Box Score
Friday night’s ballgame between the Milwaukee Brewers and Los Angeles Dodgers was a quiet affair, a pitcher’s duel that ended with a final score of 2-0. Saturday night’s game was not interested in a repeat. After both teams threw big punches against starters Freddy Peralta and Emmet Sheehan in a very long third inning, Milwaukee did an excellent job of creating add-on runs—one each in each of the fourth, sixth, seventh, and eighth inning—and withstood a late charge from the Dodger offense
to hang on for their ninth straight win.
Things were relatively quiet for the first two innings. After the Brewers went down in order in the first, Peralta worked around a one-out Will Smith single in the bottom of the inning. Milwaukee made some loud contact to start the second—Christian Yelich led off with a single and Sheehan needed a diving catch from Michael Conforto to snag a sharp Andrew Vaughn line drive—but Yelich was caught stealing and a Caleb Durbin strikeout nullified a two-out Isaac Collins single. In the bottom of the inning, Peralta allowed another harmless single but it was 0-0 after two.
In the third, the fireworks started. Blake Perkins, making his first start of the season after bunting for a hit in his first (and only) major league appearance of the season on Friday night, led off the inning with a triple, a liner into the right-field gap that Teoscar Hernández was unable to cut off. One pitch later, Perkins scored when Joey Ortiz looped a single into left field.
Perk triples and Joey O immediately cashes in pic.twitter.com/w6a0aBL1LU
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) July 20, 2025
A wild pitch and a walk put led to a mound visit with two runners on and nobody out, and William Contreras came through with a big hit, an opposite-field double into the gap that scored both Perkins and Brice Turang to make it 3-0. Jackson Chourio then singled, the fourth straight batter to reach against Sheehan, to put runners on the corners with no outs and three runs already in. The Brewers managed only one more in the inning, on a Vaughn sac fly, but they took a 4-0 lead to the bottom of the third with their ace on the hill against a profoundly struggling offense.
Oh we're cookin now @Wcontreras42 pic.twitter.com/RLiUmoRvhd
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) July 20, 2025
Tonight, though, the Dodgers had an answer. Peralta started the inning with a very frustrating Peralta-like move: he walked the leadoff hitter, Miguel Rojas, with the deadly top of the Los Angeles order waiting behind him. That mistake immediately cost him: Shohei Ohtani got a first-pitch changeup that could not have been more down the middle, and he detonated it for a monstrous 448-foot homer to center, just slightly to the opposite field.
Peralta’s trouble didn’t end there, though. Smith followed with another single, Freddie Freeman walked, and Hernández, on a 3-2 pitch, lined a double to the opposite-field gap that scored smith and put Freeman on third with still nobody out. The Dodgers then tied it when Peralta threw a wild pitch that scored Freeman, but to Peralta’s credit, he battled back: he struck out Andy Pages, got a groundout from Conforto, and a lineout from Tommy Edman, and Hernández was stranded at third. The big lead was gone, though, as it was 4-4 after an eventful third inning.
Collins led off the fourth with a beautiful at-bat. He quickly fell behind after Sheehan got a somewhat friendly first-pitch strike call, and a foul ball made it 0-2. After taking ball one, Collins then fouled off three 1-2 pitches before getting a slider at the bottom of the zone that he could handle, and handle it he did: he snuck it over the short wall in the right-field corner, to very nearly the same spot where Hernández caught a deep fly ball that he hit on Friday night. Collins’ sixth home run restored Milwaukee’s lead and chased Sheehan, who was replaced by Jack Dreyer. The Brewers did get a one-out baserunner in scoring position when Perkins walked and stole second, but Ortiz popped out and Turang grounded out and the inning ended with the Brewers ahead 5-4.
Right back in front https://t.co/prCkNuMP6l pic.twitter.com/3wXY5xzXEX
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) July 20, 2025
Peralta, who needed a ton of pitches to get through the third, went out and retired the Dodgers in order on just nine pitches in the bottom of the fourth, though two of those outs came on balls hit over 102 mph. The Brewers went down in order in a sort of roundabout way in the top of the fifth, too—Contreras struck out, Chourio grounded out (after a review overturned an initial safe call), and Yelich grounded out.
A two-out walk of Hernández did not hurt Peralta in the bottom of the fifth, as Pages grounded out to end the inning after that. That closed the book on Peralta, who didn’t have his best stuff and really had to battle through a tough third inning but finished with a chance for a win. He allowed four runs on five hits and three walks in five innings while striking out four. It was the roughest start since early May for the All-Star, but he managed to work through that ugly third inning and limit, in some ways, the damage.
The Brewers tacked on a run in the top of the sixth, led by one of tonight’s stars, Collins, and last night’s hero, Durbin. Ben Casparius replaced Dreyer, and with one out, Collins reached for the third time when he drew an easy four-pitch walk. With Durbin at the plate, Collins stole second (his 11th of the season), and Durbin came through with a double just over the outstretched glove of a leaping Edman at third base. Collins scored to make it 6-4, which is where the score sat as Aaron Ashby replaced Peralta in the bottom of the sixth.
Caleb Durbin's monster series continues ‼️ pic.twitter.com/mR9BLBOO7X
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) July 20, 2025
Ashby started his inning by striking out Conforto on three pitches, but Edman lined a hard grounder through the middle with one out. Ashby struck out Hyeseong Kim and it looked like he might get out of the inning, but Rojas extended the inning with a single that Ortiz got a glove on but couldn’t handle, and (again) on the first pitch, Ohtani corkscrewed a single to left on a pitch that kind of jammed him but he put into the outfield anyway. Edman scored, and the Dodgers had cut the score to 6-5.
As they had earlier in the game, the Brewers had an answer to the Dodgers’ answer. Turang started the seventh with a single after a nine-pitch battle against Casparius, and after Contreras struck out, Chourio knocked a ball off the glove of Rojas and into left field to put runners at the corners with one out. It looked like a golden scoring opportunity, but the Dodgers brought in lefty Anthony Banda to face Christian Yelich and he struck him out on three pitches for the second out. But the next batter, Vaughn, came through again: on an 0-1 pitch, he hit a hard grounder through the middle of the infield that scored Turang and made it 7-5. Collins struck out to end the inning but the lead was back to two.
Andrew Vaughn: RBI MACHINE pic.twitter.com/Bl6wV8uSAK
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) July 20, 2025
Ashby stayed on to face Freeman in the bottom of the seventh and got him to ground out before handing things over to Nick Mears, who struck out Hernández and Pages. The Brewers then kept the pressure on Los Angeles in the top of the eighth. Lou Trivino, fresh into the game, got the first two outs but surrendered a two-out solo homer to Ortiz (his seventh) that increased Milwaukee’s lead to three. Turang then hit a single into right-center that was misplayed by Pages, allowing him to advance to third, but Contreras flew out to left and the inning ended. The Brewers had increased their lead again, though, and led 8-5 heading to the bottom of the eighth.
New batting stance, big result https://t.co/v4kk1PAVTV pic.twitter.com/xqEtjFETz5
— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) July 20, 2025
Los Angeles wasn’t going to go quietly in this one, though. Jared Koenig came on to pitch the eighth and got the first out on a deep fly ball from pinch-hitter Esteury Ruiz. Edman’s deep fly ball didn’t stay in the ballpark, though, as he homered on a Koenig changeup down the middle that cut the lead to 8-6. Koenig struck out Kim for the second out, but Rojas blasted a 1-0 sinker to almost the exact same spot that Edman’s homer went, though Rojas’s was much more of a hard line drive. The LA crowd thought the Dodgers had tied the game when Ohtani followed Rojas with another deep fly ball, but Ohtani’s was to straightaway center and died on the warning track. Perkins made the catch to end the inning, but this one went to the ninth as a one-run game.
Tanner Scott entered for the Dodgers in the top of the ninth and quickly got Chourio on a strikeout and Yelich on a fly ball. Vaughn drew a two-out walk, but Collins grounded out on the first pitch he saw, and Trevor Megill would need to work with just a one-run cushion against the 2-3-4 hitters in the Dodger order.
Smith got a hittable (albeit 101 mph) fastball on a 3-2 count but got just under it and flew out to Collins for the first out. Freeman grounded out harmlessly to second base. Hernández grounded out to shortstop. No problem at all for the All-Star Megill in a pressure spot.
It was the ninth straight win for the Brewers, and their fifth in that span over the formerly National-League-best Dodgers. The Cubs won tonight and still hold a one-game advantage over Milwaukee, but the win puts the Brewers ahead of Los Angeles in terms of overall record and alone with the second-best record in the NL.
Andrew Vaughn’s two RBI tonight gave him 12 through his first seven games as a Brewer, which is a new franchise record, breaking a tie with Brian Anderson and Paul Molitor. He was one part of a balanced offensive attack from Milwaukee: every player got at least one hit for the Brewers, as Turang, Chourio, Collins, and Ortiz had two. Collins and Ortiz had the two biggest hits, both solo homers, and Perkins tripled while Contreras and Durbin both had RBI doubles.
Tomorrow’s series finale will be a matchup of two veteran lefties, Jose Quintana and Clayton Kershaw. That game starts at 3:10 p.m. central on FanDuel Sports Network Wisconsin and the Brewers Radio Network.
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