DENVER -- Sometimes, you just can’t wait around.
Just ask Brewers left fielder Jackson Chourio, who was 0-for-10 over the first two games of Milwaukee’s weekend series against the Rockies at Coors Field.
Prior to Sunday’s 12-4 win over Colorado to complete the club’s first sweep in Denver since June 20-22, 2014, Brewers manager Pat Murphy was jokingly giving Chourio a hard time about not having a hit so far in the series at the hitter-friendly venue.
Chourio replied that he was going to swing at the first pitch he saw on Sunday.
“I told everyone,” Chourio said with a big smile.
Chourio made good on his promise. In fact, he had three hits in the contest -- a single to open the game and a pair of doubles -- all on the first pitch of each plate appearance.
The early-count aggression was a theme not just for Chourio, who has more of a tendency to swing early than many of his teammates, but the entire lineup.
The Brewers entered the series ranked 29th in the Majors in swing percentage on the first pitch of a plate appearance (25.6%). But they swung early and often on Sunday. It paid major dividends, particularly in a seven-run sixth inning that put the game out of reach and helped this year’s club become the fastest in franchise history to reach 40 wins in a season (63 games).
The big sixth inning opened with a William Contreras single. Then Andrew Vaughn lined an RBI triple to right-center. That was followed by a two-run homer on the first pitch by Gary Sánchez. Garrett Mitchell followed with a double, Luis Rengifo walked and Blake Perkins singled with a bunt to load the bases.
Rockies reliever Jaden Hill, who had taken over for starter Kyle Freeland earlier in the inning, then walked in a run by issuing a free pass to Joey Ortiz. After Chourio flew out, Brice Turang delivered a two-run single. Contreras capped the scoring with an RBI groundout in his second at-bat of the frame.
Attacking early in the count wasn’t exactly planned. It was a result of Brewers hitters reading the situation and acting accordingly.
“Normally, I’m actually a guy that’s pretty patient,” said Sánchez, whose homer traveled a Statcast-projected 447 feet, the longest homer for a Brewers batter in 2026. “But in that AB in particular, I knew that I wanted to swing first pitch. It’s a guy who throws pretty hard, and I knew I wanted to make contact out front there. So I was ready to get it going from pitch one there.”
Sánchez has hit six home runs in 102 at-bats this season, something that Murphy pointed out to compliment Sánchez because of how tough it is to hit when you’re not an everyday player. Murphy also echoed the notion that Sunday’s offensive approach was not specifically planned for Coors Field, but instead simply the product of good hitting.
“It’s nothing we do intentionally,” Murphy said. “You’re just trying to be a master of the ball-strike. You’re trying to get the pitch you want to hit early in the count. There’s no secret plan for that.”
The plan may not have been secret, nor a plan at all, for that matter. But it was more than enough to back rookie left-hander Shane Drohan, who made his third career start and first appearance at Coors Field. Drohan went 6 1/3 innings, giving up three runs on five hits, walking one and striking out four. Over his first 13 Major League outings, he owns a 3.11 ERA.
Given the Brewers’ injury-riddled pitching staff, this type of performance in this type of environment was huge.
“The altitude is very real,” Drohan said. “ … But Friday I was able to throw a side session to kind of see how [the ball] moved. So I was able to make those adjustments so I didn’t have to do it on the fly in the game.”
It’s a game of adjustments, both for pitchers and for hitters. And for Milwaukee’s hitters on Sunday, that adjustment involved being ready to hit right away. It worked well and it worked early thanks to Chourio’s pregame promise and tone-setting single to open the game.
“[Murphy] knows I’m a guy who likes to swing the bat from the first pitch of the AB,” Chourio said. “He just reminded me to find a good pitch to hit and do what I do with it.”
Murphy’s hitters were hungry on Sunday, and they delivered in a big way. But there was hunger and a special delivery even before the first pitch.
The Brewers’ skipper has been known to keep some interesting types of food on his person -- waffles, egg rolls, etc. Remember the pocket pancakes he pulled out during an interview on national television last year?
Well, after the Brewers introduced a pocket pancake concession stand at American Family Field last summer, this summer the hotcakes have hit the road. The Brewers’ broadcast caught a moment of a fan at Coors Field handing Murphy some pocket pancakes prior to the game.
When asked about it afterward, Murphy said something he hopes will apply to how Milwaukee’s bats produced on Sunday:
“Happens all the time.”