MILWAUKEE — The opportunities the Cardinals missed to reshape the outcome of a weekend in Wisconsin were as costly as the ones the Brewers did just enough to capitalize on.
Christian Yelich had three hits and a solo home run to drive Milwaukee to a 6-1 victory on Easter at American Family Field. The Brewers had only two hits Sunday afternoon with a runner in scoring position, but each time they delivered a two-run double. Willy Adames had the first to give the Brewers an early lead, and he added a solo homer later. The Cardinals, meanwhile, left the bases loaded in the eighth, just as they had twice on Friday night. And they went one-for-12 with runners in scoring position.
Brewers starter Freddy Peralta allowed one run on four hits through six innings, and he struck out seven. Jake Woodford steadied himself in his second start of the season but allowed three runs – all of them driven in by Adames.
The Brewers won the first series of the season between the division rivals and will not host the Cardinals again in Milwaukee until the Cardinals’ final road series of the season.
Milwaukee has won all three of its series this season and seven of eight games.
In each game, even the one they won, the Cardinals had a chance to change the look on the scoreboard and failed to do what the Brewers did.
Before the Cardinals botched the entire thing in the eighth inning, the defining plate appearance for what could have been was also another first for Jordan Walker.
The rookie outfielder extended his hitting streak to nine games with an RBI single earlier in the game, and in the eighth he worked his first walk in the majors. Walker fell behind 0-2, fouled off two 95-mph fastballs and ignored a couple of breaking balls out of the zone. Walker saw eight pitches in the plate appearance to earn the walk from Brewers’ right-handed Matt Busch. That loaded the bases for the Cardinals.
Bush had zero outs.
What followed was one of the most significant misses of the early season.
Bush remained in the game just long enough to start cleaning up the mess of his making. He fell behind 2-0 to pinch-hitter Willson Contreras before recovering to strike out the veteran catcher. Busch got a fly out from Tommy Edman to shallow left field that the Cardinals did not dare to try and turn into a sacrifice fly. The runners stayed put. Bush did not. When the Brewers replaced the right-handed Bush on the mound with lefty Hoby Milner, the Cardinals lifted leadoff hitter Brendan Donovan for pinch-hitter Taylor Motter.
Milner struck him out on five pitches to end the inning.
The first three batters reached base and were marooned there.
Rookie Walker ties Cardinals record, Ted Williams
The Cardinals’ lone run against Brewers starter Peralta came with a tailwind of history.
Walker connected on a line drive RBI single to center field that cut Milwaukee’s lead in half and tied a Cardinals’ club record. In all nine games of his big-league career, Walker has at least one hit, and that matches the longest streak by a Cardinal to start a career. Outfielder Magneuris Sierra set the rookie record for Cardinals with a nine-game hitting streak in 2017.
Walker’s hitting streak is also a rarity for someone his age.
At 20 years, 322 days old, he is the youngest player in the majors to open his career with hits in nine consecutive days since Ted Williams. The Hall of Famer – and to hit .400 – started his career with a nine-game hitting streak in 1939. Walker’s hitting streak is the first of at least nine games since by someone age 20 or younger.
Eddie Murphy, a Philadelphia Athletics’ outfielder a century ago, debuted at age 20 and began his career with a 12-game hitting streak.
The Cardinals’ franchise record for a hitting streak at any point by a rookie belongs to current bench coach Joe McEwing. In 1999, he had a 25-game hitting streak.
Woodford gets stubborn with sinker
Stung in his first start of the season by four-seam fastballs that ran high in the strike zone, Woodford adjusted his elevation and returned to the lower edges.
Or, as his manager said, he got “stubborn low in the zone.”
Nearly half of Woodford’s 87 pitches were sinkers, and got him through the early innings. The first two Brewers to face Woodford reached base, but a double play started by Nolan Gorman at third ended the first inning. In the second, Woodford found that rhythm and sequence that gave him such success in spring training. He got two groundouts on the sinker, and, when he was ahead in the count, he elevated the four-seam fastball for a strikeout. That second inning was his only three-up, three-down inning of the game.
The Brewers cracked through for two runs in the third, and Woodford invited the rally by walking the No. 9 hitter. A double by Adams brought both runners in and that was when Woodford’s pitches started to stray from being stubbornly down.
The last pitch Woodford threw Adams hit over the fence in the fifth.
Woodford finished his 4 2/3 innings with five strikeouts and three runs allowed on six hits. He walked only the one batter that came around to score.
Brewers pile on
As the Cardinals considered the construction of their bullpen coming out of spring training, one factor in the conversation was right-handed reliever Andre Pallante’s success against left-handed batters. In his rookie season, left-handed hitters managed a .619 OPS and a .284 on-base percentage against him, and he was exceptional at getting groundballs from them. That gave the Cardinals the option of carrying one lefty in the bullpen with Pallante as a reliever who could neutralize the opposing team’s top hitters from that side.
That side gave him trouble in the seventh Sunday.
Yelich, a left-handed hitter, connected for a solo homer against Pallante. The next batter, left-handed hitter Jesse Winker, laced a single over the reach of Paul Goldschmidt and down the right-field line. Pallante complicated his inning with a wild pitch that moved Winker and Adames into scoring position for Rowdy Tellez.
Another left-handed batter.
Tellez drilled a double to the left-center gap, and what set up to be a swift inning for Pallante cratered into a pull-away rally for the Brewers. Milwaukee scored three runs in the inning, all of them driven in by a left-handed batter. That widened the Brewers’ lead to five runs with a rested and ready bullpen.
