Bullpen shines, offense sputters in second straight extra-innings loss

A dramatic late comeback was undone by a failure to score in extra innings

Box Score

Having split their games on Monday and Tuesday, the Milwaukee Brewers and St. Louis Cardinals needed to decide a series winner tonight at American Family Field. After Brewers starter Colin Rea got off to a shaky start, it looked like it might be a high-scoring affair, but after that first inning, the game settled in as a pitcher’s duel between Rea (and later DL Hall) and Cardinals starter Sonny Gray. But while the Milwaukee offense was just able to muster enough to tie the game and send it to extra innings, for the second straight night they were unable to pick up an overtime victory.

Rea got the first two batters of the game but lost it completely with two outs in the first inning. Paul Goldschmidt extended his hitting streak to 11 games with a single, followed by a Nolan Arenado double (his first hit of the series) that bounced into the Brewers bullpen, momentarily saving a run. But then Rea, who walked only one batter in over 30 innings in August, lost his command: he hit Brendan Donovan to load the bases and then walked Iván Herrera and Lars Nootbaar, forcing in two runs. Rea finally recovered to retire José Fermín on a fly ball to center field, but Milwaukee would need to work out of a two-run hole in this one.

Sonny Gray got off to a good start, aided by the fact that he struck out Jackson Chourio, who didn’t swing the bat, on an at-bat that consisted of five pitches outside of the zone. On the bright side, Rea looked much better in the top of the second as he got Michael Siani, Masyn Winn, and Alec Burleson on seven pitches.

Gray cruised through the second inning as well, and Rea worked around a two-out Donovan single to put up a zero in the third. With one out in the bottom of the inning. The Brewers got their first baserunner against Gray when Eric Haase reached on an errant throw by Winn with two outs in the bottom of the inning. Milwaukee nearly scored their first run when Brice Turang hit a ball into the gap that Siani got in his glove but couldn’t hold on to (reminiscent of yesterday’s 11th-inning game-tying hit), but Haase was thrown out on the relay throw to home trying to score. After three, the Cardinals’ two-run lead was intact.

Things really settled in after that. Rea gave up a leadoff single in the fourth but got through it with no trouble despite a stolen base (a close play which was challenged but upheld). Hall replaced Rea after the fourth, and he looked sharp in relief. Hall put up zeroes in each of the next four innings, allowing only two walks and no hits while striking out six.

On the offensive side, the Brewers got their leadoff runners aboard in the fourth (a Chourio double), fifth (a Blake Perkins walk), and sixth (Turang bunt single, a wild pitch, and a steal), but failed to score in any of those innings. They did so in the seventh as well, when Garrett Mitchell led off with a triple (off of Gray, who was still pitching), but they finally got a run across when Joey Ortiz knocked him in with an RBI groundout. That was all for Milwaukee in the seventh, but they had halved the Cardinal lead.

They’d erase the rest of the deficit on the first pitch of the bottom of the eighth inning. JoJo Romero replaced Gray (who finished with seven innings and allowed just four hits and a walk while allowing one run and striking out seven) and his first pitch was a sinker right down the middle that Haase obliterated—it landed 438 feet away in the left-field seats. Three pitches later, Turang hit a double down the left-field line, and the Brewers were in business in a newly-tied ballgame.

Chourio advanced Turang to third base on a groundout to second, and Pat Murphy decided to make his move there and brought William Contreras—who had a rare off-day—off the bench to pinch hit for Jake Bauers. Oliver Marmol countered by bringing in Andrew Kittredge for Romero, and it worked: he struck out Contreras for the second out, and chose to forego the righty-righty matchup with the hot-hitting Willy Adames, instead striking out Mitchell to end the inning. Still, Haase had tied the game heading to the ninth.

With the game tied, the Brewers went to Devin Williams in the ninth. Fermín started the inning with a long at-bat but he was retired when Ortiz did his best Brooks Robinson impression down the third-base line. Williams then went into superhero mode for the next two batters and looked utterly unhittable as he struck out Siani and Winn, sending the Brewers to the bottom of the ninth tied.

Kittredge was back out for the ninth. (Not that he would have been used in a tie game, but Cardinals closer Ryan Helsley was surely unavailable tonight after pitching two innings on Tuesday.) Milwaukee went down quietly on a Perkins groundout, an Ortiz shallow fly ball, and a Frelick pop-up in foul territory. Like Tuesday, this one was headed to extra innings.

Williams pitched only one inning tonight, as he was replaced by Joel Payamps for the 10th, a night after he’d pitched a scoreless 10th inning on Tuesday. He got things started perfectly by inducing a pop-out from Burleson and got the second out when Perkins made a great sliding catch on a line drive that Goldschmidt scalded. With the ghost-runner Winn still on second base, Arenado was intentionally walked and Murphy opted to bring in Hoby Milner, who hasn’t pitched in the majors since August 8. Marmol countered by bringing on Luken Baker—who hit a backbreaking homer off of Bryan Hudson earlier this season in St. Louis—in place of Donovan.

I’m not sure that I agree with Murphy’s decision to switch to Milner, who has struggled this season—the move to Baker probably should have been foreseeable. In any case, it didn’t work: Baker knocked a single through the middle of the infield and Winn scored, giving St. Louis a 3-2 lead. Milner struck out Herrera to hold the deficit at one.

On the plus side, Milwaukee started with speed at second base in their half of the 10th, as Frelick was placed at second as the ghost runner. The new Cardinals pitcher was Ryan Fernandez, who was looking for his second career save. Fernandez struck out Haase and Turang, putting the Brewers’ backs against the wall. The Cardinals chose to intentionally walk Chourio (he’s good, folks), preferring to face Rhys Hoskins (who entered as a defensive replacement after Bauers had been replaced by Contreras) instead. Fernandez kept pumping sliders into Hoskins, who laid off a few tough ones and worked the count full, but he couldn’t lay off of the last one, striking out on ball four as the game ended.

After Rea’s weird two-out meltdown in the first, he settled down, and he, Hall, and Williams got the Brewers to the end of the ninth inning without allowing so much as a scoring threat. But the Milwaukee offense just couldn’t muster enough, they missed a couple of opportunities, and the roulette wheel of regular-season extra-inning baseball didn’t go the Brewers’ way for the second straight night.

Though he struck out in a crucial spot in the 10th, Turang was the offensive star tonight, as he had two doubles, a single, and his 41st stolen base in five trips to the plate. Haase also had the big game-tying homer and Chourio hit a double, but there was very little in terms of stringing offense together tonight against Gray, who effectively scattered the hits against him.

St. Louis and Chicago both won tonight, but the Brewers are still up nine in the division. They’ll get tomorrow off before starting a three-game set at home with the Rockies on Friday.