The Brewers needed length, and Kyle Harrison was the guy tasked with delivering it. Instead, the afternoon turned into another rough one for Milwaukee, and another series finale loss - the third straight series in which the Brewers couldn’t finish the job.
Harrison never really found a rhythm. Dane Myers opened the bottom of the first with a leadoff double, and after an Elly De La Cruz walk, Tyler Stephenson brought in the game’s first run to put the Reds ahead 1-0.
Milwaukee then handed Cincinnati more help in the second with another baserunning mistake, and the Reds made it pay. De La Cruz and Sal Stewart followed with sacrifice outs, stretching the lead to 3-0.
The third inning brought more trouble for Harrison, who issued his third walk of the game to start the frame. He did get a couple of punchouts and looked as if he might settle in, but Juan Brito doubled to center to drive in Cincinnati’s fourth run.
Milwaukee’s offense briefly flipped the script. Jake Bauers got the comeback going with a two-run homer that brought Jackson Chourio home and cut the deficit to 4-2. Later in the inning, Cooper Pratt dropped down a sacrifice bunt to score Garrett Mitchell, who had reached on a triple, and the Brewers were suddenly back within a run at 4-3.
Pat Murphy gave Harrison another chance in the fourth, hoping to coax something useful out of his starter. Instead, the Reds answered immediately. De La Cruz launched his 23rd home run of the season to push the margin back to three, and after another hit and Harrison’s fourth walk of the inning, Murphy had seen enough.
Harrison’s final line told the story: 92 pitches in 3 2/3 innings, with 41 balls. He walked four, matching a season high, and his last two outings have now included 19 hits allowed, along with six homers. For a pitcher Milwaukee has leaned on heavily this season, the timing couldn’t be much worse with the playoffs only a few weeks away.
The Brewers kept swinging. Back-to-back walks set up Mitchell to drive in a run and make it 6-4, and Turang later crushed his 31st double of the season to bring home the tying run and finish off the comeback. But that was as close as Milwaukee got to grabbing the lead.
De La Cruz kept coming for the Brewers, too. In the bottom of the fifth, he ripped his 25th double of the season - his second double of the game - and it drove in two more runs to put Cincinnati back in front 8-6. Over the series, De La Cruz finished with seven hits, five RBIs, two home runs and two walks, making a loud case for player of the series if such a thing existed.
Cincinnati quieted down in the sixth and seventh, and Milwaukee made one more push late. Pratt and Turang drew back-to-back walks to open the eighth, and Bo Naylor picked up his first hit as a Brewer with a single to left that brought in a run and trimmed the gap to 9-7.
But the bottom of the eighth was the backbreaker. The Reds broke it open with three more runs, turning a frustrating bullpen outing into a 12-8 loss. Milwaukee scratched across one more run in the ninth, but the tying run was left in the on-deck circle when the game ended.
It was the first series the Brewers have dropped to the Reds since the final series of the 2025 season, when they lost two of three. Now Milwaukee heads home after a week on the road and gets the Cubs next, with a three-game series beginning on Labor Day afternoon at 1:10 p.m.
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