Heated Burnes tossed in Crew's extras win

CINCINNATI -- Corbin Burnes’ outing was over, so he let his frustration out.

Burnes earned his first career ejection following the sixth inning of the Brewers’ 5-4 win over the Reds in 11 innings on Friday night after a fiery confrontation with home-plate umpire D.J. Reyburn on a hot evening at Great American Ball Park.

The Brewers didn’t let hard feelings linger, however. They scored on a pair of fielder’s choice groundouts in the top of the 11th, and five relievers delivered quality relief behind Burnes, including Elvis Peguero in the 10th for his first career win and Bryse Wilson in the 11th for his third save. Before Wilson surrendered Curt Casali’s run-scoring double with two outs, the Brewers’ bullpen hadn’t allowed a hit.

Those efforts combined to snap the Brewers’ three-game losing streak in Burnes’ starts.

“Starting pitching has been up and down all year, offense has been up and down all year,” Burnes said, “but for the most part, those guys have been pretty consistent out there.”

For Burnes, the standoff with Reyburn had been brewing throughout the night. Burnes surrendered only two Reds hits and struck out seven over six innings and 100 pitches, but tied his season high with four walks, including leadoff walks in the second and third innings, with both runners coming around to score -- the second on Jonathan India’s two-run home run in the third inning for the Reds’ first hit.

The Brewers tied the game at 3 in the fourth, and it remained tied in the bottom of the sixth when Burnes disagreed with at least two called balls. When Burnes made a sliding catch behind the mound to end that 1-2-3 sixth inning, he spiked the baseball to the turf from his knees and had an animated discussion with Reyburn on the way back to the dugout.

Burnes continued talking from the dugout between innings. Before the top of the seventh got underway, Reyburn looked at him and said, “You’re done.”

“You see [disputed pitches] between innings and it's frustrating, but you’ve got to shake it off,” said Burnes, who has a 3.75 ERA through a dozen starts. “You got to go out there and pitch knowing that he was giving me some stuff on the other side of the plate. But in that last inning, it kind of just blew over.”

There was little downside to Burnes blowing off some steam, other than the potential fine he’ll receive for being ejected. Had there been any question his outing was complete, he would have been back up in the clubhouse prepping for another inning.

“There were just a bunch of pitches, good pitches, that weren’t called, that force longer innings,” said Brewers manager Craig Counsell. “The walks hurt him. There was no hard contact today. Even the pitch to India didn’t feel like a bad pitch, necessarily. But two of the walks scored and I think there were four walks altogether, which is not normal for him.

“He was fired up.”

Was Burnes dissatisfied with the zone all night?

“You can't get upset with the calls on the edges,” he said. “Every umpire has their established strike zone that they have. D.J. was giving me the fastball off the edge most of the night. Every now and again, he wasn't giving it.

“But I think what frustrates pitchers the most are the ones that are completely in the strike zone and you can see they're completely in the strike zone. I think those are the ones that get us. Two of the walks I had probably should have been strikeouts if we had some pitches called strikes that were clearly in the zone.”

The Brewers did enough to pick Burnes up. Joey Wiemer hit a two-run home run in his return to Cincinnati, where he played college baseball for the Bearcats, and fill-in shortstop Andruw Monasterio continued to shine with two hits, a walk, a stolen base and a sensational defensive play up the middle in the 11th to take away a hit from the Reds’ Stuart Fairchild. Without it, Casali’s double could have tied the game.

But the Brewers escaped with a win in the opener of this four-game series against the Reds, who went into the weekend coming off a 5-1 road trip with a chance to pull into first place in the National League Central.

“The bullpen was awesome today,” Counsell said. “Pick a guy, they all had to make pitches with the game on the line, and they all made pitches. That’s not easy to do, to have five different guys do that.”