{"id":661638,"date":"2026-04-03T22:30:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T22:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/661638\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T22:30:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T22:30:29","slug":"game-thread-7-milwaukee-brewers-5-1-kansas-city-royals-3-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/661638\/","title":{"rendered":"Game Thread #7: Milwaukee Brewers (5-1) @ Kansas City Royals (3-3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Milwaukee Brewers, coming off a 5-1 homestand to kick off the season, take their show on the road for the first time tonight when they take on the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium. (Check out Harrison\u2019s series preview here<\/a>.) Chad Patrick is scheduled to pitch for the Brewers, while Luinder Avila will make his first career start after debuting with 13 (effective) relief outings down the stretch last seasonAv. There is weather in the area, though, so keep an eye out for delays.<\/p>\n

Milwaukee swept the White Sox in their first series of the season and then took two of three from the Rays, and there was no shortage of dramatics along the way. Kansas City opened the season by losing two of three in Atlanta, but took two in a three-game series with the Twins to open their home schedule.<\/p>\n

Patrick is coming off a start in which his final line wasn\u2019t bad, but in which he didn\u2019t seem to have his best stuff. He allowed just one run in 4 1\/3 innings, but the White Sox made some hard, tough-luck contact toward the end of the outing. Still, he walked only one batter compared to four strikeouts, and his pitch count (74 in 4 1\/3 innings) wasn\u2019t disastrous.<\/p>\n

Avila, a righty, counts as a rookie, though, as mentioned, he made 13 appearances and threw 14 effective innings (1.29 ERA, 2.14 FIP) last season, all but one in September. Avila isn\u2019t a complete non-prospect (he ranked 19th on MLB Pipeline\u2019s Royals list going into 2025 and 9th in 2026), but he\u2019s never been a top 100 prospect. Avila does through pretty hard (he features a four-seam fastball and a sinker which sit at about 96 mph) but intriguingly he threw his curveball more than any other pitch last season, a whopping 43% of the time. We\u2019ll see if that persists into this season, when he\u2019ll presumably take a slightly different approach as a starter. He has struggled with control in the minors, and even when he was so good at the end of last season, he walked almost four batters per nine innings. Avila also made two scoreless appearances totaling four innings for the champions from Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic this spring, though he walked as many guys as he struck out and was perhaps fortunate to get through unscathed.<\/p>\n

The Brewers\u2019 lineup is, unsurprisingly, packed with lefties (their clearly stronger side, with Jackson Chourio and Andrew Vaughn out) against the right-handed Avila. Of note, David Hamilton is getting the start at shortstop, while Luis Rengifo slides into the starting lineup at third base. Joey Ortiz will start the game on the bench tonight. One right-handed surprise, though, is Brandon Lockridge in left-field, who gets a start versus the right-hander over the switch-hitter, Blake Perkins.<\/p>\n

An old friend is in the Kansas City lineup tonight; Isaac Collins, who has warmed up a bit after a tough start, is in left field for the Royals. The main attraction, of course, is superstar shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., batting second, who might be almost as good as Brice Turang.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also Brewers news that doesn\u2019t directly involve the major-league team: Cooper Pratt\u2019s extension has been finalized<\/a>, and he\u2019s been added to the 40-man roster (and optioned to Triple-A Nashville, where he played last weekend). Steward Berroa has been designated for assignment to open that roster spot.<\/p>\n

Tonight\u2019s game, scheduled for 6:45 (but again, watch the weather), is exclusively on Apple TV. If you\u2019re not an Apple TV subscriber, the game will, as usual, be on the Brewers Radio Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Milwaukee Brewers, coming off a 5-1 homestand to kick off the season, take their show on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2401],"tags":[5,136,843,59,72545,4514,4280,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-661638","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-discussions","13":"tag-milwaukee-brewers-news","14":"tag-milwaukeebrewers","15":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116343146373878964","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661638","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=661638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}