Remember early in the season when the Brewers couldn’t get any comeback victories?
Yeah, that’s not a problem anymore.
It’s been a season to remember for Milwaukee, and tonight they matched a 38-year-old franchise record with their 13th straight win, and this was the most improbable of a streak that includes a walk-off, come-from-behind victory against one of the best closers in the game. When the Brewers’ plan of having Jacob Misiorowski essentially throw a rehab start against a major league team in the playoff hunt didn’t go well, the Brewers were behind big, and basically any other team would have shrugged, been satisfied with the 12-game winning streak they clinched on Wednesday, and phoned it in.
But this team is different, and they were back in it in a flash, and the Brewer bullpen submitted their signature performance of the season as they finished the game with seven perfect innings.
Sal Frelick started the game with a hard-hit grounder that wasn’t a tough play for Gavin Lux at second base. Joey Ortiz made his season debut as the Brewers’ number two hitter (he hit there a couple of times last season) by serving up a Joey Ortiz August special: he popped one off the end of the bat that landed in no-man’s land in shallow center field. William Contreras, though, chopped into a double play, and Reds starter Nick Martinez was through his first inning.
Misiorowski’s first pitch off the injured list was a 102-mph fastball to TJ Friedl that missed high. He found the zone with the next one, then just missed on a pitch that was, according to umpire Erich Bacchus, just off the outside corner. But Friedl fouled off a 2-1 fastball and was frozen by a curveball in the zone, and Misiorowski’s first start back was underway with a strikeout. Miz fell behind Spencer Steer, who lined a 3-1 fastball into left for a one-out single. Elly De La Cruz was next, and Miz pounded the zone — he threw five straight strikes, with a couple of foul balls in there, and a swing and a miss on the last one. That brought up Miguel Andujar with two outs; he probably should have struck out looking on a 2-2 pitch, but, while it was in the strike zone, it wasn’t the spot that Miz was aiming for, and it was called a ball. Andujar fouled off a couple more pitches before hitting an absurdly high chopper to the left side of the infield that went for an infield hit.
The pitch count — already on a limit — was creeping up for Misiorowski, and Contreras paid him a visit on the mound to give him a breather. The batter was Lux, who came in hitting .400 in August, and he kept it going by lining a hard single into right field that scored Steer from second. The first pitch to Austin Hays was also smashed into center field for a hit, but the latest ace outfielder for the Brewers, Steward Berroa, came up throwing … and Andujar was toast at the plate. The Reds put four hits on Misiorowski and made him throw 27 pitches, but they scored only one run.
Christian Yelich led off the second and had an immediate answer. He hit a towering fly ball — I thought it was too high off the bat, and Statcast showed a 42-degree launch angle, but it carried all the way out over the left field wall for a solo homer that tied it at one. (Some might say that the ball got a little extra juice from the cosmic plane, as Yelich is using a custom Bob Uecker bat for player’s weekend.) Andrew Vaughn and Caleb Durbin followed with groundouts, but Brice Turang got a cheap two-out hit by squibbing one through a defensive shift on the left side. That gave Berroa his first at-bat with the Brewers, and he put a good battle together, complete with hard foul balls and a variation on the Soto Shuffle, but he finally struck out looking (on a pitch that was sort of hilariously down the middle that he tried to sell as ball four).
Misiorowski started the second with a strikeout of Noelvi Marte, but got a bit wild after that — he hit Tyler Stephenson in the gut with a 100-mph fastball and then walked the number nine hitter, Ke’Bryan Hayes. Back at the top of the order, he walked Friedl, too (though the 3-1 pitch that was called ball four was pretty close). After a mound visit from Chris Hook, Misiorowski yanked a curveball way wide that Contreras dove and snagged to prevent a run from scoring on a wild pitch. Miz finally found the zone on 2-0 and worked Steer to a full count, but it was clear that he couldn’t throw anything except the fastball for a strike. After Steer fouled off a 3-2 pitch, Misiorowski missed outside on a fastball, walked in a run, and Pat Murphy was out of the dugout.
Murph brought in DL Hall with the bases loaded, one out, and Elly De La Cruz up, a tough situation. Hall’s job was made even tougher by the fact that the BABIP gods decided to inflict a plague upon the Brewers.
De La Cruz started things off with a double down the right field line. He didn’t hit it all that hard, 90 mph, but he put it in the right spot, and two runs scored. Andujar followed with a chopper that went over the head of Ortiz, who was playing on the edge of the infield grass with runners on second and third and one out. Lux followed that with a fly ball to right that was at 79 mph but dropped in between Berroa and Frelick. Hays was next, and he got jammed, but his little blooper found its way through the infield. Marte, next, also blooped one, this one at 56 mph, and it went into shallow right for another hit.
That’s five straight hits with exit velocities of 90, 104 (but on a grounder that would’ve been an out had the infield been at regular depth), 79, 53, and 56. Statcast’s expected batting average on the hits by Andujar, Hays, and Marte was .170, .190, and .290, respectively. By the time it was over, the Reds had eight runs.
Hall finally got out of it on fielder’s choice groundouts from Stephenson and Hayes, but even these Brewers were in deep trouble, down 8-1 after two innings. It was an ugly outing for Misiorowski, who hadn’t pitched in a game in almost three weeks. In the first inning, he gave up a whole bunch of hits — four of them — and in the second, he lost his control and gave up four more baserunners via three walks and a hit batter. Only two runs had crossed the plate when he left the game, but he left Hall in a bad spot, and bad luck took over from there. Miz finished with five runs on his ledger in 1 1/3 innings. He threw 54 pitches, just under today’s target of 60. Hall, for his part, was angry when he got back in the dugout and his poor glove was rudely introduced to the bench. Several times.
But these Milwaukee Brewers are not going to go down without a fight. Brandon Lockridge led off the third with a base hit up the middle, and Frelick followed with a line drive just over the glove of Lux for another single. Ortiz popped out to second base, and Contreras nearly grounded into his second double play, but he busted down the line and beat the relay. (Please remember this.) That gave Yelich an opportunity with two outs and runners on the corners, and he came through, in a way — he got a very Reds-y hit by popping a ball into shallow left that nobody could catch. Lockridge scored, Contreras moved to third, and Yelich ended up at second with a 63-mph double.
Next was Andrew Vaughn, and Martinez threw a 90-mph cutter right down the middle, and Vaughn doesn’t miss pitches like those these days. He hit a three-run homer and cut the Reds’ lead to three. Durbin then hit a hard liner into left that should’ve been a single, but it bounced higher than Hays, the left fielder, was expecting, and got past him. Durbin ended up at second (with a single and a fielding error, for those of you keeping track) for Turang. Turang hit a bunch of foul balls, took a tough 2-2 slider below the zone, and then on the eighth pitch of the at-bat, he cracked a double down the right field line and Durbin scored, too.
That was it for Nick Martinez, who lasted only 2 2/3 innings and allowed six runs on nine hits. Terry Francona called for our dear old friend Brent Suter to relieve him, and he struck out Berroa looking on three pitches to end the inning. But the Brewers had bounced right back up off the mat, scored five runs, and cut the Reds’ lead to 8-6.
Hall was back out for the bottom of the third in a spot where a shutdown inning would go a long way toward preserving the Brewers’ momentum. Friedl led off and finally got the Reds a ball with an exit velocity over 100 mph, but Berroa caught it comfortably in right center. Steer also flew out, and De La Cruz grounded out to shortstop, and Hall had his clean inning.
Lockridge, who started the third-inning rally, led off the fourth but struck out looking this time. Frelick then singled on a ground ball that barely had enough juice to make it to the outfield grass, but he hit it in the right spot between shortstop and third base. (Maybe those BABIP gods were just having fun with this one, rather than favoring one team over the other.) Ortiz lined a single to center, but Contreras hit what looked destined to become an inning-ending double play right at Lux … but Lux dropped it on the transfer, everyone was safe, and the bases were loaded with one out for Yelich.
It was a moment for drama. Yelich took a close 2-2 pitch — definitely low, but Suter wanted it — and then hit a patented Yelich hard grounder to the opposite side, just inside third base, that scored both Frelick and Ortiz to tie the game at eight. It was the fourth inning, and Yelich was three-quarters of the way to a cycle and had four RBIs. It took this remarkable team only two innings to erase a seven-run deficit.
Suter managed to get Vaughn and Durbin to end the top of the inning with the score tied at eight. Hall locked things down in the bottom of the fourth: Andujar flew out to right, Lux struck out, and Hays flew out to center.
Berroa worked a nice one-out walk in the top of the fifth to reach base for the first time as a Brewer, and Lockridge followed with a perfect bunt. It would have worked as a sacrifice, but the Brewers challenged the call at first base, the out call was overturned, and the Brewers had two speedsters on base with one out and the top of the order coming up. Frelick, though, tried to check his swing on a low slider but made contact, which ended with Suter throwing out Lockridge at second. Francona made a move from Suter to the righty Scott Barlow, who almost hit Ortiz with his first pitch but got him to hit a soft liner to second for the final out. The Reds managed to hold the Brewers in check in the fifth, their first scoreless inning since the first.
Nick Mears replaced Hall — who, after a rough start, retired the last seven batters he faced and had two crucial shutdown innings — in the bottom of the fifth. Marte hit a swinging bunt to start things, but Mears made a nice play on it and got him at first, and Frelick made a nice diving catch on a Stephenson fly ball to shallow right for the second out, and Mears struck out Hayes to end another 1-2-3 inning.
Contreras flew out to start the sixth, but that just brought up Yelich, who had already had one of his better games of the season. In his fourth at-bat, he got his fourth hit, second homer, and fifth RBI after hitting one out to left field. Vaughn followed with a one-out single to center, but Durbin grounded into a double play to end the inning. But the Brewers had come all the way back from down seven to take a 9-8 lead.
Aaron Ashby replaced Mears in the bottom of the sixth and struck out Friedl, got Steer to fly out, and struck out De La Cruz to work another perfect inning. Since the Reds scored their eighth run with one out in the second inning, Hall, Mears, and Ashby had retired 14 straight.
Sam Moll replaced Barlow in the top of the seventh. He struck Turang out looking on a questionable third strike call, and Berroa popped out to shallow center.
But bad Reds defense would ultimately gift the Brewers another run.
With two outs, Lockridge jumped on Moll’s first pitch and drove it into the right field gap for a double, but a bobble by Friedl enabled Lockridge to take third base, as well. He stood at third with two outs and Frelick at the plate, and he scored on a breaking ball that got away from Stephenson. Frelick walked one pitch later, and Moll was finished; Francona turned to rookie flamethrower Luis Mey, and he got Ortiz to pop out to De La Cruz in shallow left, but the Brewers had added another one and led 10-8 heading to the bottom of the seventh.
Murphy went to Abner Uribe in the seventh, perhaps an inning sooner than most would expect. But he did what most would expect him to do at this point, with a strikeout of Andujar, a groundout from Lux (on a nice play by Vaughn), and a strikeout of Hays. Filthy. Make it 17 straight for the Brewer bullpen.
Contreras started the eighth with a double that bounced off the glove of the diving Hayes down the left field line. The Reds finally got Yelich out when he hit a chopper to second base, but even Yelich’s out was a productive one, as Contreras moved over to third with one out for Vaughn. But Mey struck out Vaughn with a slider he wasn’t expecting, and got Durbin, too, after a bit of a battle. The Reds were still down, but Mey’s job to not let the leadoff double score was crucial if they had any chance of a comeback.
The Reds had the bottom of the order coming up in the eighth, which was perhaps why Murphy opted to use Uribe in the seventh and Koenig in the eighth rather than vice versa. Koenig has been a little shaky lately, but he did his job here: another three-up, three-down inning for the Brewers with two strikeouts to make it 20 straight outs for Milwaukee.
Mey gave way to the lefty Joe La Sorsa in the top of the ninth. Turang looked at La Sorsa’s first six pitches, but unfortunately for him, three of them were called strikes, and La Sorsa had the first out. He got the second when Berroa hit a routine fly ball to center, and the third when Lockridge flew out to Hays, and Trevor Megill would have to work with a two-run lead.
It turns out he only needed one. Friedl struck out swinging on a ball in the dirt, which Contreras secured. Steer then struck out looking at a curveball on the outside corner (one pitch after taking a very close curveball), and De La Cruz grounded out to first on the first pitch he saw.
What else is there to say about this group? The Brewers trailed by seven after two innings, and it looked like the luck had finally run out on their winning streak. But they erased that deficit in a flash, and the bullpen completely shut the Reds down: 23 up, 23 down after their run of ridiculous batted-ball luck in the second inning. When the smoke cleared, the Brewers had matched the famous win streak of the 1987 Brewers.
Yelich was the big offensive star tonight. He finished 4-for-5 with two homers, a double, and five RBIs. But he was far from the only offensive contributor: the Brewers ended up with 17 hits, all of their starters except for Berroa finished with at least one, and six Brewers had multi-hit games. Vaughn’s three-run shot in the third was the biggest hit of the day. The Brewers have scored at least 10 runs in three straight games and five times in August; they’ve scored fewer than seven runs in only three of 13 games this month.
And how about that bullpen? It was a disastrous outing for Misiorowski, one to put in the rearview mirror, and it was a rough start for Hall. But after he got out of that second inning, Hall threw two more perfect frames, and was followed by perfect appearances from Mears, Ashby, Uribe, Koenig, and Megill. From the start of the third inning on, Brewers pitchers went seven scoreless innings with no hits, no walks, and 10 strikeouts.
Thirteen straight! The Brewers will try to set a new franchise record for consecutive wins in a single season tomorrow, when Quinn Priester takes on Zack Littell at 5:40 p.m. CT.
