BREWERS FALL JUST SHORT IN SECOND STRAIGHT COMEBACK BID
The Milwaukee Brewers weren’t quite able to make it two straight comeback wins against the Chicago Cubs as they came up just short this afternoon. Tobias Myers, Milwaukee’s starter, struggled through three innings, while his counterpart, Jameson Taillon, cut through the Brewers lineup like a hot knife through butter for six innings before the Brewers got to the Chicago bullpen.
Things did not get off to a good start for Myers. Cubs leadoff hitter Nico Hoerner jumped on a 1-1 cutter that Myers left over the plate and put it in the left field bleachers. Myers then lost his command completely: he walked the next two batters on eight pitches, and finally threw a couple strikes but walked Christopher Morel as well to load the bases with nobody out. A second run scored on a Michael Busch grounder that wasn’t quite hit hard enough for the Brewers to turn two on, and despite getting ahead, Myers walked Dansby Swanson, too. But with the bases loaded again, Myers managed to get back-to-back strikeouts on Patrick Wisdom and Pete Crow-Armstrong to escape the inning with just two runs allowed, a minor miracle given how it started.
Myers worked a 1-2-3 inning in the second (which included a nice sliding catch from Sal Frelick), but he was back in trouble in the third. Ian Happ led off with a line drive that Hoskins couldn’t handle, and Morel did not miss a middle-middle four seamer; he homered for the second straight game, to make it 4-0. It would be the end of the day for Myers, who needed 62 pitches to get through three innings; he allowed four earned runs on three hits and four walks while striking out two.
After Myers was removed, the Brewers got scoreless innings from Jared Koenig (who returned to the majors this morning) and Hoby Milner, but the Cubs struck again in the sixth. With Thyago Vieira pitching, Patrick Wisdom got a front-door slider that didn’t fool him and demolished it 438 feet into left, the Cubs’ third home run of the game, to make it 5-0.
Taillon, meanwhile, mostly cruised. He gave up a couple of infield hits in the second, walked a guy in the third, walked another guy in the fourth, and gave up a hit in the fifth, but aside from the second (when they had runners on first and second with one out), the Brewers never really threatened him in six innings. He finished with just two hits and two walks allowed in those six innings, and struck out a season-high seven.
Keegan Thompson replaced Taillon in the seventh, and the Brewers immediately showed their thankfulness to be facing anyone else, even though Thompson came in having allowed only one earned run in 10 2/3 innings on the season. Rhys Hoskins led off with a walk, and Oliver Dunn followed with his first career triple, which cut the lead to 5-1. Blake Perkins followed, and he put one in the basket in right field to make it 5-3. Jackson Chourio followed Perkins with his second hit of the day, and Thompson was yanked without recording an out. Mark Leiter Jr. replaced him, but the Brewers didn’t seem to care who was pitching; on Leiter’s second pitch, Frelick lined one into right and aggressively stretched a single into a double. The throw to second got away, and Chourio scored to make it 5-4. Leiter settled in after that and retired Contreras, Black, and Adames in order to end the inning, but Milwaukee had closed the gap.
Vieira stayed in to face Nico Hoerner in the seventh, but gave up a leadoff single, after which he was replaced by Bryan Hudson, who got Tauchman to fly out and then struck out Happ and Morel to end the inning. Leiter Jr. stayed in the game for the 8th; Turang led off the with a 380 foot fly ball but he hit it to center field and it died on the warning track, and Hoskins and Dunn were easily retired.
The Brewers went to the bottom of the 8th looking to put up a zero to give themselves the best chance in the ninth, and they nearly did, even after Busch led off with a double off of Bryan Hudson, who remained in the game. With the infield drawn in, Hudson induced a Dansby Swanson groundout, and then appeared to strike out Patrick Wisdom looking. But home plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt didn’t see it that way, and the at bat continued, ending with a Wisdom RBI single to center field to extend the Chicago lead to 6-4.
Héctor Neris replaced Leiter Jr. for the ninth and it didn’t start well, as he walked Perkins on five pitches. Chourio flew out to right and Frelick hit a comebacker that could have been a game-ending double play, but it bounced off Neris and everyone was safe, which brought up Contreras with two on and one out. Contreras did what Contreras does, as he knocked a solid single into right to score Perkins and cut the lead to one. But Tyler Black struck out and Adames grounded out (in a sequence in which included another bad call, this time in the opposite direction, from Wendelstedt that put Adames in an 0-2 hole) and this one ended Cubs 6, Brewers 5—an exciting game, but a tough loss for the Brewers.
For Milwaukee, the top and bottom of the order offered balanced contributions while the middle of the order struggled. Perkins was 1-for-3 with a home run, a walk, two runs scored, and two RBI; Chourio had two singles and a run scored; and Frelick was 2-for-4 with a double and a walk. Today’s two-through-five hitters, though, were a combined 1-for-18 with a walk, their only hit being Contreras’s ninth-inning RBI single.
This game may feel like a missed opportunity, but the Brewers will have another chance to win the series tomorrow afternoon, when Freddy Peralta is back on the mound against Javier Assad at 1:20 p.m. on Bally Sports Wisconsin and the Brewers Radio Network.
2024-05-04T21:26:42Z dg43tfdfdgfd