Thursday 9/20/18
20 September 2018 Sports
Jesus Aquilar had been hunting 100 RBIs for a while, and he got there with some small ball. Then he found his power stroke, too.
Aguilar’s infield single in the first inning made him the 19th Brewers player to reach triple-digit RBIs in a season, and his three-run homer in the third sent Milwaukee cruising toward a 7-0 win over the Reds at Miller Park on Wednesday night. And another step closer to playing October baseball.
Gio Gonzalez pitched six scoreless innings to improve to 9-11 and Manny Pina added a three-run homer at the end of an epic at-bat for a series win over the Reds and a 3-3 penultimate homestand that left the Brewers an NL-best 19-9 since Aug. 19. They grew their lead atop the National League Wild Card standings to three games over the Cardinals and climbed within 2 1/2 games of the Cubs in the NL Central.
The remaining schedule looks like this: Three games in Pittsburgh beginning Friday night, then three in St. Louis that loom large. The Brewers finish the regular season at home with three against the Tigers.
Corey Knebel, Junior Guerra and Freddy Peralta finished the Brewers’ fifth shutout victory over the Reds — the first time Cincinnati had been blanked that many times in a season by a single opponent since 1960 against the Pirates, and the first time the Brewers had shut out an opponent five times since 1971 against the Angels.
It was Aguilar who supplied the early run support in another flashback to his fantastic first half. He leads Milwaukee with 33 home runs and 103 RBIs but had cooled significantly in September.
Milwaukee is off today before opening a three-game series at Pittsburgh on Friday night. Jhoulys Chacin will start for Milwaukee against Piirates right-hander Ivan Nova. First pitch is at 6:05.
The Packers did not practrice Wednesday and while they are moving on past the tie against Minnesota and preparing for Washington with some mental work in the classroom, there is no moving on past that call against Clay Matthews that no one agrees with.
Coach Mike McCarthy said, “What are you going to do?,” “Call the league up and say a bunch of bad words to make yourself feel good? That doesn’t work. But I’m just going to tell you this, we haven’t changed anything with how we are coaching our players and how we’re going to hit the passer.”
Quarterback Aaron Rodgers said “We enjoy the protection below the knee and above the shoulders, but I don’t know many quarterbacks who want (calls like Clay’s). There are very few opportunities for us in the game to show any type of toughness. The one on me, I don’t think that’s roughing the passer either. Some of the rules I think help, but some of the rules are maybe going the wrong direction.”
As the team does move forward they are preparing for a Washington defense that is ranked #1 overall through 2 weeks.
Meanwhile the Packers have released CB Deante Burton and activated RB Aaron Jones from exempt status. Burton was claimed off waivers by the Packers from the Atlanta Falcons on Sept. 11 and was inactive for last week's game against the Vikings.
Thursday Night Football…….New York Jets at Cleveland
Share |