Brewers Blast Six Early Runs, Survive Cubs' Wild Ninth

Milwaukee buried Chicago under six runs before the Cubs recorded a single run, then held on for an 8-6 win on September 9. The story of the night was a three-homer barrage in the first two innings that made Kevin Gausman's evening a short, painful one.

Christian Yelich set the tone immediately. In the first, he launched a 372-foot shot to left center, scoring Turang and Contreras to put Milwaukee up 3-0 — a swing that pushed the home win probability from 66% to 86% before Chicago had even settled in. The Cubs never really recovered from that opening blow. Jackson Chourio followed in the second with a 436-foot bomb to center, and then William Contreras added a two-run shot to left at 374 feet, and just like that it was 6-0 before the game was two innings old. Gausman lasted only 4.0 innings, allowing 8 hits and 6 earned runs against 6 strikeouts — a line that looks like a complete unraveling against a lineup that was locked in from pitch one.

Milwaukee kept piling on. Chourio singled to left in the third to score Mitchell and push the lead to 7-0, and Contreras added yet another RBI single in the sixth — his third RBI of the night — to make it 8-1. Contreras finished 2-for-3 with a homer, 3 RBI, and 2 runs scored. Chourio went 3-for-5 with a homer and 2 RBI. On the pitching side, Logan Henderson was dominant through 5.0 innings — just 2 hits, 0 earned runs, 1 walk, and 6 strikeouts — and JoJo Romero followed with 2.0 scoreless innings of his own. Milwaukee's pitching staff appeared to have this one locked up well before the final out.

Then came the ninth, and Chicago made things genuinely uncomfortable. Pete Crow-Armstrong scored on a walk, Nico Hoerner singled in a run, a groundout plated another, and then Michael Conforto doubled to center to score two more — suddenly it was 8-6 with the tying run at the plate. Crow-Armstrong scored twice in the game, Hoerner drove in a run, and Conforto's 2-RBI double was the kind of hit that makes a bullpen sweat. But Milwaukee closed it out. The final was 8-6, and while the Cubs' ninth-inning rally looks like a sign of life, it came far too late against a Brewers offense that had already done its damage in the first three innings.