Brewers fall to Reds, magic number remains 1

Coming into today’s game, Milwaukee had won nineteen consecutive Quinn Priester starts. It’s been literally four months since the Brewers lost a game he started. The baseball gods had been shining on Priester all season.

But today, with the Brewers in control of their playoff destiny, the same gods that had blessed the young Priest turned their heads, casting a dark cloud over the mound at AmFam Field. That’s a perfect double-play ball, except…

The frustrating thing is that Priester didn’t pitch badly, nor was he purely a victim of a ball taking a dead hop, hitting a base, and caroming into the outfield. This loss was a perfect confluence of factors — errors, lack of run support, allowing baserunners, and good old-fashioned bad luck.

Milwaukee got their only run of the night when Brice Turang broke a 0-0 tie in the bottom of the third with an RBI single:

Sadly, Priester wouldn’t be in line for the win for much longer. Cincinnati tied the game up in the fourth after a Spencer Steer single scored Gavin Lux from third base. Tyler Stephenson then beat out an infield single to load the bases with one out for Ke’Bryan Hayes. Thankfully, Priester got Hayes to swing over a cutter and ground into an inning-ending double-play to keep the score tied at 1.

Neither team scored again until the sixth, when Lux led off with a soft line drive down the left-field line. Left fielder Jake Bauers was playing off the line and had to hustle to cut off the ball. It still looked like Bauers would easily secure the grounder, even to the point where the broadcast even cut away to show Lux rounding first. However, the broadcast immediately cut back to left field, showing Bauers chasing the ball all the way to the wall.

The play was officially ruled a a double with a fielding error (on Bauers) that allowed Lux to take third. The next batter, Miguel Andujar, singled into center to put the Reds up, 2-1. The play after that was the De La Cruz single that bounced off second base and into the outfield grass. Manager Pat Murphy left Priester in to face De La Cruz, and Priester got a ground ball that could have easily been a double play — it just didn’t bounce the Brewers’ way.

De La Cruz’s single put runners on first and third for Steer, prompting Murphy to bring in Nick Mears. Mears got Steer to wave at strike three for the first out, but De La Cruz stole second on the third strike. Stephenson hit a fly ball into center field that might have been a play at the plate, but Jackson Chourio hit the cutoff man to keep De La Cruz from taking third on the throw home. Stephenson’s sac fly put the Reds ahead 3-1, which ended up being the game’s final score.

Zack Littell, who started today’s game for Cincinnati, allowed just three hits through 4 2/3 innings. Milwaukee fared even worse against the Reds’ bullpen, failing to record a single hit for the rest of the game. The only player to reach base after the fifth inning was Jackson Chourio, who walked with one out in the eighth.

The bottom line is that three hits isn’t going to win a whole lot of baseball games. It doesn’t matter how good your pitching is if you can’t score runs. The Brewers haven’t scored more than four runs in a game since September 18th, and they’ve now scored one run or less in four of the past seven games. Milwaukee also only has two regular season games to figure things out at the plate. I have faith they can do so given how impressive the offense has been at times, but today was not an inspiring performance.

Milwaukee would have clinched the number one seed in the National League with a win or a Phillies loss, but neither happened. They’ll get another chance at 6:15 pm tomorrow. On to the next.