Reserves will get chance to start

MILWAUKEE — As part of a tentative monthly plan to find playing time for his bench players, manager Clint Hurdle said he will put them into the starting lineup against the Milwaukee Brewers at some point this weekend.

Hurdle and coach Dave Jauss map out a month’s worth of projected playing time, so they can provide several at-bats during the course of a couple games to the bench guys and help them establish some rhythm.

“We believe we've got a better balanced bench than we've had in the past,” Hurdle said.

“It's not a guy getting a game every sixth or seventh day. We're going to try to back them up, piggyback some games, basically because all of them can play multiple positions.”

Hurdle said he played for a manager who employed this tactic, and that he was one of the bench players who was used in this way.

The Pirates look at how the number of atbats a player historically has had in a certain month corresponded to their performance to look for correlations, and they have also studied playing time and rotations in basketball and hockey.

“How much is too much?” Hurdle said. “You just start working some numbers, playing with some numbers. Then you start thinking about, how many positions can this guy play?”

Tough division

Brewers manager Ron Roenicke has watched the National League Central Division mature in the past three or four years, and, while he didn’t know if the division was the toughest, he said it was hard to find a division that was better.

“The hard thing is, is when you play your division so much, it's hard to really pull away when you've got all these good teams that keep battling all the time,” Roenicke said.

When the Houston Astros were still in the division, Roenicke said, teams could count on winning two out of three against them.

The Astros hit bottom and started a rebuilding process while both Hurdle and Roenicke were managing NL Central teams.

“And now you've got to battle every single game,” he said.

“That's different. I think all of baseball is that way. I really don't see any bad teams.

“If you look all over. there's no teams that people say, we're going to beat up on these guys. It's good for baseball because it is balanced better.”

Braun returns

Brewers right fielder Ryan Braun returned to the starting lineup Friday night.

He left the season opener Monday after injuring his right side making a catch on the warning track.

Braun did not start Tuesday or Wednesday, but he did pinch-hit Wednesday.