Cubs nearly spoil brilliant Brown outing, but beat Brewers in 10
MILWAUKEE — The jeers Craig Counsell heard Monday during his return to Wisconsin made for great dinner-table conversation.
After the game, the Cubs manager went back to his home, which he still keeps in suburban Milwaukee.
“It was great, because I had my whole family home (Monday) night, which is hard when you have four kids that are older,” Counsell said. “We had a great conversation at the table. More than anything, we laughed about it.”
According to Counsell, the kids filled him in on some of the nasty signs brought to the game by Brewers fans.
“That's why it was funny,” he said before Tuesday's game. “It was a good life experience yesterday.”
An even better experience for Counsell was the Cubs snapping their five-game losing streak with a 6-3 victory in 10 innings, in front of more booing Brewers fans.
Rookie pitcher Ben Brown was brilliant, keeping the Brewers hitless through 7 innings, with a career-high 10 strikeouts. Then Counsell decided 93 pitches was enough and went to the bullpen.
“I understand how it works,” Brown said. “I trust Craig and he’s doing it for my career moving forward, and what’s best for the team. We won the game and that’s huge.”
Hayden Wesneski came in and gave up a one-out single to Sal Frelick, a sharp grounder up the middle for the Brewers' first hit, but he got through the inning with help from Mark Leiter Jr.
In the ninth, Hector Neris retired the first two batters, walked Christian Yelich, then was called for a balk, sending Yelich to second. With two outs and two strikes, Willy Adames tied the game with a single to left.
The 10th inning got off to a strange start. Mike Tauchman hit a line drive that struck Brewers pitcher Trevor Megill's right arm. Megill stayed on his feet, but was clearly injured, and pinch-runner Luis Vazquez raced around to score from second while the ball sat near the mound.
The offensively-challenged Cubs added 4 more runs with a Cody Bellinger RBI single, Ian Happ 2-run double and Michael Busch RBI single. It was a crazy turn of events, the ninth-inning rally resulted in the Cubs bats finally breaking out, and the Brewers closer getting injured.
In the last 14 innings he's pitched, Brown has allowed just 3 hits and no runs, with 20 strikeouts. Since his rough debut in Texas on Mar. 30, Brown has posted a 1.61 ERA over 44 ⅔ innings.
“I thought it was the fastball (which averaged 97 miles per hour),” Counsell said. “It was like an angry fastball. It was just really good and it was overpowering for much of the game.”
Brown gave up 2 walks in the fifth inning. Otherwise, the closest the Brewers came to getting hits were a pair of deep fly outs. In the seventh, Bellinger jumped above the wall and likely robbed Adames of a home run.
“I can’t say enough about Belli,” Brown said. “That’s humble pie for sure, because I know I was one pitch away from not having such an extravagant night.”
When Busch clubbed a home run to center field leading off the third inning, the Cubs scored first in a game for the first time since May 18, when they got a run in the ninth to beat the Pirates 1-0.
Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer spoke to reporters in the visitors dugout before the game. Obviously, the current storyline is the Cubs aren't hitting, but one question is how long do they wait to try something different.
One example is Pete Crow-Armstrong returned to Iowa and went 12 for 23 at the plate in his first five games. If the Cubs brought him back in an attempt to spark the offense, someone would have to hit the bench — either an outfielder or first baseman Busch.
“Ultimately the bigger concern has to be the performance of our team,” Hoyer said. “If at some point, someone like Pete has to come up or some other player comes up and maybe certain guys lose at-bats for a little bit of time, maybe that's necessary. We've had those discussions, we'll continue to.”
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