Monasterio’s walk-off hit caps thrilling come-from-behind victory over Cardinals

Milwaukee gave up eight runs, including one apiece in the ninth and 10th innings, and made three errors … on the way to their league-leading 91st win. While the Brewers eventually came out on top, the odds didn’t look good initially.

St. Louis quickly jumped on Brewers’ starter Jacob Misiorowski in the first. After Brendan Donovan struck out to lead off the game, Misiorowski threw a 101-mph fastball right down the middle that Iván Herrera sent over the left field fence and into the Brewers’ bullpen. Alec Burleson grounded out to shortstop Joey Ortiz for the second out, but Misiorowski hit Willson Contreras, the elder brother of William, with a fastball to keep the Cardinals in the inning. Lars Nootbaar, the next batter, sent another Misiorowski fastball down the middle into the gap in left-center. Contreras scored from first, while an errant throw from Ortiz allowed Nootbaar to take third. Thomas Saggese struck out to end the inning, but the damage was done; St Louis led 2-0 going into the bottom of the first.

Sal Frelick, Jackson Chourio, and Brice Turang went three-up, three-down in the bottom of the first, and the Cardinals followed suit in the top of the second. William Contreras singled to start the bottom of the second, but ended up getting thrown out trying to steal second while Christian Yelich struck out, and Gray faced the minimum once again. Donovan hit a solo home run of his own in the top of the third to give the Cardinals an extra insurance run.

Milwaukee loaded the bases in the bottom of the third inning with nobody out, but only got one run out of it. After three straight singles by Jake Bauers, Caleb Durbin, and Ortiz, Sal Frelick hit a sacrifice fly to center that was deep enough to score Bauers from third and advance Durbin and Ortiz. Chourio was up next, but he struck out swinging on a slider that started low and away and nearly ended up in the dirt. That brought up Brice Turang, who swung at a changeup down and away, grounding out to Donovan at second to get Gray out of the inning. All three outs this inning were made on pitches that were out of the strike zone, which is pretty uncharacteristic for this Brewers team.

Chourio ended the top of the fourth with this ridiculous catch to rob Victor Scott II of extra bases. This is what 99th percentile sprint speed looks like:

The bottom of the fourth saw the Brewers go down in order. In the top of the fifth, Herrera doubled with one out. Misiorowski got Burleson to fly out without Herrera advancing, but Wn. Contreras singled into right field to score him anyway. St. Louis got a couple more insurance runs an inning later on a sacrifice fly by Scott II and a wild pitch by Brewers reliever Rob Zastryzny, bringing the score to 6-1 through 5 1/2 innings.

Cardinals starter Sonny Gray pitched very well tonight, but he didn’t come back out for the sixth, and Milwaukee began to chip away against the Cardinals’ bullpen. William Contreras made it a 6-2 game in the bottom of the sixth with a sacrifice fly. In the eighth, Frelick led off with a single. Chourio and Turang both walked to load the bases for Contreras, who hit another sacrifice fly to score Frelick from third. Yelich brought in another run while grounding out for the second out. Isaac Collins then walked, but Bauers flew out to end the inning with the score now 6-4.

St. Louis got another run in the top of the ninth off Tobias Myers, but Myers struck out Nolan Gorman and Pedro Pages to limit the Cardinals to one run. Riley O’Brien came in to close the game for the Cardinals, but he immediately hit both Caleb Durbin and Andruw Monasterio (who entered the game as a defensive replacement after Rhys Hoskins pinch-hit for Ortiz in the seventh). Frelick then laced a double into the gap to score Durbin and advance Mona to third. The next hitter, Chourio, hit a weak ground ball back up the middle. Donovan was able to range over from second base and stop the ball from trickling into the outfield, but he didn’t have a play at first. Monasterio came in to score, and all of a sudden it was 7-6 with the tying run at third and the winning run at first base, still with no outs.

Cardinals manager Oli Marmol had seen enough, pulling O’Brien in favor of Kyle Leahy. Leahy got Brice Turang to fly out for the first out on a ball that wasn’t quite deep enough to score Frelick from third. Wm. Contreras took a big hack at a 2-0 sinker and rolled over on it — grounding a weak dribbler halfway in between Leahy and Gorman at third base. By the time Gorman got to it, he didn’t have a play at any base, and Milwaukee had tied the game up.

Abner Uribe came in for the top of the 10th to try to keep the game tied, but he didn’t have anywhere near his best stuff after not having pitched since last Friday in Pittsburgh. Uribe hit the first batter he faced (Scott) and walked the second (Donovan) to load the bases with nobody out. Things seemed to be quickly going off the rails, but Uribe managed to recover quickly, inducing a double play ball off the bat of Herrera and an inning-ending groundout from Nathan Church. Herrera’s double play scored ghost runner Jordan Walker to give the Cardinals a one-run lead, but Uribe kept the Brewers in it.

Marmol left Leahy in the game for the bottom of the 10th. Leahy got Jake Bauers to ground out for the first out, which advanced the ghost runner Perkins to third. Caleb Durbin followed with a double into the gap in left-center to score the tying run. Monasterio was next up, and he decided to take his sweet time — fouling off seven of the 10 pitches he saw from Leahy. The 10th pitch was a sinker down in the zone, and Mona was ready:

Monasterio’s third career walk-off means the Brewers have now won their last two games. The way that this team has bounced back after being swept by the Rangers has been incredibly encouraging to see. Milwaukee was down 6-1 at one point in this game, but they still managed to sneak away with a victory. Misiorowski didn’t have his best stuff, the bullpen is depleted, and the Brewers were down 6-1, but they still managed to pull out the win. They did so on the strength of a couple of infield hits, a couple of hit-by-pitches, and a well-timed double into the gap. That’s Brewers baseball.

The Cubs lost today, so the Brewers now hold a 6.5-game lead in the NL Central with 13 games to go. They would need to go 9-4 from here on out to finish with 100 wins. Tomorrow’s series finale will pit Jose Quintana against St Louis’ Miles Mikolas. First pitch is scheduled for 1:10 p.m. CT.