The Milwaukee Brewers’ offense is struggling hard. After scoring in the first inning in their loss on Friday night, they didn’t score for the rest of that game, and that streak made it another eight innings—in which the team had only one hit—tonight. Washington’s Forrest Griffin, who spent the last three years pitching in Japan, no-hit the Brewers through five, and though starter Kyle Harrison and bulk reliever Brandon Sproat combined for eight pretty good innings tonight, Milwaukee’s offense looked inept for most of the game and couldn’t overcome even a small deficit.
It was an inauspicious start for the Brewers. The first batter of the game, James Wood, should’ve struck out looking but got a favorable call (that William Contreras did not challenge, puzzlingly), then hit a grounder over to first base. Gary Sánchez (who was starting at first base for the fifth time in his 12-year career) didn’t field it cleanly—he knocked it down, but had to rush his throw to Harrison, who was covering the bag. Sánchez put way too much juice on the throw and it hit Harrison in the knee, and he then stumbled over the base. There was a long delay as the Brewers’ training and pitching staff checked on Harrison, but he ultimately stayed in the game with Wood at first. Wood made it to third after a fielder’s choice and a fly ball to right, and a Daylen Lile groundout stranded the opening run at third.
After a Brice Turang groundout started the game, Luis Rengifo—who is having no batted ball luck at all, and came in 0-for-his-last-13—hit a ball hard into the right field gap, but Joey Wiemer was able to run it down despite a .550 expected batting average via Statcast. Contreras hit a ball to fairly deep center field, but he got too far under it, and the Brewers were retired in order in the first.
It’s always a question whether a player will come back out after an injury like the one Harrison suffered in the first, but he was indeed back on the mound to start the second and started things off by striking out Wiemer on three pitches. CJ Abrams and Jacob Young were both aggressive early in the count and both hit line drives right at Rengifo, and Harrison was through the second on just eight pitches.
After a Christian Yelich groundout, Sánchez became the Brewers’ first baserunner after he successfully challenged a strike three call on 0-2 and then took three more balls to draw a walk. Sánchez was erased at second when Brandon Lockridge hit into a fielder’s choice, and Frelick flew out to right field to end the inning.
The third inning started with a bizarre play: Nasim Nuñez hit a grounder to first, but Harrison didn’t seem interested in covering first, so Sánchez had to wait for Turang to get over there from second base. The second bad throw of the night (and second throwing error) from Sánchez went past Turang but hit the first-base umpire…but Nuñez tried to go to second, and Sánchez picked up the ball (which was still in the infield after hitting the ump) and threw him out at second. Not something you see every day. Keibert Ruiz grounded out to third for the second out, but Washington got a couple of two-out baserunners when Wood was hit by a 2-2 pitch (that he nearly swung at) and Curtis Mead worked a walk. Brady House, though, flew out to center, and Harrison had a third scoreless inning.
In the bottom of the third, Blake Perkins hit a weak grounder back to Griffin, Ortiz golfed a flyout to left, and Turang struck out looking.
It was a little misleading because it felt like there’d been a lot of action, but neither team had a hit through the first three innings. That finally ended when, after two quick outs in the top of the fourth, Abrams got the game’s first hit on a bloop single to left. But with Young at the plate, Harrison threw over to first behind Abrams, who took off too early for second—Sánchez’s throw to second was wild and nearly his third throwing error of the game, but Ortiz snagged it and applied the tag for the third out.
Yelich drew a two-out walk in the bottom of the inning, but Milwaukee would have to wait to get their first hit, as Yelich didn’t make it past first.
Young led off the fifth with a single to right, and Nuñez followed that with the game’s first extra-base hit when he lined an 0-2 pitch down the right-field line (one pitch after just missing on nearly identical batted ball that went just foul). Frelick was able to cut it off, which held Young at third for the time being, and on the next pitch, Ruiz hit a fly ball to shallow-left center. Young did not test Frelick’s arm, and the Brewers had the first out. Unfortunately, Wood smoked the first pitch he got into the left field gap for a two-RBI double.
Harrison’s pitch count was still in decent shape, but Pat Murphy made a move with one out in the fourth and brought in Grant Anderson to try to clean things up. A Mead grounder advance Wood to third but gave the Brewers the second out, and Anderson struck out House to end the inning. Harrison’s line was thus final: 4 1/3 innings, four hits, one walk, but only one strikeout, and the two Nationals runs. Not bad for a guy who looked like he might have to leave after the first batter, but he needed some help from his offense.
Lockridge made some of the better contact of the night to start the bottom of the fifth, a line drive to the warning track in right, but Wiemer tracked that down, too. Frelick got a hanging curveball on 1-2 but hit a harmless groundout to first, and on just Griffin’s 70th pitch, Perkins flew out to shallow right. Griffin was up to five no-hit innings, and the Brewers’ offense was up to 13 straight innings without scoring a run.
Brandon Sproat, whose turn in the rotation was skipped (not eliminated, according to Murphy), came out of the bullpen in the sixth. It wasn’t a great start, as Lile lined a 105 mph single past the diving Turang. But Sproat struck out Wiemer, and on the next pitch Contreras threw out Lile trying to steal second, and suddenly there were two outs with nobody on. Abrams hit a grounder up the middle that Ortiz fielded; Ortiz’s throw was in the dirt, but Sánchez made a nice pick, balancing the scales from Sánchez’s near-error earlier.
The nice turnaround in the top of the sixth felt almost like it gave the Brewers some momentum. Who knows, but Ortiz did lead off the sixth with a base hit up the middle, ending the no-hit bid. A nice piece of hitting, even if he did try to bunt but missed on the first pitch. Turang drew a walk, and given how long it’d been since the Brewers had scored, it felt like a real rally was cooking. But Rengifo popped out, and the Nationals decided to make the switch to a right-handed pitcher to face Contreras. Contreras swung at the first pitch and hit a grounder to the right side; it was far enough away from Nuñez that it at least advanced the runners and wasn’t a double play, but there were now two outs. Washington walked Yelich with first base open, and Murphy made a move as well, to Jake Bauers, who came on to pinch-hit for Sánchez. Bauers swung at the first pitch and grounded out to second, and the rally flamed out.
Sproat continued in the seventh, and Young battled in the first at-bat of the inning but grounded out to Ortiz. Nuñez battled, too, and his at-bat ended when he hit a weak grounder that snuck past a diving Sproat—Turang got it and still maybe could’ve gotten Nuñez (who is very fast) but the throw went into the dugout and Nuñez was awarded second base. Sproat, though, picked Nuñez off at second (technically a caught stealing in the scorebook) before throwing a pitch to the next batter, Ruiz. But with the intensely hot Wood on deck, Sproat lost the strike zone and threw three straight balls to Ruiz, the number nine hitter; Contreras saw something he didn’t like, and called out the training staff. After a couple of minutes, Sproat stayed in, walked Ortiz, but struck out Wood to end the threat.
Lockridge, Frelick and pinch-hitter Garrett Mitchell struck out in order in the bottom of the inning against right-hander Brad Lord.
Sproat kept going in the eighth. He walked Mead to lead things off, but got the next three. The Nationals went to Cionel Pérez in the bottom of the inning, and he also retired the Brewers in order, on groundouts from Ortiz and Turang and a strikeout by Rengifo.
Sproat, who is obviously stretched out for longer outings, was back out for his fourth inning of work in the ninth. Abrams made pretty good contact but his fly ball hung up in center for Mitchell, and after Young hit a one-out single, he was picked off by Young—the fifth time tonight that a National made an out on the basepaths. A good thing, too, as Sproat issued his third walk of the evening to Nuñez. Unfortunately, when Sproat was one strike away from a badly needed four scoreless innings, Ruiz reached down and got a 2-2 changeup that was about a foot below the strike zone and hit it into the right field corner for an RBI double. That was all for Sproat, as the Brewers brought in DL Hall to face the left-handed Wood. Hall walked Wood on four pitches—first base was open, though Hall did not have the platoon advantage against the right-handed Mead. It didn’t matter, as Mead hit a routine fly ball to center that ended the inning. But the Nats’ new three-run lead felt more like a 12-run lead with the way the Brewers’ offense had been performing.
Clayton Beeter was on for the ninth, and Contreras greeted him rudely. After 16 straight scoreless innings going back to the first inning of yesterday’s game, Milwaukee finally scored again when their catcher hit an opposite-field homer just over the wall into Washington’s bullpen. Christian Yelich then struck out on three pitches… but the ball went flying, and a confused Nationals defense froze, and Yelich didn’t just make it to first base on the strikeout but he made it all the way to second.
That brought Bauers to the plate as the game’s tying run, and he nearly tied the game, but his fly ball was caught by Wiemer just in front of the wall in right center. Lockridge then drew a walk to put two on for Frelick. Frelick was almost given a reprieve when he should’ve struck out on a high slider that looked in the zone, but the Nationals were out of challenges; unfortunately, Frelick watched the next pitch, a fastball in the zone, as well, and he struck out looking. Mitchell was the batter—and the winning run—with two outs. Both runners advanced to scoring position on a wild pitch in a 2-1 count, but that invited Washington to intentionally walk Mitchell and bring who else but Ortiz to the plate with the bases juiced. (Murphy could have opted for David Hamilton as a pinch-hitter, but Washington would surely have gone to a lefty, so I assume that was the line of thinking there.)
Ortiz hit a weak dribbler back to the mound and the game ended.
The Brewers made this one interesting, but not until far too late. Otherwise, it was a second-straight night of brutally inept offense for most of the evening. A shame: the Brewer pitching staff did pretty well to hold the Nationals to three runs. Harrison wasn’t as sharp as his first two outings, but pitched pretty well, especially considering what happened to him in the first. Grant Anderson did his job, and Sproat, though he still walked too many batters (three in 3 2/3 innings), was a 1995-style-golfed-double on a 2-2 pitch away from throwing four scoreless innings.
Aside from Contreras’s second homer, it was a very bad night for the offense, who managed just two hits—Contreras’s ninth-inning homer as the second. Milwaukee badly needs Jackson Chourio back. They have now lost four straight, and has scored just six runs combined in those four games.
The Brewers will try to salvage the third game of the series tomorrow afternoon. Brandon Woodruff takes the hill versus Washington’s Zack Littell at 1:10 p.m.
