hitter in Interleague Play. Santo hit 342 homers in his career.
– Carrie Muskat
8/30 Cubs lineup
Alfonso Soriano gets a day off Thursday in the Cubs series finale against the Brewers. Here’s the lineup:
DeJesus LF
Valbuena 3B
Castro SS
Rizzo 1B
LaHair RF
Clevenger C
Jackson CF
Barney 2B
Raley P
– Carrie Muskat
8/28 Cubs lineup
Travis Wood takes the mound Tuesday night as the Cubs face the Brewers at Wrigley Field. Here’s the lineup:
DeJesus RF
Valbuena 3B
Rizzo 1B
Soriano LF
Castro SS
Castillo C
Jackson CF
Barney 2B
T. Wood P
– Carrie Muskat
8/27 Cubs lineup
Josh Vitters is back in the Cubs lineup, playing third, as they open a four-game series against the Brewers. Milwaukee has had the edge this season, posting a 10-3 record so far. This week is their last meeting of the year. Justin Germano takes the mound. He lost to the Brewers last Monday at Miller Park, giving up seven runs on eight hits over 4 2/3 innings. Here’s the lineup:
DeJesus RF
Vitters 3B
Rizzo 1B
Soriano LF
Castro SS
Clevenger C
Jackson CF
Barney 2B
Germano P
– Carrie Muskat
5/13 Mother’s Day lineup
The Cubs will try to avoid being swept at Miller Park on Sunday as Jeff Samardzija takes the mound in the series finale. The Brewers are 5-1 against the Cubs so far this season. The Cubs are trying to snap a 10-game losing streak at Miller Park. It’s their longest skid at a visiting ballpark since losing 13 in a row at Busch Stadium Oct. 3, 1999, to June 19, 2001.
Since 1914, the Cubs are 49-64 on Mother’s Day, and 5-3 since 2004. Jeff Samardzija will start, vying for his third straight win. Starlin Castro and Bryan LaHair are both in mini funks. They’re both 1-for-10 in the two games so far on this road trip, while Ian Stewart is 0-for-6. Here’s the lineup:
RF DeJesus
CF Campana
SS Castro
1B LaHair
LF Soriano
3B Stewart
C Soto
2B Barney
P Samardzija
– Carrie Muskat
4/9 Sveum has inside info
The Cubs didn’t need to tap into their advanced scouting system for the four-game series against the Brewers. All they had to do was ask manager Dale Sveum, who took over the scouting report.
“I did most of it, to tell you the truth,” Sveum said Monday. “It was pretty easy to go over the scouting report and I might have given some people a series off that way. I was able to handle the whole deal.”
Sveum was on the Brewers coaching staff for six seasons, including the last three as the hitting coach, before taking the Cubs job last November.
“I think it definitely gives you an edge but the bottom line is you still have to make your pitches,” Sveum said. “With the video equipment you have, you get to know people as well as I do. I know the insights and the mental part of people and what the video doesn’t show and I think that will benefit us. You still have to execute the pitches and execute the plan and sequence of the pitches.”
Aramis Ramirez, now with the Brewers after nine years with the Cubs, did his part and sat in on the Milwaukee pitchers’ meeting.
Sveum and the Cubs did face the Brewers in Spring Training but said this is different.
“These games count,” he said.
There is a big difference gap in the Brewers lineup with the departure of Prince Fielder, who signed with the Tigers.
“They’re extremely different,” Sveum said of Milwaukee’s lineup. “You take the one big left-handed bat out of the lineup who had been a staple there for six years. Mat Gamel is capable of doing a lot of good things but there’s only one Prince Fielder. The threat that guy brings every day and hitting behind [Ryan Braun] all the time is huge for Braun, too. They replace him with Aramis Ramirez so it becomes a little easier. Not that [Ramirez] can’t put up the numbers but it’s easier to go through right-handed hitters than left-handed hitters.”
– Carrie Muskat
4/8 Ramirez, Braun headed to Wrigley
Monday will be an interesting night for the middle of the Brewers order. Ryan Braun will be playing his first regular season away game since appealing a suspension over the winter. Cleanup man Aramis Ramirez is returning as an enemy after parts of nine seasons with the Cubs. Ramirez said he isn’t sure what kind of reception he’ll get. But he has a hunch about Braun.
“I think it’s going to be ugly for Braun everywhere we go,” Ramirez told reporters Sunday in Milwaukee. “On the road, it’s going to be tough for him. He knows it. That’s no secret. Plus, he got a taste of it in Spring Training. Everywhere we go, he was getting booed. But that’s a good player, and he’s tough. He’s tough mentally, and I think he’s going to be OK. He’s a good enough player to separate that from his game.”
How will Cubs fans greet Ramirez?
“I don’t know. That’s a good question,” he said. “I had a great career there. I played for some good teams and also played for some bad teams. I guess you have to ask the fans.”
Ramirez had a similar experience in September 2003 when he returned to Pittsburgh for the first time since a midseason trade from the Pirates to the Cubs. Ramirez went 5-for-13 in that four-game series, with three home runs and six RBIs. He homered twice in that series finale, a 4-1 Cubs win.
“They booed me,” Ramirez said of Pirates fans. “I don’t know why. I didn’t ask to be traded.”
Likewise, Ramirez said, he did not ask to leave Chicago after batting .294 with 239 home runs and 806 RBIs in 1,124 games. He was a free agent, and the Cubs’ new president of baseball operations, Theo Epstein, informed agent Paul Kinzer early in the process that Ramirez did not fit the franchise’s plan.
“Theo was honest,” Ramirez said. “He told my agent they were going young, so there was no place for me there. I’m 33.”
If Cubs fans do boo him this week, Ramirez said, “I want to know the reason why. What did I do? But [Cubs] fans, they go to the park and they do whatever they want.”
Brewers manager Ron Roenicke was asked whether he worried about Ramirez trying to do too much in his return to Wrigley Field.
“I think sometimes it goes both ways,” Roenicke said. “Sometimes a guy comes back and does great, and then there’s the player who comes back and tries so hard to do well that he gets out of his game. It’s hard to say which way Aramis will go. He’s calm, he’s always thinking, but there’s still emotion under that calm. Going back to a place he was for that many years, there’s going to be emotion there.”
Ramirez still has a home in downtown Chicago, but it’s for sale so he will stay with the Brewers at the team hotel.
– Carrie Muskat
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