Brewers clobber their way past Reds again 13-9

After scoring 20 runs the night before, the Brewers offense showed no signs of slowing down against a beleaguered Reds pitching staff, putting up 13 runs en route to a 13-9 victory.

The scoring started early, again. Jackson Chourio led off the game with a walk and Brice Turang followed with his 19th home run of the season, setting a new career-high for himself. That put the Brewers up 2-0 very quickly. But they weren’t done in that first inning. With two outs, William Contreras drew a walk and then Garrett Mitchell clobbered his 11th home run of the season, a mammoth blast into the 2nd deck.

Just like that, it was 4-0 Brewers and the Reds had to be thinking ‘oh no, here we go again!’

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The Reds offense, however, was able to do a little bit more than they did on Friday night, getting in some hard contact off Brewers starter Shane Drohan. After being robbed of a home run by Luis Lara in right field last night, Eugenio Suarez went pull side and lifted a home run to left field to get the Reds on the board.

The Reds would answer again in the 3rd on a double from Elly De La Cruz. Then they had a big inning in the 4th. Suarez drew a walk, JJ Bleday doubled, then Juan Brito, who was hitting .197 coming into the day, slugged a three run homer on an 0-2 pitch to tie the game at 5-5.

“I think I was 15 of 17 on first pitch strikes, I was getting in good counts, then just throwing terrible two-strike pitches” Drohan said.

That chased Drohan from the game, who ended up going 3.2 IP with five hits and five earned runs allowed.

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What should have been a very comfortable Brewers lead was no more. But, the Brewers offense was able to answer right back in the bottom of the 4th. With two outs, the rally started with a Jake Bauers walk, then a Christian Yelich single, then William Contreras lifted his 17th home run of the season to take an 8-5 lead.

The Brewers were not done. They sent 10 men to the plate in the 5th inning. The rally got started with a Cooper Pratt single, his third hit of the game. That was followed by four consecutive base hits from Chourio, Turang, Bauers, and Yelich. Then Contreras was intentionally walked, the bases were loaded for Garrett Mitchell, who hit a grand slam last night, and he ripped a 2 RBI double over the head of Hector Rodriguez in right.

Mitchell finished a triple shy of the cycle in this game and was 4-for-5 on the night with 4 RBIs.

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Meanwhile, the Brewers bullpen was largely locking it down. Chad Patrick, DL Hall, and Antonio Senzatela all combined to keep the Reds off the board. Then Pat Murphy turned to struggling starter Kyle Harrison for the 8th inning.

The struggles continued. Harrison’s fastball velocity was up to 97 MPH consistently, which was a nice uptick, but his command was lacking and he left a couple over the heart of the plate. The Reds did not miss them and crushed a pair of 109 MPH base hits. Then Harrison generated some soft contact, but that fell in for hits too and Murphy had to quickly pull Harrison.

All four batters Harrison faced reached and all four came around to score. In his last 7.1 IP, Harrison has allowed 23 hits and 17 runs. What does Murphy tell Harrison after an outing like that when it was supposed to help build his confidence?

“We’ll get this straight. This will happen. You’re going through a rough patch, we’ll get it straight” Murphy said.

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Murphy remains confident in Harrison, but Harrison’s struggles did force him to use two leverage arms he did not want to use in what was a blowout game. Aaron Ashby had to secure the 8th inning and with the lead dwindled to just four runs, Abner Uribe came in to close down the 9th.

With the win, the Brewers dropped their magic number to clinch the division down to 3.

Murphy named Robert Gasser the starter for Sunday’s finale against the Reds.