Box Score
The Milwaukee Brewers’ bats came to life on Thursday afternoon, but this was a game that made it clear: no lead at Wrigley Field is safe these days. The Cubs’ high-powered offense nearly erased a big Brewer lead, but Trevor Megill overcame some bad umpiring to close the door in the ninth, long after starters Freddy Peralta and Jameson Taillon were out of the game, and the Brewers had a big road win.
As they did on Tuesday, the Brewers scored first in this one. After Sal Frelick started the game with a fly out to shallow right, Jackson Chourio got an 0-2 sweeper that didn’t sweep enough and he banged it down the left field line and hustled into second for a double. Two pitches later, Christian Yelich lined a hard single into right, and Chourio scored the game’s first run. William Contreras grounded into a double play to end the inning, but the Brewers were on top early.
Rhys Hoskins got the Brewers off to a nice defensive start, too, as he went down to his right and made a sliding stop against Ian Happ, the Cubs’ first batter of the game, and flipped it to Peralta for the first out. Peralta then issued a walk to Kyle Tucker—maybe not the dumbest thing in the world, given what he did to the Brewers on Tuesday—and got Seiya Suzuki to fly out to right field. But Pete Crow-Armstrong, the guy who scouts thought would spend his career as a 15-20 homer guy, hit his 20th home run in just his team’s 74th game of the season. It wasn’t even a bad pitch, really, a fastball just above the zone.
The PCA homer flipped the scoreboard in favor of the Cubs, who took a 2-1 lead to the second inning, but the Brewers had a quick answer. After a Brice Turang lined out to start the inning, Hoskins got a hanging sweeper and hit it into the bleachers in left field for his 11th home run to tie it at two.
But they weren’t done there. Isaac Collins followed with a walk, and Caleb Durbin then got a 2-2 cutter right down the middle and put that one in the bleachers, too, for his third homer of the year. Joey Ortiz made the second out even though it was another piece of good contact for him, and Sal Frelick flew out to center, and the inning was over. 4-2 Milwaukee after one-and-a-half.
Peralta had a nice comeback inning in the second and got Michael Busch, Carson Kelly, and Nico Hoerner in order. Chourio kept the hard contact going against Taillon when he led off the third with a 107 mph single to right, and then Yelich pounded one 105 mph on the ground up the middle for another hit, and it was clear that Taillon wasn’t fooling anyone. The very next pitch was a fastball that got a ton of plate and Contreras scalded that one into center field, too, scoring Chourio and giving the Brewers a 5-2 lead.
Turang almost got in on the fun when he lined one to left, but Happ made the catch on a slide for the first out. Hoskins flew out to left, and despite along at-bat, Collins struck out and the Brewers stranded a couple runners. Peralta got Matt Shaw and Happ (who was called out on a strike that wasn’t a strike—he wasn’t happy) to start the third, which meant he was facing Tucker exactly the way you want to face Tucker: two outs and nobody on. Tucker put up a fight but Peralta struck him out to end the inning.
Durbin struck out looking to start the fourth on a call that may have been making up for the third strike against Happ. Ortiz made more good contact and lined a single into left with one out, and Frelick nearly got a hilarious hit when he checked his swing on a high fastball and knocked it into shallow left but Happ made another sliding catch. Chourio smashed another ball, this one at 108.6 mph was his hardest hit of the game, but it was a ground ball that Dansby Swanson handled and the inning was over.
Peralta struck out Suzuki and PCA to start the bottom of the fourth and had retired nine straight after Crow-Armstrong’s homer in the second, but Swanson got ahead 3-0 before knocking a 3-1 fastball out to left. The Cubs only had two hits, but they were both homers, and it was now 5-3 Brewers. Peralta lost it a bit after that; he walked Busch on four pitches and fell behind Kelly but found the zone again and struck him out with a nasty slider.
Taillon was done after four innings, replaced by lefty Génesis Cabrera (who gave up a run on Tuesday). He got Yelich on a (hard-hit) ground out, but walked Contreras on four pitches. Cabrera fell behind Turang, too, but after working the count full, Turang hit a fly ball to the right field gap. It looked like one of the two (very good) outfielders out there should have caught it, but Tucker and PCA had some miscommunication and the ball landed between them and Turang had a double (an a ball that Statcast gave a .150 expected batting average). That gave Milwaukee a golden opportunity to add on to their lead, as there were runners on second and third with one out. But Hoskins frustratingly popped up a 3-0 fastball down the middle for the second out, and Cabrera had a route out of the inning.
Enter Isaac Collins. Collins, the team’s offensive star on Tuesday, got a hanging curveball and didn’t miss it, and he had his second straight game with a homer (this one from the opposite side). It was Collins’ fourth homer of the season and it put the Brewers up 8-3. Durbin flew out to center to end the inning but the Brewers had put some distance between themselves and the Cubs.
Hoerner jumped on Peralta’s first pitch of the fifth and nearly hit it out, but Chourio caught it on the warning track in center. Peralta hit Shaw with a 1-2 pitch to give the top of the Cubs’ order a baserunner to work with. Happ flew out to left and Pat Murphy let Peralta stay in to face Tucker with two outs—something he may not have allowed had the Brewers not added on in the top of the fifth—and Tucker just missed the barrel and flew out to deep center on the first pitch. Peralta was through five.
Chris Flexen replaced Cabrera in the sixth, and Ortiz greeted him by smoking another baseball into right field for a base hit. Frelick’s at-bat was interrupted by a small episode in which he let go of his bat, it got caught in the net, and a guy who Brian Anderson aptly described as a “finance bro” climbed and grabbed it. (He was briefly escorted out, but later returned to his seat to raucous applause.) Eventually, Frelick hit a ball that deflected off of Flexen, who recovered to throw him out at first. Chourio and Yelich both got at-bats with Ortiz at second, but both struck out and the inning ended.
Peralta was done after five innings. He only gave up two hits, but they were both homers, and he also walked two, so he had a total of three runs allowed (and he gave up some hard contact outside of that, too). Aaron Ashby was the replacement for Peralta, and on the second pitch of the inning, Suzuki hit a hard ground ball up the middle but Ortiz made a beautiful diving play and threw him out. Ashby got the second out a couple pitches later when PCA hit a slow roller to first that culminated in Ashby just winning a race to the bag. On the next pitch, Swanson hit a weird little squibber with two outs that went for an infield hit, but Busch grounded out to end the inning.
Flexen kept going in the top of the seventh. Contreras walked again to lead off the inning, and he was replaced at first base when Turang hit a grounder that wasn’t hit hard enough to turn a double play on. But the inning ended quickly when Hoskins struck out and Turang was simultaneously thrown out trying to steal second.
Kelly singled to left off of Ashby to start the bottom of the seventh, but Ortiz made a really good play to apparently turn a 6-3 double play on Hoerner. The Cubs challenged the call at first and Hoerner was called safe, but it was still a nice play. A wild pitch allowed Hoerner to advance to second, but Ashby struck out Shaw and it looked like he’d get out of the inning. But Happ got a 2-1 sinker he could handle, and Happ hit a two-run homer to center and the lead was trimmed to three. Jared Koenig replaced Ashby to face Tucker and needed only two pitches to retire him and end the inning.
Flexen came back out for the eighth. Collins hit another one hard to start the inning but hit it right at Crow-Armstrong for the first out. Durbin then grounded out and Ortiz popped out in foul territory, and Flexen had no trouble in his third inning of work.
Koenig’s day was done after just two pitches, as Abner Uribe entered to face the three-through-five batters in Chicago’s order. Uribe and Suzuki had a long battle, with Suzuki fouling off a bunch of tough pitches, but Uribe won that battle with a 2-2 slider that Suzuki couldn’t quite hold up on. Uribe (maybe) hit Crow-Armstrong with a pitch—if it did, it clipped the top of his shoe—but there was no challenge and PCA was on first with one out and you got the sense that the Brewer dugout wasn’t too upset to let the guy who had five homers in five games against them this season have first base. But Uribe then walked Swanson (though two of those pitches could have been called strikes), and the Cubs brought the tying run to the plate in the form of Michael Busch.
Uribe walked Busch to load the bases and the Brewers were suddenly in a very precarious position with the bases loaded and one out. Kelly hit a weak grounder to shortstop and Ortiz threw to second to get one, but the Brewers didn’t have a shot at turning a double play, and PCA scored to make it 8-6. Hoerner was up with two out and the tying run at first. He also hit a grounder into the hole between third base and short, and Ortiz dove and kept it in the infield but had no play, and the Cubs got another one. Uribe stayed in to face Shaw, the Cubs nine-hole hitter, and Shaw popped out to second base and the inning mercifully ended. Milwaukee was still ahead, but it was a very uncomfortable one-run lead, and the sharp end of the Cubs’ order was due up in the ninth.
With that in mind, the Brewers certainly went into the ninth hoping for an insurance run or two. Drew Pomeranz, who hasn’t allowed an earned run in 20 appearances this season, was the new pitcher for the Cubs, who smelled blood in the water. But Frelick got things started with a base hit on a flare into shallow left, and that killed a little bit of the momentum you could feel in the crowd. Chourio almost hit into a double play with a hard grounder to third, but he beat the relay throw. Yelich struck out looking for the second out but Chourio stole second base, which gave Turang a chance with a runner in scoring position. But Turang struck out, and Trevor Megill was coming on to face the top of the Cubs’ lineup.
The Brewers’ inability to add on against the Cubs’ bullpen in the latter innings created an uncomfortable save situation for Megill, but that’s what he gets paid the big bucks for. It doesn’t help, of course, when Megill freezes Happ for what should have been strike three on a 3-2 pitch, but doesn’t get the call from the home plate ump. Happ was on in front of Tucker.
Megill could have been rattled by that undeserved walk, but he came back and struck Tucker out with a 100 mph fastball. For the second time in the inning, home plate umpire Adam Beck blew a call on what should have been the third strike, but it was just ball three, and on the very next pitch, Megill got what felt like karmic justice: Suzuki hit a hard grounder to Durbin at third, and he started a 5-4-3 double play to end the game.
For those in the audience who aren’t gifted at lip reading, the cameras that stayed with Pat Murphy as the team went through the high-five line revealed a manager who was still pretty worked up about those missed third strikes.
Whew! A game that didn’t need to be close ended up that way, but the Brewers managed to hold on and get a big win in Chicago. Offensively, the Brewers got hits from every name on the lineup card, including two each from Ortiz, Yelich, and Chourio. Hoskins, Durbin, and Collins all homered, while Chourio and Turang each hit doubles. On the mound, it was an adventure, but you’ll take any win you can against a team with an offense as high-powered as that one. Peralta was the pitcher of record, and Megill picked up his 16th save with his scoreless ninth.
The Brewers travel to Minneapolis tonight, where they’ll take on the Twins for a weekend series. The Twins had lost six straight heading into today, but they beat Cincinnati 12-5 to end their skid. Tomorrow night’s game begins at 7:10 p.m.
