Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – Jackson Chourio smacked a walk-off two-run single to give the Milwaukee Brewers a 4-3 victory over the San Diego Padres on Sunday and a commanding 2-0 lead in their Major League Baseball playoff series. For the second straight day, the Brewers rallied from 2-0 down to beat the Padres, who are now in survival mode as the best-of-five National League division series shifts to San Diego for game three on Tuesday.
“I don’t have words for this,” Venezuela’s Chourio — who hit a two-run homer to spark the Brewers’ game-one rally — told Fox Sports after belting a two-out, bases-loaded fastball from dominant Padres closer Mason Miller up the middle for the winning runs. “I was just looking for a good pitch to hit there and, you know, thankfully he threw me one that I could do something with,” Chourio said.
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With three errors, the Brewers looked far from the team that won an MLB-best 103 regular-season games. San Diego seized a 1-0 lead in the first inning and capitalized on Brewers errors to push the advantage to 2-0 in the fifth. Milwaukee had stayed in range with a run in the bottom of the fifth, finally breaking through against Padres starting pitcher Michael King with a double from Christian Yelich, who scored on a base hit by Sal Frelick.
The Padres pushed their lead back to two in the seventh, but the Brewers pulled within 3-2 in the bottom of the inning when an error from Padres second baseman Jake Cronenworth allowed a run to score. “We’re a team that never backs down,” Chourio said. “We’re never going to back down from a challenge, and we like these moments. We’re going to keep going, and we’re going to battle for every opportunity that we get.”
The winners of the series will take on either the two-time defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers or the Atlanta Braves for a place in the World Series. The Dodgers, trying to become the first team since the New York Yankees in 1998, 1999, and 2000 to win three straight World Series titles, took a 1-0 series lead into game two of their NL division series against the Braves later Sunday in Los Angeles.
© 2024 AFP
