The Brewer offense had a solid day today against a 2026 All-Star, Pittsburgh starter Braxton Ashcraft. But Brandon Sproat had a second straight poor, inefficient start for the Brewers, and a late meltdown by one of the team’s more reliable but suddenly struggling relievers gave the Pirates a late lead. Milwaukee tried to mount a ninth-inning rally but came up just short, and the Pirates had a big comeback win.
Ashcraft got off to a good start: after falling behind Christian Yelich 3-0, he
came back and got him to pop out to shallow left. Garrett Mitchell struck out looking at an 0-2 pitch and, frustratingly, unsuccessfully challenged the pitch, putting the Brewers behind the eight ball for the rest of the game in that respect. Brice Turang flew out to left, and Aschraft had a 1-2-3 first inning.
Sproat’s start wasn’t as good. He yanked a fastball on a 2-2 pitch to leadoff hitter Jake Mangum and hit him in the foot to give Pittsburgh a leadoff baserunner. Brandon Lowe got a mistake on an 0-2 fastball down the middle but got a little bit under it and flew out to center for the first out, but Sproat yanked another pitch, this one a 1-2 curveball after seven straight foul balls, that just grazed the tip of Bryan Reynolds’ shoe. Esmerlyn Valdez hit an 86 mph ground ball that could’ve been a tailor-made double play with a slightly differently positioned infield, but this one found the hole between Joey Ortiz and Cooper Pratt and scored Mangum from second.
Sproat came back with a nice strikeout of Ryan O’Hearn, who wasted Pittsburgh’s first challenge, too. Another yanked fastball on 0-2 got past catcher William Contreras and allowed Reynolds and Valdez to advance to second and third, which mattered when Nick Gonzales hit a ground ball to Ortiz, who bobbled the ball and didn’t have a play on anyone; a rare error which cost the Brewers another run. On his 34th pitch, Sproat finally got a Tyler Callihan to ground out to end the inning. It was a sloppy first: both batters that Sproat hit came around to score, despite the fact that he didn’t walk anyone and his only hit allowed was a not-hard-hit single.
The Milwaukee offense had a hole to dig out of today, but they very quickly did so. Contreras got things going into the second by lining a double into the left-field corner, and three pitches later—on a sinker right in the happy zone—Jake Bauers crushed a ball 112 mph into the seats in right field. 2-2 ballgame.
The inning ended quickly after that—Luis Lara hit a looping liner to second base, and after a Pratt fly out, shortstop Jared Triolo made a nice play to rob Sal Frelick of a hit. Triolo led off the bottom of the second hit a line drive, but Turang made a nice leaping catch for the first out. On the first pitch to catcher Henry Davis, he popped up a bunt in foul territory—Sproat made a diving attempt and almost caught it, but needed a minute. He continued with a dirty jersey, but walked Davis five pitches later. Sproat started in a 1-0 hole against Mangum after his second pitch-timer violation, but on 2-2 Mangum hit a ground ball to Ortiz which turned into a fielder’s choice out at second base. On an 0-1 pitch to Lowe, Mangum took off for second, and for some reason did not slide, enabling Contreras to throw him out at second base. It was another inefficient inning, but Sproat kept Pittsburgh off the board.
Ortiz was living on the edge to start the third when he risked the team’s second challenge on a 2-1 pitch with nobody out in the third, but he was right. Unfortunately, Ortiz ended up lining out on 3-2, so it didn’t matter much. Yelich got a hanging slider on 3-2 but could only foul tip it into the catcher’s glove for the second out. Another strikeout of Mitchell ended the inning.
Sproat started the bottom of the third with a couple strikeouts of his own, but with two outs Valdez, who had the Pirates’ one hit in the first inning, got a hold of a cutter and hit it out to dead center. His home run restored the Pirates’ lead. Things went a little sideways after that; Sproat hit O’Hearn with a 2-1 pitch and then walked Gonzales on five pitches. For the second straight inning, the Brewers got someone up in the bullpen, but Sproat got Callihan to fly out to left on a 3-2 pitch and was able to finish the inning with the Brewers down just one.
After a soft lineout by Turang, Contreras smoked a ball for the second straight time up but this 108 mph line drive was caught in center by Mangum. Bauers struck out on three pitches chasing a curveball way out of the zone, but that was after he was upset by Ashcraft’s quick pace on the mound.
Sproat was done after three rocky innings. That he allowed only three runs was almost surprising; he only allowed two hits, but he walked two and hit three batters and it took him 83 pitches to record nine outs—his second extremely inefficient outing, after he needed 92 pitches to get through four in his last start. Craig Yoho replaced Sproat in the fourth, and he started by striking out Triolo but then walked the number-nine hitter, Davis, on four pitches. A Mangum ground ball to Pratt started what was almost a 6-3 double play, but it wasn’t quite hit hard enough and Mangum beat the throw to first. Lowe was next and he hit a ball hard toward first, but Bauers made a nice pick on the short hop and stepped on first for the third out.
Luis Lara led off the second with his first career extra-base hit, a double into the gap in right that Mangum slid to cut off, lest Lara end up with a triple. Pratt followed with a looping fly ball to left which Callihan dove for but couldn’t come up with—it got past him and Pratt ended up at second with a double, which scored Lara from first and tied the game. The Brewers’ light-hitting players weren’t done, either: Frelick got a hold of a 1-1 slider that didn’t get low enough and hit it to the seats in right field for a two-run homer that gave Milwaukee their first lead of the game. It was Frelick’s fourth homer and first since April 30th.
After Ashcraft picked up outs on an Ortiz fly ball and another Yelich strikeout, Mitchell and Turang drew back-to-back two-out walks. That gave Contreras, who’d scorched two balls today, a chance with two on and two outs, but he struck out to end the inning. Still—the Brewers had taken a 5-3 lead against the Pittsburgh All-Star, and they’d pushed his pinch count up to 98 through five innings, getting into the bullpen early in this doubleheader.
Yoho, back out for the fifth, got Reynolds to ground out and struck out Valdez. On a 1-1 pitch with two outs and nobody on, Contreras unsuccessfully challenged a changeup that missed outside and Milwaukee was without a challenge for the last four-plus innings of the game. It didn’t matter, either, as two pitches later Yoho got O’Hearn waving at a changeup for the third out.
Carmen Mlodzinski relieved Ashcraft in the top of the sixth and on his first pitch got Bauers to fly out to right-center. Lara walked on four non-competitive pitches, and Pratt got into a long battle after falling into an 0-2 hole that ended with solid single to center. Milwaukee was unable to capitalize on their rally, though: Frelick grounded into a fielder’s choice that would’ve been a double play had Triolo not dropped the ball on the transfer, and Ortiz flew out to center field to end the inning with runners stranded on first and third.
Chad Patrick entered in the bottom of the sixth (relieving Yoho, who had a very nice day of work) and gave up a leadoff baserunner when Gonzales reached on a high chopper for an infield hit. Callihan lined out to Lara in left for the first out, and Patrick quickly got out of the inning with a 4-6-3 double play from Triolo.
Yelich tried to bunt for a hit to lead off the seventh—he put down a good bunt but couldn’t quite beat the throw on a very close play at first. Too bad, because the next batter, Mitchell, lined a ball into left that he turned into a hustle double. Turang also hit one hard into left, but his 104 mph fly ball was too close to Callihan and there were two outs. Contreras, though, looped a two-out RBI single into left and the Brewers’ lead was up to 6-3 after Mitchell raced home on what would’ve been a close play with a different player running. Bauers drew a walk to extend the inning, but Lara flew out to center to end what was still a productive inning.
Trouble came in the bottom of the seventh. Davis added a single to his two walks, at which point the Brewers removed Patrick in favor of Aaron Ashby. Mangum grounded a single through the right side that was followed by a looping liner off the end of the bat from Lowe that loaded the bases with nobody out. None of Pittsburgh three hits to start the inning was hit all that hard, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles, sometimes.
The batter with the bases loaded was the notorious Brewer nemesis Bryan Reynolds, but Ashby made him look foolish chasing a 1-2 curveball for the first out. But Valdez, who’d already homered and hit an RBI single in the game, was up next, and Ashby ominously fell behind. On a 3-1 pitch, an Ashby sinker got way too much of the plate and Valdez drove it out to right field for a scoreboard-flipping grand slam. Ashby struck out the next two to end the inning, but the damage had been done; the Pirates led 7-6 after seven innings.
Now facing an unfortunate deficit, the Brewer offense needed to get going again. Mlodzinski was still pitching in his third inning, and he started the inning with a strikeout of Pratt. Frelick got into a long battle but also struck out on a foul tip on the eighth pitch of the at-bat, and an Ortiz groundout ended the top of the eighth.
Bryse Wilson’s return to the Brewers came with him trying to keep the Pirate lead at one in the bottom of the eighth. He did that quite deftly, with a flyout and two groundouts, and the Brewers went to the ninth needing a run with the top of the order coming up.
Lefty Gregory Soto entered for the Pirates, and the Brewers somewhat surprisingly did not pinch-hit for the struggling Yelich. He came through, though, with a solid single to left to start things off, and with Yelich on first the Brewers did send Jackson Chourio to the plate in place of Mitchell. Chourio, though, popped out in foul territory near first base for the first out. Turang was next, and drew a walk in a weird at-bat for the home-plate ump (he called a 3-1 pitch that wasn’t all that close a strike—and of course Milwaukee was out of challenges—and then called a closer 3-2 pitch a ball, which the Pirates couldn’t challenge after using their last one earlier in the inning).
Double-play machine Contreras was up with one out and runners on first and second, and he did hit a ground ball to shortstop—it probably would’ve been hit slowly enough that the Pirates wouldn’t have been able to end the game with a double play, but Triolo dropped the ball when trying to throw to second and everybody was safe, and the Brewers had the bases loaded with one out. Andrew Vaughn, noted lefty destroyer, pinch-hit for Bauers… but hit a ground ball to third that turned into an unconventional 5-2 double play. Game over.
What a drag of a baseball game. The Brewers played pretty sloppy baseball and were then undone by a stinker of an outing from Aaron Ashby, whose struggles in the last month have become far too much to ignore.
Milwaukee’s offense did plenty to win the game—they had 10 hits, including doubles for Contreras, Lara, Pratt, and Mitchell and the home runs by Bauers and Frelick. But Sproat and Ashby were bad today, which overshadowed nice outings for Yoho (three strikeouts, no hits in two scoreless innings) and Wilson (three quick outs in his return to the Brewers). Valdez destroyed the Brewers: he had three hits, two of which were homers, and knocked in six of Pittsburgh’s seven runs.
Milwaukee will look to recover in the second game of today’s double header in about an hour. Shane Drohan starts for the Brewers in game two, with Bubba Chandler on the mound for Pittsburgh.
