It wasn’t pretty, but the National League Central-leading Milwaukee Brewers finally found a way to win in Denver.
The Brewers snapped a six-game Coors Field losing streak — a skid that had dated to Sept. 6, 2022 — with a 4-3 victory over the Colorado Rockies on Tuesday night as Rhys Hoskins knocked in the winning run with a two-out, bases-loaded hit-by-pitch in the ninth inning.
Milwaukee’s league-leading 26th comeback win of the season evened the four-game series.
Colin Rea (7-2, 3.61 ERA), who went 3-0 with a 3.25 ERA in five starts in June, will start for the Brewers on Wednesday night in the third game of the series and be opposed by fellow right-hander Dakota Hudson (2-11, 5.84).
Rea is 0-0 with a 4.35 ERA in two career starts against Colorado. He comes in off a 4-2 win over the Chicago Cubs on Friday, allowing two runs on three hits over 5 1/3 innings while walking two and striking out eight.
Hudson has lost four straight starts, including 5-3 to the worst team in the majors, the Chicago White Sox, last Friday when he allowed five runs on six hits over five innings. He is 1-4 with a 5.14 ERA in 10 career appearances (seven starts) against the Brewers.
Milwaukee entered the ninth inning Tuesday trailing the Rockies 3-2. The Brewers grinded out two runs, forcing Colorado relievers to throw 55 pitches.
The Brewers loaded the bases with one out on an infield single by Andruw Monasterio, a walk to Brice Turang and a broken-bat infield single by Christian Yelich, his third hit of the game.
Willy Adames then drove in Monasterio with a sacrifice fly to tie the game, and Garrett Mitchell followed with a walk to re-load the bases. Reliever Justin Lawrence then hit Rhys Hoskins in the left elbow to drive in Turang with what proved to be the winning run.
“Give our guys credit,” Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy said. “This has been a tough place for us to pull off a victory. We didn’t get the big hit, but we pecked away like little woodpeckers and came up with enough.”
“The boys took amazing at-bats,” said Adames, who is 5-for-8 with two RBIs and two runs in the series. “They battled to the end, and we ended up victorious. We are competitors over here. We’re always going to be fighting, and we’re never going to give up.”
The loss snapped a rare two-game winning streak for Colorado, which was trying to win three games in a row for the first time since May 9-15, when the Rockies put together a season-high seven-game winning streak.
“Any time you walk guys in the ninth in a one-run game, you put yourself in peril,” Rockies manager Bud Black said.
“It’s frustrating,” left fielder Nolan Jones told The Denver Post. “As a team, we’ve got to win these games.”
Brenton Doyle had another big game for Colorado in Tuesday’s loss, hitting his third home run in two games as well as an eighth-inning RBI double that gave the Rockies a brief 3-2 lead.
–Field Level Media
