The Brewers have traditionally had trouble with Rockies starter Ryan Feltner, a generally mediocre pitcher in his six-year career. But tonight, led by a couple of 21-year-olds and aided by some poor Rockies defense, Milwaukee finally figured him out. Robert Gasser also befuddled Colorado hitters for most of the night, and after a frustrating loss on Friday, the Brewers evened the series with a mostly comfortable win.
Gasser started nicely with three consecutive groundball outs in the top
of the first. In keeping with yesterday’s game, Christian Yelich flew out to the warning track in his first at-bat. The Brewers got a couple of baserunners when Jackson Chourio snuck a single through the infield and Brice Turang laid down a perfect bunt for a hit, but Contreras grounded into a 1-6-3 double play that ended the inning.
Hunter Goodman became Gasser’s first strikeout, leading off the second. TJ Rumfield was next and Gasser nearly got hit by a comebacker but he got out of the way and Cooper Pratt made the play for the second out. A Willi Castro popout ended the inning, and Gasser was perfect through two.
Jake Bauers drew a walk to start the second, and on the first pitch to the next batter, Garrett Mitchell, he stole second. Mitchell grounded out on the next pitch but that at least got Bauers to third with one out. Luis Lara was next and he just missed his first career homer—instead, he had a sac fly to the right-field corner. Pratt, who just hit his own first career homer on Monday, followed with his second career homer, a solid shot out to left on the first pitch of the at-bat. David Hamilton nearly got in on the action, too, but flew out to the warning track to end the inning with the Brewers ahead 2-0.
Gasser kept his perfect game going through the first two outs of the third, but gave up a two-out single to Ezequiel Tovar, but a Jake McCarthy strikeout ended the inning. Feltner came back in the third with his first 1-2-3 inning of the game against the top of the Brewers’ order.
Colorado got their first rally of the game in the top of the fourth when Kyle Karros led off with a single to center (one that Mitchell might’ve been able to catch with a better jump) and Cole Carrigg followed with a double down the left-field line. Colorado’s best hitter, Goodman, was next and he hit a broken-bat single into left, and he advanced to second on Chourio’s (ill-advised) throw home. Just like that, the game was tied, on batted balls of 80, 93, and 70 mph.
Gasser got the first out of the inning on the next pitch, when Rumfield grounded out to short, and one pitch after that, Castro flew out to right. Braxton Fulford also flew out to right, and Gasser was out of the inning, but the Brewer lead had vanished.
Contreras burned a challenge while striking out looking to start the fourth. Bauers followed with a single to center, and Mitchell just missed a homer with a 383-foot drive to deep center that became yet another ball caught on the warning track. With two outs, a couple of Brewer rookies came through to restore Milwaukee’s lead: Lara lined a single to left, and Pratt followed with a hard grounder that deflected off of Castro’s glove and into right, scoring Bauers in the process. A Hamilton strikeout ended the inning, but Milwaukee was back on top at 3-2.
Tyler Freeman hit a solid single to center to lead off the fifth, and moved to second on a sacrifice bunt by Tovar. McCarthy hit a hard line drive toward the gap in right, but Lara got a good jump and made a nice jumping catch to steal a double (and a run). Karros was out on a soft liner to third, and Freeman was stranded at second.
Yelich led off the bottom of the inning with a jam-shot fly ball to center which should’ve been caught but wasn’t—Carrigg, in center field, got a bad jump and dove and sort of trapped the ball but it ended up on the grass and Yelich was credited with a double. Chourio followed with a strikeout, and Yelich then made an out on the bases when he tried to take third when Karros was playing a ways off of the base, but not far enough. Turang was then robbed of a hit by Carrigg, who made up for his mistake earlier in the inning by making a diving catch for the third out.
Gasser had given up some hard contact in the fifth, but he’d only thrown 70 pitches, so he kept going in the sixth, and had a quick, seven-pitch, three-up three-down inning. Contreras, of all people, started the bottom of the sixth with an infield hit, and Bauers followed with a single into left, which got him on base for the third time in three plate appearances. With two on and nobody out in the sixth, Feltner’s day was over, as the Rockies turned to the right-handed flamethrower Juan Mejia.
Mejia got off to a poor start by walking Mitchell on four pitches to load the bases. Lara hit a pop fly to left, but it dropped into no-man’s land, and McCarthy misplayed it on the bounce, which allowed a second run to score and got Lara to second base for a bloop double. Pratt was up next and hit a fly ball to left—it looked like it had a chance to drop, but Pratt settled for a sac fly that made it 6-2, instead.
Hamilton had the next chance for the Brewers, and he popped a single over the outstretched glove of Tovar for another hit. Lara had to freeze to make sure it got down, so he held at third, and the lineup turned over with runners on the corners and one out. Yelich struck out, but with two outs, Hamilton took off for second, and Ashcraft faked a throw to second then threw back to third to try to get Lara leaning too far off the bag—the throw, though, went off of Karros’s glove and into left field, allowing Lara to score. Chourio grounded out to end the inning, but the Brewers were up 7-2.
After the long inning, the Brewers went to Chad Patrick in the top of the seventh, even with Gasser at just 77 pitches. Patrick had no trouble and put up a 1-2-3 inning, and capped off Gasser’s nice day: six innings, two runs (on weak hits), five hits, no walks, and four strikeouts.
Turang greeted the new Colorado pitcher, Tanner Gordon, rudely, by hitting a double into the right-field corner. Contreras struck out looking on a pitch that he wanted to challenge, but Contreras had already burned both Brewer challenges, so he couldn’t. Bauers also struck out on a pitch he wanted to challenge (for the record, both pitches looked like balls on Gameday), but those are the breaks. Garrett Mitchell struck out, too, but he at least swung. (This would’ve been a very frustrating inning in a close game, but we can deal with it with a five-run lead.)
Lance McCullers Jr. was on for his second outing as a Brewer in the bottom of the eighth. After getting the first two outs, he walked back-to-back hitters in front of Goodman and his 31 homers. That prompted a visit from pitching coach Chris Hook, but McCullers won a long battle by getting a pop-up (which he fielded himself) on the ninth pitch of the at-bat.
The Brewer Boy Wonders both reached to start the bottom of the eighth, Lara on a walk and Pratt on an error by Karros at third, an error which allowed Lara to reach third. Pratt stole second on the next pitch, setting the Brewers up for another chance at a big inning. Gordon did a decent job working out of it, with a strikeout by Hamilton, a sac fly RBI by Yelich, and a pop out by Chourio, but the Brewers tacked one on and led 8-2.
McCullers walked Rumfield to start the ninth, but struck out Castro. A ground ball from Brett Sullivan to Bauers could’ve ended the game, but his throw to second sailed past Pratt and into left field and there were two on with one out. Turang made a nice catch on a pop-up in shallow right field, but the third out remained elusive when McCullers walked Tovar to load the bases. After a mound visit, McCarthy jumped on the first pitch and blooped a two-RBI single to center, which brought Pat Murphy out of the dugout to retreive McCullers in favor of Trevor Megill, who came into the game needing one out but in a save situation.
The Brewers surely didn’t want Megill to have to pitch tonight. He got ahead of Karros, but the Colorado third baseman fought off and 0-2 fastball way above the zone and dumped it into center for another RBI single. Improbably, Carrigg came to the plate as the tying run, but Megill struck him out to finally end the game.
The kids led the way in this one. Lara was 2-for-2 with a walk, a sac fly, and three RBI. Pratt was 2-for-3 with a solo homer, a sac fly, and a stolen base. Turang also had multiple hits including a double. On the mound, Gasser had his nice night, Patrick had a good scoreless inning. McCullers battled wildness and a Bauers error, but Megill was able to clean up the mess.
The Brewers will try to secure the series tomorrow with Jacob Misiorowski on the mound. That game is at 1:10 p.m. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, the Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony is also tomorrow, starting at 12:30 on MLB Network.
