The broadcast replay made Jackson Chourio’s walk-off single look like a brutal near-miss for the Padres. The angle from behind home plate makes Jake Cronenworth look a step late.
A video that has been circulating on social media shows Cronenworth moving toward the middle later than it first appeared on television. By the time he dives, Chourio’s line drive is already on its way to the second-base side. Cronenworth’s glove never gets there, the ball gets through to center field, and the Brewers walk off with a 4-3 win that leaves San Diego in an 0-2 hole in the NLDS.
That said, this isn’t some routine ground ball being blown up by slow motion. Chourio hit the pitch at 109.5 mph off a 101.3 mph Mason Miller fastball. Even with the new angle, it’s clear this was a viciously struck ball, not an easy play.
Cronenworth said he thought he handled it the right way.
“He smashed it, but I thought I got a good jump on it,” Cronenworth said after the loss.
The home-plate view makes that harder to buy.
It also lands differently because Cronenworth had already had a rough day. He finished 0-for-4 and was charged with two errors.
His throwing error in the seventh helped Milwaukee trim San Diego’s lead to 3-2. Then came the ninth, when the Padres needed one more out and Cronenworth couldn’t come up with the ball that ended it.
Still, this wasn’t all on him. Miller walked Christian Yelich, Sal Frelick and Gary Sánchez to load the bases.
Craig Stammen stayed with his closer after he lost the strike zone. Manny Machado had already cost the Padres a chance to do more damage in the seventh.
There’s blame to go around here. Cronenworth is part of it, but he’s not the whole story.
What the new angle does is sharpen the question. The standard broadcast showed a desperate dive that came up just short. The home-plate look makes you wonder why the dive had to be that desperate in the first place.
Maybe Miller’s velocity cut the reaction time down so much that the camera simply can’t capture it. A 109.5 mph rocket doesn’t give an infielder much room to work with. Even so, the play still looks late.
Miller said he deserved the loss and the blown save, and he’s right to own that. Walking the bases loaded turned one Chourio swing into a nightmare.
But the Padres’ veterans made his job a lot harder, too. Machado’s baserunning mistake wiped out a chance to extend a 3-1 lead.
Cronenworth’s seventh-inning error gave a run back. Then Chourio stepped in and one hard-hit ball erased the afternoon.
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Padres Season Now Hinges On One Painful Game 2 Decision
The Padres had the kind of Game 2 that lingers, the sort that turns a single inning into the center of an entire postseason conversation. Mason Miller was asked to get the final six outs, but he could not finish the job, and Milwaukee walked it off on Jackson Chourios two-run single for a 4-3 Brewers win that pushed San Diego to the brink. Millers command wavered badly along the way, and by the end of the night the choice to keep him in drew plenty of scrutiny.
Now San Diego heads home down 2-0 in the NLDS and staring at a simple but punishing equation: win three straight or the season is over. The pressure is no longer just on the lineup to score or the bullpen to hold, but on the decisions that shape each high-leverage inning from here on out. One game changed the tone of the series, and it left the Padres with very little room to survive another misstep. [Read more 🡒]
Padres Explain Late Mason Miller Call After Crushing Game 2 Collapse
The Padres Game 2 loss in Milwaukee left them staring at an 0-2 hole in the National League Division Series, and the way it unraveled only deepened the sting. San Diego had turned to Mason Miller for six outs in a high-leverage spot, trusting the closer to help lock down the game, but the plan fell apart in the ninth when his command slipped and the Brewers kept pressing until Jackson Chourio delivered a walk-off two-run single.
Afterward, manager Craig Stammen and Miller both addressed the late call to extend him beyond the usual closer usage, a decision that now looms over a crushing collapse. For a Padres team that needed one clean finish to even the series, the choice to ride Miller that long became part of the postgame conversation, with the result leaving San Diego to answer not just for the loss, but for how it got there. [Read more 🡒]
Brewers Just Got A New NLDS Concern As Series Shifts Home
As the National League Division Series shifts to San Diego for Game 3, the Padres added another experienced arm to the mix by reinstating right-hander Walker Buehler from the paternity list. To make room, Randy Vasquez was taken off the roster, a move that reflects how tightly San Diego is managing its pitching staff as the series changes venues and the leverage starts to climb.
Buehler is expected to matter if the matchup goes beyond Game 3, which gives the Padres a little more flexibility in how they piece together the back half of the series. For a club trying to control every pitching decision in October, getting him back into the active roster only adds to the questions Milwaukee now has to account for as the series moves forward. [Read more 🡒]