Brewers fall to Cardinals 7-2

WP: Miles Mikolas (13-3)
LP: Wade Miley (2-2)

HR: Travis Shaw (24), Christian Yelich (19), Marcell Ozuna (15)

Box Score

For the first time since the end of April, the Brewers are out of a playoff spot.

Tempers were definitely high in this game. In the top of the first, Lorenzo Cain got hit by a pit from Miles Mikolas. Then, in the bottom of the inning, Wade Miley threw behind Tyler O’Neill, leading to both benches being warned. Craig Counsell was enraged by this and argued with the umpires, promptly leading to his ejection. After the game, Adam McCalvy explained why Counsell was so angry:

With both benches warned, the teams kept playing. They exchanged solo home runs in the second inning, with Travis Shaw hitting one for the Brewers and Marcell Ozuna getting one for the Cardinals. Then, in the bottom of the third, things completely fell apart. After Kolten Wong led off the inning with a single, Mikolas attempted to bunt Wong up but the Brewers got Wong at second, though it came after a pickoff throw from Miley hit Wong in the elbow. Wong ended up coming out of the game after that.

Matt Carpenter hit into a groundout for the second out in the inning, then Wade Miley got a strikeout that should have ended the inning with no runs scored. However, Erik Kratz missed the ball, allowing Yadier Molina to reach base. O’Neill followed that with a bloop single to put the Cardinals up 2-1. After Ozuna walked, Paul DeJong singled through the shift to put the Cardinals up 4-1. All three runs were unearned in the inning.

That was the deciding factor for the game. Wade Miley pitched five innings, allowing four runs, but only one of them was earned. He did strike out seven in the game. Corey Knebel pitched the sixth and a throwing error from Arcia, a walk, and a triple by Harrison Bader increased the Cardinals lead to 6-1. Christian Yelich hit a solo home run to cut the lead to 6-2, but the Cardinals got it right back in the bottom of the inning with a walk and a double off of Dan Jennings for the final 7-2 score.

The offense struggled quite a bit today. Six different Brewers had a hit, but none had more than one. The team had no walks, and struck out eleven times. The only starting position players that did not strike out were Cain and Keon Broxton.

The Brewers can potentially move back into a playoff spot, and prevent a sweep, with a win tomorrow afternoon. Jhoulys Chacin will face John Gant in the final game of the series. First pitch is at 1:15 pm. It will be tough for the Brewers, who have lost their last 10 final games of a series, and haven’t won one since July 8.