Offense isn’t up to the challenge again
With their best pitcher on the mound – not to mention one of the best in the major leagues in 2020 – the Milwaukee Brewers knew they had to win the opener of their make-or-break, season-ending five-game series in St. Louis.
Instead, the Brewers suffered a demoralizing loss, in more ways than one.
Not only did Corbin Burnes fail to put the finishing touches on a Cy Youngworthy season Thursday night at Busch Stadium, he exited with lower back discomfort in the fourth inning after allowing only the second home run against him in 2020. That loud hissing sound you heard coming out of St. Louis was the air leaking from the Brewers’ playoff hopes.
That was the story after a 4-2 loss in which the offense did not do nearly enough yet again. The Brewers scored nine runs in the first four games of this trip, and that’s not going to cut it. Blame it on the weird pandemic season if you will but that’s no excuse to struggle this often to score over 60 games.
The Brewers knew they had little margin for error on the trip after losing two of three in Cincinnati before heading to St. Louis. The underachieving offense was no match for the Reds’ strong pitching staff, and the Brewers were fortunate to win even one game at Great American Ball Park.
“We’re making it harder on ourselves,” manager Craig Counsell said. “We just haven’t scored enough on the trip, there’s no question about it. That’s required us to be really, really good pitching-wise. In one game we were, but we scored three runs to win a game.”
“We just haven’t been good enough offensively on this trip. You can attribute some of that to the pitching we’ve faced, for sure, but I think we knew that coming in.”
You could see right away Burnes wasn’t the same guy who had gone 4-0 with a 0.30 ERA in his previous five starts, allowing only one run over 292⁄3 innings. He struck out three hitters in the first inning, stranding a runner at third with one down, but threw 24 pitches in the process.
Burnes’ battle continued in the second with a pair of singles to open the inning. Again, he rose to the occasion to keep St. Louis off the board, but his pitch count soared to 46 for two frames.
While the Brewers were batting in those early innings, television cameras caught Burnes using some kind of heat/ massaging device on his lower back, a sign that something was not right physically. And his struggles continued in the third inning with three consecutive singles to get it started.
Burnes needed 68 pitches to record nine outs. After a one-out walk to Dexter Fowler in the fourth, Counsell, pitching coach Chris Hook and head athletic trainer Scott Barringer paid a visit to Burnes, who told them he could continue.
But No. 9 hitter Dylan Carlson, a young prospect batting .189 with a .326 slugging percentage, pulled a 2-1 cutter down the right-field line and out for a two-run homer to snap a 1-1 tie. Burnes would retire Kolten Wong on a grounder to second before finally saying it was enough, leaving with an anguished look on his face.
“You never want to end the season banged up,” said Burnes, who lost his shot at an ERA title and in all likelihood the Cy Young Award after finishing onethird of an inning short of gaining official statistical ranking.
The Brewers made the Cardinals sweat it out at the end, scoring a run in the ninth and getting Christian Yelich to the plate as the potential winning run with two outs.
In his first two seasons in Milwaukee, Yelich often delivered in a big way in such situations, but this has not been that kind of year for the struggling twotime batting champ, who struck out on a sweeping breaking ball from lefty Andrew Miller.