Brewers hold on for 10-9 victory over Atlanta in series finale

Box Score

Sometimes, a baseball contest can seem like multiple games within a nine-inning span. Such was the case with Sunday’s series finale between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Atlanta Braves. The first six innings were a one-sided affair tilted towards the home team. The final three frames, however, featured an offensive explosion by the visitors. When the dust finally settled, the end result was our Menomonee Valley Nine eking out a narrow victory over the boys from Hotlanta.

Freddy Peralta got the start for the Brewers, and the young right-hander did his best to continue elbowing his way into the conversation, along with Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes, when it comes to who is the “ace” of this starting rotation. Peralta has a ways to go before matching the sub-2.00 ERAs that Woody and Burnes are currently sporting, but his 2.40 earned run average isn’t too shabby, either. Freddy took a no-hitter into the fifth inning before allowing consecutive singles to Austin Riley and William Contreras, but those wound up being the only base knocks he allowed across six shutout frames. Peralta walked one and punched out eight while hurtling 88 pitches to Omar Narvaez.

For the first time in what feels like forever, the offense showed up to support the starting pitcher, too. Dan Vogelbach cranked a two-run double to start the scoring in the bottom of the third. In the fourth, Narvaez added a run with an RBI double. Avisail Garcia continued his torrid May with his sixth homer of the season in the fifth, scoring Travis Shaw to make it 5-0. In the sixth, a passed ball, a wild pitch, and a ground out by Vogelbach led to three more runs, and by the time Milwaukee went to their first relief pitcher after Freddy’s night was done, the score was 8-0.

JP Feyereisen has been mostly stellar for Milwaukee as a rookie reliever this season, but after retiring the first batter in the seventh inning, he went single-walk-walk-single, which led to Atlanta’s first two runs scoring. Then Brent Suter came on, and Luis Urias momentarily forgot how to field his position. Pablo Sandoval and Ehire Adrianza both reached on balls fielded by Urias, and another run scored to make it 8-3. That brought Freddie Freeman up to the dish, and he deposited a first-pitch curveball from Suter out over the fence in center field for yet another grand slam, all of a sudden making it a one-run game at 8-7.

It was LoCain to the rescue in the bottom of the seventh, as his bases-loaded single off Josh Tomlin plated two very important insurance runs to make it 10-7. Atlanta scored one in the eighth against Devin Williams when Urias committed his second error of the game, and then got one off Josh Hader in the ninth as he allowed a walk, single, sacrifice fly, and another single before ending the contest with a strikeout to seal the 10-9 Milwaukee victory. That allowed the Brewers to avoid getting swept at home against Atlanta, pushed their record back over .500 at 21-20, and let them head into the Monday off-day on a high note. They’ll pick things back up on Tuesday on the road in Kansas City for an interleague series against the Royals, with Brandon Woodruff scheduled to face a yet-to-be-determined opponent. First pitch will take place at 7:10 PM central.