Brewers: Revisiting the Regular Season Games Against The Braves

The Milwaukee Brewers and Atlanta Braves first faced off in Milwaukee between May 14th and May 16th. Let’s see how their offenses performed.

For the Brewers, this was a week before they traded for Willy Adames and basically turned their season around. The team’s batting average went up 30 points, their OPS up almost .100 and run average improved by 1.3.

The Brewers lost 6-3 in the first game. Luis Urias has two RBIs and a home run and Manny Pina also homered in the ninth inning, but it was too late. The Braves were already up by five runs after the pitching staff struggled. Marcell Ozuna, while he was still playing, and Ozzie Albies hit back-to-back home runs in the fifth to push Atlanta ahead. The Crew would lose the next day 5-1. Urias would get an RBI again with a sacrifice fly, but the Brewers only had three hits the whole game. This was definitely a peak period of the offense struggling before they hit their stride.

Milwaukee closed out their series in Atlanta with a 10-9 win. It was an all-around team effort. Daniel Vogelbach had three RBIs and a walk, Lorenzo Cain and Avisail Garcia had two RBIs, while Cain, Narvaez and Wong had three hits apiece. With 19 total runs scored, it was a slugfest that ended with a nail-biting save from Josh Hader.

Besides the Sunday game, the Brewers offense wasn’t close to matching Atlanta. But, that was without Adames or Rowdy Tellez and the Braves had a completely different outfield playing with Ozuna and Ronald Acuna Jr. still in the daily lineup.

How did their pitching groups perform during their first series meeting in May?

Milwaukee didn’t have the best pitching going for them in the first Braves series. Adrian Houser only lasted three innings in his start. He gave up two runs and five walks. Eric Lauer came in to replace him and didn’t do great either. He gave up three earned runs over three innings, including the back-to-back home runs that blew the game open for Atlanta.

Josh Lindblom would get the ball the last two innings, and give up another run and leave the game with a 9.95 ERA. Braves starter Drew Smyly went six innings and only gave up one run and one walk and took the win. Their bullpen did give up two runs, but kept the Brewers in check.

The second game was a lot of the same. Brett Anderson didn’t make it out of the fourth inning. He had four earned runs. The bullpen did pretty good containing after that, but Hoby Milner did give up a home run in the 8th. Ian Anderson took the mound for the Braves in Game 2. He also went six innings, and only gave up one run. Their rotation can consistently pitch five or six innings of low-run baseball.

For Game 3, the Braves finally had to face one of the big three for the Brewers and went against Freddy Peralta. The Braves would score nine runs in this game, but none against Peralta. He had six strong innings with eight Ks off two hits. J.P Feyereisen would give up their first four runs and Brent Suter would give up two in the seventh. The Crew held onto the win, but Peralta’s start helped the team avoid a sweep