Game Thread #72: Milwaukee Brewers (38-33) vs. St. Louis Cardinals (36-34)

Brewers go for third straight win, series victory

The Milwaukee Brewers have won the first two games of their series with the slumping St. Louis Cardinals behind excellent pitching, which has held the Cardinals to just two runs in two games. They’ll look to get a third straight this afternoon to clinch a series victory in this four-game set at American Family Field.

After excellent starts from Jacob Misiorowski and Freddy Peralta in the first two games of the series, Milwaukee will today turn to Jose Quintana to continue the run. Quintana has gone five innings in each of the two starts he’s made since missing the last three weeks of May with a sore shoulder. In both outings, he dealt with significant traffic but achieved solid results. In the first, on June 1, he allowed two runs on four hits and four walks in a 5-2 victory over the Phillies. In his last outing, which was a week ago, Quintana allowed one run on five hits and three walks in a 4-3 win over the Padres.

The Cardinals, who have lost six in a row, will send Andre Pallante to the mound. He’s made 13 starts and thrown 72 innings this year with a 4.75 ERA and near-identical 4.76 FIP. He does not strike many batters out — just 47 in his 72 innings — and this season he’s been bitten by the home run bug (1.4 per nine innings), though that’s in contrast to lower home run numbers from the first three seasons of his career.

Though the Brewers have won two in a row, their offense hasn’t performed very well in June; they’ve scored five or more runs just three times in 12 games, though they’ve managed to go 7-5 in those games. The Brewers will run out the same lineup tonight that they used last night, with Sal Frelick leading off, Christian Yelich as the DH, and Isaac Collins in left field.

We got a couple of injury updates this morning, too. Curt Hogg tells us that Nestor Cortes threw another bullpen session, and while he remains a ways away, he is making progress. The Brewers also put out a press release stating that a couple of others are closer: Garrett Mitchell and Blake Perkins both started rehab assignments in the Arizona Complex League. We heard recently that we could see one or both of them in Milwaukee before the end of June.

First pitch today is at 3:10 p.m. on FanDuel Sports Network Wisconsin, and can also be seen nationally on FS1. They’ll also, of course, be on the radio.