The Brewers finished off a satisfying sweep of the St. Louis Cardinals on Wednesday, then got a deserved day off on Thursday. Tonight, they’re in Houston, where they face the Astros in the first game of a three-game jaunt on the road before getting back to Milwaukee on Monday. The Astros started the season poorly, but they’ve won six of their last seven, all on the road: they swept the Cubs at Wrigley last weekend, then won three-of-four against the Rangers in Arlington. The Astros looked dead in the AL
West for a while, but that division is now led by the 28-29 Seattle Mariners, and Houston is just two-and-a-half games back.
Tonight’s pitching matchup features two relatively inexperienced starting pitchers. The Brewers are rolling with Coleman Crow, the rookie who will be making his third career start. He’s made two solid spot starts for the big-league Brewers this season: he threw 5 1/3 innings of two-run ball against the Marlins on April 17th, then gave up one run in five innings against the Twins on May 15th. Milwaukee won both games. His numbers haven’t been as good at Triple-A Nashville, but a lot of that is attributable to one outing when he gave up eight runs in late April (right after his first career major-league start). He’s allowed only four combined runs in his last three starts with Nashville.
Houston will go with the right-handed Taiwanese pitcher Kai-Wei Ten, who debuted for Houston in 2024 but has made only 29 appearances, 11 of them starts, in his major-league career. Ten is 27 and having a nice year for Houston: he started the season in the bullpen, but has started in his last three appearances. The last two of those have gone quite well: in his last two games, Ten has 11 shutout innings and while he’s been wild (seven walks), he’s allowed only four hits in those 11 innings. Houston won both games, a 4-1 win over the Rangers and a 3-0 shutout of the Cubs.
A couple pitching notes today: Abner Uribe has been fined and suspended by the league, but he is appealing that decision. My suspicion as that Uribe will probably pitch a couple times and then drop the appeal before a game in which he wouldn’t have been used anyway, but that’s a little hard to control. In any case, he’ll be available tonight.
Second, Jared Koenig has been sent to Nashville to begin a rehab assignment. Given how Quinn Priester’s rehab is going, I’m a bit pessimistic about rehabbing pitchers at the moment, but hopefully Koenig will be fine and back with the Brewers soon.
Christian Yelich is back in the leadoff spot, where he went 4-for-9 in the last two games of the St. Louis series. The Brewers are going with the left-handed side of a couple of platoons, as David Hamilton starts in place of Joey Ortiz and Jake Bauers is in for Andrew Vaughn. Both Sal Frelick and Garrett Mitchell are in the lineup, as well. Houston’s lineup doesn’t feature a whole lot of firepower, but they’ve got one enormous weapon in Yordan Alvarez, who has probably been the league’s best hitter this season. He’s hitting .307/.419/.654, leads the AL with 20 homers, and leads the majors with a 199 OPS+ and 134 total bases.
