June 19, 2019: Franmil Reyes pulls Padres past Brewers in slugfest

As the Milwaukee Brewers took the field on a sunny Wednesday afternoon in San Diego in June 2019, they were once again in a tight National League Central Division race with the Chicago Cubs. A season earlier, Milwaukee and Chicago had finished the regular season with identical 95-67 records; the Brewers had taken the division title by winning a tiebreaker game at Wrigley Field. The ’19 Brewers commanded a 40-33 record, fourth-best in the NL, but led the Cubs (39-33) by just a half-game.

Meanwhile, the San Diego Padres (37-37) sat in fourth place in the NL West Division, 12 games behind the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers.

Matt Strahm took the mound for the Padres. He had a 2-6 record in 12 appearances, and he carried a 4.66 ERA. Strahm originally came up as a reliever with the Kansas City Royals in 2016,1 but by 2019 he was exclusively a starter for San Diego.2

Zach Davies, the Brewers’s starter, boasted a 7-1 record with a 2.60 ERA in 14 appearances. The 26-year-old Davies looked to bounce back after a forgettable 2018, a year riddled with injuries, in which he managed only 13 starts and posted a 4.77 ERA,3 the worst of his five-season career to date.

Strahm retired Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich to start the game, but former NL Most Valuable Player Ryan Braun got hold of a fastball and drove it over the right-field wall for his 12th home run of the season and the 334th of his career.

In the bottom of the inning, the Padres wasted no time: 20-year-old rookie Fernando Tatis Jr. led off with a walk and veteran Eric Hosmer crushed Davies’ first pitch to him into the stands. Padres 2, Brewers 1. The Padres looked to add to their lead after a walk and two singles loaded the bases with one out, but Davies retired Greg Garcia on a fly ball and struck out Strahm to end the inning.

Strahm pitched a scoreless top of the second, throwing only 12 pitches despite giving up a walk to catcher Manny Piña. In the bottom of the inning, Tatis and Hosmer singled, putting two on with one out for Manny Machado, in his first season with the Padres after signing a 10-year, $300 million free-agent deal.

Machado cracked a deep drive that hit the top of the center-field wall, near where a secondary wall provided reinforcement. The ball bounced back toward the playing field. The Padres trotted around the bases as if it were a home run. (The hometown scoreboard operators blasted the homer-horn.) The Brewers tossed the ball into the infield, playing the hit as if it stayed in the park and tagging Hosmer as he rounded third. The umpires conferred; crew chief Fieldin Culbreth called for a replay review.

After review, it was determined that the ball never left the ballpark. Tatis was ruled safe at home, Hosmer was ruled out, and Machado was awarded a single.

Hosmer later admitted his mistake, saying, “It was my fault, I saw the ball go over the fence. I didn’t realize there’s a second wall back there. Thought it was a homer and kept running like it was. Just a dumb mistake on my part and luckily it didn’t cost us the ballgame.”4

Machado ended up stranded at second, and the Padres scored just one run in the inning. The score was now 3-1, San Diego.

Strahm got into some trouble with one out in the top of the third. Cain and Yelich singled. On a 0-and-2 count, Strahm left a slider hanging at the bottom of the zone; Braun jumped on it and launched it to the center-field wall for a double, scoring both baserunners and tying the game, 3-3.

The Padres’ offense was hot, though, and Franmil Reyes led off the bottom of the third by swatting a Strahm pitch into left field for a single. One out later, Garcia laced a triple into the right-field corner and the Padres reclaimed the lead.

A walk to Strahm put runners on the corners for Manuel Margot, who, after a seven-pitch duel, grounded a seeing-eye single through the right side of the infield, scoring Garcia and sending Strahm to second. Davies struck out Tatis on a low change-up, but his day was over before he could complete three innings, as reliever Adrian Houser retired Hosmer. Davies’ final line was 2⅔ innings pitched, 5 earned runs, 3 walks, and 9 hits,5 and the Brewers trailed, 5-3.

Houser kept the Brewers in the game by holding the Padres scoreless over the next three innings. San Diego’s only baserunner during that time was Tatis, who singled in the sixth but was thrown out trying to steal second.

With two outs, Milwaukee made it a one-run game in the fifth when Strahm left a changeup down the middle for Yelich, who sent it 447 feet to right-center field for his 27th homer of the season. An inning later, the Brewers threatened with back-to-back two-out walks against reliever Matt Wisler, but Orlando Arcia struck out to strand the runners.

Brad Wieck came out of the bullpen for San Diego in the seventh. He allowed singles to Ben Gamel and Cain to lead off the inning, then got Yelich to fly out to left field. Gerardo Reyes relieved Wieck and got Braun to fly out to deep center field, as Gamel went to third.

With two outs, the tying run stood 90 feet away, with the go-ahead run at first. Yasmani Grandal, the 30-year-old Milwaukee first baseman, stepped up to the plate. Grandal had begun his career with three seasons in San Diego, then spent four years as the Dodgers’ starting catcher. He had inked a one-year free-agent deal with the Brewers in January 2019.

After fouling off the first pitch, Grandal got an inside fastball and belted it down the line, slicing just inside the right-field foul pole for a three-run home run. The Brewers went ahead 7-5, their first lead since the first inning.

The Padres offense showed no signs of slowing down. Machado led off the bottom of the seventh against Jeremy Jeffress with a popup between the pitcher’s mound and first base. It fell between four Brewers infielders for a single. Jeffress walked Hunter Renfroe, bringing Franmil Reyes, the go-ahead run, to the plate.

All Reyes needed was one pitch, a low, two-seam fastball, to turn the tide. He barreled it way into the afternoon breeze; San Diego led, 8-7.

The Brewers and Padres went down quietly in the eighth. Craig Stammen, who retired the last Brewers batter in the eighth, returned for the Padres in the ninth, looking for the four-out-save.

Cain grounded out to start the inning, but Yelich reached on an infield single. With Braun batting, Yelich took second on a passed ball. Braun worked a walk, putting the go-ahead run on first. But Grandal grounded a 2-and-1 sinker softly in front of the catcher Mejia, who tossed it to third for the force. Machado rocketed it to first, bidding for a double play to end the game.

Not quite.

First baseman Hosmer6 had started celebrating before the ball made it to his glove. The ball fell to the ground, and Grandal was safe.

It all came down to the Brewers’ second baseman, Hernán Pérez, but Stammen needed only four pitches, getting Pérez to swing over the top of a sinker to end the game.

Final score after five lead changes: Padres 8, Brewers 7.

Reyes’ clutch blast was part of a 3-for-4 game, adding to an impressive 2019 season. At the July 31 trade deadline, after an 8-17 slide had dropped San Diego from postseason contention,7 he went to the Cleveland Indians a three-team, seven-player deal between the Padres, Cincinnati, and Cleveland that sent Trevor Bauer to the Reds, and Reyes and Yasiel Puig to the Indians.8 Reyes ended the season with 37 homers, a .512 slugging average and an .822 OPS.

Yelich went 3-for-5 and was one of the five players to homer in the game. For the season he slashed .326/.429/.671 with 44 home runs and looking to win back-to-back NL MVPs. He lost that race to Cody Bellinger of the Los Angeles Dodgers after his season was cut short by a fractured kneecap in early September.9

The Brewers grabbed the second NL wild-card spot, finishing 89-73. Weakened by the loss of Yelich, they lost the wild-card game to the eventual World Series champion Washington Nationals.10

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources 

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for information including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SDN/SDN201906190.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2019/B06190SDN2019.htm

Notes

1 In July of 2017 Strahm had been traded by the Royals with Estuery Ruiz, Travis Wood and cash to Padres for Ryan Butcher, Trevor Cahill, and Brandon Mauer.

2  Strahm continued to struggle in his next two starts, allowing 11 runs in 9 innings, and he was moved to the bullpen.

3  Eric Stephen, “Brewers Replace Injured Gio Gonzalez with Zach Davies on NLCS Roster,” SBNation, October 17, 2018, https://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2018/10/17/17990558/nlcs-roster-2018-gio-gonzalez-zach-davies-injuries-mlb-rules.

4 Associated Press, “Reyes’ 3-Run Homer Lifts Padres to 8-7 Win vs Brewers,” ESPN.com, June 19, 2019, https://www.espn.com/mlb/recap/_/gameId/401075838.

5 Statlines like these became all too common for Zach Davies, who started off hot but went on to post a 4.07 ERA the rest of the year with a 3-6 record. Traded to the Padres in 2020, Davies posted the best year of his career by ERA+ (154). He was traded to the Cubs the following year.

6 Hosmer signed an eight-year, $144 million contract with the Padres in February of 2018. At the 2022 trade deadline he was sent to the Red Sox for Jay Groome, a top-10 pitching prospect in the Red Sox organization. In his time with the Padres organization, Hosmer hit .265 and amassed -4.3 Wins Above Replacement in 596 games.

7 The Padres went 33-55 after this game, finishing 70-92 for their ninth consecutive losing season. Developing young talent like Tatis and veteran acquisitions like Machado eventually yielded a winning record and postseason appearance in the COVID-shortened 2020 season and a National League Championship Series berth in 2022.

8 Connor Byrne, “Reds Acquire Trevor Bauer in 3-Team Deal with Indians, Padres,” MLB Trade Rumors, July 31, 2019, https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2019/07/reds-to-acquire-trevor-bauer-in-3-team-deal.html.

9 Christina De Nicola, “Yelich Out for Season after Fracturing Kneecap,” MLB.com, September 11, 2019, https://www.mlb.com/news/christian-yelich-exits-with-knee-injury.

10 The Brewers lost in part due to a crucial error by Trent Grisham, Yelich’s replacement in right field, which allowed the go-ahead run to score in the eighth inning. The Nationals went on to beat the Astros in the World Series.