MILWAUKEE — Brent Suter turned a quick mistake into a big win over the St. Louis Cardinals. The left-hander pitched seven strong innings, Manny Pina homered and the Milwaukee Brewers capitalized on a season-high four errors by St. Louis in an 11-3 victory Thursday night. Suter (8-4) retired 12 straight after Matt Carpenter homered on the first pitch of the game. “Not that I just laid it in there, but it kind of fired me up,” Suter said. “It was like, OK, they’re coming out swinging. I have to locate better and come out with that much more conviction on my early pitches.” That he did. Suter went a career-high seven innings for the second time this season and third overall. He limited the Cardinals to two runs and two hits with a walk and five strikeouts. “I was able to get some early outs and keep them off the bases,” he said. Suter is 6-1 with a 3.12 ERA in his last seven starts and made an impression on his manager by commanding his curveball and changeup. “To me, this little run he’s on, his off-speed pitches have been well-located,” Milwaukee skipper Craig Counsell said. The Brewers regained the lead in NL Central, one game ahead of the Chicago Cubs. Carlos Martinez (3-4) struggled in his fourth start since returning from the disabled list (right lat strain). He allowed seven runs — five earned — on eight hits in four innings with two walks, three strikeouts and two wild pitches. The right-hander is 0-2 with an 8.10 ERA since being activated on June 4. Milwaukee went ahead 2-1 in the first and never looked back. Left fielder Marcell Ozuna tracked Jesus Aguilar’s towering fly and climbed the wall in anticipation of making a home run-saving catch. The ball hit the padding behind and below Ozuna and bounced away as two runs scored for Milwaukee. Matheny: "We're a team that's better than what we showed right there. … These guys dislike it just as much as I do." #STLCards pic.twitter.com/f2okfmCgZP — FOX Sports Midwest (@FSMidwest) June 22, 2018 Fielding and throwing errors in the third helped the Brewers tack on two unearned runs. Lorenzo Cain reached on Carpenter’s fielding error at third base and scored on Travis Shaw’s double. Shaw advanced on a wild pitch and then raced home when Martinez lost the grip on the ball as he threw toward the plate and it squirted toward the third base line. The Brewers broke it open in the fourth on a home run by Pina, a run-scoring single by Cain and a sacrifice fly by Shaw. Milwaukee added three unearned runs in the seventh aided by a fielding and throwing error by second baseman Jedd Gyorko. The four Cardinals errors surprised Suter. “They definitely had some uncharacteristic mistakes,” he said. “We had a lot of baserunners there. So, maybe keeping the pressure on them led to that. They don’t do that very often, and they probably won’t the rest of the series.” St. Louis manager Mike Matheny addressed the miscues. “Mistakes are mistakes,” he said. “Guys prepare. They compete. They don’t give up. Mistakes are going to happen. Do we settle for them? Do we try to fix them? We don’t settle. We try to fix. That’s all.” Yadier Molina was hit by a pitch and scored on a double by Yairo Munoz in the fifth. Munoz had a run-scoring base hit in the ninth. Carpenter hit the first pitch from Suter for his 17th leadoff home run and second of the season. TRAINER’S ROOM Cardinals: RHP John Gant was recalled from Triple-A Memphis for the third time this season. He allowed three hits and four unearned runs with two strikeouts over two innings. Brewers: LF Ryan Braun, who is batting .236 with eight home runs and 31 RBIs, had a cryotherapy injection in his troublesome right thumb Wednesday in Los Angeles. It’s the first time this season and fifth overall that he’s undergone the procedure to freeze the nerve. He did not play. CAIN UPDATE Cain came out in the top of the fifth with a right hamstring cramp. He hit a sacrifice fly in the fourth before exiting in what the team called a precautionary move. Counsell said Cain will be in the lineup Friday. WACHA UPDATE The Cardinals placed right-hander Michael Wacha on the 10-day disabled list with a left oblique strain. Wacha (8-2), who has a 3.20 ERA and leads the team in wins and strikeouts (71) in 15 starts, left Wednesday’s outing against Philadelphia with the injury. Matheny said an MRI confirmed the strain and it was too early to tell how long Wacha will be out. “It’ll be a couple of weeks, at least,” Matheny said. “We don’t have a clear time. They’re still doing testing.” UP NEXT Cardinals: RHP Jack Flaherty (3-2, 2.66 ERA) makes his third career start against the Brewers and second at Miller Park, where he made his major league debut on April 3, striking out nine in a 5-4 loss. He was optioned to the minors the next day to make roster room for RHP Adam Wainwright. Brewers: RHP Junior Guerra (3-5, 2.89) makes his 14th start of the season and third against the Cardinals. He is 2-2 with a 3.82 ERA in six career starts vs. St. Louis, including 1-0 in two starts this season.<doc-sep>After a late-night flight back home, your Milwaukee Brewers would probably have a good excuse to come out sleepy-eyed and sluggish to start their next homestand. Unfortunately, there won’t be much time to waste with the St. Louis Cardinals coming back into town. While the Redbirds have been sluggish themselves lately -- losing their past three series, including a home series against the San Diego Padres -- they’re still just 4.5 games behind the Brewers and Cubs in the NL Central race, and as we know from experience, it’s best to try to bury the Cardinals as soon as possible before they make their inevitable late-season run. We last saw the Cardinals at the end of May, when the Brewers took 2 of 3. The Brewers have only lost a total of two (2!!) series to the Cardinals dating back to the start of last season, which feels pretty surreal given how much they’ve tormented Milwaukee over the years. Probable Pitchers Thursday - 7:10 p.m. CDT Carlos Martinez vs. Brent Suter Friday - 7:10 p.m. CDT Jack Flaherty vs. Junior Guerra Saturday - 3:10 p.m. CDT Miles Mikolas vs. Chase Anderson Sunday - 1:10 p.m. CDT Luke Weaver vs. Jhoulys Chacin The rainout in Pittsburgh moved everyone in the Brewers’ rotation back a day, shuffling the matchups for the weekend a bit and bumping Freddy Peralta from Sunday’s series finale. Martinez comes into this series with a 2.73 ERA, but it’s been almost entirely luck as of late. He’s walked 40 batters in 62.2 innings and has hit a league-leading 10 batters so far this year. All of the extra baserunners have led to plenty of short outings and a FIP of 3.92 -- more than a run higher than his ERA. He’s walked at least 5 batters in each of his past three starts, including 7 two starts ago against Cincinnati. Despite that, he’s managed to avoid total disaster in those outings. While the Reds touched him up for 5 runs in 3.2 innings, he only allowed 2 runs in 4 innings despite 5 walks against the Marlins and only 3 runs in 5 innings despite 6 walks and 7 hits against the Cubs. Flaherty has now become a regular part of the Cardinals’ rotation after the team insisted on shuttling him back and forth from Memphis for some reason during the early parts of the season. You may remember he struck out 9 batters in his season debut against the Brewers on April 3rd, before getting sent back down in favor of Adam Wainwright. The Cardinals eventually came to their senses and he’s been mostly excellent the rest of the way. He’s allowed a single run in 5 of his 9 starts, and that doesn’t include the 5 shutout innings he’s coming off of against the Cubs on Sunday. Mikolas has put up a nice 2.69 ERA in 14 starts so far this year and has done it by barely allowing any baserunners -- his 1.0 BB/9 is the lowest in the National League, having walked just 10 batters in 90.1 innings. But despite his home run against the Brewers, they’ve been one of the rare teams to hit him pretty well this year. 8 of his 27 earned runs on the year have come against the Brewers, giving up 4 in each of his first two starts. The fact he doesn’t walk anyone may actually help the Brewers and some of the free-swingers in their lineup, since they know strikes are coming. Weaver, on the other hand, had three good starts to begin the season and has struggled for much of the year since. He’s given up 4 earned runs in each of his last 3 starts, and like Martinez, has fallen victim to the walks bug. He gave out 4 free passes in his last start in Philadelphia and walked 5 on June 8th against the Reds, but the Cardinals managed to win both of those games in 7-6 slugfests. The Cardinals have been pretty conservative with how they’ve managed him so far this year, seldom letting him throw much more than 90 pitches. Mike Matheny took him out after 76 pitches in his one start against the Brewers this year, after he gave up 4 runs (only 2 earned) in 4 innings on May 28th. Statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference<doc-sep>
MILWAUKEE — Ryan Braun is expected to be back in Milwaukee and available Thursday night when the Brewers open a four-game series with the St. Louis Cardinals at Miller Park. Braun left the team Thursday morning for Los Angeles, where he received a cryotherapy injection in his right thumb — a procedure he has undergone four times since first receiving treatment on the thumb following the 2014 season. “It started bugging him the last couple of days so he flew out (Thursday) morning),” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “It’s something that he expects from time to time. When it starts (bothering him), we try to get in front of it and knock it out right away.” Braun was expected to miss Milwaukee’s game Wednesday night at Pittsburgh, but Mother Nature made the point moot as rain forced cancellation of the finale of a three-game series with the Pirates. As a result, the Brewers will take the field Thursday virtually tied with the Chicago Cubs for first place in the National League Central with the Cardinals lingering 4 1/2 games behind. St. Louis will try to cut into that deficit behind right-hander Carlos Martinez (3-3, 2.73 ERA), who has struggled since returning from the disabled list back on June 5. In three starts since then, Martinez is 0-1 with a 7.11 ERA. He struck out 15 while walking 18 in 12 2/3 innings — failing to get past the fifth in any of those outings — while opponents have batted .306 against him with a .908 OPS. “He’s got to do something different, I know,” manager Mike Matheny admitted. “(Pitching coach Mike) Maddux has talked to him about getting locked in. It just looks different. We need him to be like he can be.” Martinez was off to a strong start before the injury. He bounced back from a rough season-opening outing against the New York Mets to post a 0.99 ERA over his next seven starts. He still had a 1.77 ERA after the Minnesota Twins tagged him for four runs over five innings in a 7-1 loss on May 8 but was placed on the disabled list the next day with a strained forearm. “Right when he got hurt, he was as good as anybody in the league,” said Matheny. “We’ve just got to get him back there, that’s all. Martinez has faced Milwaukee twice this season, dominating the Brewers in each appearance. He held them to a run over six innings in a 5-3 victory on April 10 in St. Louis and fell two outs short of a complete game shutout on April 4 at Miller Park, where he is 4-4 with a 2.36 ERA in 16 career appearances, including 10 starts. Overall, he’s 6-4 with a 1.95 ERA in his career against Milwaukee and has held the Brewers to two runs or fewer in 10 of his last 14 starts against the Brewers. Because of the rainout in Pittsburgh, left-hander Brent Suter (7-4, 4.30) will get an extra day of rest and start for Milwaukee on Thursday, with Junior Guerra, Chase Anderson and Jhoulys Chacin rounding out the series. Suter is 1-0 with a 3.48 ERA in two starts against St. Louis this season, and 1-2 with a 4.10 ERA in eight career appearances (four starts) against the Cardinals.