The Milwaukee Brewers have found their fourth starter.
Dustin May, who was recently acquired in a trade with the St. Louis Cardinals, made his Brewers debut this afternoon and delivered a gritty six-inning performance, allowing just two runs on three hits while striking out five.
While riding high on the May train, the offense kept it going into today’s ballgame. Jackson Chourio hit a home run for the second time in three days, this time in the bottom of the first inning to make it 1-0.
Later on, rookie Cooper Pratt made his presence felt by driving in a run via a sacrifice flyout to extend the Crew’s lead to 2-0.
One of the lone blemishes of May’s debut was a home run he allowed to Brandon Lowe in the top of the fourth inning to pull the Pirates within one. Later in the same inning, Spencer Horwitz singled and drove in a runner to tie the game at 2-2.
Gary Sánchez is starting to heat up as we enter the middle part of August, as he has five hits over his last 19 at-bats, including a home run today in the bottom of the fifth inning to give the Brewers back their lead at 3-2. Today’s home run was his first since a solo blast against the Chicago Cubs on June 28.
Pratt stayed hot in the bottom of the fifth inning as he drove a ball into the right-center field gap for a double before he later scored on a base hit by Brice Turang to extend the Brewers’ lead to 4-2. The offense kept nickel-and-diming the Pirates in the bottom of the sixth as well with an RBI base hit from Andrew Vaughn that drove in Garrett Mitchell from second base.
With today’s win, the Brewers not only lock up the series win but also improve their record since the All-Star break to 13-5, while holding the best record in baseball by 2.5 games, pending tonight’s Braves game. On the division side of the record breakdowns, the Brewers don’t have much room for error at this time as the Cubs are hot, but fortunately, they only made up one game despite sweeping the Dodgers yesterday and winning a makeup game against Toronto today.
Going back to May’s incredible debut with the Brewers this afternoon, his outing was among the top of those starting pitchers that were traded to another team, including (arguably) Tarik Skubal’s outing with the Dodgers. After this series, the rotation looks like it’s in a great spot to excel coming down the stretch, so long as everyone stays healthy.
The Brewers will be back in action tomorrow night as they take on the Minnesota Twins, a team they took two of three from back in May. But with a retooled pitching staff, this could be a tricky series for the Crew. Shane Drohan will take the rock in the opener tomorrow, while a starter has yet to be announced for the Twins. First pitch is at 6:40 p.m.
