The Milwaukee Brewers and Colorado Rockies wrap up their three-game series today in Denver. The Brewers are hoping for a rare road sweep; my quick and dirty research shows that Milwaukee has only swept the Rockies in Colorado once, from June 20-22, 2014. The winning pitchers in those games were Marco Estrada, Wily Peralta, and Kyle Lohse.
It’s been a wild series so far. The Brewers escaped with an extra-innings victory in game one after accruing only one hit through the game’s first seven innings.
Last night was a more comfortable win, as Milwaukee hit five solo homers and Jacob Misiorowski did Jacob Misiorowski things. This afternoon, Shane Drohan will start the game for the Brewers, while lefty Kyle Freeland takes the hill for the Rox.
Drohan is making his third start and 13th appearance this season for the Brewers. After a bit of a rough outing in his MLB debut on April 8th (a spot start in which he allowed three runs and walked four in just 2 2/3 innings), Drohan returned to the big leagues in late April as a long man out of the bullpen. Since then he’s been quite good: from April 24th through May 27th, Drohan made 10 appearances out of the bullpen and had a 1.82 ERA, 26 strikeouts, and just four walks in 24 2/3 innings. Necessity moved him back to the rotation on June 1st, when Drohan pitched the first four innings of Milwaukee’s 16-2 romp over the Giants. He allowed two runs on four hits and two walks while striking out five. Overall, Drohan has a 2.87 ERA and 2.78 FIP in 31 1/3 innings on the season.
Freeland is a Rockies legend, the owner of what was arguably the best pitching season in team history (he went 17-7 with a 166 ERA+ in 202 innings in 2018). But at age 33, he is having a disaster of a season. In 10 starts, Freeland owns an 8.06 ERA and 6.08 FIP. While his strikeout and walk numbers aren’t terrible, he’s allowing a ton of hits (12.6 per nine) and a ton of homers (2.4 per nine). Only the Cubs’ Jameson Taillon has allowed more homers per nine innings than Freeland among qualified pitchers, and that number of hits would be the most per nine innings in baseball by a lot—Zac Gallen is currently last with 10.9/9.
Expect Drohan’s innings to be somewhat limited today: he hasn’t thrown more than 71 pitches in any appearance this season (he had 68 in his last outing) and hasn’t completed more than 4 1/3 innings. This Rockies roster doesn’t exactly work the count, so he could get deeper into the game, but I wouldn’t expect Drohan to go much beyond 70 pitches even if he’s cruising. The bullpen should be in pretty good shape after Misiorowski went seven last night; the only players used out of the ‘pen on Saturday were Grant Anderson and Milwaukee debutant Drew Rom.
Christian Yelich gets the afternoon off with the lefty on the hill, so Jackson Chourio moves up into the leadoff spot. William Contreras will serve as the DH today, with Gary Sánchez behind the plate batting fifth. Jake Bauers, who is 4-for-6 with a homer, two doubles, four RBI, and four walks in the series, isn’t in today’s starting lineup; Chourio, Garrett Mitchell, and Blake Perkins are in the outfield today, while Andrew Vaughn will handle duties at first base. Luis Rengifo and Joey Ortiz make up the left side of the infield, and Brice Turang (who homered twice last night) plays second base and bats second.
First pitch today is at 2:10 p.m. It’s free on Brewers.TV no matter what market you’re in, and can be found in all the regular places on TV and the radio.
