Sometimes the stupidest things can change a team’s momentum.
In the eighth inning tonight, a Brewers offense that was grasping at straws all night managed to score two runs on four batted balls that had an average exit velocity of 63 mph and went combined distance of 23 feet in the air. Baseball is a stupid game.
Those two runs, plus a big day for Brewers’ starter Chad Patrick and a beleaguered Milwaukee bullpen (who pivoted to a likely new closer), were enough to finally put an end to the Milwaukee’s dismal six-game losing streak.
Though no one would’ve predicted it at the time, Toronto nearly won the game in the top of the first inning. After Marshfield native Daulton Varsho drew a walk with one out, he moved to third on a Vladimir Guerrero Jr. single and scored on a Jesús Sánchez sacrifice fly. It was 1-0 in the top of the first, but that score nearly stood for the entire game.
Milwaukee’s offense is missing a whole lot of punch right now, and Toronto starter Dylan Cease—the newly-minted $210 million man—smelled blood. Cease, who came in with a 2.45 ERA and an absurd 26 strikeouts in less than 15 innings, was on his game. William Contreras did manage a line drive single in the bottom of the first, but Milwaukee didn’t have another hit until fifth inning (a Joey Ortiz single), and they managed to get a runner past first base only once during Cease’s entire six-inning outing, when Ortiz stole second and moved to third on a groundout but was stranded there.
Patrick, though, was up for the challenge after the early hiccup. He’s had a somewhat strange season—walks are up, strikeouts are way down, he’s not giving up runs but things have been pretty shaky. Patrick came in with a FIP of 4.29 and an ERA of 0.73, which is borderline funny. He still couldn’t find his strikeout stuff tonight, and that remains a concern, but Patrick was inducing weak contact all over the place, took advantage of the good defensive players behind him, and worked with shocking efficiency.
After Toronto’s first-inning run, they did very little to threaten Patrick again. A third-inning leadoff single was erased one batter later by a double play. Lenyn Sosa hit a two-out single in the fifth (just after Brandon Lockridge made a fantastic leaping catch on a foul ball), but did not advance. The one time the Blue Jays got a little bit of a rally going was in the seventh: Kazuma Okamoto drew a one-out walk, but Patrick got the second out before giving way to DL Hall. Andrés Giménez singled to put two on with two out, but Hall retired Sosa on a fly ball to end the inning.
In total, Patrick needed just 81 pitches to go 6 2/3 innings—he was the first Brewer starter this season to record an out in the seventh inning. He struck out just two batters, but allowed only three hits (all singles) and two walks.
It was in the eighth when the Brewers, down 1-0 and looking helpless at the plate, made their move. Cease was pulled after six, so Milwaukee had gotten that hurdle out of the way, and the pitcher in the eighth was the submariner, Tyler Rogers, who entered with a 0.00 ERA in 8 2/3 innings this season. The Brewers will not win any awards for style for what came next, but they needed something to go their way, and something finally did. Here’s how it went:
- David Hamilton hit an infield single on a swinging bunt. 48 mph exit velocity, 2 feet, -79 degree launch angle.
- Sal Frelick hit a high chopper directly in front of the plate that just sort of died. It went 0 feet, according to game day, with a -76 degree launch angle. The exit velocity here was 61.3 mph. Catcher Brandon Valenzuela waited to see if it would go foul, then tried to pick it up to throw Frelick out, but mishandled it; it was ruled an E2.
- William Contreras poked a single through the right side of the infield, which was pretty open for him due to a defensive shift. A classic piece of slap-hitting—this one had a distance of 17 feet and a launch angle of -7 degrees, with an exit velocity all the way up at 92.3 mph. Hamilton scored, and Frelick advanced to third.
- Brice Turang hit a soft ground ball just past Rogers that enabled Frelick to score from third. Turang was out at first, and his RBI groundout went 3 feet, with a -57 degree launch angle, and came off the bat at 53.3 mph.
Here are the highlights from that sequence:
Of course, given Milwaukee’s issues lately finishing ballgames, no one was comfortable heading to the ninth with a 2-1 lead. Nobody except perhaps Abner Uribe, the man with the baseball. Looking sharp and hitting 99 on the radar gun, Uribe got Okamoto to ground out and struck out Ernie Clement. With two outs, Giménez hit a ball pretty hard toward the left field gap but the speedy Lockridge moved over and made the catch without too much trouble. The losing streak was over. Uribe, at a time when the team desperately needed someone to come through in a save situation, came through.
There was nothing pretty about Milwaukee’s offense today, but the pitching staff showed up big time and the Brewers managed to turn a game that looked like it was headed toward a soul-crushing 1-0 loss into a feel-good, come-from-behind victory. There were no Brewer extra-base hits and only Contreras reached base more than once, but they did what they needed to do tonight. On the mound, Patrick had his good outing and was followed by scoreless appearances by Hall, Aaron Ashby (who allowed a hit and a walk in his inning but struck out the side), and Uribe, who struck out one and didn’t allow a hit.
For all the (justified) doom and gloom after Monday’s game, the Brewers can now win this series and build some real momentum with a win tomorrow afternoon. That game will be at 12:40 p.m., and will see two players on opposite ends of their careers face off: the veteran lefty Patrick Corbin for Toronto, and Brandon Sproat, making his return to the rotation, for the Brewers.