After the season we again had to make decisions. 4 players entered the final year of arbitration and the front office decided to make some moves.
The decision was made to sign Chris Eckelberry and Jim di Giovanni to long-term deals while trading shortstop Caldwell and star outfielder Jason Porter and to hand the shortstop job to minor league phenom Brian Bischoff.
The trade brought some much needed budget space and starting pitcher Chris Wilson to Milwaukee, giving the team a fearsome pitching rotation.
The offense struggled over long stretches and was shut out 10 times and scoring one run in 20 other games (finishing with a 6-5 record in 1:0-games) - one year after scoring 927 runs and finishing with a run differential of 385.
On the other hand, the pitching staff pitched a ridiculous 29 shutouts and allowed a single run in 34 other games.
The Tigers quickly took advantage from the Brewers struggles (we were just 24-21 on May 31) and at one point led the division by 11 games.
From then on we tried to catch them, but the closest we came was on September 14 after the Brewers had just completed a three-game sweep at Milwaukee to move within half a game.
Back-to-back 2:1 losses at Cleveland dropped us back again, and entering the final regular-season series, a 4-game set at Detroit), we trailed the Tigers by 3 games before sweeping the final 4 games.
Since the Tigers have swept the previous two Wild-Card-Series we fully expect to meet them in the Divisional Series
