'Fun to win': Crew splits series vs. Rox

Eric Lauer and the Brewers breezed into the bottom of the sixth inning on Sunday with a six-run lead and a 98 percent win probability, per Statcast, after Lauer squeezed home a run with a sacrifice bunt.

At Coors Field, however, you can throw win probability out the window.

No lead is safe.

Lauer didn’t record an out in the inning and combined with relievers Zack Godley and Hoby Milner to surrender six runs on eight hits including four home runs that combined to fly 1,711 feet through the Rocky Mountain air. It took another ninth inning rally for the Brewers to get away with a 7-6 win over the Rockies and a split of the four-game series.

“We were up 6-0 and we were still yelling in the dugout, ‘This isn’t over!’” Kolten Wong said. “We still have to continue to fight, we have to throw on runs. As you can see, we needed to put on one more.”

Daniel Vogelbach delivered that one more run with an RBI single off Rockies closer Daniel Bard and Brad Boxberger closed it out in the bottom of the ninth after Josh Hader pitched the previous two days.

The Brewers entered the ninth inning on Saturday night three outs away from losing a sixth straight game and falling into a 3-0 hole in the series against the Rockies. Thanks to a pair of ninth-inning rallies, the Brewers have back-to-back victories and are headed to Arizona with a share of first place in the National League Central.

“You’re always in the game, no matter what the score is here,” said Jace Peterson, who singled and stole second base before scoring the winning run with a hard slide home. “They had one huge inning but we were able to stay in there and come out with a win.”

Said manager Craig Counsell: “It’s just the way this place is. You expect it, almost. You grind through a four-game series here, it takes a little bit of a toll. But I’m proud of our guys.”

The Brewers built a 4-0 lead after two innings and led at 5-0 by the fourth thanks to a balanced offensive attack led Derek Fisher, who collected his first two Brewers hits and scored a pair of runs on Sunday, and Wong, who saw only three total pitches in his first three at-bats and connected with all of them for hits, including a two-run home run in the second and an RBI single in the fourth.

With the Brewers bullpen having been used rather heavily lately and still in a stretch of 16 consecutive game days, Lauer took the mound at the 80-pitch mark in the sixth and began a third pass through the Rockies order. It did not go well. Raimel Tapia singled to end an eight-pitch at-bat to open the inning before Yonathan Daza and Trevor Story knocked Lauer out of the game with back-to-back home runs.

Godley took over to face four batters and surrendered three hits, including home runs to C.J. Cron and Joshua Fuentes. A 6-0 Brewers lead was suddenly a 6-6 tie, and it might have been worse had Milner not worked around two hits himself to retire Daza to finally end an 11-batter inning.

Believe it or not, the Brewers have had worse innings. They surrendered an MLB-record-tying five home runs in a single inning on July 27, 2017, at Washington, when Michael Blazek saw five hitters go deep in a six-hitter span in the third inning of a 15-2 loss.

“It was a crazy inning,” Lauer said. “I think from my end, I just ran out of gas. I really started feeling it that inning but I was trying to play through it and get through that inning but sometimes, especially when you’re pitching here, you tend to run out of gas a little quicker than you normally would. I think they put a lot of good swings together and that’s what happens here. You can never have too big of a lead at Coors.”

His teammates bailed him out, starting with Milner. Then Brent Suter (pitching for the third day in a row), Devin Williams (three up, three down, three strikeouts) and Boxberger (third save filling-in for Hader) blanked Colorado on two hits over the final three innings.

“Obviously, it was a kick in the face to give up six in one inning but we never felt like we were out of it or were down or anything,” Lauer said. “We have a lot of fight and aren’t going to give up.”

“Those games are fun to win,” Vogelbach said.