MILWAUKEE – Jacob Misiorowski has made pitching look easy for much of his breakthrough season, but the Reds provided a reminder that it’s not always going to be that way.
The budding Brewers ace surrendered a pair of home runs for the first time in his last 13 starts and departed Thursday’s series finale at American Family Field in a 5-1 deficit after an anticipated pitchers' duel with Cincinnati’s Chase Burns never really developed. The Reds would go on to win, 7-2.
Misiorowski was charged with five runs (only one was earned) on five hits over five innings, with no walks and 10 strikeouts in his seventh double-digit strikeout performance this season and ninth of his career.
Four of those runs scored in the fourth inning, when Brewers first baseman Jake Bauers dropped a throw leading off the inning for a costly error that extended a Reds rally long enough for Noelvi Marte to hit a run-scoring single ahead of Cincinnati catcher Jose Trevino depositing a three-run home run into the left-field corner.
Trevino’s home run was his first since last June, and with Sal Stewart’s solo homer off a 102.7 mph Misiorowski fastball in the first inning, it was the first time since the Blue Jays homered twice against him on April 14 that Misiorowski surrendered multiple extra-base hits in a game.
How unhittable had he been since then? In his 12 starts between April 14 and Thursday, Misiorowski surrendered only four extra-base hits.
The Stewart home run was its own kind of rarity. Prior to that swing, opponents were 4-for-46 in the regular season and postseason against Misiorowski in at-bats that ended with a pitch at 102-plus mph – including the Elly De La Cruz strikeout to lead off Thursday’s game. The four hits were all infield singles.
This, however, was a different kind of day. The five runs off Misiorowski – even though four were unearned – matched a career high. The Reds were the last team to score five times off the right-hander, in a start in Cincinnati last August while the Brewers were in the midst of their club-record 14-game winning streak.