…Him? (Photo by Wilfredor, via Wikimedia Commons)

When the best part of my night is realizing that Sean Marshall is sort of the Irish translation of Juan Marichal, (Sean and Juan both translate to John! It’s true, I read it on Wikipedia!) you know it hasn’t been a good day for the Redlegs. This game marked our third straight loss – something we haven’t done since July 3rd, 4th, and 5th, at the end of a series we lost to the Dodgers, and the beginning of an eventually winning Padres series. That wasn’t the last series we lost though – we lost two games out of three against Arizona in mid-July.

At least we can say we didn’t get no-hit, or worse, the victim of a perfect game, which Brewers starter Mike Fiers had, running into the seventh inning. Thankfully, Zack Cozart broke it up with a double, and was batted in by Brandon Phillips – who otherwise looked a little rough in his second day back in the lineup. Otherwise, though, the lineup was iffy, first against Mike Fiers (74 previous total innings), and then in the 9th against side-arm relief pitcher Jim Henderson. (5 previous total innings)

And Cueto really had a decent game. Three runs in seven innings should have been good enough. Johnny was excellent outside the first inning – racking up 9 strikeouts with no walks and only six hits total. It was actually a lot like Cueto’s last start against the Padres – where he was pretty good, but ran into a little trouble with home runs. Of course, we won THAT game, thanks to some excellent hitting.

Amazingly, I’m still feeling good about this team. We’ve really been lifted up lately by some phenomenal pitching, clutch hitting, and a healthy dose of extraordinary luck. I’ve always known that this team wasn’t really 20-3 good. But the fact that a little luck can raise us to such lofty heights is really a good thing  - even knowing that sometime we’ll be a bit mediocre. And tonight we were pretty mediocre. But sometimes lineups suck. Remember when Travis Wood nearly perfecto’d against the Phillies? That team had one of the best offenses in the league. Just…. not that night.

Tomorrow, we’ll be better. And if not, there’s a game the next day too. Isn’t baseball great?