The San Francisco Giants must exploit a struggling starter and overcome the Milwaukee Brewers' elite bullpen to claim a crucial series win at Oracle Park.
The San Francisco Giants staff allowed all nine Milwaukee Brewers batters to record a hit, and everyone but Andrew Vaughn reached base twice in the game.
San Francisco fell to 45-62 as they dropped game two of the series to Milwaukee, 8-2.
Coming off such a stellar series opener where the Giants held the Brewers to just three hits, San Francisco ran into what many believe is one of the best teams in all of baseball.
The Brewers' 67-40 record certainly proves that, and it really puts things into perspective knowing they are 27 games over .500 while the Giants are 17 games below that mark.
Either way, San Francisco has a chance to win back-to-back series; it'll just take a stellar performance against Shane Drohan and an extremely fresh Brewers bullpen.
Giants must pounce on Drohan in series finale
This Giants team just took two out of three against the Los Angeles Angels, but obviously the 42-66 Angels are nowhere near the level of the Brewers.
With their six-game homestand coming to a close, it would be a great step in the right direction for this team to finish 4-2 with a pair of series victories. In order to do so, they'll have to take down Drohan and the rest of this bullpen.
Milwaukee has a left-handed pitcher starting game three, one who's just 27 years old and is 2-2 in his last four starts.
The Giants would love to expose Drohan, a guy who's given up 11 runs in his last three starts. All of those have gone at least 6.0 innings, and he just gave up five earned runs on six hits to the Colorado Rockies.
Overall, he's 5-4 and will be making his 12th start in his 22nd appearance this season. Drohan is a 0.9 WAR player, so it's understandable why he's in this Brewers starting rotation, and his latest starts don't do his 3.51 ERA and 1.20 WHIP justice.
Who will deliver big hit?
It was far too little too late, but rookie sensation Bryce Eldridge homered in the eighth inning against Grant Anderson, one of the Brewers' bottom-tier relievers.
Even though the Giants lost game two, they had seven hits, which was one more than they had in their series-opening victory. Grant McCray homered in that game while Luis Arraez drove in his 41st run of the season.
Willy Adames already has two hits and a walk against his former team, but a guy like Rafael Devers is just 1-for-7. Losing Casey Schmitt hurt in a big way, but someone needs to step up if the Giants want to stun the Brewers on Wednesday, July 29, at Oracle Park.
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