Brewers hold off Dodgers 3-1, enter month of May tied for best record in National League

Box Score

The Milwaukee Brewers may be without Corbin Burnes for the time being, but the starting rotation has certainly stepped up in his absence. Eric Lauer delivered the best start of his Brewers’ career on Thursday, and on Friday it was “Not Just Fastball” Freddy Peralta keeping the vaunted Dodgers’ offense down.

Both teams’ put runners on in the first inning but came up empty. In the second, though, Jackie Bradley, Jr. put the Brewers on the board first. Avisail Garcia led off the inning with a line drive single, then with one out, JBJ launched a fly ball over the wall in center field for his 100th career home run to make it 2-0.

Peralta retired ten batters in the row from the first through fourth innings, but that streak ended in the top of the fifth when AJ Pollock led off with a solo homer to left-center to make it a 2-1 game. At the same time that Peralta was mowing batters down, the Brewers were also getting handled by the Dodgers’ spate of bullpen pitchers on Johnny Wholestaff day. The Brewers had a streak of 13 batters retired in a row, which was broken by a single from Omar Narvaez in the sixth inning. Unfortunately, Narvaez also came up lame after reaching first base, and had to exit the game with a hamstring injury.

Peralta made it through six complete innings with just the one run allowed, which was actually the only hit he allowed as well. He walked one and struck out seven on 91 pitches before yielding to Brad Boxberger, who worked a scoreless seventh. JP Feyereisen posted a zero in the eighth, and owns a perfect 0.00 ERA across 15 appearances and 14.0 innings pitched. The Brewers added a Badger Mutual Insurance Run in the bottom of the eighth, with Kolten Wong leading the frame off with a double and coming around to after a pair of groundouts from Dan Vogelbach and Luke Maile.

Josh Hader entered and struck out the side on 11 pitches in the ninth inning to record his 7th save of the season. Despite a ridiculous amount of injuries and an offense that has struggled to score consistently, the Brewers hold a 16-10 record at the end of April, tied for best in the National League. Brandon Woodruff will take the mound for the Brewers on Saturday against Dustin May, with first pitch scheduled for 6:10 PM central.