The Brewers didn’t look great tonight. They only got four hits. They had a couple of tough errors, one of which led directly to runs. They trailed for most of the game. But these Brewers don’t lie down. They managed to squeeze a couple of late runs across by a combination of grit and good baserunning, and the bullpen kept the Astros down for six innings. Trevor Megill did the rest, and the Brewers had their third extra-innings win of the season.
Christian Yelich got the Brewers off to an inauspicious
start when he struck out on three pitches, the second and third of which he swung out despite being way out of the zone. After Jackson Chourio flew out on a fly ball, Turang struck out looking (also on three pitches), and Astros starter Kai-Wei Teng had a quick and easy first inning. Taylor Trammell started things for the Astros with an infield single, but an Isaac Paredes double play erased him. Yordan Alvarez put a scare into Milwaukee starter Coleman Crow when he scorched a ball to the warning track in center, but he hit it to the wrong spot—despite a 113 mph exit velocity on a 409-foot drive, Garrett Mitchell ran it down for the third out.
The Brewers did get a couple of runners on in the second inning. Jake Bauers drew a one-out walk, and advanced to third when Mitchell followed that with a base hit up the middle. But Bauers was a sitting duck at home when he broke on a Rengifo ground ball to third, and Sal Frelick was unable to come through with a two-out knock when he flew out to center.
David Hamilton made a nice play on a hard grounder from Christian Walker to start the bottom of the second, but the Astros got on the board with one out when Cam Smith hit is sixth homer of the season out to left. (It wasn’t a cheapie, either.) Pop outs by Braden Shewmake and Jake Meyers ended the inning, but Houston had an early 1-0 lead.
The Brewers had an immediate response through an unlikely source: David Hamilton. He led off the top of the third with a backhand slapshot to the Crawford Boxes in left field, an opposite-field shot for his first homer of the year (despite just 94 mph exit velocity and a measured 343 feet!). Teng recovered to get the top of the Brewer order all in a row, but Milwaukee had tied it up.
After Nick Allen popped out to start the bottom of the inning, Crow walked the nine-hole hitter, César Salazar. But Trammell became Crow’s first strikeout victim, and Paredes grounded to Hamilton who flipped to Turang for the third out. Garrett Mitchell drew a two-out walk in the top of the fourth, but Milwaukee got nothing else.
A Rengifo throwing error put the Brewers in hot water in the bottom of the fourth. After Alvarez walked to start the inning, Walker hit a ground ball to third. It probably wasn’t hit hard enough to turn two, but Rengifo rushed the throw and threw it into right field. On the very next pitch, Smith hit one to the gap in right center; Alvarez scored, and runners were on second and third with still no outs.
Milwaukee benefitted from bad Houston baserunning for the first out. Shewmake hit a grounder to a drawn-in Turang at second, and after he looked Walker back to third, he threw to second, where Smith was too far off the bag and was caught for the first out. Crow had a path out of the inning with runners on the corners and one out, but Meyers spoiled that when he hit a one-hopper off the wall in left for an RBI double. There were still runners on second and third with one out for Allen, who hit a fly ball to center that was plenty deep to score Shewmake from third. Salazar flew out to end the inning, but Houston scored three (two of them unearned) and led 4-1.
Once again, the Brewers had an answer right away. With two outs in the top of the fifth, Yelich drew a two-out walk, and Chourio finally got a sweeper that was over the plate, and he didn’t miss it. He crushed it, 431 feet, to left-center for his second homer of the season. After a walk for Turang, too, Contreras grounded out to end the inning, but Milwaukee had closed the gap to 4-3.
Crow was done after four—Rengifo’s error certainly didn’t help what was a somewhat disappointing day. DL Hall replaced him in the bottom of the fifth and started with strikeouts of Trammell and Paredes. He got Alvarez, too, on a silly little play; Alvarez hit one pretty much straight down and assumed it was a foul ball, but it trickled into fair territory and Contreras picked it up and tagged him out as he stood outside of the batter’s box.
Steven Okert, a lefty, replaced Teng in the sixth. Bauers tried to poke one at the Crawford Boxes to lead off the sixth, but it didn’t quite get there, and he became the first out of the inning. A slider got away from Okert with Mitchell at the plate and went right at his head; luckily Mitchell mostly got out of the way, and instead of getting hit on the helmet, it was a glancing blow to his upper back that didn’t even really seem to hurt. Mitchell tried to steal a couple of times on pitches that Rengifo fouled off, but Mitchell was a little too aggressive; Okert threw over and had Mitchell picked off, though he almost made it into second on the throw from Walker. In any case, Rengifo struck out and the inning ended.
With one out in the bottom of the sixth, Hall ran into a bit of trouble when he walked Smith and Shewmake in back-to-back plate appearances. But he got out of it quickly when Meyers followed with a second-pitch 4-6-3 double play. Okert had no trouble at all with Frelick, Hamilton, and Yelich in the top of the seventh, mowing down the three lefties in a row.
Grant Anderson replaced Hall for the bottom of the seventh, and he got through it with a pop out and two fly outs. Bryan Abreu came in for Okert in the eighth and started by throwing eight straight balls, walking Chourio and Turang. After a ninth straight ball to Contreras, he finally got one in the zone. A couple pitches later, Contreras hit a fly ball to center field for the first out, but Chourio tagged and made it to third.
That set up Jake Bauers with a good situation, but the Astros had had enough of one Bryan and switched to another, Bryan King. He also struggled to find the strike zone, and on a 3-1 pitch, Bauers hit a slow ground ball to second where the only play was to first base. Chourio scored to tie it, and Turang moved to second. Pat Murphy took an opportunity to use a weapon off the bench, but Andrew Vaughn, pinch-hitting for Mitchell, flew out to foul territory in right on the first pitch and the inning ended.
Now in a tie game, the Brewers went to the Vulture, Aaron Ashby. He struck out Paredes and Alvarez, and though Walker picked up a two-out single, Ashby needed just one more pitch to get Smith to ground out to short.
Could the Brewers get him a 10th win? With King still pitching, Rengifo lined out to right on the first pitch he saw. Frelick lined a solid single up the middle on a 3-2 pitch and put the go-ahead run on first with one out. The Brewers at this point decided to go with another pinch-hitter, Gary Sánchez, who hit for Hamilton. Sánchez popped up to shallow right—the second baseman, Allen, let the ball hit the grass so that he could throw Frelick, the faster runner, out at second, though that didn’t matter much anyway because Joey Ortiz was going to come in for Sánchez whether that was on the bases or in the bottom of the inning. So Ortiz was on first with two outs for Yelich, but he grounded out to end the inning. No win tonight for Ashby.
Abner Uribe was the Brewer pitcher, making his first appearance since “crotch-chop gate” against the Cardinals on Tuesday. The leadoff hitter in the bottom of the ninth was pinch-hitter Jeremy Peña, who was one of the better players in the league last season but has struggled while dealing with injuries in 2026. Peña should’ve grounded out, but Ortiz, who’d just entered the game, didn’t make a perfect throw and it got by Bauers (who honestly probably should’ve caught it). Ortiz was charged with an error; Meyers tried to bunt on the first pitch but swung away at the second; Rengifo, playing in to cover the potential bunt, didn’t have a play on a ground ball that probably would’ve been a double play with a regularly positioned defense. Tough luck, but the Astros had runners on first and second and nobody out.
Allen was definitely in to bunt, and he laid down a good one; it required a good (and kind of scary) play by Uribe to get him at first base, but the winning run was at third with one out. Christian Vázquez came in to pinch-hit for Salazar, facing a fully drawn-in infield. After a first-pitch ball, the Brewers chose to intentionally walk him to load the bases. The batter was not Trammell, but Brice Matthews, who’d entered as a defensive substitute an inning earlier. Uribe needed just three pitches to strike out Matthews looking, and the Brewers were one out away from a Houdini act. The batter was Paredes. A beneficial call in an 0-1 count made it 0-2, and there was nothing Paredes could do about it, as the Astros had burned both challenges early in the game. After a couple more pitches, Paredes popped out to Turang in shallow right, and the Brewers were out of it.
The new Houston pitcher in the tenth was Alimber Santa, who made his major-league debut on Monday when he pitched the last two innings of the Astros’ combined no-hitter. He started Chourio with three straight balls but worked the count back full before Chourio flew out to center. It wasn’t hit very deep, but Yelich challenged Meyers’ arm in center, and made it to third with one out. Turang jumped on the first pitch and hit a line drive to right—it was caught, but Yelich, who’d just moved to third with good baserunning, tagged and scored. Santa struck out Contreras to end the inning, but the Brewers had a 5-4 lead.
Megill replaced Uribe with pinch-runner Zach Dezenzo on second as the ghost runner and Alvarez at the plate. Walking Alvarez seemed like the obvious decision, but Megill had different ideas. The first pitch was a fastball on the upper inside corner for a called strike, a perfect pitch. The second one, he got away with: a fastball in the lower half that got a bit too much of the plate, but Alvarez mercifully missed it. The next pitch, a fastball on the outer half, surprised Alvarez, and he struck out looking. It was quite an at-bat.
Walker, the next batter, hit a fly ball to fairly deep right, which Frelick caught right on the edge of the warning track. Dezenzo tagged and moved to third, but Houston was down to their last out—in the form of Cam Smith, who’d already homered and doubled in this one. The Brewers got another fortunate call in Smith’s at-bat when he appeared to check his swing on a 2-1 pitch, but the first-base umpire disagreed; Smith was only able to get a tiny piece of the next pitch, a fastball in the upper part of the zone, and he was out on a foul tip. Milwaukee won, 5-4.
This felt like an unlikely win. The offense was lifeless for most of the game, and the Brewers had a couple of uncharacteristic defensive miscues that nearly cost them the game. But this is a team that doesn’t quit, and some timely manufactured offense along with six shutout innings from the bullpen gave them a win.
Crow wasn’t as bad as his line—four innings, four hits, two walks, one strikeout, four runs, two of which were earned—but he’ll hope for better days in the future. Hall looked great in his first inning and got through the second despite a couple of walks. Anderson and Ashby threw solid scoreless innings. Uribe worked around the throwing error that nearly handed Houston the game. And Megill was extremely impressive in the 10th.
Offensively, Milwaukee managed only four hits, but they did what they needed to do. Two of those hits were homers, Hamilton’s first and Chourio’s second. Yelich’s baserunning in the 10th didn’t show up in the box score, but the run he scored did. Bauers and Turang both went hitless but both knocked in runs (and each drew a walk).
Milwaukee now has two chances to win the series. The first of those comes tomorrow afternoon at 3:10 p.m., when Brandon Sproat takes on Peter Lambert.
