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Struggling Brewers aim to avoid sweep vs. Twins

May 20, 2007 - 1:32 PM Minnesota (20-22) at Milwaukee (26-17) 2:05 pm EDT

MILWAUKEE (Ticker) -- One of baseball's early-season surprises, the Milwaukee Brewers will look to snap out of the doldrums and avoid a three-game sweep against the Minnesota Twins Sunday when the clubs face off in the series finale.

The Brewers, who entered last weekend's series with the New York Mets on a season-high six-game winning streak, have now dropped seven of nine contests after absorbing setbacks in the first two games of this series.

One of the reasons Milwaukee has been struggling is its lack of offense. It has scored a combined 11 runs in its last five games, and the offensive struggles continued on Saturday thanks to Twins starter Scott Baker, who was called up from Class AAA Rochester.

Baker tossed a career-high 8 1/3 innings and Torii Hunter blasted a two-run homer as the Twins continued their dominance of the Brewers with a 5-2 victory.

Minnesota looks for more of the same from Ramon Ortiz (3-4, 4.89 ERA), who has lost his last three starts. Ortiz has not secured a victory since winning at Seattle on April 17.

In his last outing, Ortiz tossed just one inning, allowing six runs and seven hits. The righthander has yielded 16 runs - 15 earned - and 20 hits in his last 11 innings over three starts.

Milwaukee will counter with Claudio Vargas (3-0, 2.93), who yielded three runs and seven hits in six innings, while striking out two and walking one but did not figure in the decision in a 4-2 loss at Philadelphia last Tuesday.

The righthander has allowed just four runs in his last 18 innings over three starts.