One of my main memories from the 2010 World Series season was being stuck in Las Vegas while the Giants played a 4-game series in Milwaukee. I’m not a gambler and I’m not a dirtbag and so Sin City doesn’t really do it for me and so all I had to look forward to was the Giants trying to hold their season together.
After dropping 3 of 4 in Colorado (the finale being the infamous game where Bruce Bochy pinch-ran Eli Whiteside for Buster Posey), they went to Milwaukee and swept a 4-game series to kickoff
the second half of the schedule, going 51-30 the rest of the season. I don’t pretend that this series will turn around the long-dead 2026 Giants, but after yesterday’s fluky win, maybe rolling right into another series against a much better team gives them some added fight they’ve been missing all year long.
Easier said than done, of course, as the Brewers are — once again — one of the best teams in the sport. After running a 19-7 record in May, they have the fourth-best record overall (35-21) and run differential in the sport (+74) and the sixth-best home record (19-11). Their 268 runs scored is just 11th, but they’re tied with the Dodgers for #1 in pitching value (+9.8 fWAR). They’re 3rd in team ERA with 3.17. The Giants are none of these things and it’s almost unfair to the Brewers that they have to risk their better roster getting hurt or momentarily embarrassed by a team that probably should take the rest of the decade off. On the other hand, the beauty of baseball is that top teams can be embarrassed by stinky teams from time to time.
So, on paper, this should be an easy sweep for the Brewers with nothing new learned about our unbearably awful 2026 Giants, but at the same time, either in success or failure, this could be a valuable bonding experience for the team, perhaps as it was all the way back in 2010. Road trips are usually where fractured teams find their footing — or fall apart completely! I say all this because the vibes at the end of yesterday’s win were great and it was encouraging to see the players all pulling for each other. In previous wins like that, they’d usually follow it up with an off day. Not so here.
Yes, yes, the big story in this one will be that the Giants will face their former top pitching prospect, Kyle Harrison, who has bounced around since they traded him for Rafael Devers. The other little stories here:
- This is the first 4-game home series for the Brewers in 2026.
- The Brewers are “just” 12-9 against sub-.500 teams.
- Forgetting yesterday’s win, the Giants have average 4.53 runs/game over their last 15 while the Brewers have averaged just 3.93. The difference? The Brewers have allowed just 3 runs per game while the Giants have averaged 5.8.
Series overview
Who: San Francisco Giants (23-36) at Milwaukee Brewers (35-21)
Where: American Family Field | Milwaukee, Wisconsin
When: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at 4:40pm PT, Thursday at 11:10am PT
National broadcasts: FS1 (Monday).
Projected starters
Monday: Landen Roupp (RHP 5-5, 3.30 ERA) vs. Shane Drohan (LHP 2-1, 2.63 ERA)
Tuesday: Trevor McDonald (RHP 2-2, 4.34 ERA) vs. Kyle Harrison (LHP 6-1, 1.57 ERA)
Wednesday: Logan Webb (RHP 2-4, 4.82 ERA) vs. TBD
Thursday: Adrian Houser (RHP 2-5, 5.59 ERA) vs. TBD
Players to watch
Brewers
Kyle Harrison: The Brewers were able to get Harrison to adjust his arm angle and that has made all the difference. We’re approaching a year since this Eno Sarris post which laid bare “the trouble with Harrison”:
Of course, our Steven Kennedy was all over this when he broke down Harrison’s arsenal early last year, too, but the fact is that Harrison’s initial ace projection when the Giants drafted him had run into reality in such a way that the Giants moving on from him (and the Red Sox afterwards) only made sense. Of course, the Brewers are known for their pitching lab and look at what they’ve done (apologies in advance for Mark DeRosa being in this):
This season, he’s averaging 94.9 mph with his four-seamers (up +2 mph from his Giants days), and is slurve (which Steven had labeled his problematic pitch) has a .109 batting average against in 255 instances of it being thrown. A 27.4% Whiff rate right after his four-seamer (30.8%). Could the Giants have helped him make this adjustment? Probably not. If it were easy to do what the Brewers do then more teams could do it. Instead, the Giants got Rafael Devers for him and that’ll just have to do.
Andrew Vaughn & Jake Bauers: Vaughn hit the IL and Christian Yelich, too, and this gave longtime backup/platoon Bauers some run and he ran with the playing time, hitting .295/.354/.523 over the last 2 weeks with 3 homers and 11 RBI in his last 12 games. Meanwhile, Vaughn missed all of April and came back in May to slug .351/.431/.526 in 65 PA. He hit just 1 home run but 7 doubles in 20 hits.
Christian Yelich & Jackson Chourio: He has just a .710 OPS (58 PA) since returning from the IL on May 12 from a groin strain but is a notorious Giants Killer, hitting .293/.374/.479 in 68 career games. Meanwhile, Chourio was a young player signed to a massive extension last season (a trend that picked up this past offseason across the sport) and dropped a bit from a .791 OPS player to .770. He’s at .721 so far this season. Can the Giants tiptoe around this talent or will his bat wake up against them and spark a slightly struggling lineup?
Brewers’ bullpen: Milwaukee has the second-best bullpen in baseball for value (2.9 fWAR) behind only the Padres (3.9). Lefty Aaron Ashby is 9-0! There’s a little weakness in the closer role, with flamethrowing Abner Uribe having ceded the role to veteran Trevor Megill, but this is a tough group, and the Giants might once again find themselves unable to mount a comeback after the 5th inning.
Giants
Willy Adames: Last season, he had an overall great time against his former team, with a pair of homers in 7 hits and 5 walks against 4 strikeouts (.269/.375/.500 in 32 PA) in 7 games. Over his last 15 games, he’s hitting .311/.358/.672 (67 PA) with 5 doubles, a triple, 5 homers, and 5 walks against 14 strikeouts. Remarkably, it was almost immediately after I published this post about Willy Adames being the captain of the team that he started to annoy fans and pundits alike with his too-friendly ways with the opposition and his overall brain-less play in the field. Will he have 30 errors this season as Tim Kawakami surmised in the San Francisco Standard last week or is this return to Milwaukee, coupled with his hitting hot streak, a pivot point in his season?
Logan Webb: It was a questionable decision to bring the Giants’ most important player back from the IL in Colorado of all places, but the move worked out okay. He wasn’t good in his start against the Rockies, but allowing just 1 run in 4.1 innings wasn’t bad, either. Okay, you know… he was more good than bad. The Brewers’ lineup will be another big test for him, though.
Luis Arraez: .375/.424/.571 over his last 15 games (67 PA) with 3 doubles, a triple, a pair of homers, and 9 RBI along with 4 walks and just 2 strikeouts. For his career, he’s just a .264 hitter when facing the Brewers, and in Milwaukee, just .274 in 17 games (68 PA). With the Brewers starting at least two lefties in this four-game series, figure he won’t be white hot, but his bat still might be critical.
Giants’ bullpen: 25th in MLB by value (-0.2 fWAR) despite a 3.69 ERA (12th) overall. They’ve also held a not-terrible 3.85 ERA on the road, too, and with a Brewers lineup that is more “fine” than “awesome,” this might be a decent matchup for them to hold a narrow lead late in the game.
Tony Vitello watch
Milwaukee’s manager Pat Murphy was kinda-sorta known as a “college coach” before taking the Brewers job, but unlike Tony Vitello, he was a pro (signed with the Giants in 1982 and played in the minors), a special assistant in an MLB front office, a minor league manager, and finally a bench coach on a major league staff before being named as manager. Far from the same, but we’ll hear the comparison being made — and drawn as being much closer than it is — at least once this week (probably on the national telecast).
Prediction time
My last two times in the prediction corner have been spectacular flameouts (won’t get swept by Diamondbacks and the Giants will hit at least 5 home runs in Colorado). Will this be another one? The Giants won’t have double digit strikeouts against Kyle Harrison in Tuesday’s game. They’ve only struck out 10+ times in 13 games this season. Now, Harrison might K nine Giants or something and the Brewers’ stellar bullpen carves up the rest, but the former top pitching prospect of the Giants will, at best, only mildly embarrass them.
