It had been a long and difficult 0-for-21 skid for Brice Turang, who had seen his batting average drop from .291 down to .263 heading into Monday night’s game. That all changed as Turang snapped his skid with an opposite-field double in the first inning and ended up reaching base four times to help lift the Brewers to a 16-2 victory over the Giants.
The Giants got up early on a two-run homer from Matt Chapman off Shane Drohan, but the Brewers offense had their starter’s back, promptly putting up seven runs in the bottom half of the second, sending 10 men to the plate.
It got started with a leadoff walk from Jake Bauers after a successful ABS challenge on a 3-2 pitch. Following a flyout from Andrew Vaughn, the next six Brewers batters reached base. Sal Frelick doubled, Luis Rengifo and David Hamilton singled, Christian Yelich walked, Jackson Chourio doubled, then Turang tripled. William Contreras supplied a sac fly to bring home the seventh run of the inning and secure the 7-2 lead.
“You had a big inning there. That’s a big inning against a good pitcher. That’s a good sign. You think about Bauers challenge there, that started the whole thing,” Murphy said.
That was all Drohan needed to finish cruising through his four innings of work, allowing just four hits and striking out five. He was followed by Chad Patrick, DL Hall, Grant Anderson, and Jake Woodford out of the bullpen.
The Brewers offense kept supplying insurance runs, though. A bases loaded GIDP from Contreras in the fourth brought home another run. Andrew Vaughn had a two-run single with the bases loaded in the sixth inning. Then RBI singles in the seventh by Yelich and Chourio brought home two more.
In the eighth, the Giants put position player Buddy Kennedy — the grandson of longtime Brewer Don Money — on the mound. The Brewers put up four runs against him to make it 16-2.
Pat Murphy elected to give some rest to Turang and Vaughn as the game got out of hand. That meant bringing Blake Perkins into the game in the outfield as Jake Bauers moved to first base.
“I just wanted to get Turang off his feet for an extra half hour and to be honest I wanted to get Perk— Perk’s been maybe the unluckiest hitter we’ve had. The numbers are ridiculously bad. He’s hit some balls tremendously hard, especially right-handed, so I wanted to get him some at-bats,” Murphy said.
The Giants also made a line change and removed a number of their starters, including Willy Adames, who was 0-for-3 on the night.
This game was well in hand since the second inning as the Brewers offense just continued to demolish one of the worst teams in the league. Everyone in the starting lineup reached base at least once and eight of the nine had at least two hits. The only one who didn’t was William Contreras, who ended up with a pair of sac flies.
The Brewers had 18 hits on the night and drew 11 walks. It was one of their most impressive offensive performances of the season.
They’ll look to do it all again tomorrow in support of Kyle Harrison, who will be facing his old ballclub with Trevor McDonald opposite him. First pitch is once again at 6:40 p.m.