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It’s not going well here in the early going as the Milwaukee Brewers chase this year’s Cactus Cup. Today the Crew dropped their third game in four Cactus League contests as they fell to the Kansas City Royals by a score of 6-3.
Zach Davies made the start for Milwaukee, his first appearance of the spring, and tossed a perfect first inning with two punchouts. Keon Broxton, batting leadoff for the first time this spring, lead off the bottom of the first with a triple off the wall in right center field and came around to score on Domingo Santana’s two-out single to give Milwaukee a 1-0 lead. It’s a small sample, but Keon is batting .375 so far this spring.
The Brewers added their second run of the game in the second inning when Yadiel Rivera smacked a solo shot off the batter’s eye, his first home run of the spring, to make it 2-0. Joba Chamberlain (2nd) and Carlos Torres (3rd) both pitched scoreless innings before the Royals broke through in the 4th inning against Michael Blazek. The righty allowed a single to Alex Gordon to lead off the inning, and after a fielder’s choice and a strikeout, walked Ryan O’Hearn and served up a two-run double to Brayan Pena.
After a scoreless inning by Taylor Jungmann in the 5th, the Brewers called on Hiram Burgos for the 6th inning and were going to allow him to finish the game. That is, until Burgos ran into some big trouble. He allowed a solo home run to Ryan O’Hearn in the sixth inning to give Kansas City a 3-2 lead, but did manage a scoreless 7th inning. Once he got to the 8th, he allowed a lead off double to Terrance Gore, an RBI single to Hunter Dozier, and a two-run homer to Peter O’Brien to make it 6-2. Burgos was then pulled in favor of Damien Magnifico, who recorded three outs without allowing another run.
The Brewers added a single run in the bottom of the 8th on an RBI single by Manny Pina to score Lewis Brinson (who had a hit and a stolen base and is now batting .800 this spring) to make it 6-3, but that’s where the game would finish after scoreless inning by David Goforth in the 9th.
The Brewers (1-3) will face off against the Reds (0-5) tomorrow at Maryvale at 2:05 PM CST. The game will be on FSWisconsin as well as the Brewers’ radio network, AM 620 in Milwaukee.