The Milwaukee Brewers let the Colorado Rockies, their struggling visitors, get the best of them on Friday.
The Milwaukee Brewers dropped the first game of their series against the Colorado Rockies on Friday in a 5-2 loss at American Family Field in Milwaukee.
With the loss, the Brewers are now 64-39 and sit one game behind the Los Angeles Dodgers for the best record in baseball, but they are still comfortably in first place in the National League Central Division with a 6.5 game lead over the Chicago Cubs.
So, what went wrong against the Rockies?
Falling behind first
The Rockies came to Milwaukee with the second-worst record in Major League Baseball, but that did not stop them from getting a leg up on their opponent early.
Left-hander Shane Drohan received the starting nod for the Brewers, and Colorado’s offense jumped on him almost immediately. After Drohan struck out leadoff batter Jake McCarthy, he allowed a double to Kyle Karros.
After Karros doubled, Cole Carrigg followed up with a double of his own to score the former. Subsequently, Drohan gave up an RBI single to Hunter Goodman that made it a 2-0 game.
The Brewers responded quickly in the bottom frame thanks to a leadoff solo home run by Christian Yelich, marking his seventh of the season, but it did not matter in the long run.
Drohan had a good second inning in which he struck out two of the three hitters he faced, but he allowed Colorado’s offense to bounce back in the third when he gave up a leadoff triple to McCarthy before Karros drove him in with an RBI single.
The Rockies struck again for another run in the fourth, thanks to a successful small-ball approach to make it a 4-1 game. Turang provided another response for the Brewers when he delivered a solo home run of his own in the bottom of the sixth, but Colorado used the top of the seventh to tack on its fifth run of the evening.
Drohan pitched six innings for the Brewers and gave up six hits, five earned runs and two walks while logging six strikeouts. He was assessed the losing decision, which made him 5-4 on the year.
The final wrap
Overall, the Brewers' offense fell flat. All told, they went 9-for-36 at the plate. Sure, Milwaukee managed two home runs, but its other seven successful at-bats could never translate into additional scores.
From a pitching perspective, Drohan has been decent this season, especially for a rookie, but the Brewers’ cracks in their rotation have been exposed much more than once, especially with injuries to productive pitchers such as Kyle Harrison and Brandon Woodruff.
Losses like this are bound to happen in a 162-game season, but some of the flaws concerning the team are telling.
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