DENVER -- Freddy Peralta continued his dominance at Coors Field Tuesday, earning a 7-1 win over the Rockies in the series opener Tuesday as the Brewers kicked off a six-game road trip with their first away win of the season.
Peralta pitched five innings and allowed just one run, a homer in the bottom of the third to Rockies center fielder Brenton Doyle. It was one of just three hits Peralta allowed, alongside three walks and six strikeouts.
¡°Third straight outing where he just went after the hitters,¡± manager Pat Murphy said of Peralta. ¡°[He was] a little bit more tired than normal. He said after five that ¡®I'm good.¡¯ He put a lot into it that, but he kept attacking.¡±
Peralta touched 98 on the radar gun, bringing some ninth-inning mentality to his start and recording four of his strikeouts with high heat.
¡°He's got to pitch like a closer from inning one to how many innings he gives us,¡± Murphy said. ¡°When he does that, he just lets it go. That heater up was really effective tonight.¡±
The right-hander is now 2-0 in four games (three starts) at Coors Field with a 1.59 ERA (17 innings, three earned runs). The first of those games was his big-league debut in 2018, when he pitched 5.2 scoreless innings and struck out 13, a franchise record for a first-time starter.
¡°Hopefully that happens for the rest of my career,¡± Peralta said. ¡°I¡¯m never going to forget what happened in my first game. I don't really try to do the same thing on the mound. It just happened.¡±
Murphy attributed Peralta¡¯s prowess in the notorious hitter¡¯s park to having both ¡°a knack for pitching¡± and a good memory, and Peralta drew on his experience when approaching Coors Field.
¡°Because of the altitude, I knew that my breaking ball probably wasn't going to be great,¡± Peralta said. ¡°I had it ready just in case, but my plan was to use the fastball today.¡±
The Brewers paired an offensive outburst with Peralta¡¯s strong showing, erupting for four runs on six hits while batting around in the third inning.
Isaac Collins and Joey Ortiz -- hitting in the seven and eight holes -- led off the inning with a pair of singles to center and Jackson Chourio extended his hit streak to 10 games with a bases-clearing one-out double.
¡°They got a lot of speed at bottom of their order, so you get to be conscious of that, and they got their big boys up top,¡± Rockies ace Kyle Freeland said of the Brewers. ¡°It's somewhat of a difficult lineup to navigate.¡±
William Contreras, Rhys Hoskins, and Sal Frelick hit three straight two-out singles from the middle of the order to plate two more runs and give the Brewers a 4-0 lead.
¡°Guys are starting to swing it a little bit better, but, still, we've got a lot of improvement to do offensively,¡± Murphy said.
Brice Turang drove Freeland from the game in the top of the seventh, launching a 444-foot homer into the center-field bullpen to extend his hitting streak to 11 games and restore the four-run lead over the Rockies. It was the longest homer of his career.
¡°I'm getting older,¡± Turang, 25, said of his new-found power swing. ¡°That's just how it is. I'm starting to get the ¡®man strength.¡¯ I've always known I've had it. Even when I was in high school, I had it. It was just kind of doing it the right way and not forcing it. All that stuff comes from working out in the gym, getting older, getting stronger, stuff like that.¡±
Christian Yelich and Contreras followed in the same frame with a pair of two-out solo shots to right and left, respectively, to make it a 7-1 lead.
Nick Mears, fresh off the 15-day injured list (illness), pitched a perfect eighth inning, striking out two as he returned to Colorado, where he opened the 2024 season before a late-season trade to Milwaukee.
The icing on the Coors Field cake for Peralta was the chance to be in the same park with his brother, Luis, who debuted with the Rockies last year and is currently in their bullpen, though he didn¡¯t get into Tuesday¡¯s game.
¡°Since Spring Training, I was thinking about this moment -- I'm going to see him again,¡± Peralta said. ¡°I'm really proud of him, my younger brother. We know where we're coming from, and that's why everything's more special for me.¡±