The Milwaukee Brewers haven't played good baseball in May, but they also haven't got many breaks, either.
One night before the Brewers can finally turn the page on a historically bad month, Milwaukee had a few things go its way in an 8-5 victory over Philadelphia on Friday night.
The win allowed the Brewers to avoid the dubious distinction of owning the worst month in franchise history outright, as they will tie the 1969 Seattle Pilots at 6-22.
Down 3-2, the breaks started going Milwaukee's way in the third inning against Phillies left-hander Cole Hamels. Norichika Aoki started the inning with an infield single, Jean Segura reached on an error by Phillies second baseman Cesar Hernandez, and Ryan Braun blooped a single to right to load the bases.
Aramis Ramirez snuck a seeing-eye single through the hole and into right field to tie the game at 3-all, while Carlos Gomez gave the Brewers their first lead in 61 innings with a sacrifice fly to right. Milwaukee added two more runs in the inning to take a 6-3 lead, one it would never relinquish.
"We've been coming up in key situations and hitting bullets at people," Brewers manager Ron Roenicke said. "It's nice to sneak balls in and chop them over his head and bloop them into right. That was a rough inning for him. He didn't pitch that bad in that inning and he gave up a bunch of runs. That was a rough one.
"The offense was good. We got big hits, but we got really lucky today, too. That third inning, the first three balls that were hit, we got some breaks. Then we got some clutch hits."
While Milwaukee's offense as a whole had a big night Friday, Brewers catcher Jonathan Lucroy raised his batting average from .229 to .253 by going five-for-five with two home runs, a double and four RBI.
"I felt pretty good yesterday swinging the bat," Lucroy said. "Today, things just worked out, and I was able to hit the ball hard somewhere. I'm just really glad we won. Regardless of how many hits I got, I just wanted to win a game, man. It's been a tough stretch. I'm just glad to get that monkey off our back."
Though the Brewers lost Thursday night in Minnesota, they scored six runs on 12 hits. An inconsistent offense – one that has been dormant lately – may be beginning to wake.
"We squared up a lot of balls yesterday," Roenicke said. "We squared up a bunch again today. I think sometimes you are fighting, you get two strikes and instead of punching out you flip it out somewhere. You never know what's going to happen."
Milwaukee entered May with a 14-11 record, right in the thick of things in the National League Central. The Brewers leave May with a 20-33 record, 15 games out of first place and 13 games out of third place.
While the calendar flipping to June isn't suddenly going to get the Brewers playing good baseball, winning a series might. It's something they haven't done since May began. Now they have a chance to win a series with just one more win in Philadelphia over the weekend.
"We just have to keep fighting, man," Lucroy said. "It's tough to come out and lose, I think we've lost six in a row. A lot of home runs have been beating us. I think this is a good pick me up here just to let our team know that we're really good, we can hit really good and our pitching can be really good."
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