NL Central News and Double Play Balls.

ESPN's Elias says...that the Cubs are particularly bad when it comes to run support. They lead the MLB in losses (6), when they give up 2 runs or less to the opposing team.

He also says...Albert Pujols has came into a GIDP possibility against a reliever 17 times in the last 3 seasons. Last night, Brian Stokes got him to ground-into-a-double-play for only the second time of those 17 instances.

This got me thinking, how good is the Brewers pitching staff at getting opposing batters to GIDP?

According to Fox Sports stats, there are no Brewers pitchers that reach the top 50.
Braden Looper is in at #55 in the MLB with 8 GIDP, Jeff Suppan at #77 with 7 GIDP. Gallardo, Dave Bush and Manny Parra all have 6.

We all know that the GIDP is a pitcher's best friend and certainly helps get out of tough in-game situations, but it isn't necessarily noticeable during the games that we don't have a single or a couple pitchers that are "good" at inducing the double play.

Here are the top 5:
Zach Duke - PIT - 14
Brett Anderson - OAK - 12
Bronson Arroyo - CIN - 12
Aaron Cook - COL - 12
Felix Hernandez - SEA - 12

An interesting note of that top 5 is that 2 of the have ERAs over 5 (Arroyo and Anderson) but all have 7 or more wins besides Anderson (3-7).

Now we have to look at the other side of the plate. In 2008, the Milwaukee Brewers were an MLB best in grounding into double plays with only 97. The Chicago White Sox led with 157, almost one every game.

In 2009, the Brewers find themselves in the middle of the pack at #15 in grounding into double plays 57 times. Certainly, double play balls kill rallies of any sort, but it doesn't seem like they are hurting the Brewers that bad and certainly helped the Brewers make the post-season last year in sporting the best rate in baseball.