The whole Eastern seaboard is swamped, those four games all washed away, so I’ll ramble a bit before a few game notes.

How far can we project Milwaukee’s 20-8 start? Based on teams from the past 100 seasons, it’s still too soon to draw strong conclusions. (All records here projected to a 162-game schedule.)

The 45 prior teams that won exactly 20 of their first 28 averaged 95 wins — a sure ticket to postseason play in the wild-card era. All but one of the 75 teams winning 95+ since 1995 made the playoffs, and that one came before the second wild card was added.

But not all of those 45 teams were so fortunate:

• Three finished .500 or under.
• One in five finished below 85 wins, all sitting home in October.
• 36% wound up under 91 wins. (Why 91 wins? In each year of the two-wild-card format, a team with 90 or 91 wins has missed the playoffs.)

What’s more, 20-8 hasn’t projected much better than 19-9 or 18-10. The 86 prior teams that began 19-9 averaged 93 wins, just two under the 20-8 starts. The 133 teams starting 18-10 averaged almost 92 wins.

So, let’s check back in ten games or so. If the Brewers keep up this pace, they’d be 27-11:

• The 62 teams starting 27-11 or 26-12 averaged 98 wins; more to the point, 82% won at least 91, and just 5% fell short of 85 wins.
• But those at 25-13 or 24-14 averaged 93 wins (five fewer); 63% won 91+, and 13% missed 85 wins.

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@Cardinals 9, Brewers 3 — Nothing could be more welcome to Cards fans than a power surge by Allen Craig, who homered and doubled twice as St. Louis rallied in the middle innings. Craig has 5 XBH and 5 RBI in his last 3 games, after 4 and 6 in his first 25. But Matt Adams struck the game’s biggest blow, putting the Cards on top in the 3rd with a 3-run shot off Matt Garza, after Matt Holliday singled. Adams had one homer in his first 108 PAs. Cards had 8 extra-base hits, three more than their prior high for the year.

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@Angels 7, Cleveland 1 — Eight innings of two-hit ball by C.J. Wilson, who’s 65-34 since leaving the bullpen. Wilson’s tied for 5th in total wins since 2010; he had no wins as a starter before age 29.

• No happy flight: Cleveland heads home after dropping all six on their Cali swing, batting .183. They’re 4-11 on the road; last year’s club lost 12 straight road games to reach 12-21 away, but finished at 41-40.

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Tigers 5, @White Sox 1 — Max Scherzer had a 4.02 ERA last April, 3.00 or less in each of seven months since, including 2.82 in four October starts. This month’s 2.08 is the best of the seven.

• Detroit’s 4-run 4th: Two sac flies, and then a 2-run double by Bryan Holaday, his first XBH this year.

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Cubs 9, @Reds 4 — Four in the 9th off Sean Marshall blew up a close game. Anthony Rizzo homered in the 1st, then drew four walks — the first such regulation effort since Melky Cabrera in 2012, and first by a Cub since Hee-Seop Choi in 2003.

• Confession: I had to look up the name of Chicago’s closer. No offense meant to Hector Rondon, who’s pitched well. But the Cubs now have two saves in nine wins, which is odd; bad teams usually have the highest percentage of wins saved. Chicago’s won six games by 4+ runs, another that began with a 4-run lead in the 9th.

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@Marlins 9, Braves 3 — Another market correction, as the Fish gaffed Aaron Harang for 9 runs, thrice his total through five starts and tying his one-time career high.

• Harang’s run of five starts with 6+ IP and one run or less was the longest since 2012, when R.A. Dickey and Paul Maholm both had six. Four other Atlanta Braves have done five straight in a season — Kris Medlen, Tim Hudson, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine — but none has reached six.

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Athletics 12, @Rangers 1 — Jesse Chavez got back on the horse, and Oakland extracted full revenge for Texas’s visiting sweep last week: two shellackings, plus Sonny Gray’s 3-hit whitewash against Yu Darvish. Rangers were out-hit 17-1 through the 7th tonight, and the lone walk from Chavez was scrubbed on a DP. But they did finally catch up their hits to their 4 errors.

Oakland’s 7-run 3rd inning featured three unearned runs from Elvis Andrus’s second E of the night, his 7th this season, or half last year’s total. Two more came from a two-error play in the 4th.

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Nationals 7, @Astros 0 — Hit your position: A dong and two dubs gave Anthony Rendon 16 XBH and 20 RBI, both 2nd among third basemen. Not bad for a guy who who was a second baseman last year, and hit like one.

• Brett Oberholtzer (0-5) has had a couple of duds, but his mates have only scored 8 runs in his starts.
• George Springer leads the majors with 5 outfield errors, in 15 games. The 2012-13 leaders each had 8 errors.

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Rockies 4, @D-backs 2 (8th) — Jordan Lyles let in one run in 6 IP, and offset that with the 5th home run by a pitcher this year. All had at least one prior HR — Travis Wood, Mike Leake, Gio Gonzalez and Madison Bumgarner — and the five have a combined career average of 12 HRs and 30 XBH per 600 ABs.

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@Royals 4, Blue Jays 2 — Two steals in the 7th by pinch-runner Jimmy Paredes kept the pressure on Drew Hutchison, who gave up a 2-out, 2-run double to Alcides Escobar. But if you thought John Gibbons might have called on his bullpen that inning, you haven’t been paying attention.

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@Giants 2, Padres 0 (7th) — Tim Hudson seemed intent on avenging his only loss, zipping through the first 7 innings on 69 pitches, 3 hits.

Brandon Hicks has homered in 4 of his last 7 games; 16 of his 24 hits since 2012 have gone extras. And I knew there was something familiar about his rates; he’s a good match for slugging pitcher Earl Wilson (Hicks’s stats through Wednesday’s first AB):

• OBP — Wilson .265, Hicks .269
• SLG — Wilson .369, Hicks .385
• HR% — Wilson 4.1%, Hicks 4.7%
• SO% — Wilson 33%, Hicks 37%

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Tidbits from Tuesday

Seeing Carlos Santana’s “4-1-2-3, HR” in the box score, I had to double-check the date. Yes, Santana had the exact same line on Monday. And here’s just the kind of oddity I love: The last man to repeat that exact box score line was Jason Varitek, another switch-hitting catcher — and he did it on the very same dates, exactly 10 years ago.

By the way, you know you’ve started off slowly when 4-for-8 with 2 HRs lifts you to a .156 BA and .610 OPS.

Mike Trout walked three times (one intentional) in front of Albert, who went down each time.

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Detroit won despite 14 strikeouts, no walks or extra-base hits. Just one other such game in the database: On 9-17-84, Doc Gooden fanned 16, but balked home the winning run. The other run off Doc came from a dropped strike three, a steal, E-1 on a pickoff at second, and a Von Hayes hit after Ray Knight dropped his foul pop.

Bryan Holaday’s go-ahead bunt hit with two outs in the 9th inning was the first such event that late in a game since an Adam Jones walk-off in 2010. For a catcher, it’s the first since 1982 (Gary Allenson), at least for what’s been captured in play-by-play descriptions — and, I should add, excluding the postseason.

Rajai Davis fanned in all four trips, from the leadoff spot. It’s the 3rd game this year where a leadoff man struck out in each of 4+ PAs. There are only 123 such games in the searchable annals, with a season high of six games. It’s never been done by both leadoff men in a game, thank goodness, but that day will come.

Through Tuesday, four ChiSox qualifiers have OPS+ of at least 148. No modern team has had four at 145+, and only the 2003 Red Sox and ’76 Reds had four at 140+.

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Was there any doubt that Drew Stubbs would corral the long drive by Eric Chavez that would have made the Snakes winners? Come on — the guy who hits the go-ahead blast in the top of the 9th always runs down the last out.

Three Rockies qualifiers have OPS+ over 160. Only the 1963 Giants did that for a season.

Tulo‘s on a bit of a tear — 11 games, 6 HRs, 16 RBI, 1.615 OPS. (Do check his home splits, though.)

LaTroy Hawkins has never saved 30 in a season, but at age 41, he’s on pace for well over 40 saves. The oldest first-time 30-save men:

• Age 37 — Takashi Saito, 2007 (39 saves); David Weathers, 2007 (33 saves); Rafael Betancourt, 2012 (31)
• Age 36 — Ryan Franklin, 2009 (38); Billy Taylor, 1998 (33); Jason Grilli, 2013 (33)

With Grilli still pending, none of them ever saved more than 27 thereafter. But LaTroy’s not looking past this year.

Highest ERA since 2012 among closers with 50+ total saves: 4.20, Addison Reed; 3.72, Chris Perez; 3.42, Ernesto Frieri. The last two have been deposed, despite conversion rates better than Reed’s 85%, which rates 17th of the 19 in this sample. I’m not picking on Reed; it’s others who’ve wrapped him in a protective halo. Reed spent just two years in the minors, just 41 innings at the top two levels. Maybe he’s not quite ready yet. However you slice it, a 4.20 ERA is no relief.