Afternoon State Sports Briefs: Brewers' Lucroy to have surgery on injured hand

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LOS ANGELES - Milwaukee Brewers’ catcher Jonathan Lucroy will have surgery tomorrow on the right hand he broke in a freak accident at his Los Angeles hotel room on Sunday night.

The team announced this afternoon that Lucroy will have a pin placed inside the hand. Team physician William Raasch will perform the operation. The Brewers say Lucroy will then miss six weeks while he recovers. Lucroy was Milwaukee’s hottest hitter when he got hurt. He was reaching for a sock underneath his hotel bed when a suitcase fell from the bed onto his hand.

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The Milwaukee Brewers have not won three straight games since early April. But they can match that streak tonight with another victory in Los Angeles. The Brewers are coming off a pair of one-run victories against the team with the Majors’ best record at 32-17. Milwaukee is 21-28, a game behind fourth-place Houston in the National League Central. Despite the Dodgers’ two losses this week, they still lead the NL West Division by five-and-a-half games over second-place San Francisco. But LA has only scored three runs against Milwaukee the past two nights. And the Dodgers have not received the lift they were expecting with the return of Matt Kemp from a bad hamstring. Kemp, who missed 13 games, was 1-for-4 last night and 1-for-17 in his last five games overall. But Kemp is a .333 lifetime hitter against tonight’s starter for Milwaukee, right-hander Yovani Gallardo. Reigning National League Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw will start for the Dodgers.

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Yovani Gallardo will try to even his 3-4 record tonight, when the Milwaukee Brewers play the Dodgers in Los Angeles. The right-handed Gallardo has an ERA of 4.19. But he has only given up just over two runs every nine innings of his last four starts. Last Friday night, Gallardo gave up one run in seven-and-a-third innings in a 7-1 Brewers’ victory at Arizona. He’s due against LA. Gallardo is 0-3 lifetime against the Dodgers – and his last two starts against them have been no-decisions. The Dodgers will start current Cy Young Award recipient Clayton Kershaw. The left-hander is one of just two regular starters in the National League with an ERA of under two. It’s a one-point-nine-seven with a 4-2 record. Kershaw is coming off a loss to Houston last Friday night, despite a quality start in which he gave up three runs in seven innings. Kershaw is 0-and-2 lifetime at home against Milwaukee. The Brewers are guaranteed at least a split of their four-game series with the Dodgers by virtue of their wins the last two nights. It ended a streak of four straight series losses by the Brew Crew.

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In the Midwest League, the division-leading Wisconsin Timber Rattlers will open a series at Cedar Rapids tonight. The Rattlers lead the Western Division by two games over second-place Beloit. That’s after Wisconsin lost to Peoria in 14 innings last night, 4-3. The Beloit Snappers also had an extra-inning contest, winning 5-4 over third-place Kane County. The Snappers open a series at Quad Cities this evening. All of tonight’s other action is also under the lights. Eastern Division leader Lansing plays at Bowling Green. Burlington hosts Peoria. Kane County is at Clinton. South Bend plays at Dayton. Lake County entertains West Michigan. And Fort Wayne hosts Great Lakes.

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Defending champion Marietta was playing Wheaton of Massachusetts this afternoon in the championship game of the NCAA Division III Baseball World Series near Appleton. Marietta had jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the third inning. Earlier today, Marietta shut out Saint Thomas of Saint Paul 5-0. The Tommies were eliminated while finishing in third place.

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Green Bay Packers’ receiver Donald Driver returned to practice today for the first time this spring. Driver spent the last three months competing on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” which he won last week. He said he was in great shape, and Packers’ coach Mike McCarthy agreed. But the coach said the 37-year-old Driver would have a limited role at this week’s practices. Meanwhile, there was nothing new to report on Driver’s contract situation by mid-afternoon. His agent said Driver and the Packers have agreed on a restructuring of his current deal, apparently to reflect his more limited role in the offense. But it allows him to stay with the team that drafted him in 1999. Driver, the Packers’ all-time leading receiver, is starting his 14th year in Green Bay. And he has said he wants to be a “Packer for life.”

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The Packers signed rookie tight end Brandon Bostick today, as they reached their off-season roster limit of 90 players. Bostick is the seventh tight end on Green Bay’s roster. He’s the third all-time leading receiver at Newberry College in South Carolina, where he caught 35 passes last year for 439 yards and seven touchdowns. As a junior, Bostick had 48 catches for 839 yards and eight scores.

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Milwaukee Admirals’ coach Ian Herbers is leaving to take a similar job at his college alma mater in Canada. Herbers will become the new coach at the University of Alberta. He became Milwaukee’s head coach last November, after Kirk Muller left to coach the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes. Muller had the Milwaukee job for only 17 games, after he replaced Lane Lambert – who was promoted to an assistant coach for the Admirals’ parent NHL team in Nashville. Herbers went 30-23-2-4 for a Milwaukee team that took second in the American Hockey League’s Midwest Division and was eliminated in the playoffs by Abbotsford after the first round. The Admirals say a search will begin immediately for a new coach.

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Fox Valley native and former pro soccer player Kris Kelderman was named today as the new coach of the UW-Milwaukee men’s soccer team. Kelderman coached at UW-Green Bay this past season, where he led the Phoenix to an 11-7 mark. As a player, Kelderman was a two-time state champion at Neenah. And he played nine seasons in pro soccer, including four years in Major League Soccer with three teams. At Milwaukee, Kelderman replaces Chris Whalley – who was fired in March after reports that used offensive language to his players. Officials said Whalley also failed to tell UWM officials about several secondary violations of NCAA rules – and the school still faces possible limited recruiting restrictions. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel said UWM has been privately assured it would not face major NCAA sanctions because of what Whalley did.

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It’s Opening Night in the Northwoods summer college baseball league, and all 16 teams are in action. The Lakeshore Chinooks of Mequon will play their inaugural game at Green Bay against the Bullfrogs. The Eau Claire Express host the Wisconsin Woodchucks of Wausau. The La Crosse Loggers travel to Wisconsin Rapids to play the Rafters. The Madison Mallards are at home against the Battle Creek Bombers. The Duluth Huskies host the Saint Cloud Rox. The Rochester Honkers take on the Bucks in Waterloo. The Mankato Moondogs face the Stingers at Willmar. And the Thunder Bay Border Cats of Ontario open their season in the U.S. against the Alexandria Beetles. All seven Wisconsin teams are in the South Division, along with Battle Creek – which won both halves of last year’s regular season, as well as the league title after two rounds of playoffs. Battle Creek had a combined record of 43-26 for both halves in 2011. Green Bay had the next best record in the South at 42-27.

Tags: wisconsin sports, sports, proam, brewers, packers