Rise & shine! Crew's 7 a.m. alarm leads to 'W'

PITTSBURGH -- The Brewers looked no worse for the wear Tuesday in a rare “show and go” road game.

After Monday’s scheduled flight to Pittsburgh was delayed to Tuesday morning due to Christian Yelich’s bout of COVID-19, Brett Anderson, Omar Narváez and the Brewers dropped their bags at the hotel, showed up at PNC Park and scored eight runs before making their fourth out. They sailed to a 9-0 victory in the opener of a weeklong road trip.

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“It was one of our biggest wins considering all the extra-curricular stuff,” Anderson said after dealing six scoreless innings. “You don’t think about waking up early and traveling on the day of the game. Some guys did that in Triple-A. I didn’t really play in Triple-A so I didn’t have to do that, fortunately.”

Welcome to our world, retorted a reporter.

“Yeah,” Anderson clapped back, “but you don’t have to go out and pitch against big league teams. You get to sit in a box and type.”

Anderson, Narváez and the rest of the Brewers had 7 a.m. wake-up calls in Milwaukee for the testing and contract tracing that allowed them to play at all on Tuesday after Yelich reported symptoms of the virus the day before. The Brewers are playing without him, as well as hot-hitting Jace Peterson, who was also placed on the COVID-IL alongside Yelich due to MLB’s contact tracing protocols.

The Pirates were similarly scrambling after trading All-Star second baseman Adam Frazier on Sunday, reliever Clay Holmes on Monday, then reportedly starter Tyler Anderson on Tuesday just before his scheduled start against Milwaukee. As the Brewers took batting practice, they still didn’t know which Pirates pitcher would start the game.

The answer was Luis Oviedo, and the 22-year-old’s first Major League start was one for the record books. According to Stats by STATS, he became the first pitcher in the modern era (since 1901) to pitch an inning or less and allow at least eight runs. Narváez hit a two-run home run and a two-run double before the Brewers made their first out of the second inning, Rowdy Tellez homered again and drove in three more runs, and Lorenzo Cain tallied two hits, an RBI and a sliding catch for the highlight reel in his return from a two-month stint on the injured list for a hamstring strain.

Three runs in the first inning and five in the second made a winner of Brewers starter Anderson, who needed only 72 pitches to complete six scoreless innings.

“It was a strange day today, travel-wise, getting to the hotel around noon,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “A little odd. But we came out and took advantage of a pitcher that was struggling with the strike zone a little bit and made it easy on ourselves.”

Anderson had no such trouble. But let’s just say he’s not a morning person.

“I don’t think Brett was the biggest fan of traveling the day of the game,” Counsell said, chuckling. “We’ve asked if he’d like to travel day of the game from now on. He’s not very interested in it, but we get to joke around with him about it.

“He did a nice job. You get staked to that lead and your job is to throw strikes. Especially for the way he pitches, it’s put the ball on the ground and make them hit it at people. That’s what he does. That double play we got in the second I thought was a pretty big point for him just to get out of a little bit of a jam there. Then it was kind of cruise control.”

Much of that early offense came from Narváez, who was supposed to have the day off with a left-hander scheduled to start for Pittsburgh. But when Tyler Anderson was scratched amid reports the Pirates were working on trading him to the Phillies, and the right-hander Oviedo was put in his place, suddenly Narváez was rubbing sleep from his eyes and preparing to play.

"When I started the game, I didn't feel so good,” Narváez said. “But I was trying to not swing too much, be relaxed at the plate, see pitches and let it get deep. I got good results today."

There was no postgame celebration this time.

The Brewers were ready for bed.

“The internal itinerary is not waking up at 7 o’clock to go get testing, then flying at 9:30 on a start day. That’s not really on the program,” Anderson said. “You just take it in stride. … Hopefully, Yeli starts feeling better soon and can get back with us as soon as possible.”