Youth Movement

It was the Milwaukee's future stars that made an impact tonight and led the Brew Crew to a comeback victory over the Twins. Both second baseman Rickie Weeks and first baseman Prince Fielder (in a pinch-hit appearance) hit their both career home runs, and Fielder's was a three-run shot that came with the Brewers down 6-5 to put them on top for good.

Johan Santana's struggles continued, as he failed to pick up a win despite the fact that the Shannon Stewart and Torii Hunter's first-inning homers handed him a 3 run lead before he even took the mound. Santana has simply been allowing way too many men to get on base. After walking an uncharacteristic 4 batters in his last start, he did it again tonight, and also allowed 6 hits. After he was pulled from the game, Jesse Crain came in with two runners on base and faced Fielder, and his first pitch was a terrible fastball right down the middle which ended up over the fence in center field.

I overheard a theory as to why Santana's performance has been so poor as of late. Word is that Johan was signaling his pitches so opposing teams could figure out what he was going to throw. In order to fix this problem, the Twins' staff worked with Santana to adjust his motion so that he wouldn't signal, but now these changes have got him all screwed up and he's lost his control. That would make sense. Clearly, something must be done to get him back on track, because we will never get back in the race in the AL Central if Santana can't step up and be our ace.

Hunter continued his red-hot June with two home runs tonight. Glenn Williams started at third again and got another hit... he has now hit in each of the 10 games he has played since being called up. The offense was not the problem tonight, but their pitching just could not do the job.