The Milwaukee Brewers opened an 11-game road trip Friday night the way they have won all season: with relievers. Milwaukee beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 7-4 in 11 innings in Phoenix, scoring four times in the 11th after the bullpen had held the line for the better part of three hours.
The winning rally was scratchy and perfect. Facing Ryan Thompson with the automatic runner aboard, Cooper Pratt was hit by a pitch, Joey Ortiz bunted both runners over, and Christian Yelich was walked intentionally to load the bases. Jackson Chourio then chopped a slow roller to the third-base side; Thompson fielded it and threw wildly, two runs scored, and Brice Turang followed with a two-run single for the 7-3 lead. Turang finished 3 for 6.
It rescued a night that started sideways. Kyle Harrison gave back an early 3-0 lead — built partly on Garrett Mitchell‘s eighth homer of the season, a two-run shot in the second — and needed 38 pitches to get through the third before his night ended at 2 2/3 innings. From there the relief corps took over: Chad Patrick retired ten hitters over 3 1/3 innings of one-hit work, and Abner Uribe, Aaron Ashby, Grant Anderson, and Trevor Megill finished the job. The final line on the bullpen: 8 1/3 innings, one run, and that run belonged to the automatic runner. Anderson, who worked two innings, got the win.
Milwaukee is 54-32 with a six-game lead in the NL Central and has won four of five. A club built this way is never going to blow anyone’s doors off in July, but depth in the late innings travels well, and this trip — which runs all the way to the All-Star break — will test exactly that.
