Jesus Aguilar delivers walk-off blast as Brewers beat Marlins, 6-5

Box Score

Milwaukee’s starting pitchers have been performing perhaps better than expected so far this season, but that fortune didn’t extend to Brent Suter’s outing last night. The game got off to a troublesome start for the soft-tossing lefty, who allowed a solo home run to the second batter of the game, Derek Dietrich, to put the Brewers in a quick 1-0 hole. The next inning didn’t go much better, as Suter served up consecutive singles to Justin Bour and Cameron Maybin to begin the frame. That brought former Brewer Lewis Brinson up to the plate, who continued his revenge tour through the 414 with his a three-run shot - his third dinger of the series - to make it a 4-0 game.

Suter would settle down a bit after that and wound up completing five innings while allowing only one more run. His line for the day was 5 IP, 8 H, 5 ER, 1 BB, and 4 K. His ERA for the season now stands at 5.68. With Wade Miley on the mend and Brandon Woodruff (1.65 ERA in AAA) pitching well in the minors, Suter’s time in the rotation may be running short. Fortunately for Suter, Jacob Barnes, Josh Hader, Matt Albers, and Jeremy Jeffress each tossed a scoreless inning apiece to keep Miami at five runs.

Milwaukee’s offense came alive during the first two games of the series, and they started to chip away at the deficit in the second inning with a Travis Shaw solo home run, his fourth of the season. Next they put together a two-run rally in the fourth, which started with a Ryan Braun leadoff double. Shaw walked to bring up Eric Thames, who snuck an RBI single through the right side to plate Milwaukee’s second run. Eric Sogard followed with an RBI groundout for the Brewers’ third run.

Milwaukee scored their fourth run in the fifth inning on a Braun sac fly that scored Domingo Santana, but entered the eighth inning trailing by a score of 5-4. Shaw and Thames both collected two-out walks in the bottom of the eighth, and then Sogard hit a popup to shallow left that wound up falling in. It was originally scored as an error, but was changed to a double after the game. That brought in Shaw to tie the game at 5 apiece, although Thames was thrown out at home.

The Marlins brought in Junichi Tazawa to try and preserve the tie in the 9th and send the game to extras, and the first batter to the plate was Jesus Aguilar. He had entered earlier as a defensive replacement and this was his first at-bat of the game. Aguilar fell into a quick 0-2 hole, and then fouled off seven pitches while working his way to a full count. On the 13th pitch of the battle, Aguilar got on he could handle:

That’s now five wins in a row for the Cream City Nine (13-9), thanks in large part to a bullpen that has worked 17.2 consecutive scoreless innings with five hits, three walks, and 21 strikeouts. The Brewers will attempt to complete the four-game sweep of Miami (5-15) beginning at 1:10 PM CST on Sunday, and it will be #JuniorGuerraDay. Our hero will face off against former Brewers Caleb Smith, who Milwaukee selected in the 2016 Rule 5 Draft before immediately trading his rights to the Cubs for cash considerations.