Brewers pick each other up in walk-off win

MILWAUKEE -- Lorenzo Cain and Brandon Crawford have compiled long highlight reels, but the Brewers’ 5-4, walk-off win over the Giants on Saturday ended with one inning of defense each player would just as well forget

Cain booted a bouncing base hit to center field and allowed the Giants to score the tying run in the top of the ninth before Crawford did the same on a routine ground ball to shortstop leading off the bottom of the frame, starting a rally that ended with Ben Gamel’s two-out, two-strike double to the wall in right field. The Brewers’ second win in eight games was cause for celebration at Miller Park, where everyone from the stands to the clubhouse is hopeful for more moments like this in the second half.

“Gamel picked me up there,” said Cain, a contender for his first career Rawlings Gold Glove Award. “That’s what we need from all of us. Pick each other up when another guy is struggling. He delivered a big hit for the boys. We definitely needed that as a team.”

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Gamel was the last player off the Brewers’ bench, and had he not come through, the Giants and Brewers would have entered a second straight extra-inning game with Milwaukee closer Josh Hader unavailable. Hader suffered a blown save in a two-inning appearance the night before, which is why the Brewers turned to Jeremy Jeffress in the ninth inning Saturday with a 4-2 lead.

It had been a struggle to get to that point for the Brewers. They went hitless in their first nine at-bats with runners in scoring position, including multiple chances against Giants starter Madison Bumgarner in the second, third and fifth innings, though Christian Yelich’s hard grounder off second baseman Joe Panik’s glove in the fifth went down as a run-scoring error.

The Brewers finally broke through in the eighth, when Mike Moustakas, Jesus Aguilar and Keston Hiura hit successive doubles to start the inning, turning a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 lead. Hiura then dashed home on Orlando Arcia’s sacrifice fly to score with a headfirst slide for an insurance run that proved critical when the Giants tied the game at 4 against Jeffress, who’d created his own trouble by walking Crawford leading off the inning. Three batters later, with two runners aboard, pinch-hitter Stephen Vogt dumped an RBI single into center field and Cain missed it. Austin Slater, a thorn in the Brewers’ side the past two nights, raced home for the tying run.

“I thought the ball was in my glove. That just can’t happen,” said Cain. “That [ticked] me off. I rushed it and didn’t make sure it was in my glove. ... I’m sure [Crawford] is ticked off about it. I’m ticked off about making an error there. Making errors is something that just can’t happen.”

A half-inning later, it was three-time Gold Glove Award winner Crawford kicking himself for an error. Giants reliever Reyes Moronta retired the next two batters, but Hiura worked a walk that pushed Braun into scoring position for Gamel’s winning hit. Gamel’s first career walk-off hit snapped his 0-for-13 skid.

It was the Brewers’ third walk-off win this season, and first since Braun singled in the 18th inning to beat the Mets on May 4.

“We kept having good at-bats, and that’s what won us the game,” said Brewers manager Craig Counsell. “Keston battled back and got a walk, and it set it up for Ben.”

Crawford’s rare error helped, too.

“It’s baseball,” said Gamel. “Two really reliable guys who don’t really ever make errors. It happens.”

“It was strange,” said Counsell. “You don’t expect Crawford to make the error. You don’t expect Lorenzo to make the error. But you just have to keep going in those games. Mistakes happen, and you just have to keep going.”

More troubling for the Brewers in the bigger picture was their ongoing bullpen issues. Zach Davies navigated six innings while allowing one unearned run -- unearned because of his own error covering first base in the first inning -- but two more earned runs went in the books against the Brewers bullpen, which has a 4.54 ERA.

“As a team, we definitely haven’t been playing as well as we would like,” Cain said. “But a lot of things can change. A lot of things can happen if we keep grinding, keep trying to score runs, keep picking each other up.”