Peralta shines, offense does just enough in Brewers’ 4-0 victory over Cubs

Box Score

After two ugly losses to their biggest rival, the Brewers turned to their ace, Freddy Peralta, to stop their three-game skid. Peralta responded with six fabulous innings, followed by three more good ones from the bullpen, and Milwaukee’s struggling offense did just enough — and capitalized on Chicago’s one real mistake of the day — to pull out a 4-0 victory, salvaging the last game of this otherwise-ugly series.

Peralta started out today’s game by giving them something they badly needed: a scoreless first inning. Ian Happ struck out, Kyle Tucker rolled over a 2-0 changeup, and Seiya Suzuki also struck out, with Peralta getting some help from home-plate umpire Malachi Moore on the last one (the called third strike was definitely high, but the Brewers will certainly take what breaks they can get at the moment).

In the bottom of the first, it was Jackson Chourio leading off against Cubs starter Shota Imanaga, and in a frustratingly familiar scene, he popped out on the first pitch. Isaac Collins, hitting in the two-hole today, saw a few more pitches and finished his at-bat by dropping a single in front of Happ in left field. William Contreras followed with a very different kind of single — a 111-mph screamer to center, hit hard enough that Collins had to hold at second. Christian Yelich then just missed the sweet spot on one and flew out to fairly deep right, and Rhys Hoskins popped out to center, and their two first-inning hits went for naught.

The good call that Peralta got to end the first was cosmically corrected by a terrible missed third strike on a 3-2 pitch to the second inning’s leadoff hitter, Michael Busch. Then, after a Nico Hoerner strikeout, Busch advanced to second when the first-base umpire, Andy Fletcher, ruled obstruction by Hoskins on a pickoff throw, and Busch was awarded second base. I guess, technically, this was the correct call, but Brewers fans will surely be grumbling about the number of times they have seen this not called when it would have benefited them. It nearly turned into a real injustice, as Pete Crow-Armstrong hit a lazy pop fly into shallow left-center that nearly dropped between Collins and Chourio, but Collins made the catch on the run while avoiding a collision with Chourio, and everything was okay. Miguel Amaya popped out to shallow left to end the inning.

Sal Frelick led off the second inning with a pretty deep drive to right, but it was caught on the warning track, and he was followed by a far less threatening fly ball from Caleb Durbin and a strikeout from Joey Ortiz. Dansby Swanson led off the top of the third with a base hit, but Joey Ortiz turned a nice 6-3 double play on a Jon Berti grounder, and Happ popped out in foul territory to end the inning.

Turang fouled off a couple of two-strike pitches but struck out to start the bottom of the third. Chourio hit an 0-1 splitter to right field for the second out, and Collins popped out behind the plate for the third out — the Brewers were up to eight straight retired after Contreras’s one-out single in the first.

Frelick, who appeared to tweak his left knee during his second-inning at-bat, was removed from the game in the top of the fourth and replaced in right field by Daz Cameron. (Frelick, the team noted, was removed with “knee discomfort,” and it’s unclear if it requires anything more serious than some ice and rest)

Tucker led off the inning by knocking a base hit in front of Cameron. Peralta then struck out Suzuki again — swinging, this time, no help from the ump necessary — and Busch just missed a two-run homer after that, a ball that was maybe just a tiny bit too high and which died on the warning track. The inning ended when Hoerner hit a groundout to third for the third out.

Imanaga started his fourth with a three-pitch strikeout of Contreras, but Yelich hit a rocket into the opposite-field gap with one out, breaking an 0-for-19 streak. Crow-Armstrong did a nice job of cutting that ball off, which held Yelich to a single. (If you look at PCA’s old scouting reports on MLB Pipeline, you will see an “80” under fielding. This is the kind of thing that makes a difference.) Hoskins flew out to right, which set up the first home at-bat for Cameron as a Brewer: he worked a good, long at-bat and made good contact, but he hit it to the wrong part of the park and flew out to center for the final out.

PCA got the fifth started with an opposite-field single, but he was caught trying to steal second base — and I think we need to take a moment to acknowledge Contreras, who, after that one, leads the majors with 11 baserunners caught stealing at a sparkling 46% rate. Peralta then struck out Amaya and Swanson, and he was through five scoreless innings on 75 pitches. The Brewers hadn’t backed him up yet, but Peralta was holding up his end of the bargain.

Milwaukee’s offensive breakthrough would not come in the fifth. Durbin and Ortiz both flew out to center, and Turang struck out, and Imanaga was also through five scoreless on an even-more-efficient 71 pitches.

Given the state of the Brewers’ offense, it was beginning to feel like a game where if the Cubs scored, the Brewers would lose. Peralta, I’m sure, felt this too, and he responded by getting the first two in the top of the sixth on just six pitches. Tucker did get his second hit, a two-out single, but Peralta struck out Suzuki for the third time, and he was through six without allowing a run (or even an extra-base hit).

Chourio led off the bottom of the sixth and took a questionable strike one on the outside corner and quickly fell behind 0-2. He had a good take on an 0-2 splitter, fouled off a backdoor sweeper, took another splitter, and then lined a base hit into left field. Given the state of his at-bats recently, it was a very encouraging plate appearance.

Before the Brewer announcers could even debate whether or not Collins should bunt, he popped out on the first pitch he saw. Contreras then took a four-pitch walk, putting runners on first and second with one out for Yelich. Yelich delivered a Yelich special — a hard grounder to the right side — but he did manage to beat the relay throw to first. Imanaga also hurt himself on the play while running to cover first base — my years of watching soccer have told me that he likely strained a hamstring. He was removed from the game, and there was a delay while Julian Merryweather was given whatever time he needed to get warmed up.

Merryweather, once he was ready to go, had runners on the corners and Hoskins to deal with. It turned out maybe he wasn’t ready: his first pitch was way outside, and Amaya couldn’t handle it. Chourio scored from third to break the scoreless tie on the wild pitch. When Hoskins got ahead 3-0, the Cubs put him on to face Cameron instead; with former Brewer and dad Mike Cameron in the crowd, the younger Cameron picked up his first hit as a Brewer, a single to right, and Yelich scored from second for a huge second run. Cameron stole second to put runners on second and third for Durbin, and Durbin delivered: a two-run double to the right field gap that made it 4-0. The Brewers’ offense finally had their desperately needed offensive breakthrough, thanks to two unlikely sources: Cameron and Durbin.

In need of a shutdown inning, the Brewers turned not to Peralta, who had thrown 89 pitches, but to Jared Koenig, and Koenig obliged. He retired Busch on a flyout, Hoerner on a soft liner, and Crow-Armstrong on a strikeout. The fireballing Daniel Palencia carved through the Brewers in the bottom of the seventh with strikeouts of Turang and Collins and a Chourio groundout on which he tripped leaving the box but was fine.

Abner Uribe, who was a rare bright spot on Saturday, looked good again today: he struck out Amaya and got weak groundouts from Swanson and pinch-hitter Vidal Bruján.

Old friend Drew Pomeranz was the pitcher for Chicago in the bottom of the eighth, making his fourth appearance for the Cubs. Contreras walked to get things started, his third time on base this afternoon, but Pomeranz struck out Yelich and got Hoskins to ground into a double play.

With the looming specter of how disastrous a late blown lead would be in this game, Pat Murphy went with his closer, Trevor Megill (who hadn’t pitched since Thursday), in a four-run game in the ninth. Megill got ahead of the leadoff hitter Happ, but he knocked a 100-mph fastball into left field in a 1-2 count. Megill then walked Tucker on four pitches, and things were officially uncomfortable.

Megill got Suzuki for a loud first out (it went 366 feet to center field and was almost 99 mph off the bat), but it was an out. Happ tagged and went to third, and Tucker stole second (and appeared to hurt himself but stayed in the game) to put two runs in scoring position, but Megill struck out Busch looking and Hoerner swinging to end the game, leaving PCA and his three homers in this series on deck.

On the offensive side, Contreras was productive (1-for-2, two walks), but it was the bottom of the order that got the big hits. Cameron was 1-for-2 with that huge two-out RBI single, and Durbin had the game’s only extra-base hit, the two-run double that followed Cameron. It was the pitching staff, though, that really shined this afternoon: against the red-hot Cubs offense, Peralta allowed only four singles and one walk in six shutout innings while striking out seven, and neither Koenig nor Uribe allowed a baserunner in their innings. Megill’s outing wasn’t clean, but he did the job.

This win felt more like relief than anything else, but it’s nice to get one after the first two games went so poorly. The Brewers are back in action tomorrow night when they welcome Houston to town for a three-game set.

Post-game injury update from Adam McCalvy: Frelick will undergo an MRI on his knee. Also, Peralta was dealing with some groin discomfort, but doesn’t believe it to be anything serious.