This Is Exactly The Spark The Brewers Needed...

This is exactly the spark the Brewers needed as they bounced back against the Chicago Cubs, getting a 9-4 win in Game 2 of the I-94 Rivalry Series. And tonight we will see NL Cy Young favorite Jacob Mizorowski on the mound, hoping to extend this winning streak to two games. I welcome you into this episode of Brewers Digest. I'm your host, Taylor Brettel, and I got you covered on everything you need to know about the Milwaukee Brewers. A big phew, a big sigh of relief after we saw that first game in this series. It was lots of concerns. A 17-3 loss turns into a 9-4 win the very next day, and I feel like all the overreacting has stopped. The Brewers were down early, bounced back. They were down three runs in this one, 3-0, and then went on a 9-1 run to finish it off. A nice win, a team win, lots of positives to take away from this. So let's just look right into this. I'm going to flash up the box score first, then we're going to get into the nitty gritty details. Let's take a look at what we saw in last night's contest. Again, a 3-0 deficit following the bottom of the 4th inning, but the offense responded in the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th innings to get those nine runs. I want to give a big shout out. William Contreras was a huge spark plug in this one. Had multiple doubles. Christian Yellich pulled a homer. Don't really see that in 2026. An inside pitch, that was actually a ball absolutely turned on it to right field for a home run. We saw Joey Ortiz continue that hot streak that he had. He had a home run of his own. I mean, the offense just looked very crisp. It looked pure. 13 total hits, nine total runs. That is what you love to see. There were a lot of, you know, fishy spots to start this game, though. Two errors the Brewers had in this game. The fielding looked a little off. Terrain missed a grounder right at him where he could have turned a double play. So little nitpick things weren't too clean, but the Brewers, they didn't let that knock them down. They still came all the way back and won this one 9-4. Taking a look at the pitching. Again, only four runs given up after a night where they gave up 17. I do want to give a shout out to Robert Gasser. Now you're going to look at that line, four and a thirds innings, two earned runs, you know, only four Ks are going to be like, eh, not that great. He pitched a very good first, second, and third inning. Only faced three batters in the first, three in the second, and four in the third. That fourth inning got away from him, and then he was pulled from the game. So, you know, I do want to show the respect that Gasser deserves because I feel like a lot of people aren't going to turn to that in this 9-4 win. You also got to respect the rest of the bullpen. Senza Tella, finally back pitching. Feels like it's been a while for him. He got his 10th win on the season, one inning, very good baseball from him. Jojo Romero got a hold. Welcome to the Brewers. It's nice that he is back from the IL. He was on that 15-day IL from when the Brewers traded for him from the St. Louis Cardinals. He had a very solid outing, only needed 11 pitches to get through it. Abner Uribe, absolute demon. He was hitting 100 miles an hour. Aaron Ashby, no panic in that outing there. One, two, three from him. Then D.L. Hall came in to close it. That means Trevor McGill is still available for tonight. It's been a while since he pitched, so I wonder if the Brewers will pitch McGill, even if they're up a sizable amount like we saw yesterday. There's kind of thoughts on would McGill come in, even though it's a five-run lead, just because he needs to pitch. That question remains today. But this pitching staff, lots of arms were used, so it'll be a little thin. Hoping Mizorowski tonight is able to go about six innings because of how thin the bullpen will be. But again, I want to talk about Robert Gasser. This is a guy that gave it his all yesterday. We saw Kyle Harrison get absolutely lit up. You turn it over to Robert Gasser. He's a lefty, and his top two most-used pitches are the same most-used pitches that Kyle Harrison's are. And you start to get a little bit worried, but you know what? Robert Gasser, I really like the outing that he had. He spoke to the media after the game with this conversation that he had with Pat Murphy. When Pat Murphy pulled out Robert Gasser, it wasn't a typical managerial move where they go to the great job, give him a pat on the back, and take the ball from him. No, this was a sizable mound visit to still take a pitcher out. It was like the length of what a typical mound visit is when you're going to go back to the dugout and the pitcher resumes. This was a long talk with Robert Gasser before they took him out of the game, and Gasser spoke on what the conversation was between him and Pat Murphy. This is what I saw about it on X from Jack Stern. It says, Pat Murphy's lengthy mound visit when he pulled Robert Gasser in the fourth was actually a message of encouragement after the Brewers played questionable defense behind him. It says, I was telling Gasser, regardless, you did an incredible job. That is what Pat Murphy said. It was obviously way longer than that because it was about a minute-long mound visit, but that's a good summary right there. And Robert Gasser spoke on it on his end. He said, for him to say that to me out there on the mound and take the time to tell me I did a good job, it means a lot. Because again, a lot of managers are just like, you did good, you know, give me the baseball. We're going to put in a reliever. He really had to explain to Gasser why he was going out of the game maybe earlier than he planned, saying he did a good job. I talked about it. Two errors in the game. Terang had what could have been easily a double play, didn't get that to go. So there is some defense that could have been a little bit better, and I know one of those errors was not when Gasser was in the game, but it's nice to see it was acknowledged, really giving Gasser some good appreciation. But where one of the other errors happened is when Jojo Romero was in this game. Do you want to talk about him as well? He finally makes his Brewers debut, and only 11 pitches, eight of them were sinkers. He was absolutely pounding that pitch. Got three outs. Everything looked great from him. He's a big ground ball out guy, which, you know, we will get to see that a little bit later into the season because we'll get more opportunities. But his very first pitch as a Milwaukee Brewer was a pop-up to the third base side that seemed like it was going to be an out, and then it wasn't, and that actually resulted in what was a very scary injury. Cooper Pratt colliding with Joey Ortiz and Jackson Churio. There's kind of a screenshot right there. I mean, you see Romero's pitches. It says zero because he threw one pitch at that at bat, but it was kind of in the death triangle, as some people call it, you know, a baseball falling between three fielders. You have Joey Ortiz, who is one of the best defensive left side of the infield guys in the league, playing third because Pratt's at short. He's sprinting for this ball. Cooper Pratt's also sprinting from this ball. He kind of has more ground to cover, and then Jackson Churio was a little bit in left center because of Michael Bush, who's a lefty, being up. Churio wasn't playing where a typical left fielder plays. So all of these guys were very far from where this baseball was going to land, but the baseball was very high up. It resulted in a collision, about probably a three to four minute pause within this, seeing if Cooper Pratt was going to be okay. That was a big scare because you look at the replay, and you notice Pratt's hurt, and you're trying to pick where. He landed hard. He got kicked in the face by Jackson Churio, who was running straight through. He landed on one arm, landed on the other. I mean, you see a good screenshot of that. Ortiz is kind of on top of him. If only Cooper Pratt sustained four injuries within that. When he was trying to get back into the game, which he then ended up staying in the game, it seemed like it was kind of the wrist, forearm area on his catching hand because there is some shots of him trying to put on the glove, and Bryce During was playing catch with him, and you can kind of see Cooper Pratt was like, throw it as hard as you can. I want to see if I'm able to close the glove. Cooper Pratt stayed in the game, got a ground ball to him, and made a very good smart baseball decision play, so Cooper Pratt seemed good to go. He is in tonight's lineup, which I'll get around to at the end of the video, but that was very, very scary. I do want to give an update on that, like Adam McAlvey did. He says the Brewers x-rayed Cooper Pratt's forearm after yesterday's collision just to be safe. It was clean, he said, and he is good today and is in the lineup, but again, looking at this live, watching it happen live, I had no idea what to think on if Cooper Pratt was going to be okay or not. Him staying in the game was a shock to me. During also got a little bit hurt when running earlier, and he stayed in the game, so there are these lots of mini injuries that these Brewers guys have, and they are all playing, so I hope that they stay safe, that they play smart. Jake Bowers is another example of those guys with a couple of injuries that played in yesterday's contest, so it's a lot to track for the Milwaukee Brewers, but what we also have to track is what is the pitching matchup tonight? What are we going to see in this series? Well, we look at the first two games again, 17 to 3 and 9 to 4, a 1-1 split. Now we go to Jacob Mizrowski and David Peterson. You might look at this and be like, all right, this should be a Brewers win. I know the last two games are a little crazy. This should be a Brewers win. You got the NL Cy Young favorite, you got David Peterson. This is a guy with over a 5 VRA, should be a breeze. I don't view it that way, especially because of the weather at Wrigley Field, which I'll also touch on in just a second. You can never guess what the result is going to be with that, but David Peterson, he's a guy that has had the Brewers number. This is the pitching matchup right here. You see Mizrowski, a 14-5 record, 1.73 ERA versus a 7-7 record with a 5.11, and that's when you are looking at it saying this should be a breeze. Mizrowski should carve him off. The Brewers should hit Peterson. That's not the case. The Brewers have actually faced Peterson already this season. I want to take a look at Peterson's last four games against the Milwaukee Brewers because that is the same scale for Mizrowski and how many times he's faced the career. We're going to look at the last four, which I will flash up here for you guys. David Peterson is 3-0 with an ERA of 1.33 over his last four outings against the Brewers. Now, two of them did come in 2024, one of them in 2025, but one of them did come here in 2026 when he was pretty new to the Chicago Cubs. He went five and two thirds innings, only gave up two earned runs and only five hits. The Brewers ended up losing that game as well. Again, that is one of his three wins that he was credited with. So, David Peterson, this is not a pitcher to overlook despite what the numbers may show you, but we do have to flip it to the Miz, Jacob Mizrowski, see what he's done against the Cubs in a similar time frame of four games and pretty similar numbers, a higher ERA and such though, but you look at the last two outings, only one run given up over six innings and zero over six in the one before that. So, only one run over 12 innings of baseball against the Cubs this season, but overall over 20 innings of baseball against the Chicago Cubs in the regular season. He has only allowed six earned runs, which equates to a 2.7 ERA. Mizrowski did get to actually face the Cubs in the playoffs and I believe the only run he gave up against them that entire time was a solo homer to Seiya Suzuki. So, those numbers could be lower if I include the playoff numbers, but that's kind of what we're looking at right here. Do not overlook this matchup at all because man, that's the last thing I'm going to do in this series, but we have this pitching matchup right here and you got to ask yourself, is the offense going to show out with this pitching matchup? Well, the weather's a big factor of that. Wrigley wins. This is a count on X that I've been tracking the past three days because of this series. It says tonight versus the Brewers, 90 degrees. That is hotter than the past two days. Wind is blowing out to center field at seven miles an hour with gusts up to 16. So, it's hotter, it's more humid, and there is more wind than we have seen in the previous two matchups. I think the long ball is still going to be a factor. I mean, Christian Yelich's homer, that looks like it probably would have been gone in a good amount of ballparks. Jory Ortiz, that was definitely helped out by the wind. I think both of their homers were hit under 100 miles an hour and this obviously goes for the other side for the Chicago Cubs. We could possibly see that from them tonight. We saw them hit nine against the Brewers in game one, so this is a little bit scary on what is going to occur in tonight's contest. Hoping that the ball stays in the yard for the Brewers, but hey, when you throw a fastball like Jacob Mizorowski, that, you know, sometimes can touch 104, 105 miles an hour. If you make contact with that tonight, that could fly pretty far, but the same goes if the Brewers get around on some of Peterson's pitches. Hopefully, they fly far as well. We do want to take a look at tonight's lineup that was posted by the Milwaukee Brewers. I'll flash this on the big screen for you guys to get a better look at it. It is David Peterson on the mound who is a lefty to note, so we're going to see a good amount of righties in this lineup, and it leads off with a righty in Jackson Churio, who is playing left field. Bryce Turang seems to be good to go as he's in the lineup playing second and batting second. Andrew Vaughn, who played very well yesterday, want to give a huge shout out to Pat Murphy. It was a possible opportunity when a righty came in the game. You thought maybe Pat Murphy would take Andrew Vaughn out, and he actually did not. Andrew Vaughn had a very clutch hit in yesterday's contest, which was a one-run double to tie the game. He is the guy that is batting third up in that order for the Brewers. Another righty in Contreras getting the cleanup duties. We go back to the left side playing right field in the five spot. Jake Bowers, Luis Lara, who we did not see in the contest, or sorry, who we did see in the contest yesterday in center field, is back in center field playing in place of Garrett Mitchell, so that is two days in a row. That'll be something to track. Gary Sanchez gets the DH duties over Christian Yelich because of a lefty being on the mound. Joey Ortiz and his red hot bat that we've seen over the past two months will be playing third and batting eighth. The Cooper Pratt playing shortstop, rounding it out at that ninth spot. Again, nice to see that Cooper Pratt is in that lineup, that he's healthy, that he's good to go, because that was a huge scare. I'm shocked that Pratt was the only one that took the blow there. It felt like three guys could have taken it, but hey, I like this lineup. I don't mind it at all. A lot of pinch hit opportunities. I haven't seen anything posted on, you know, like Yelich being out saying he's not going to play this game no matter what. He's getting rest. Could be a guy when a righty comes out of the bullpen. Possibly we'll see him in. Possibly same could be true for Garrett Mitchell, so that'll be a lot to track, but hoping that we can track a W at Wrigley Field tonight. The Brewers, a 1-1 split in this series. They lead the division by eight games. They lead the National League by three and a half over the Dodgers, so things are looking good for the Brewers. Again, I talked about it would be huge if Milwaukee would be able to take three out of four from the series. If they went two and two, that also would have been fine, because that's just four more games that happened, and the exact same spot in the division. They've gone one and one, so they're on pace for two and two, but we hope for a little bit more than that. But again, hoping the Brewers get a win tonight and that Jacob Mizorowski continues his Cy Young case.