Burnes follows All-Star nod with 12-K gem

Corbin Burnes and the Brewers are back in command in the National League Central.

Gaining back all the ground they lost to the Reds over the three days leading to last week’s All-Star break, the Brewers completed a three-game sweep on Sunday behind a masterful Burnes with an 8-0 win at Great American Ball Park, leaving a seven-game gap between division-leading Milwaukee and second-place Cincinnati.

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But the Brewers know as well as anyone that division leads don’t mean anything in July.

“Yeah, they go quick. It’s a bad week away from being a really tight race. It’s far, far, far from over,” Christian Yelich said. “Once it gets close to the end of the season, which we’re a long, long ways away from -- we’ve still got over two months, a lot can happen -- then you can kind of start counting down games.

“We’ve got to focus on just stringing together good days and good series and trying to stack them on top of each other. We’re a team over the last few years that’s been able to run some other teams down, so we understand how quick [division leads] can go away.”

Outings like the one Burnes delivered in his first career start against the Reds will help fend off the rest of the field. He didn’t allow a hit until the fourth inning, didn’t allow a runner past first base until the ninth and pitched to within two outs of what would have been the Brewers’ first nine-inning complete game since Jimmy Nelson on Father’s Day in 2017, and their first shutout since Kyle Lohse blanked the Reds in the same ballpark in 2014.

Still, Burnes’ outing -- a career-high 8 1/3 innings with five singles, one walk and 12 strikeouts on a career-high 108 pitches -- was just what the Brewers needed after they depleted the bullpen to get an 11-inning victory the night before.

“To get our lead up to seven games is huge, knowing we only have three more games against these guys,” said Burnes, referring to the final Reds-Brewers series in Milwaukee in the final week of August. “We just have to keep playing good baseball. We’ve got a couple of off-days here this week, so we can keep everyone fresh and everyone feeling good as we go into August.”

The offense came in part from Tyrone Taylor and Jackie Bradley Jr., who delivered successive two-out, two-run hits in the fifth to give their starter some breathing room, and Yelich, who added an exclamation point by following Saturday night’s go-ahead double with his first home run since June 26 on Sunday. Willy Adames went deep, too, scorching a two-run homer in the ninth for his 11th home run in 51 games since coming to the Brewers in a May trade with Tampa Bay.

Burnes, meanwhile, was still pitching.

“He really settled in after the first and just was able to really settle in and shut us down completely offensively,” Reds manager David Bell said. “He’s been good all year. You’ve got to give him a lot of credit.”

Burnes delivered the Brewers’ first start of at least eight innings with at least 12 strikeouts since Yovani Gallardo on June 24, 2010, and the 11th start in Brewers history of eight-plus innings, 12-plus strikeouts and no more than one walk.

When Burnes navigated the seventh on six pitches and took the mound for the eighth at 83 pitches, he had the finish line in sight. Burnes was denied in the ninth when a bloop single to center, an error on first baseman Rowdy Tellez and an infield hit prompted a call for Angel Perdomo to get the final two outs of Milwaukee’s 10th shutout victory in 2021.

Burnes pitched enough innings to climb back into qualifying for MLB’s pitching leaders. He ranks second to the Mets’ Jacob deGrom with a 37.2 percent strikeout rate, fifth with an 0.90 WHIP and fifth with a 2.16 ERA.

“That’s kind of been him all season,” Yelich said. “But especially after last night -- a really long game, went deep in the bullpen, just a late one for the team -- for him to step up like that and put up that kind of outing was huge. Great way to close the series.”

Sunday’s victory gave the Brewers an unconventional seven-game series victory over the Reds, who were in Milwaukee for four games just before the break, then hosted the Brewers for three more to begin the second half. The Brewers won four of the seven to add a game to their division lead.

“They played a good series in Milwaukee, we played a really good series here, and so we're kind of back where we started,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “We've just got to see what's in front of us.”