Chourio leads Brewers with ‘Miz’ shaky on mound
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CHICAGO -- Jackson Chourio homered and the Milwaukee Brewers beat the Chicago Cubs 9-5 on Wednesday night, overcoming a shaky performance by ace Jacob Misiorowski.
William Contreras hit a tiebreaking RBI single as Milwaukee won for the sixth time in eight games, improving to a major league-best 87-53. Chourio had four of the Brewers’ 14 hits and scored twice.
Misiorowski allowed five runs and five hits in four innings. The front-runner for the NL Cy Young Award surrendered three earned runs or fewer in each of his first 25 starts this year.
Chicago (78-62) dropped nine games behind Milwaukee in the NL Central. It also remained one game back of Philadelphia for the top NL wild card.
Alex Bregman homered and drove in four runs for the Cubs.
Milwaukee went ahead to stay with three runs in the fourth against David Peterson (7-8). Cooper Pratt scampered home on Brice Turang’s sacrifice bunt, and Andrew Vaughn singled home Chourio. Turang scored on Contreras’ liner to center for a 6-5 lead on a muggy night at Wrigley Field.
Joey Ortiz’s two-run single made it 9-5 in the ninth. Ortiz hit a two-run homer in Milwaukee’s 9-4 win on Tuesday night.
JoJo Romero (2-3) pitched a scoreless inning for his first win since he was acquired in a deadline trade with St. Louis.
The Milwaukee Brewers’ Christian Yelich, right, scores on a single by Cooper Pratt as Cubs catcher Miguel Amaya waits for the ball in the seventh inning in Chicago on Wednesday. (AP photo)
Miz’s misery
Misiorowski’s worst start of the season was just a minor inconvenience for the rolling Brewers. He struggled in hot and humid conditions Wednesday night, surrendering five runs and five hits in four innings against the Chicago Cubs.
“He’s going to learn a lesson from this,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “He didn’t command his fastball. And he just had to bob and weave. He was slipping on the mound again early. … He didn’t have his perfect delivery, and that’s going to be a key going forward.”
His ERA rose to 1.97, which still leads the majors. He also has an MLB-best 227 strikeouts in 155 innings in his second big league season.
“Didn’t feel wonderful, didn’t feel great,” Misiorowski said. “Obviously it felt soggy the whole time. The weather played a factor in that, so lost grip, but, you know, had to make it work.”
The 24-year-old Misiorowski, who has a long extension with his pitching motion, said a soft mound is a significant challenge.
“You start second-guessing everything, start trying to make pitches too big, and start trying make things too spot-on,” he said, “so (you) start leaking places, and you got to calm yourself down and figure out a way to get through it.”
He threw 92 pitches, 53 for strikes, and the NL Central-leading Brewers had a 6-5 lead when he departed.