Brewers finally end stretch of futility versus Cubs starting pitching on Wednesday

Prior to eventually losing control of the game, and their closer, in extra innings on Tuesday night, the Milwaukee Brewers found themselves fighting to scrape any runs across the plate against Chicago Cubs starting pitching. It was a familiar tune for the Crew's hitters so far this season.

Cubs starting pitching had dominated Brewers hitters in the teams' five previous 2024 matchups. Actually, dominated may even be too light of a term to describe the situation, so let's go with completely neutralized.

Amazingly, heading into Wednesday, Brewers hitters had not scored a single run against a Cubs starting pitcher so far this season. Hayden Wesneski (6.1 innings), Jameson Taillon (6), Javier Assad (6), Justin Steele (7), and most recently Ben Brown (7) had all held Milwaukee scoreless in each of their outings this year.

It's almost crazy that the Brewers managed to win two of those five games.

For those counting at home, that's 32.1 straight innings of scoreless baseball by Brewers hitters against Cubs starters to begin 2024. And for many, it was looking like there would be more of that to come on Wednesday with Chicago's best starter, rookie Shota Imanaga, set to kick off game three of the series against the Crew.

Instead, the Brewers quickly ended their stretch of futility against Cubs starters by striking early on Wednesday night.

Milwaukee was determined to not start Wednesday's nights game the same way they had the previous five times against the Cubs and that's exactly what happened. It began with third baseman Joey Ortiz, batting leadoff for the first time in his career, ripping a double to the gap in right-center.

Catcher William Contreras would ground out to the left side, which would bring outfielder Christian Yelich to the plate. And on the very first pitch, a 93 MPH fastball right down the middle, the former MVP put an end to the Crew's unfortunate streak.

In doing so, Yelich put an end to another bad stretch of his own. It was the first home run he had hit since April 12th, a stretch of 18 games that included a stint on the injured list in between.

With that out of the way, the Brewers can focus on evening the season series against the Cubs and stretching out their 3.5-game division lead. Through two and a half innings of Wednesday night's game, Milwaukee holds on to a 2-1 lead.