Brewers fall in another sloppy loss, drop series to Giants

Loss obscures Myers’ debut

The Milwaukee Brewers did not trail today until the bottom of the eighth inning, but the whole game felt oddly precarious. Sloppy baseball reigned; the Brewers made outs on the bases, they continued to make defensive mistakes (a bit of a disastrous series in that regard), and they walked way too many batters. But an equally sketchy game for the Giants meant that the Brewers stayed either ahead or even through the first eight innings, but their luck finally ran out when they found themselves needing to get through an eighth inning without a reliable bullpen option remaining. The ugly loss clouded the season debut of one of last season’s heroes, Tobias Myers, who pitched four innings of two-run ball for the Brewers today.

Milwaukee got off to a nice start in the top of the first inning against Giants starter Landen Roupp. Brice Turang drew a walk, and Sal Frelick followed with a ground ball that found its way through the right side, and Turang advanced to third. With runners on the corners, Christian Yelich hit a fly ball to center that was plenty deep to score Turang from third, but Frelick — who was running on the play — lost track of the ball and got doubled off at first.

The out on the bases proved costly. Rhys Hoskins and Jake Bauers followed the odd double play with back-to-back singles, but Joey Ortiz bunted into an out to end the inning (an act that was not only puzzling but an alarming indicator of Ortiz’s current confidence level). The Brewers got one, but they could’ve had more.

The first pitch that Tobias Myers threw upon his return was whacked into center field for a base hit by Mike Yastrzemski. Welcome back, Tobias. Myers then slipped when trying to throw a 1-0 pitch to Willy Adames, which counts as a balk, so Yaz moved up to second, where he had to stay when Adames hit a weak ground ball to third base. But that run scored easily when Jung Hoo Lee also hopped on the first pitch and pulled a solid double down the right field line. Myers, though, recovered nicely: he got Matt Chapman to pop out in the infield and struck out Heliot Ramos to strand Lee at second. After one inning, it was 1-1.

Roupp started the second inning with a walk, too, this time of Garrett Mitchell. Vinny Capra then struck out, but on the decisive third strike, Mitchell stole second base, putting a runner in scoring position for Eric Haase. Haase grounded out to first, advancing Mitchell to third in the process; that proved to be crucial, as a 1-2 pitch in the dirt to Brice Turang got away from catcher Sam Huff and Mitchell scored from third. Turang flew out, but the Brewers had restored their one-run lead.

The Giants also started the second inning with a walk, when Myers put LaMonte Wade Jr. on with five pretty questionable pitches. But Myers got Tyler Fitzgerald to pop out, got Huff on a weak grounder, and got Luis Matos to fly out to left, and it was a pretty painless inning.

Milwaukee kept a little pressure on Roupp in the third when Hoskins hit a two-out double, but Bauers struck out looking on a close pitch at the end of a long at-bat, and Roupp had his first scoreless inning of the game.

The game got back to a tie in the bottom of the third when Yastrzemski hit a 3-2 pitch to exactly the right spot and just snuck it to the top of the high wall in right field for a solo homer on a ball that, according to Statcast, had an .070 xBA. Myers seemed a little rattled after that: he walked Adames after a long at-bat but then walked Lee on four pitches, and the Giants had two runners on and still no outs. But a mound visit from Haase settled Myers down, and he struck out Chapman, got Ramos to fly out, and got Wade to ground out to shortstop to end the inning with the score still tied.

Ortiz looped a base hit to center to start the fourth inning, advanced to second on a Mitchell groundout, and advanced to third on a wild pitch with Capra at the plate, setting the Brewers up nicely for another small-ball run. Capra then walked, and Haase dropped down a beauty of a bunt down the third-base line. That easily scored Ortiz, but when the throw to first went wide (it would have been a very close play) and went down the right field line, Capra came all the way around to score, and Haase ended up at second.

Turang then lined a solid single through the left side, his eighth hit in the last three games, resetting runners on the corners with one out. Frelick, though, did not drop down a squeeze bunt, though the effect was the same; Frelick chopped one down the first base line, and Wade thought about throwing home to get Haase but went to first instead; his moment of hesitation initially allowed Frelick to reach, but the Giants challenged the call at first and he was called out. Still, it was productive for Frelick, as Milwaukee took a 5-2 lead. That chased Roupp, too, and it was Spencer Bivens who faced Yelich; on the first pitch, Turang tried to steal third, was initially called safe, but the call was again overturned on a challenge, and the inning ended.

Fitzgerald made good contact on a 2-0 slider in the bottom of the inning, but Yelich made the catch going back in left field. One pitch later, Huff grounded out to third, and Myers was looking at a quick inning. But he fell behind the number nine hitter, Matos, who hadn’t gotten a hit in weeks, and he scorched a 3-1 fastball into left field for a two-out hit. Pat Murphy elected to let Myers face Yastrzemski for a third time after he’d already gotten him for two hits (including a homer), and they had a long battle, but Myers walked him on the eighth pitch of the at-bat.

Surprisingly, Murphy still elected to keep Myers in, even with two two-out baserunners and two arms ready in the bullpen. Myers started Adames with a couple of nasty breaking pitches for swinging strikes, and after a foul ball, he managed to retire his old teammate on a (solidly struck) fly ball to right field. It got a little sketchy, but Myers was through four innings in his return; he allowed two runs on four hits and four runs while striking out two. He threw 82 pitches.

Bivens, who threw only one pitch in the fourth, was back for the fifth, and he promptly walked the first two batters he faced, Yelich and Hoskins. Bauers, the next batter, hit a sharp grounder to first that could have been a double play, but Bauers beat the return throw to first, and the Brewers, for the third separate time in two innings, had runners on the corners with one out. This time, Ortiz didn’t bunt, though maybe he should’ve; instead, he had an unlucky at-bat in which two borderline pitches were called strikes to start him off, and then he hit the ball hard but right at Chapman, who started a 5-4-3 double play. Tough.

Abner Uribe was the first pitcher out of the pen for Milwaukee, and he got off to an inauspicious start as he walked the leadoff hitter, the fifth Brewer walk of the game. Chapman was next, and Uribe left a 100-mph sinker too high, which Chapman crushed out to the Brewer bullpen in center to cut the Brewer lead to 5-4. Uribe got ahead of Ramos but struggled to put him away; Ramos fouled off four straight 2-2 pitches, took ball three, and then walked on the 10th pitch of the at-bat, and Uribe was in the danger zone.

Murphy didn’t make the move to the warming Jared Koenig immediately, as Chris Hook was the man out of the dugout at this juncture. Uribe did get the first out in dramatic fashion: Wade hit a short pop fly behind third base, and Ortiz overran it before adjusting and making the catch only after a dive, a real “yikes” moment. Uribe gave Fitzgerald an 0-2 slider that saw way too much of the plate, but Fitzgerald popped it up for the second out, and Huff grounded out to second to end the inning with the Brewers’ lead intact.

A (sort of hilarious) two-out infield single by Eric Haase chased Bivens, but his replacement, Erik Miller, needed just one pitch to retire Turang on a ground ball. Jared Koenig replaced Uribe for the bottom of the sixth, and Adames reached with two outs on what was initially ruled a tough error on a weak ground ball to third (it was later changed to an infield hit) but Koenig got Lee with the help of a nice diving stop from Bauers at first base to end the inning.

Miller retired the Brewers in order in the top of the seventh — the first time a Giants pitcher had done so in the game. For the Brewers, it was Nick Mears in the bottom of the inning; he got away with a fastball right down the pipe to Chapman, who hit another deep fly ball to center, but one that hung up for Mitchell. Mears then had no trouble with Ramos, who he struck out, or Wade, who flew out to shallow right.

This game had settled down by this point from the frantic mess it had been through the first few innings, but it felt like a game where the Brewers could really use an insurance run or two. The Giants in the eighth turned to the submariner Tyler Rogers, who pitched in Wednesday’s game. Rogers struck out Bauers and Ortiz to start things off, but Mitchell knocked a two-out single to center. With Capra at the plate, Mitchell stole second base, but Capra struck out, and his batting average dipped to .077.

I’m not exactly sure what sequence of choices led to the Brewers needing to go to Tyler Alexander in the eighth inning of a one-run game, but regardless of how it happened, it was not an ideal situation. Things got off to an ominous start, as Alexander walked Fitzgerald, and pinch hitter Wilmer Flores improved to an absurd 8-for-11 in the series with a single lined to right. That put runners on the corners with nobody out for the Giants.

Alexander did get the first out without giving up the run when Matos hit a sharp grounder to third; Capra looked Fitzgerald back to third and threw Matos out at first, though the go-ahead run did advance to second. In need of a strikeout, Alexander got ahead of Yastrzemski 0-2 and threw a series of solid pitches, but Yaz kept fighting them off until he hit a weak ground ball to Turang, who was playing in. Turang tried to throw Fitzgerald out at home, but the ball just wasn’t hit hard enough (and Turang’s throw was bad), and the tying run scored without the Brewers recording an out.

That was all for Alexander, as the Brewers moved for Trevor Megill at this point to try to maintain the tie game. Adames was the batter, which felt somehow cosmic. In what felt like a fitting exclamation point on a chaotic baseball game (and a subpar defensive series), Adames hit a hard line drive right at Yelich, who started thinking about his throw home before he caught the ball. As any Little League coach will tell you, that will lead to trouble, and the ball bounced off Yelich’s glove. The go-ahead run scored, obviously.

Megill recovered to retire Lee and Chapman to end the inning, but the Brewers, in a game of missed opportunities and miscues, found themselves trailing for the first time in the game.

The somewhat erratic Camilo Doval, who finished off last night’s game for the Giants, was the choice in the top of the ninth, and in a game that just refused to go quietly, Doval walked the leadoff hitter Caleb Durbin on four pitches. Doval then fell behind Turang, as well, but then almost picked off Durbin and worked back into the count before getting Turang to fly out to left field for the first out. Frelick also flew out to about the exact same spot, and the Brewers were down to their last out in the form of Yelich, looking to redeem himself after the dropped fly ball in the bottom of the eighth.

Yelich got ahead and then lined a base hit into center field to extend the game for at least one more batter. Hoskins went after the first pitch — it wasn’t a bad pitch to hit, a slider in the zone — but he got under it, and a harmless fly ball ended the game.

That the Brewers lost three of four in San Francisco wasn’t necessarily a shock; the Giants are good, and it’s a tough place to play. It was the way that the Brewers lost this series. They made outs on the basepaths, they played uncharacteristically bad defense, they just didn’t do the fundamental things that last year’s division-winning team did so well. I’m not saying they can’t get over this: it’s still early, and maybe this series will work as a wake-up call. But this team this week looked like an inexperienced group of young players rather than a tough, smart division winner. The Brewers could have won this series; instead, they head to St. Louis at .500 and losers of three of four.

Not much to write home about, offensively. For the second straight game, the Brewers had only one extra-base hit, this one the Hoskins double. It was nice to see Myers back on the hill, but he definitely showed some rust, most notably in the four walks allowed.

The Brewers will spend the weekend taking on the Cardinals in a three-game series in St. Louis before finishing up the road trip with a three-game set on Chicago’s South Side in the middle of next week.