Crew wants to make lefties 'a little nervous' after strong showing vs. Sale

ATLANTA – To get as far as they want to go in this surprise season, the Brewers might have to beat the Phillies’ Ranger Suárez or Cristopher Sánchez. There might be another matchup with the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw. If the D-backs keep surging, perhaps they’ll see Jordan Montgomery or Eduardo Rodriguez. And they might match up again with the Braves’ Max Fried or Chris Sale.

Left-handed pitchers, all of them. For two years, southpaws have been a problem for the Brewers, who looked a lot more formidable while wearing down Sale in Wednesday night’s 8-5 win over the Braves at Truist Park.

“It is changing a little bit,” said the Brewers’ longest-tenured pitcher, Freddy Peralta, who picked up a win even after yielding a fifth-inning lead on a night his ERA ticked north of 4.00. “In the past, everyone knew, ‘Ah, the Brewers are struggling against lefties.’ But we’ve been looking way different now.

“Especially with Sale, man. He’s no average pitcher. He’s a legend already, and we were seeing him good. We weren’t able to score a lot against him, but we were able to take him out of the game quick, and that’s the reason we won tonight.”

It was a case of the Brewers’ “lefty lineup” coming through. Blake Perkins led the way by driving in three runs on three hits, including one go-ahead single in the fifth inning, and then, after Peralta lost the lead on Austin Riley’s two-out, two-run homer in the bottom of that inning, another go-ahead two-run single in the sixth.

Perkins had plenty of backup from the Brewers’ right-handed hitters. Jackson Chourio, Rhys Hoskins and Joey Ortiz all had three hits of their own, and Gary Sánchez had two hits and scored twice as the Brewers, with back-to-back victories to start this three-game set, snapped a streak of three consecutive losing series.

“I would hope that lefties are a little nervous now, a little bit cautious with us,” Perkins said.

The Brewers won 92 games last season despite going 22-26 against left-handed starters. They thought they’d made some corrections going into this year with the free-agent additions of right-handed sluggers Hoskins and Sánchez, plus, if things broke right, young right-handed hitters like Chourio and Ortiz.

But with a combination of injuries and the expected rookie inconsistencies, the results have been similar. The Brewers went into Wednesday’s matchup against Sale with a 14-17 record in games started by opposing southpaws. That included a loss in a Sale start on July 31 at American Family Field, when the 35-year-old pitched into the sixth inning and held the Brewers to two runs in a no-decision.

Now, with Chourio surging since the start of July, Ortiz emerging from a neck injury followed by a slump (he has back-to-back multihit games for the first time since June 22-23) and Sánchez back from a month-long stint on the IL for a left calf injury, this version of Milwaukee’s lineup looks more formidable. It collected nine hits off Sale in the lefty’s 4 2/3 innings, then reclaimed the lead in the sixth on Perkins’ two-out single off another Braves lefty, A.J. Minter.

All together, the seven right-handed hitters in Wednesday’s starting lineup, plus the switch-hitting Perkins, combined to go 16-for-36 with eight walks. Three of the walks belonged to second baseman Andruw Monasterio, who reached safely four times in a rare start.

“There weren’t a lot of extra-base hits, but it was relentless,” manager Pat Murphy said. “Look at Ortiz, Perkins, Monasterio and Chourio. Ortiz, people were kind of worried about after that neck injury, and he’s just back to his form. He was tremendous tonight with four quality [plate appearances]. Perkins four quality, maybe five. Monasterio, four quality. Chourio, four quality. That’s what we’re looking for.”

Chourio, usually the leadoff hitter in the Brewers’ lefty lineups, finished 3-for-5 with a walk and has 11 multihit games in 15 games since the All-Star break. Ortiz went 3-for-4 with two doubles -- the Brewers’ only extra-base hits -- and a walk in his first three-hit game since May 17, when he was on the way to winning National League Rookie of the Month honors.

“You’re being mentioned as a Rookie of the Year candidate, and then all of a sudden you’re injured and you’re trying to play with it, then you go on the IL and you don’t know what to think,” Murphy said. “This whole thing is a mental game. I’m really proud of him breaking through.”

Ortiz wasn’t the only one.

“We forgot we faced Chris Sale, you know what I mean?” Murphy said. “This guy is one of the best in the game and he made big pitches at big times. But we just hung in there.”