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.
And good things happened.
Misiorowski rebounded from his 40-pitch three-run first frame by delivering three more scoreless innings, 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.
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 Christian 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 struck first in a matchup of rivals who began the day tied for the top record in the National League. Fans have had this three-game series circled 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, 63-43 and atop the NL Central standings. Yelich is the first to say that nothing is settled yet, not with seven head-to-head matchups remaining between these teams.
“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.”
