The Milwaukee Brewers and Los Angeles Dodgers continued their opposite trajectories on Sunday.
The Brewers picked up their 10th straight win with a 6-5 victory and tied the Chicago Cubs for first place in the NL Central. The Los Angeles Dodgers not only suffered their 10th loss in 12 games, they also saw star first baseman Freddie Freeman exit with a wrist contusion.
With two sweeps of the Dodgers in the span of two weeks, the Brewers became the first team to sweep Los Angeles in a season series of at least four games since 2006, when the St. Louis Cardinals took all seven games, per Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register.
As recently as June 18, the Brewers were 6.5 games behind the Cubs. They now share the title of best record in MLB with Chicago and the Detroit Tigers, at 59-40. As recently as July 3, the Dodgers were up nine games in the NL West. They now sit just 3.5 games ahead of the second-place San Diego Padres, with a record of 58-42.
The Dodgers got a small reprieve when they finished the first half with two wins over the San Francisco Giants, but have now come out of the All-Star break with a thud. The offense was listless on Friday. The defense couldn’t get a shutdown inning when it needed on Saturday.
Sunday began as a different story when a third-inning rally, capped off by a Shohei Ohtani homer, made it 3-0 Los Angeles. The Brewers tied the game an inning later via a defensive meltdown by the Dodgers, who committed three errors in the game.
One of the players responsible for those errors, Esteury Ruiz, redeemed himself with a homer in the fifth inning, but the Brewers again came back an inning later and took the lead for good this time.
It was after that when Freeman, the reigning World Series MVP took an 88 mph sinker to the wrist from Milwaukee Brewers starter Jose Quintana. The 35-year-old Freeman immediately started walking to the dugout, and the Dodgers sooner announced that he left with a left wrist contusion.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters after the game that Freeman’s X-rays came back negative and he’s day-to-day going forward.
There had already been cause for concern with Freeman, as he has been quietly awful after a torrid start to the season. Since the start of June, he’s hit .201/.274/.282 with only one homer and a 57 wRC+ that ranked as the ninth-worst among qualified players entering Sunday.
The Dodgers nearly came back in the ninth inning, loading the bases and scoring a run off Brewers set-up man Abner Uribe, but Mookie Betts, another former MVP who has struggled lately, lined out to end the game.
Very little is going right for the Dodgers these days. Their next chance to turn things around will be a home series against the Minnesota Twins. Meanwhile, the Brewers will try to continue their streak in a road series against the Seattle Mariners beginning Monday.
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