In today’s game between the Milwaukee Brewers and Toronto Blue Jays, Quinn Priester and Kevin Gausman treated us to a great pitcher’s duel in a game which was scoreless through five-and-a-half innings. Toronto scored first, an unearned run after a rare Brice Turang error in the bottom of the sixth, but as we have seen repeatedly over the last three months, this is a resilient team. After manufacturing a run to tie it up, the Brewers set off some fireworks in the ninth inning against a beleaguered
Blue Jay bullpen, fireworks which were set off by the young superstar playing in his first game since the end of July.
Gausman’s first pitch of the afternoon sailed high and wide, and Turang worked him to a full count before Gausman struck him out with one of his patented splitters. Next up was Jackson Chourio, taking his first at-bat for the Brewers since July 29th. It was very nearly a memorable moment: Chourio jumped on the first pitch, a fastball down the middle, and blasted it to center field, but Myles Straw went up and got it at the wall in what appeared to be a legit home-run robbery. (Statcast had it as a home run in nine ballparks, including American Family Field.) A drag, but a 101 mph, 407-foot drive on his first swing was encouraging. Christian Yelich was third, and he made Gausman work before he also hit one deep to center that was caught by Straw. This one wasn’t a robbery, but it went 386 feet, according to Gameday, and was caught on the warning track. Some loud contact, but no baserunners in the first for Milwaukee.
George Springer, the 35-year-old in the midst of his best season since at least 2022, started the day for the Blue Jays’ offense by striking out on a good Priester sinker. Addison Barger was next, and he hit a chopper against the infield shift but third baseman Caleb Durbin, standing where the shortstop normally would, had an easy play. Priester pounded the bottom of the zone against Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who hit a soft fly ball to left for the third out. It was a good start for the Brewers’ right-handed sinkerballer.
William Contreras struck out to start the second inning, but Sal Frelick followed with the first hit of the game when he hit a solid line drive to center field for a single. Andrew Vaughn was next and he blistered a ball into left field at 110 mph but hit it right at Springer for a tough-luck second out. (Between Chourio’s robbed homer and Vaughn’s line drive, the Brewers had made outs in the first two innings on balls with xBA via Statcast of .660 and .670.) Isaac Collins got ahead of Gausman but popped out to shallow right for the third out. Through two, the Brewers looked like they were seeing Gausman well, but had just one single to show for it.
Bo Bichette took two pitches right down the middle to start the bottom of the second, but he made Priester throw five more pitches before grounding out to Turang. Alejandro Kirk hit a big-league pop-up for the second out, and Nathan Lukes went after the first pitch and hit a weak grounder back to the mound. Two low-stress innings were in the books for Priester.
Durbin started the third by reaching on a single up the middle; Bichette dove and knocked it down but had no play. But Gausman recovered with strikeouts of Andruw Monasterio and Turang and then successfully picked off Durbin for the third out after persistently trying to get him throughout the entire inning. Chourio was left standing at home plate and would lead off the fourth.
Ty France had the first Toronto hit of the day when he started the bottom of the third with a ground ball that snuck through the middle for a single. After Andrés Giménez flew out, Straw hit what looked like it should have been a single to center field, but he turned on his considerable jets and turned it into a hustle double. (I don’t think there was a mistake in center by Chourio; it was just a ball hit in the right spot and a fast guy.) Toronto had runners on second and third with one out for the top of their order, but Priester got Springer to pop out to second base for the second out and had a way out of the inning. Barger was next and he smoked a line drive that reached Monasterio on a bounce, and Mona played the difficult hop nicely and made a strong throw to first to end the inning.
After taking two splitters low and outside, Chourio took the fourth pitch he saw since getting activated and rifled it into center field at a blazing 114 mph for a single to lead off the fourth. With Yelich at the plate, Chourio advanced to second on a wild pitch, but Yelich struck out swinging for the first out. Contreras looked frustrated with himself after fouling off an 0-1 fastball right down the middle, and he struck out two pitches later; Gausman’s sixth K of the game. Frelick made good contact and pulled one down the right field line, but France caught it on a slide and flipped to Gausman, who just beat Frelick to the bag for the third out.
Guerrero Jr. popped out to start the bottom of the fourth. Monasterio made another nice play in the hole to get Bichette for the second out, and Kirk fell behind 0-2 before hitting a weak tapper back to Priester, which capped an eight-pitch, 1-2-3 inning. Gausman responded with his easiest inning of the afternoon: Vaughn popped out on the first pitch, Collins popped out in foul territory a few pitches later, and Durbin hit a sharp ground ball but right at Giménez, and Gausman matched Priester with an eight-pitch inning of his own.
With one out in the bottom of the fifth, France reached for the second time when he hit a swinging bunt to third for an infield single. But Priester was in the mood to keep facing minimums, and he got the next batter, Giménez, to ground into a 4-6-3 double play to end the inning. Through five complete, it remained scoreless, and both pitchers were cruising after some early close calls.
The sixth continued apace for Gausman and the Brewers. Monasterio popped out in foul ground for the first out, Turang struck out swinging, and Chourio finally didn’t make strong contact: he flew out to center on a routine fly ball. Since Chourio’s single to start the fourth, Gausman had retired nine straight.
The Blue Jays managed a leadoff baserunner to start the bottom of the sixth when Straw, like France in the previous inning, reached on a swinging bunt down the third base line. It looked like Priester was going to erase Straw like he had France, too, when Springer grounded into what looked like it would be a 5-4-3 double play, but Turang’s relay throw was wide, which allowed Springer to advance to second. Barger hit a solid single to right—the first “real” hit off of Priester since the third inning—but he hit it hard enough that Springer needed to hold at third, and there was still a chance to get out of the inning without any damage as Guerrero came up with runners on first and third and one out. Guerrero did what he needed to, though, and hit a sac fly to center that scored Straw. A bad throw by Chourio back to the infield allowed Barger to tag and reach second and gave the dangerous Bichette a good opportunity to get another run in. But after working to a full count, Bichette struck out on a foul tip, and the inning ended with Toronto ahead 1-0.
It was tough luck for Priester, who was removed from the game after six innings and just 82 pitches. He allowed the game’s first run on an infield hit, an error, a single, and a sac fly. For most of the afternoon, Priester was a model of efficiency who bamboozled Blue Jays hitters up and down the lineup. He finished with just that one unearned run allowed on five hits (two of which were swinging bunts for cheap infield hits), and after a season-high five walks in his last outing, Priester didn’t walk anyone. He struck out three.
The Brewer offense came out looking to pick Priester up. Yelich came out and busted Gausman’s consecutive outs streak by lining a double down into the right field corner. Contreras fell behind 0-2 but understood that the most important thing was for him to not strike out, and he took a little hack at a fastball on the outside corner and advanced Yelich to third on a groundout to first. Frelick, one of the best contact hitters in the league, had a prime opportunity to knock Yelich in. It almost didn’t matter: Yelich was very nearly picked off third by the catcher Kirk after a 1-0 pitch. Frelick tried to check his swing on the next pitch but made contact, and while it didn’t look great, it did the trick; Frelick was tagged out by Gausman, but Yelich scored from third to tie the game. The Brewers were still batting, and Vaughn had a pesky at-bat in which he fell behind 0-2 but fouled off five pitches and took a couple of balls before striking out looking on a pitch that was not actually a strike. The ten-pitch at-bat got Gausman’s pitch count into the upper 90s, ending his afternoon, and the Brewers went to the bottom of the seventh with the score 1-1.
Priester was relieved in the bottom of the seventh by Jared Koenig, who’d had a three full days off since his rough outing against Arizona on Tuesday. Koenig fell behind Kirk but came back to to strike him out to start things. Lukes was replaced by pinch-hitter Davis Schneider, who, like Kirk, got ahead 2-0 but also struck out. Koenig flipped things around and got ahead of France 0-2, and a couple pitches later he struck him out, too. It was a great response for Koenig after giving up five hits and blowing a late two-run lead when he was last on the mound.
Gausman’s afternoon ended after his seven innings of one-run ball, and he was replaced by the former Phillie and Oriole, Seranthony Domínguez. Collins greeted him rudely by grounding an 0-1 fastball into right field for a leadoff single. It seemed like a potential bunt situation for Durbin, but he did not bunt and instead grounded into a 5-4-3 double play. Monasterio had a chance with two outs and the bases empty, and he lined a solid single up the middle. With a 12-game hitting streak potentially on the line, Turang was the hitter, but he grounded out to second (and nearly impaled Domínguez when his bat exploded).
With Abner Uribe serving as the current closer, it was Nick Mears in the eighth of a tie game for Milwaukee. He struck out Giménez to start things, but Straw lined one to left, and was thinking about another hustle double, but Collins got it back in quickly. Talk about having a day: Straw had three hits and robbed Chourio of a homer in the first. Straw’s hit gave Toronto a speedy baserunner with one out. Mears got Springer to pop out to Turang for the second out, and then Pat Murphy opted to play matchups and brought in Aaron Ashby to face Barger (who’d killed the ball all day). Blue Jays manager John Schneider countered and brought Ernie Clement off the bench; Clement made good contact and Chourio looked a little shaky on his route, but he caught it moving back toward the warning track for the last out.
Toronto closer Jeff Hoffman came to the mound for the top of the ninth in a 1-1 game. Chourio tried to hold up but couldn’t on the first pitch, he took a ball on the second pitch, and on the third pitch he hit a fly ball deep to the opposite field that kept carrying until it carried all the way over the wall. What a day for the kid. If that wasn’t enough, Yelich went after the next pitch, a low fastball, and hit it out to left to give the Brewers back-to-back opposite-field homers.
Hoffman managed to get Contreras on a ground ball to short for out number one, but he walked Frelick with one out and the crowd started to let Hoffman hear it. Vaughn grounded out, but Frelick was running on the pitch, and thus prevented a double play—important! On an 0-2 pitch, Hoffman left a fastball down the middle and Collins blasted it into the left-field gap to score Frelick from second and make it 4-1. Collins’ double ended Hoffman’s miserable day, as Schneider turned to Yariel Rodríguez to try to get Toronto out of the ninth. Brian Anderson managed to get a Bernie Carbo discussion into the broadcast during Durbin’s pesky at-bat (shout out Bernie Carbo, who played 69 games for the Brewers before he was traded for franchise legend Cecil Cooper), but Durbin struck out to end the inning. It was an inning of fireworks for the Brewer offense, though, and they handed a three-run lead to their acting closer, Uribe.
Uribe, of course, pitched yesterday in a game in which the Brewers led by five, so Milwaukee was left to hope that yesterday’s perhaps unnecessary workload wouldn’t affect him in a closer game today. Uribe had a nice battle with Guerrero to start the inning, an at-bat which included an exploding bat on a foul ball and five straight sinkers until Guerrero swung violently at a 3-2 slider that hung right over the middle of the plate. He missed, thankfully, and Uribe had one out. Bichette, up next, swung at a 1-0 pitch that was so far inside it hit him—a painful way to go to a 1-1 count. Bichette overcame whatever shame he may have felt at that ugly swing and hit a 2-2 pitch through the middle, just out of the reach of Monasterio, and gave Toronto a one-out baserunner. But on the second pitch of the next at-bat, Kirk grounded into about as easy a double play as you’ll get, 6-4-3 to end the game.
The win gave the Brewers, at worst, two out of three on the road against the team that came into the series with the best record in the American League. It also gave Quinn Priester another well-deserved win to improve his record to 12-2 in a game where Brewer pitchers shut down the powerful Toronto offense: combined, Priester, Koenig, Mears, and Uribe allowed seven hits, no walks, and one unearned run.
On offense, Chourio was the star. He had the home run and the 114 mph single, but he was mere inches (or a worse Toronto center fielder) away from a second homer in his first game in 32 days. Yelich also had a great day with two extra-base hits, a double and a homer, and two runs scored. Collins added two hits, including his RBI double in the ninth.
Milwaukee will go for the sweep tomorrow in a big-name pitching matchup between Brandon Woodruff and Max Scherzer. That game is early, scheduled for 12:37 p.m. central time, and it’ll be on MLB Network for those out of market.
