Brewers Video
For the fourth time in as many NLDS games, a Brewers starting pitcher failed to contain the Chicago Cubs in the first inning. For the second straight night, it put Milwaukee in an early multi-run deficit that it could not overcome. This time, that early scoring came against Freddy Peralta—in the form of an Ian Happ three-run homer, on a fastball over the heart of the plate.
“I thought it was one pitch in the first inning he’d take back,” Pat Murphy said. “He had two outs, and he made a pitch too much down the middle. Happ has been really good for them.”
“I think it could’ve been a better pitch,” said William Contreras. “But credit to him for connecting on that pitch and putting a good swing on it.”
Peralta’s evaluation differed.
“It was just a pitch that he was able to hit, and he hit it exactly how he wanted,” he said. “But for me, it wasn’t a mistake. It was the pitch that we wanted, and he just was able to hit it really hard.”
While he could have located it higher, it was not as bad a pitch as it may have appeared in real time. Happ struggles to get on top of elevated velocity as a left-handed batter, slugging just .200 in the regular season against four-seamers in the upper third of the zone. Peralta got his heater just high enough for Statcast to assign it to that region.
The location wasn’t the main culprit, anyway. Peralta’s first inning went sideways because he could not work ahead of hitters with what seemed to be his game plan going in.
Peralta is far less fastball-heavy than he was in his early years, but several of his more secondary-dominant outings have been those against the Cubs since the start of the second half. He used his heater 48.2% of the time against them on July 30, 43.2% on August 18, and 43.1% in Game 1 of the NLDS. It wasn’t surprising, then, that Peralta continued that trend in Game 4. When Happ stepped to the plate, he had thrown only nine fastballs of his 21 pitches.
The problem was that he was erratic early on with those secondaries, particularly with his changeup. It’s emerged as his most valuable non-fastball offering over the last two seasons, especially in those Cubs starts. Peralta threw just three in the zone in the first inning, and the other five were not remotely competitive, including the one he bounced in the dirt with his first pitch to Happ.
Peralta would land a changeup for a strike with his next pitch, but it wasn’t enough to keep Happ from hunting a fastball. When he got one, he was ready. Like the night before, the damage was done, again establishing the wrong tone early for a Brewers team that looked little like the group that jumped out to a commanding 2-0 lead in the series.
“The [1-1] pitch to Happ changed the game,” Murphy said.
Peralta settled in after the first, blanking the Cubs over his next three innings. The game plan worked when he executed pitches. Throwing his fastball just a third of the time, he induced 15 whiffs out of 42 swings and struck out six.
“Other than [the home run], I thought he threw the ball really well and gave us a chance, kept them at bay,” Murphy said. “There was some momentum in the second inning, and he kept them at bay. I thought he did a really nice job.”
The Brewers needed that version of him from the get-go, though. Instead, he was not sharp early and put his team in an early hole. It reaffirmed what’s been the case for years: Peralta is a very good, highly valuable starting pitcher—a high-percentile outcome for his development and the fruit of the work he’s put in over the years—but not a great one. He remains one step shy of fully realizing his tantalizing potential as a top-tier ace.
The hope now is that he’ll receive more opportunities to start big games this month. After entering Chicago in a great position to advance to the NLCS, the Brewers return home with their backs against the wall and must fight to keep their season alive.
“Hopefully, the tables will turn when we get into Game 5 at our place. But we have to find out how bad we’re going to fight back,” Murphy said. “We have all season.”