Friday- Still hanging on

Some things to read while looking for the dog.

The Brewers picked up a home series win at Miller Park on Thursday, beating the San Francisco Giants 3-1 behind nine hits and a strong outing from Wily Peralta. Noah Jarosh of Brew Crew Ball has the recap, if you missed it.

Every position player to appear in Thursday’s game for the Brewers reached base safely at least once, and one statistical analyst says Ron Roenicke did a good job putting together the day’s batting order. David Pinto of Baseball Musings says batting Carlos Gomez, Jonathan Lucroy, Ryan Braun, Aramis Ramirez and Khris Davis 1-5 put the Brewers pretty close to their optimal lineup.

Their hits came in support of Wily Peralta, who became the first pitcher in all of baseball to record 14 wins this season. Peralta pitched 6 2/3 innings and allowed a single run on seven hits, walking one and setting new career-highs with nine strikeouts and 115 pitches thrown. Mike Bauman of MLB.com says he’s going to be a key for the Brewers down the stretch.

It’s pretty widely known that wins are a poor statistic to use to evaluate pitching performance, but Peralta is only the fifth Brewer since 1993 to collect 14 of them. The others are Yovani Gallardo (2010, 2011 and 2012), Zack Greinke (2011), Braden Looper (2009) and Chris Capuano (2005). If Peralta continues to pitch in every fifth game he would get nine more starts.

• This was only the Brewers’ second series win since July 1 (h/t @Haudricourt).
• Will Smith faced two batters and recorded a strikeout in his MLB-leading 59th appearance of the season (h/t @AdamMcCalvy).
• Francisco Rodriguez recorded his 34th save Thursday, the second-highest total in the National League and the ninth-highest single-season total in franchise history.
• The Brewers tumblr feed has gifs of Aramis Ramirez making a great diving play and throw at third base and Jean Segura and Rickie Weeks recovering to record an out following Segura’s diving play and dribbled throw to second.
• Mike Oz of Big League Stew has video of a foul ball scrum that ended with a little girl coming away with the ball in the sixth inning.
• 38,229 fans paid to see Thursday’s game (h/t @joe_block). With the exception of Opening Day and Memorial Day, that’s the largest weekday day game crowd of the season.
• The Polish won the Sausage Race.

After Thursday’s game the Giants headed out of Miller Park and the Los Angeles Dodgers will take their place today. Kyle Lohse will take on Roberto Hernandez in the matchup of first place teams at 7:10 p.m., and Caitlin Sweica has the MLB.com preview.
 
Hernandez was acquired yesterday from the Phillies for a pair of players to be named later or cash, and immediately slotted into the starting rotation when Josh Beckett went on the DL with a recurrence of his hip injury. Hernandez, formerly known as Fausto Carmona, had a 3.87 ERA over 23 appearances for Philadelphia and beat the Brewers on July 9, holding them to a single run on three hits over eight innings.

Meanwhile, the Brewers have also announced a change to their rotation plans: With Marco Estrada needed in long relief this week, Mike Fiers has been informed that he’ll be recalled from AAA Nashville to start in place of Matt Garza on Saturday. Fiers hasn’t started a game in the majors since June 2 of last season, but has a 2.55 ERA with 11.3 strikeouts per nine innings for AAA Nashville this season.

The Brewers used three relievers to protect the lead on Thursday but Brandon Kintzler was not one of them, and he’s not happy about it. Before the game he gave this quote to reporters:

“I don’t know, he (Ron Roenicke) never throws me in there,” Kintzler said. “I threw well all of July, I never got a hold situation the whole time. I felt like I’ve done my job whatever they’ve asked me to do.”

Kintzler has a 3.76 ERA in 42 appearances for the Brewers but is striking out just 4.9 batters per nine innings, the lowest mark among 18 non-position players that have pitched in a game this season. Fielding Independent Pitching, a metric that uses home runs, walks and strikeouts to attempt to remove luck from pitching statistics, says Kintzler’s ERA should be closer to 4.70.
 
In the minors:

• The Brewers have announced a minor trade, acquiring pitcher Jay Jackson from the Pirates for cash. Jackson will be assigned to AAA Nashville after posting a 4.89 ERA in 25 appearances (12 starts) for AAA Indianapolis in the Pirates organization. He was one of Baseball America’s top 100 prospects in 2010 but is 26 years old and the Brewers will be his fourth organization.
• At the same link, the Brewers announced that Wei-Chung Wang’s minor league rehab assignment has been moved up from Arizona to Wisconsin. Wang made a pair of starts for the AZL Brewers and will pitch for the Timber Rattlers on Sunday.
• Back on the field, the affiliates went 3-3 on Thursday and one of the wins came from Wisconsin, where Preston Gainey recorded a dozen strikeouts in the Timber Rattlers’ 6-1 win over Peoria. Wisconsin also won the conclusion of a suspended game earlier in the evening. You can read about all of the day’s action in the Brewerfan.net Link Report.
• With a pair of wins on Thursday Wisconsin has moved into a tie for first place in the second half in the Midwest League Western Division and has a four-game lead in the race for the division’s final playoff spot.

Around baseball:

Angels: Acquired reliever Vinnie Pestano from the Indians for a minor leaguer and designated infielder Tommy Field for assignment.
Blue Jays: Placed third baseman Brett Lawrie on the DL with an oblique strain.
Diamondbacks: Signed outfielder Xavier Paul to a minor league deal and designated third baseman Andy Marte for assignment.
Dodgers: Acquired pitcher Roberto Hernandez from the Phillies for two players to be named later or cash and signed pitcher Bruce Billings to a minor league deal.
Rangers: Designated catcher Chris Gimenez for assignment.

I had already mentioned the Roberto Hernandez trade above, but mentioning it again gives me an excuse to post this tweet:

Roberto Hernandez, who used to be named Fausto Carmona, just got traded for two players to be named later. This is a humorous tweet.

— Drew Silva (@drewsilv) August 7, 2014

If you’ve been reading the Mug every day you’ve seen an awful lot of roster moves this season, but how much do you know about the men behind them? Gaslamp Ball has a Sporcle quiz asking you to name all 30 active MLB general managers. I got 18, and there are probably 4-5 more I might have also remembered if I’d taken the quiz after 7 a.m.

Let’s go around the NL Central:

• The Cardinals kept pace with the frontrunning Brewers with a 5-2 win over the Red Sox. Second baseman Kolten Wong hit a pair of home runs and scored three times in the victory.
• The Pirates looked good too, beating the Marlins 7-2. Edinson Volquez pitched seven shutout innings for the win and right fielder Gregory Polanco drove in four runs.
• The Reds clinched the Ohio Cup with a 4-0 win over the Indians, taking their annual interleague rivalry series three games to one. Homer Bailey pitched seven shutout innings for the win.
• The Cubs made it a perfect day for the Central by beating the Rockies 6-2. Rookie Javier Baez homered twice and has a .929 slugging percentage in his first three MLB games.
• The Brewers, as you likely know, beat the Giants 3-1.

Thursday’s big baseball economics news came from Cleveland, where the Indians announced plans for major renovations to Progressive Field. The ballpark is 20 years old and is getting several significant changes, but the net result is a decrease of 4,000-5,000 seats. With a new estimated capacity of 37-38,000, Progressive Field will be one of the smallest in baseball.

Finally, with help from the Baseball Reference Play Index, we’d like to wish a happy birthday today to:

• Brewers first base coach Ed Sedar, who turns 53.
• Brewers general manager Doug Melvin, who turns 62 (Today In Brewer History).
• Milwaukee native and UW-Madison alum Greg Mahlberg, who turns 62. Mahlberg played in the majors as a member of the 1978 and 1979 Texas Rangers.