Last night, the Milwaukee Brewers improbably extended their magical winning streak to 13 games despite falling behind 8-1 early. They did so behind a huge night from Christian Yelich (four hits, two homers, five RBI) and the bullpen, who retired the last 23 Reds batters in order.
Tonight, the Brewers will look to extend their winning streak to 14 games, which would be a new single-season franchise record for the Brewers. (They technically won 16 straight games between the end of the 1986 season and
the start of the 1987 season, but given that those were different teams, it doesn’t really count.) To do so, they’ll look to Quinn Priester, who is looking for a bounceback outing after a bad start—which the Brewers still won—against the Mets on Sunday. Cincinnati will start trade deadline pickup Zack Littell.
Priester has had an excellent season but is coming off one of his worst starts of the year on Sunday. The Mets beat Priester up for six runs on 10 hits in 4 1/3 innings while Priester only managed to strike out two batters. But that was the other wild victory during this win streak, the one where a Joey Ortiz RBI single off Ryan Helsley tied it in the eighth and Isaac Collins hit a walk-off homer off of Edwin Díaz in the ninth. Overall, Priester sports a 3.49 ERA and 4.21 FIP this season in 118 2/3 innings, which is second to Freddy Peralta on the team. The win may be an outdated statistic, but there’s certainly nothing wrong with Priester’s 11-2 record.
Littell, a 29-year-old right-hander, came over from the Rays on July 30th in a trade in which the Reds sent out two prospects. Littell is a bit of a young journeyman: drafted by the Mariners, he was traded to the Yankees and then the Twins before he ever debuted. He pitched sparingly in three seasons with the Twins and became a free agent after the 2020 season, and signed a two-year deal with the Giants, for whom he pitched quite well out of the bullpen in 2021 but poorly in 2022. Littell then signed with the Rangers before the 2023 season but never appeared for them, was sent to the Red Sox for cash, and pitched three innings with Boston before getting designated for assignment and picked up by the Rays. That was a big moment for Littell, whose career seemed to be on life support at age 27. But the Rays turned Littell into an effective starter, and since ending up with them in 2023 he has made 67 starts with an ERA around 3.60. This will be his third start as a Red; he had a somewhat rough outing in Pittsburgh last Sunday but shut down the Cubs in a 5-1 victory on August 5th.
There’s one unfortunate injury note today, as DL Hall was placed on the 15-day injured list with an oblique strain. Adam McCalvy has details:
Hall has been replaced on the roster by Grant Anderson, who had been optioned just one day earlier when Jacob Misiorowski was activated from the injured list. We’ll await word on how long Hall might be out, but those obliques can be nasty. Hall isn’t a perfect pitcher but he’s been very good in the long relief role of late, including two shutdown innings after an unlucky start yesterday.
Pat Murphy is rolling out the same lineup today that he used in yesterday’s big comeback win, with Steward Berroa in center field, Brandon Lockridge in left, and Sal Frelick in right. Christian Yelich, who seems to like very little more than he likes hitting in Cincinnati, is back in the clean-up spot. Matt McLain and Jose Trevino enter the lineup for the Reds, replacing Austin Hays and Tyler Stephenson.
First pitch is at 5:40 p.m., back on FanDuel Sports Network Wisconsin and the Brewers Radio Network.
