Cincinnati Reds (39-43, fifth in the NL Central) vs. Milwaukee Brewers (50-31, first in the NL Central)

Milwaukee; Monday, 7:40 p.m. EDT

PITCHING PROBABLES: Reds: Nick Lodolo (2-2, 5.59 ERA, 1.52 WHIP, 38 strikeouts); Brewers: Robert Gasser (1-3, 4.50 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, 31 strikeouts)

LINE: Brewers -156, Reds +126; over/under is 8 1/2 runs

BOTTOM LINE: The Milwaukee Brewers begin a four-game series at home against the Cincinnati Reds on Monday.

Milwaukee is 50-31 overall and 26-17 at home. The Brewers have gone 35-13 in games when they record at least eight hits.

Cincinnati has gone 20-21 in road games and 39-43 overall. The Reds have a 27-6 record in games when they scored at least five runs.

The matchup Monday is the fourth time these teams match up this season.

TOP PERFORMERS: William Contreras has nine home runs, 31 walks and 50 RBIs while hitting .301 for the Brewers. Brice Turang is 10 for 44 with a double, a triple and three RBIs over the past 10 games.

Elly De La Cruz has 13 doubles, two triples, 12 home runs and 38 RBIs for the Reds. Spencer Steer is 7 for 39 with three home runs over the last 10 games.

LAST 10 GAMES: Brewers: 5-5, .239 batting average, 3.30 ERA, outscored opponents by two runs

Reds: 4-6, .215 batting average, 4.45 ERA, outscored by seven runs

INJURIES: Brewers: Coleman Crow: 15-Day IL (forearm), Brandon Lockridge: 10-Day IL (knee), Brian Fitzpatrick: 60-Day IL (elbow), D.L. Hall: 15-Day IL (pectoral), Quinn Priester: 60-Day IL (wrist), Carlos Rodriguez: 15-Day IL (shoulder), Logan Henderson: 15-Day IL (back), Rob Zastryzny: 15-Day IL (shoulder), Angel Zerpa: 60-Day IL (forearm)

Reds: Eugenio Suarez: day-to-day (hand), Blake Dunn: 10-Day IL (elbow), Tony Santillan: 15-Day IL (oblique), Ke’Bryan Hayes: 10-Day IL (back), Emilio Pagan: 15-Day IL (hamstring), Nick Lodolo: day-to-day (wrist), Graham Ashcraft: 60-Day IL (forearm), Brandon Williamson: 60-Day IL (shoulder), Hunter Greene: 60-Day IL (elbow)

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The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.

A game and a series that started so promising, ended up in an emotional loss for the Milwaukee Brewers as they fall to their rivals, the Chicago Cubs, 4-3 in 10 innings on Sunday afternoon.

Brandon Woodruff was the big positive. In his second start since coming back from the IL, Woodruff shoved once again, allowing just one hit over 5.2 scoreless innings. He was efficient and filled up the strike zone as he usually does. Woodruff ended the day with six strikeouts on his line and protecting a one-run lead.

That one run lead was provided by Gary Sanchez, who took a 1-1 fastball from lefty Ryan Rolison and tattooed it into the second deck in left field. It was Sanchez’s eighth home run of the season.

However, that was all the Brewers offense could really muster off Rolison and then old friend Bryse Wilson, who shut down the Crew’s offense over his 4.1 IP.

The Brewers did have a number of opportunities, though. Runners at the corners in the 3rd with one out, both Chourio and Turang strike out. In the 4th, Andrew Vaughn gets a leadoff triple, no one can even muster a sac fly to bring him home. Runners on first in the 6th, 7th, and 8th, no advancement. In the 9th, the Brewers had runners on 1st and 2nd with one out, a base hit can walk it off, and both Cooper Pratt and Joey Ortiz strike out.

“I think sometimes guy maybe try to do too much, and that’s where we try to preach ‘take what the game gives you and go back to taking pitches and handing it to the next guy’” offense and strategy coordinator Jason Lane said.

Meanwhile the Crew used up their top bullpen arms in those earlier leverage innings. Aaron Ashby spiked a curveball with a runner on 3rd to allow the Cubs to tie the game in the 7th. But then Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill got the jobs done in the 8th and 9th. But with few leverage arms left, the Brewers turned to Joel Kuhnel in the 10th.

Kuhnel was able to get the first two batters out at the bottom of the Cubs order. Then he just lost the strike zone. They intentionally walked Pete Crow-Armstrong, then Kuhnel hits Bregman, then walks Michael Busch to bring in a run. Then Seiya Suzuki rips a single to left to score two more and put the Cubs up 4-1.

The Brewers put together some big chances in the 10th. Christian Yelich singled home Ortiz, then Chourio walked and Turang singled, loading the bases for pinch-hitter Garrett Mitchell. Mitchell worked a walk and the Brewers were within a run, down 4-3, with the bases loaded and nobody out.

That’s exactly when it all went sideways. Jake Bauers, after seeing Mitchell get walked, swung at the first pitch and hit a shallow pop fly into left field that was nowhere near deep enough to score a run. Then Gary Sanchez, who homered in the 2nd, grounded into a tailor-made 5-4-3 double play to end the game.

Milwaukee was 2-for-12 with runners in scoring position and left 10 runners on base. Woodruff pitched well enough to win. The bullpen did well enough to win through nine innings. The offense just couldn’t give them enough.

The Brewers missed way too many opportunities to put this game away when they should have and that leaves them on the short end of this series where they had their top three arms in the rotation going. The lead over the Cubs sits at 5.5 games now and the Brewers will look to turn the page to the Reds series.

After he dominated the minor leagues and reached the majors in his second full professional season last year, Craig Yoho’s career has not followed the path he or the Brewers hoped for. In 13 career appearances, most of them low-leverage outings, the 26-year-old has pitched to a 6.75 ERA and 5.22 SIERA.

It was not long ago that Pat Murphy spoke highly of Yoho after a dominant spring training showing in 2025. Within a few months, he became an afterthought on the 40-man roster. After a few rough outings last year, it became clear that the Brewers struggled to trust Yoho in pivotal situations. This season, they’ve rarely trusted him enough to roster him at all.

Control issues have been the primary culprit, in part because Yoho’s stuff moves so much. In Triple-A this year, his signature screwball-like changeup has averaged 2.2 inches of induced vertical drop and 17.8 inches of arm-side run. Even his fastball has averaged 16.6 inches of horizontal movement. In his big-league career, he’s walked 17.9% of batters faced.

Back in the big leagues by necessity for most of June, Yoho showed signs of progress this month amid his longest stint to date. In his first four outings, he was throwing enough strikes and missing barrels, posting a 1.73 xERA and 2.54 SIERA. According to Statcast, he induced whiffs on 36.6% of swings, and his average exit velocity allowed on balls in play was 83.5 mph. His walk rate was still 10%, but that will always be part of the picture for a reliever with so much movement. In each of his last two outings, Yoho threw more than half of his pitches in the strike zone.

On Monday in Cincinnati, Murphy said that performance played a role in the decision to option left-handed reliever Drew Rom, not Yoho, to make room for Brandon Woodruff’s return. Given that solid work and the recent unsteadiness throughout Milwaukee’s ‘B’ bullpen, one could argue Yoho had earned another shot at higher-leverage work.

He got that opportunity on Wednesday night, as Trevor Megill, Aaron Ashby, and a suspended Abner Uribe were unavailable. Yoho inherited a bases-loaded jam from Grant Anderson in the seventh inning, with JJ Bleday representing the tying run in a 6-2 game. With one pitch, a changeup in the zone, he induced an early swing from Bleday for a soft inning-ending groundout to first base. Yoho had answered the call in a big spot.

Things went haywire when he returned for the eighth. Edwin Arroyo waited back on an elevated changeup, dunking it to right field for a leadoff single. Elly De La Cruz worked him for a nine-pitch walk. Yoho nearly escaped with just one run allowed after coaxing routine groundouts from Dane Myers and Sal Stewart, but Spencer Steer blasted an 0-1 fastball over the heart of the plate for a three-run home run. With the score now 6-5, Yoho’s night – and his latest big-league stint – was over. The Brewers optioned him to Triple-A the following day.

As Yoho was being informed in the Cincinnati clubhouse that his next travel would be to Nashville instead of Milwaukee, Murphy gave a blunt postgame assessment of his outing, reiterating the shortcomings that have kept the Brewers from trusting him as an MLB-caliber reliever.

“They don’t know him yet, they haven’t faced him yet,” Murphy said of Yoho’s first inning. “Now he goes out the second inning, they’re expecting it. It’s a two-pitch guy, really, and he doesn’t throw strikes. You can’t do that … You can see he wasn’t comfortable in that situation.”

There were signs on Wednesday that some hitters could easily formulate a productive approach against Yoho. Arroyo waited back on his changeup. De La Cruz appeared intent on waiting him out and forcing him back into the strike zone; he watched five of those nine pitches, including two just outside the strike zone and a 3-1 changeup down the middle.

“They know the deal,” Murphy said. “I mean, the report’s out there. Fastball command, question mark. Changeup, very slow, sit on it, not a swing-and-miss [pitch]. So he’s got to make some adjustments with it, and I think he will. He’s a great kid.”

Most of the Brewers’ concerns are valid. Yoho’s movement is not only difficult to control, but it also makes pitch sequencing more challenging. His changeup is more than 15 mph slower than his fastball, and its extreme depth means he can’t tunnel any pitches within – or even near – the strike zone.

Assume that to get a chase on a changeup just below the zone, Yoho must make it look like his fastball out of the hand. The visual below from FanGraphs shows that, based on how his pitches move, he would have to throw that fastball well above the zone for the two pitches to start at the same sight line. In other words, his stuff moves so much that he can’t use an in-zone pitch to set up a chase on an out-of-zone pitch, or vice-versa.

Murphy made a questionable assertion that Yoho is purely a two-pitch pitcher, as he also features a curveball and cutter. However, the curveball is a more extreme inverse of his changeup in all the wrong ways: averaging 75.9 mph with 10 inches of induced vertical drop and 20 inches of glove-side break in Triple-A, it’s challenging for Yoho to land in the zone and is effectively impossible to tunnel. To even get that breaking ball to fit on a similar tunneling graphic from last year, you’d have to position his fastball at a right-handed batter’s helmet.

A pitcher with Yoho’s stuff will never defeat hitters with pitch tunneling and deception, though. Instead, it will work because the extreme movement will miss barrels, even if it’s not particularly deceptive. That’s where the Brewers may be selling him short.

So far, Yoho’s changeup has excelled at avoiding loud contact, even though hitters have likely known it’s coming and it has not always been located competitively. In his limited big-league work across two seasons, opponents have managed just a .247 xwOBA, 17.6% hard-hit rate, and 5.9% barrel rate against it with a 33.8% whiff rate. On Wednesday night, it induced two chases and two soft ground balls. The Reds did not whiff on it, but Murphy’s claim that it isn’t a swing-and-miss pitch is, frankly, incorrect.

Such a pitch does not need to be disguised as a fastball to be effective. Yoho just needs to throw it in and around the zone below the belt. When hitters start timing it up, a timely in-zone fastball can produce a take or a late swing. So far, he has done neither consistently. Yoho is partially responsible for his current situation because he sprayed the ball too much in his early chances last summer.

At the same time, it’s becoming clear that a poor fit between player and team is also part of the issue. Whenever Chris Hook talks about a particular pitch, he instinctively states whether it “tracks” in the strike zone like it’s a checklist item. To the Brewers, many big shapes pose tunneling problems and do not maximize in-zone swings, so they often find throwing more fastball variants and shorter sliders to be more useful than better “stuff” pitches. There are some exceptions, like Grant Anderson’s sweeper, but Yoho’s stuff is well beyond the mold.

Perhaps the Brewers are right about him, or perhaps it’s simply a poor fit. At this point, a change of scenery looks like the best way to find out. The club has a history of trading former prospects who have been leapfrogged on the 40-man roster for moderate upgrades at the trade deadline. In 2018, they flipped Brett Phillips in a two-player package for Mike Moustakas. In 2019, it was Mauricio Dubon for Drew Pomeranz. More recently, they traded Joey Wiemer for Frankie Montas in 2024.

With the deadline five weeks away, Yoho could be next. A fresh start – and, just as importantly, a setting where he’ll get a longer leash to become as competitive as possible with his arsenal – may be exactly what he needs. The Brewers, meanwhile, could fill his roster spot with a more consistent contributor.