Brewers drop series opener against Blue Jays 7-2

Box Score

It was death by a million paper cuts for the Brewers on Tuesday night as they fell to the Blue Jays 7-2 in the opener of a three-game series.

The Blue Jays recorded 14 hits against Brewers pitching, 13 of which were singles.

Adrian Houser started for the Brewers. While he did not have his best command or stuff, walking three and sitting in the low 90s with his fastballs for much of the night, the right-hander still did a solid job of missing barrels. Houser limited the Blue Jays to a 28.6% hard hit rate and 87.1 mph average exit velocity while inducing 11 ground balls.

Unfortunately, the Blue Jays excelled at finding holes on those batted balls, recording 11 hits against Houser on 21 balls in play. As a result, he was tagged for seven runs (six earned) in 4 ¹⁄₃ innings. Houser also struck out three.

After the Blue Jays scored four runs in the bottom of the first, the Brewers’ defense did not offer Houser much assistance in a shaky second.

Alejandro Kirk reached first on a ground ball to lead off the inning when Houser failed to touch first base after a feed from first baseman Mike Brosseau. Two plays later, Brian Anderson failed to glove a routine chopper to third base.

Those two free outs came back to hurt Milwaukee as Toronto put up two runs in the inning.

The Brewers jumped out to an early lead when a first-inning home run by William Contreras made it a 2-0 game. After that, Milwaukee’s only hits were Andruw Monasterio’s two singles, the first of his big-league career.

After Houser departed, Bryse Wilson, Hoby Milner, and Jake Cousins combined to keep the Blue Jays off the board the rest of the way.

The Brewers look to rebound tomorrow night in the second game of the series. Julio Teheran makes his second start of the season opposite struggling right-hander Alek Manoah. First pitch is scheduled for 6:07 p.m. CT.