MILWAUKEE – There are no mulligans in Major League Baseball, as much as Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski may have wanted one during a disastrous first inning on Monday night in his first career start against the rival Cubs. All the 23-year-old could do was keep pitching as long as he had the ball in his hand.
So, he kept pitching.
Misiorowski rebounded from his 40-pitch three-run first inning by delivering three more scoreless frames, retiring each of the final 10 batters he faced and giving his teammates a chance to rally for one of their more uplifting victories of the season, 8-4, over the Cubs in front of a sellout crowd of 41,076 at American Family Field.
“I told him, ‘It was my favorite start you’ve had in the big leagues, honestly,'" said Christian Yelich, who helped key the comeback. “All the cruising and the ‘punchies’ and all that stuff is fun and exciting, but this shows you a lot about what he’s made of out there when it’s kind of hitting the fan on him.”
The Brewers reclaimed the lead by cobbling together an eight-batter, four-run rally against Cubs starter Matthew Boyd in the third inning before getting home runs from Andrew Vaughn, Sal Frelick and Yelich, who capped a three-RBI night with a two-run shot in the seventh that bounced off the top of the right-field wall -- twice!
As a result, Milwaukee (63-43) struck first against Chicago (62-44) in a matchup of rivals who began the day tied for the top record in the National League. At first, it seemed the game was going in a very different direction.
“It was a long inning and long innings suck,” Misiorowski said.
That was true in both a literal and figurative sense, because whatever could go wrong in the first inning did. A bloop single that manager Pat Murphy’s instincts told him should have been caught, instead dropped in front of center fielder Jackson Chourio to start the game. Kyle Tucker’s walk featured a two-strike pitch at the edge of the zone called a ball. An even closer two-strike pitch against Seiya Suzuki was called a ball to extend Suzuki’s at-bat for an infield hit that struck Misiorowski on the left shin.
Things went wrong even when Misiorowski recorded an out. He spiked a changeup for a swinging strikeout against Cubs star Pete Crow-Armstrong, but it bounced past catcher William Contreras for a run-scoring wild pitch.
And two batters later, Misiorowski fielded Ian Happ’s tapper in front of the mound and threw it way over first base for a two-run error. That play looked bad, but was actually even worse. Misiorowski’s knee buckled on the play and he had to be checked out between innings (both the shin and the knee were “OK” postgame, Murphy said).
Finally, on the 40th pitch, with lefty reliever DL Hall working quickly to get warm in the bullpen, Misiorowski struck out Nico Hoerner to finish a nightmare inning.
Has he ever endured an inning like that?
“Of course,” Misiorowski said. “That's not the first one and it's not going to be the last.”
The important thing was how he bounced back. The Hoerner strikeout finished a 10-pitch at-bat and marked the start of a 10-up, 10-down stretch, as Misiorowski salvaged an 80-pitch no-decision.
“It’s like a fighter getting knocked down in the first round and he had to [recuperate],” Murphy said. “He said, ‘I’m exhausted.’ And he still gave us four and wanted to go out for a fifth. So, I learned a lot about him. It just goes to show you the kid can pitch, not just throw. He’s going to learn from this.”
It was quite a way to start a three-game series that fans have been eyeing for weeks. But the way Yelich saw things, all the pressure was on the Cubs.
“You know, our team doesn’t feel any pressure,” he said Monday afternoon. “We feel like no one really expects us to be in this spot anyway.”
But here they are, atop the NL Central standings and one game ahead of the Cubs with the teams’ season series tied at 3-3 and seven head-to-head matchups remaining.
“They’re a good team. It’s fun when they’re a good team, you know?” Yelich said of the Cubs. “It kind of feels like we’re just playing with house money. They’re supposed to win the division. They’re supposed to have the high expectations. They have half our coaching staff, they made a bunch of trades, so if they don’t win the division, I’m sure it would be pretty disappointing. For us, we’re just trying to make life tough on them and the rest of the league and seeing what we can do. That’s always been our model around here.”