On the day they clinch the NL Central, the Brewers walk off the Phillies

Milwaukee wins 2-1 on Bauers’ game-ending single

Box Score

The Milwaukee Brewers are National League Central Division champs. That was the big baseball story in Milwaukee on Wednesday, news that was confirmed late in the afternoon when the Oakland Athletics closed out a win over the second-place Chicago Cubs. But the Brewers had a game to play this evening, even if it felt anticlimactic, and it was a game that could potentially have an effect on postseason positioning in the National League.

At a minimum, it was a big game with a National League powerhouse, featuring a pitcher in Aaron Nola who the Brewers very well could see again if they are to get near their World Series goal. For Milwaukee, Freddy Peralta, the Brewers’ likely postseason-game-one starter, took the mound. It was a pitcher’s duel throughout, as neither lineup was able to muster much against either starter or bullpen, but in a fitting conclusion, the Brewers found a walk-off win to symbolically clinch the division they’d officially clinched earlier in the day.

Peralta, who ditched last week’s braids after just one outing, came out looking good. He got Kyle Schwarber on a groundout and struck out Trea Turner and Bryce Harper to get a 1-2-3 inning after the clean inning eluded him during his last start in Arizona. The Brewers got their leadoff baserunner on when Brice Turang drew a walk, and he advanced to second with a one-out stolen base, but some tough luck followed: William Contreras and Garrett Mitchell both hit ground balls over 100 mph but neither made it out of the infield, and the first inning ended with no score.

Peralta’s bid for a perfect game ended with one out in the second, when Alec Bohm hit a missile just over the wall in left-center to give the Phillies an early lead. Bryson Stott followed with a broken-bat single, but Peralta struck out Brandon Marsh and got Johan Rojas to fly out to right to end the threat with no further damage. The Brewers got a two-out ground-rule double from Rhys Hoskins in the bottom of the inning, but that was all.

Both pitchers settled in for a bit. Peralta worked around a couple of walks to put up zeroes in the third and fourth, while the Brewers went down on just six pitches in the third and couldn’t make anything of a leadoff single by Contreras in the fourth.

Peralta got another 1-2-3 inning in the top of the fifth, but—as usual—he’d thrown a lot of pitches, and the 91 pitches it took him to get through five innings meant his night was over. He’d done a better job limiting traffic than in his last outing—he gave up only two hits and walked two—and the only blemish on his night was Bohm’s second-inning homer. He also had his highest strikeout total in months tonight; his nine Ks were the most he’s had since he struck out 11 on May 28.

The Brewers finally got on the scoreboard in the bottom of the fifth, when Hoskins, against his old buddies, led off the inning with a solo shot to left, his 25^th of the year. The Brewers went in order after the homer, but they’d tied the game.

Joe Ross was the first man out of the Brewer bullpen tonight. He allowed back-to-back baserunners to start the sixth inning when Turner singled and Harper walked, but Ross came back to strike out Nick Castellanos and get Bohm on a flyout to fairly deep center, though the flyout advanced both runners. Pat Murphy decided to go for a lefty-on-lefty matchup at that point and brought Jared Koenig in to face Stott with runners on second and third and two outs; on the first pitch Stott hit a well-placed weak ground ball up the middle, and it took a great play from Turang to get him at first and keep the score tied.

Nola cruised through another inning in the sixth, getting the toughest part of the Brewers’ order without any trouble. Koenig continued in the seventh, and he got the Phillies in order; four-up, four-down for the lefty, who had a very nice bounce back from his weird, frustrating experience on Sunday.

One more three-up, three-down inning in the seventh put a bow on a fantastic evening for Nola: seven innings, three hits, one walk, and nine strikeouts, with the only run allowed on Hoskins’ home run. It took him only 97 pitches to get through those seven innings, and even with some good arms waiting in the Philadelphia bullpen, the Brewers were probably happy to see him go.

Hoping to get a win to kick off their division title celebration, the Brewers sent their A bullpen out there in a tie game, with Trevor Megill taking the eighth to face the beef of the Philadelphia lineup. Schwarber led off with a cheap single that fell between Turang, Frelick, and Mitchell in shallow right. Turner replaced him at first on a fielder’s choice that wasn’t hit nearly hard enough to turn two, and Harper hit a hard line drive (103 mph) that looked like trouble but Chourio was there and made a nice catch on the sinking liner. Bouncing off the good fortune of Harper’s ball finding a glove, Megill overpowered Castellanos, striking him out on three consecutive fastballs.

Orion Kerkering was Philadelphia’s first reliever. Frelick nearly had a leadoff infield single, but Stott made a great play up the middle. Frelick was initially called safe but that call was correctly reversed after review. Joey Ortiz and Turang struck out, and the inning was over.

A well-rested Devin Williams was on for the ninth in a 1-1 game, and he looked like a well-rested Devin Williams often does: he struck out Bohm, Stott, and Marsh in order.

The Phillies’ big trade deadline pickup, Carlos Estévez, was on to pitch the ninth, even though it wasn’t a save situation. Things couldn’t have started much better for Milwaukee: Chourio, who hasn’t looked great in this series, took Estévez’s second pitch and lined it into the right-field corner for a leadoff triple, his fourth of the season. Contreras was intentionally walked (and moved to second on defensive indifference), but Estévez struck out Mitchell on three pitches. A perhaps amped-up Willy Adames fell behind 0-2, worked the count back full, fouled off a couple of pitches, and then took a pitch that grazed him, loading the bases.

That brought up Jake Bauers with one out, and he lined the first pitch he saw past Harper and down the right-field line for a walk-off single. It wasn’t technically the game that clinched the division for Milwaukee, but it was certainly a fitting way to kick off the celebration. And for that win, getting a walk-off hit from Jake Bauers, of all people, felt exactly correct: in a season full of big contributions from unlikely sources, it was Bauers who put the exclamation point on the symbolic division-clinching victory.

It was a well-pitched game on both sides. Peralta still struggled with efficiency, but he looked a lot better than he has in some of his recent shorter starts. In that respect, it was an encouraging outing. He was followed by four relievers that put together another scoreless night, as Ross, Koenig, Megill, and Williams combined for four shutout innings. Between Peralta and the bullpen, Milwaukee pitchers struck out 16 Phillies tonight.

The lineup mostly struggled with Nola, but Hoskins got his former teammate for two extra-base hits, including his fifth-inning solo homer. Chourio’s leadoff triple was the big hit late, which set up Bauers for the game-winner.

The Brewers busted out the champagne to celebrate their division championship after the game, a well-deserved celebration near the end of a thrilling, surprising season. In a nice touch, Chourio had a basket full of non-alcoholic beer and sparkling grape juice waiting for him. Here they are, your 2024 NL Central champs.

And, of course, we had to get Ueck involved.

Whew. What a game! What a season! The Brewers have three regular-season series left, and they’ll kick off the next one tomorrow evening, a four-game set at home against the Diamondbacks. Whether the team is collectively hungover is a separate question.