MILWAUKEE -- Jacob Misiorowski did his part on Friday night.
His teammates did their thing on Sunday afternoon.
Completing a productive weekend for the Brewers phenom’s National League Cy Young Award hopes, Jackson Chourio hit a leadoff home run off Phillies ace Cristopher Sánchez and Blake Perkins capitalized on a rare start by smacking a three-run shot, powering a 4-0 win over Philadelphia to conclude a sold-out weekend at American Family Field.
“I’m happy for the guys to be in a battle like this against a team built for the World Series with that type of pitching,” said Brewers manager Pat Murphy. “That’s what this whole thing is about, to try to be in these environments as much as you can, keep your poise and hopefully win a couple of them.”
They won a couple of them starting with Misiorowski. He faced the minimum in the series opener with a 15-strikeout, one-hit shutout of the Phillies for one of the greatest pitching performances in Brewers franchise history, and a challenge to Sánchez to try to match it on Sunday. The pair are among the early frontrunners in the NL Cy Young race along with Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Dodgers, Chase Burns of the Reds, Chris Sale of the Braves, reigning winner Paul Skenes of the Pirates and many more.
At this early juncture, it’s a wide open race. But Misiorowski and Sánchez have stood out.
Entering play Sunday, Sánchez led the league in Baseball-Reference WAR as a pitcher and was 6-0 with a 0.75 ERA in his last eight starts. That included a stretch of five scoreless starts in May that narrowly gave him the edge over Misiorowski (0.23 ERA in six starts in May) for NL Pitcher of the Month honors.
But the Brewers took a bite out of those numbers by tagging Sánchez for four earned runs on eight hits in 5 2/3 innings, starting with Chourio hitting Milwaukee’s first leadoff home run of the season. It was Chiourio’s fifth homer in the last five games and his Major League-leading seventh dinger in June.
Perkins piled on when he stepped to the plate with a .111 batting average in the fourth and hit a two-out, three-run home run that gave Brewers starter Kyle Harrison some breathing room on the way to six scoreless innings in a bounceback outing.
Add Perkins’ double in the sixth which knocked Sánchez from the game, and Perkins is now 6-for-7 lifetime against the lefty with three doubles, a home run and five RBIs.
“I was really trying to lock in on winning the series against obviously a really great pitcher, but a really great team,” Perkins said. “Down the road, these are the wins we’ll hopefully look back on when we’re hopefully in a position to have our season keep going.”
Perhaps they’ll look back on it as part of the story of awards season, too. By bumping Sánchez’s ERA from 1.54 to 1.82, Brewers hitters did their part to push Misiorowski’s Cy Young case forward. Among pitchers who have logged at least 50 innings so far this season, here are Misiorowski’s MLB ranks:
ERA: 2nd, 1.34 (Ohtani, 1.06)
Strikeouts: 1st, 131
Strikeout rate: 1st, 39.8%
WHIP: 1st, 0.74
Average against: 1st, .140
OPS against: 1st, .410
Barrels: 2nd, 4 (Fried, 3)
Of course, there is a lot of regular season remaining. Mindful of that, the Brewers won’t send Misiorowski to the mound in their next series against the Guardians, opting instead to delay his next start to the series opener against the Braves on June 19. If that’s where he slots back in, Misiorowski would be pitching one full week after his unforgettable performance against the Phillies.
In turn, the Brewers are set to have Misiorowski and Harrison pitching back-to-back days for the next stretch of games. They have been Milwaukee’s two best pitchers this season, notwithstanding Harrison’s eight-run outing against the A’s in the extremely hitter-friendly environs of Las Vegas Ballpark on June 8.
Sunday was more like it for Harrison: Six scoreless innings, three hits and no walks.
“I’m happy to be back at sea-level,” he said. “Nice to see the ball moving like it should. The ‘vert’ was back. It felt good today.”
It was just as good to see Brewers hitters jump on Sánchez from the start, ending a fun weekend for the Milwaukee faithful that Misiorowski started.
“Extremely impressive what Misiorowski did, but I’m just very happy with how the whole team performed in general,” Chourio said. “I think that’s the best way to describe it: I’m just very happy with how we were able to play this weekend.”