Brandon Sproat got the ball against the New York Mets on Tuesday night, a start that put the Milwaukee Brewers back in front of the storyline they created over the offseason when they acquired him from New York in the Freddy Peralta trade. The right-hander was facing his former club while Milwaukee tried to stretch a four-game winning streak after the All-Star Break.
That was enough to make the game matter beyond one pitcher’s outing. The Brewers came in with the best record in MLB, and they were still trying to manage the lineup around injuries and absences: Christian Yelich got the night off, William Contreras moved into the DH spot and batted third, Gary Sanchez handled Sproat behind the plate, and Jackson Chourio led off.
Sproat’s numbers made the assignment easy to understand and hard to ignore. He had a 5.16 ERA on the year, but Milwaukee had reason to keep looking at him as more than a one-night fill-in because this was the pitcher it had brought in from the Mets in the trade that helped shape the offseason. Zac Thornton was making just his fourth career start in the majors for New York, with a 2.60 ERA, so the matchup also turned into a test of which side could make the cleaner early move.
The Brewers were not lining up at full strength. Brice Turang batted second before being scratched late, Garrett Mitchell played centerfield, and Luis Lara was in right field and batting seventh. New York countered with Juan Soto, Bo Bichette, Francisco Lindor, Luis Robert, and Marcus Semien in a lineup that looked powerful on paper even as Milwaukee’s recent run had pushed it to the top of the NL Central and MLB standings.
The missing names around the roster told their own story. David Hamilton had started a rehab assignment with Triple-A Nashville and played five innings, Kyle Harrison had a 4-up live BP scheduled for Saturday and was set to start a rehab assignment on July 31st, DL Hall had moved his rehab to Nashville and was scheduled to throw two innings the next day, Brandon Lockridge was expected to travel to Triple-A the next day to start his rehab assignment, and Joel Kuhnel had thrown his first bullpen session. Sal Frelick, meanwhile, had undergone an arthrogram after being placed on the IL with shoulder soreness, a procedure intended to show whether the problem was inside the joint and how serious it was.
That is what made Tuesday night bigger than a normal midseason start. Milwaukee was trying to stay hot, cover for what it was missing, and turn one more game against the Mets into a series victory. If Sproat could do that against the team that once had him, it would fit the way the Brewers have been winning lately: with depth, with patience, and with enough pitching to keep the pressure on the rest of MLB.
