Breakout by Brewers offense completely overshadowed by pitching in sweep by Braves

ATLANTA – After serving as a launch pad for airborne objects in Atlanta over the weekend, the Milwaukee Brewers will be glad to catch a flight of their own and get out of town Sunday night.

Baseballs were sent into orbit with high frequency by the Atlanta Braves in a three-game sweep of the Brewers at Truist Park, including four home runs pounded in an 8-6 victory for the home team in the finale.

A Brewers pitching staff that had been nothing short of excellent of late was pulverized over the three days.

They gave up 29 runs, the most allowed by Milwaukee in a three-game series since 2019.

Here are three takeaways from the final of the three losses:

Pitch to Austin Riley turns the tides in the game

With a runner on second and two outs in the bottom of the third, Brewers starter Colin Rea thought he had struck Austin Riley out with a full-count fastball at the bottom of the zone.

Home plate umpire Alfonso Marquez disagreed.

Shortly after, Matt Olson deposited a ball into the seats in right field for a three-run homer that turned a 3-2 Brewers lead into a two-run deficit.

“(Marquez) did a really good job today overall,” Rea said. “It was just that one pitch maybe I thought that was a strike. They’re going to miss calls throughout the game. It just happened to be in a big situation.”

Said Brewers manager Craig Counsell: “Close pitch, for sure. When you want, you feel like you make a really great pitch and just didn’t get it. Unfortunately they took a big swing after that and that’s kind of how it works. You feel like you make a good pitch and don’t get an out and somebody else hurts you.”

Braves offense pounded the Brewers staff

That sequence just goes to show how thin the margin for error is with the Braves offense, if it even exists at all.

Of the 11 home runs the Braves hit in the series, many weren’t even on bad pitches.

The sinker from Rea that Riley hit 463 feet for a two-run homer in the first was in on his hands and down.

Rea tried to go inside on Olson on a 2-2 pitch in the third and hit the inside corner, but Olson still managed to pull his hands in and crush it out to right.

Marcell Ozuna’s game-tying homer – the fifth of five times in the series that the Brewers took a lead and then immediately had it erased in the ensuing half-inning – off Hoby Milner in the sixth on Sunday was a slider below the knees that the Braves designated hitter flicked out to left-center for his fourth blast of the series.

“Top to bottom, everyone in their lineup can do damage,” Rea said. “For me, specifically, I’ve gotten hurt on the home run ball this year in numerous games and this is a team where you can’t make those mistakes. They weren’t even bad pitches today, really.”

In the sweep, the Braves as a team slashed .406/.439/.802 (average, on-base, slugging) for an almost-unbelievable OPS of 1.241. Their offense is incredible, no doubt, but one can’t help but wonder how much of this onslaught of runs was due to that fact, and how much was due to a lack of execution by the Brewers? After all, Atlanta had scored a total of nine runs over its previous four games entering the weekend.

“I don’t know,” Counsell answered.

It certainly didn’t help the Brewers that the back end of their rotation lined up for this series. Adrian Houser gave up six runs on nine hits and tons of hard contact Friday. Julio Teheran allowed nine runs Saturday, including six in the first. And Rea capped it off by giving up five runs, the eighth time in 18 starts he’s allowed four runs or more earned runs.

“They swung the bats as well as you could swing it, as well as I’ve seen, in a three-game series,” Counsell said.

Pitching updates: Brewers lose one starter to injury but expect to get another one back this week

Despite sweep, Brewers offense turned in three good performances

Preventing runs hadn’t been the problem in the second half when the Brewers touched down in Atlanta on Thursday night.

Scoring them sure hadn’t come easily.

Milwaukee had tallied five runs just once in its 12 second half games before taking on the Braves, then did so in all three games against them.

Of course, however, it went to waste in terms of the win column.

Depending on your view, it could leave even more of a sour taste to the sweep considering the offense broke out for the first time in a while, or a bit of a silver lining?

“It happens,” Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich said. “You would like to put to all together, but it’s how baseball works sometimes. It doesn’t really make sense. If we can keep doing that – we’re not going to score six or seven every game, but if you can find ways to tack on runs, I think for the rest of the year we’ll be alright in the long run. Just a tough three days. It’s one of those things that happens and you move on from it.”

Yelich homered Sunday, as did Carlos Santana in his second game with the Brewers.

Between a solo homer to give his new team a 3-2 lead in the third and a handful of slick plays on defense, Santana provided Milwaukee with a glimpse of what he could potentially provide down the stretch.

And if he and the rest of the Brewers offense can put forth a similar performance with some semblance of regularity over the final two months, the team will be in good shape.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Brewers pitchers overwhelmed in every game as Braves sweep Milwaukee