The Brewers fought back from an early deficit to win their third straight game, scoring six runs in the eighth to complete a sweep of the Chicago White Sox.<\/p>\n
Starter Brandon Sproat got lit up in his Brewers debut, surrendering a grand slam before getting an out. After walking the first two hitters he faced, Chase Meidroth and Munetaka Murakami, Miguel Vargas lifted a fly ball to centerfield that should\u2019ve been the first out. Blake Perkins ran back instead of forward, letting it drop to load the bases with still nobody out. That brought up Colson Montgomery, who smacked a first-pitch cutter from Sproat over the centerfield fence for the aforementioned grand slam.<\/p>\n
Austin Hays grounded out for the first out of the game, but Andrew Benintendi walked on five pitches \u2014 the third walk of the inning. At this point, Grant Anderson was warming up in the Brewers\u2019 bullpen, but Sproat was able to bear down \u2014 inducing a pop-up from Everson Pereira and striking out Edgar Quero to keep the game from getting out of hand.<\/p>\n
Milwaukee was able to claw back almost immediately, halving the deficit in the bottom of the first. William Contreras doubled with one out, then advanced to third on a passed ball by Quero. Luis Rengifo lined out to Meidroth at second base for the second out, but Gary S\u00e1nchez \u2014 hitting cleanup for Milwaukee today \u2014 launched a home run into left field for the Brewers\u2019 first two runs of the day.<\/p>\n
Things didn\u2019t get much easier for Sproat after a nightmare start. He walked Tristan Peters on five pitches to start the second inning before giving up a grounder into the hole at shortstop that very well could have been a hit. Luckily, the Brewers\u2019 middle infield is Joey Ortiz and Brice Turang, who turned a beautiful double play to get Sproat two outs closer to a scoreless inning.<\/p>\n
Up next for the White Sox was Murakami, who hit a towering fly ball to right field. Sal Frelick trailed back with the ball, but when he jumped up to try and make the catch the ball bounced off of his glove and over the wall for a solo home run. Anderson proceeded to get loose in the Brewers\u2019 bullpen once again. Vargas then singled and stole second, and Montgomery drove him in with another single.<\/p>\n
Brewers manager Pat Murphy left Sproat in the game to face Hays, who struck out on three pitches to end the inning, After two innings, the score was Chicago 6, Milwaukee 2. Sproat made it through the third inning, but not before allowing another solo home run, this time to Pereira. His day ended there, having allowed seven runs, six hits, four walks, and three homers while striking out three.<\/p>\n
No doubt about it: Sproat\u2019s Brewers debut couldn\u2019t have gone much worse. Still, it\u2019s too soon to worry. Back in 2019, a guy named Corbin Burnes gave up 11 home runs in his first three major league starts. He turned out fine. It\u2019s also worth noting that catcher Jeferson Quero was making his major league debut, and that Sproat \u2014 who never pitched in the Brewers\u2019 minor league system \u2014 very likely hadn\u2019t worked with him much prior to today\u2019s game.<\/p>\n
After Sproat exited, the Brewers\u2019 bullpen shut down the White Sox and the offense started to claw back. Grant Anderson tossed two scoreless innings and Jared Koenig struck out the side in the sixth. Sal Frelick led off the bottom of the sixth with a double, and Brandon Lockridge knocked him in with his second RBI single in as many days.<\/p>\n
Neither team scored again until the bottom of the eighth, when Ortiz \u2014 who\u2019s had a hit in every game this season \u2014 singled off of reliever Chris Murphy to start the inning. Jake Bauers, who\u2019d come in to pinch-hit for Quero, struck out, but Ortiz was able to advance to second on a wild pitch. Brandon Lockridge beat out an infield single, Blake Perkins walked, and just like that the bases were loaded. The next batter, Turang, ripped an opposite-field single \u2014 scoring Ortiz and keeping the bases loaded. Contreras popped out for the second out, and Luis Rengifo went down to his final strike against Murphy. However, on the seventh pitch of the at-bat, Rengifo snuck a grounder up the middle to score Lockridge and Perkins.<\/p>\n
Just like that, the Brewers had the go-ahead run on first with Christian Yelich walking up to the plate to pinch hit for S\u00e1nchez. Yelich took a couple balls, fouled off a couple pitches, then hit a towering moonshot down the right field line that stayed just fair \u2014 clearing the bases and giving the Brewers a 9-7 lead.<\/p>\n
Yelich\u2019s home run came off the bat at 111.1 mph, making it the hardest hit ball by a Brewer so far this year. He may be getting older, but he\u2019s still got it.<\/p>\n
Trevor Megill came in for the save in the ninth and immediately gave up a single to Peters, bringing up the top of the lineup for the White Sox. Meidroth and Murakami both went down swinging, and Vargas lifted a deep fly to the warning track in right field that dropped harmlessly into the glove of Sal Frelick \u2014 ending the game and completing the season-opening sweep.<\/p>\n
Every Brewers starter recorded a hit today except for Jeferson Quero, who walked in one of his two plate appearances. The bullpen, stretched to six innings today, was once again lights-out. After Sproat exited the game, Milwaukee didn\u2019t allow a run. Anderson and Jake Woodford (who picked up the win) each went two scoreless innings, while Koenig and Megill racked up multiple strikeouts.<\/p>\n
The Crew will welcome the Tampa Bay Rays to American Family Field tomorrow for a three-game series. Kyle Harrison, set to make his Brewers debut, will face off against right-hander Nick Martinez. First pitch for the series opener is slated for 6:40 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brewers fought back from an early deficit to win their third straight game, scoring six runs in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":651375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2401],"tags":[5,136,843,59,4514,3527,4280,4,38411],"class_list":{"0":"post-651374","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-brewers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-brewers","10":"tag-milwaukee","11":"tag-milwaukee-brewers","12":"tag-milwaukee-brewers-news","13":"tag-milwaukee-brewers-scores-standings","14":"tag-milwaukeebrewers","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-wpa-game-recaps"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116315003656802393","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/651375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}