Short-handed Brewers run wild, cash in on Tigers’ miscues

DETROIT -- With three of their best hitters on the injured list, the Brewers are surviving the best way they know how.

When an opponent gives an inch, take a mile.

That was the story of Tuesday’s 12-4 win over the Tigers at Comerica Park, where a lackadaisical play here and an error there helped the Brewers claim the series opener despite Milwaukee’s starter, Kyle Harrison, recording nine outs, and Milwaukee’s lineup, still missing the injured Jackson Chourio, Andrew Vaughn and Christian Yelich, not collecting an extra-base hit until Gary Sánchez and Garrett Mitchell hit back-to-back triples leading off a game-breaking, seven-run eighth inning.

Those jolts aside, the Brewers took command as they have so often while winning the last three NL Central titles -- by capitalizing every time the Tigers made a mistake.

“Trust me, I’ve faced this team a couple of years ago, so I know what it’s like,” Harrison said of pitching against the Brewers. “It’s hard at-bats. Grind you out. The relentless will to get on base and drag the pitcher down with you. Just the fight, man. That’s awesome to see.”

“When we’re clicking,” added left fielder Blake Perkins, “we’re a hard team to beat.”

They were clicking on Tuesday in a very Brewers-type way. Of Milwaukee’s 16 hits, 13 were singles. Three were infield singles. And the Brewers made those hits count, going 10-for-16 with runners in scoring position.

On the heels of a six-game losing streak, they are back to playing their brand of pesky baseball, winners of five of the last six games.

“When you’re putting pressure on other teams because of our speed and balls in play, that happens,” manager Pat Murphy said. “You make it difficult on them. It affects people, like, ‘Why me?’ And you can sometimes take advantage.”

Like in the second inning, when Detroit’s rookie shortstop Kevin McGonigle was slow to convert Mitchell’s routine ground ball leading off the frame, and the Brewers turned it into a three-run rally.

Or when Tigers reliever Enmanuel De Jesus had David Hamilton picked off second base in the seventh, only to throw the baseball into center field for an error. This time, the Brewers tacked on two unearned runs.

The Brewers’ big eighth started with Sánchez’s fourth triple in 3,373 career plate appearances, and Mitchell making it Milwaukee's first back-to-back triples since Héctor Gómez and Gerardo Parra off Clayton Kershaw on May 4, 2015, in Craig Counsell’s debut as Brewers manager. Even now, it was a case of Milwaukee making an opponent pay. It was the smallest thing -- De Jesus being slow to cover first base on a bouncer to first base that became the third of Hamilton’s four hits.

The Brewers, with two runs already on the board in the inning, went on to score five more.

“You have to keep the pressure on,” Murphy said. “Every team tries to do that. I don’t know that we’re the only one that capitalizes like that, but I see it a lot. Our innings are a walk, an infield hit and a bunt, and the pitcher is looking out there like, ‘Wait a minute. I haven’t given up a ball out of the infield and it’s bases loaded, no outs.”

Brice Turang led the Brewers with four RBIs while extending his on-base streak to 20 consecutive games. It’s the third-longest on-base streak to begin a season in franchise history, trailing only Robin Yount’s 23 in a row to begin the 1983 season and Ryan Braun’s 28 to open 2011.

But the Brewers weren’t really having fun until they watched Sánchez, their 33-year-old, 251-pound backup catcher, chugging to third base to start the eighth inning with his first triple in two years.

It was the Brewers’ first extra-base hit all night.

“That’s us,” Sánchez said. “We can have a lot of hits, we can bunt, we can play the small ball. But on any given day, anyone in the lineup can take one deep and hit a homer and have the ability to win like that. When you’re about to score runs in different ways, it makes it difficult to face us as a team.”

They expect to be an even better team once they get some big names back in the lineup. If all goes well beginning Wednesday, when Chourio is scheduled to hit on the field for the first time since Spring Training, the 22-year-old outfielder is positioned to be the first one back.

“It’s ‘next man up’ until it’s not,” Hamilton said. “We’re doing what we can right now with the guys we have.”