Lucroy, Nelson propel Crew to rubber game win

MILWAUKEE — The top of the Brewers lineup provided the offense and Jimmy Nelson settled in nicely following a shaky start against the Reds as to give Milwaukee a 5-4 win on Sunday at Miller Park.

Milwaukee’s 1-2-3 hitters — Jonathan Villar, Hernan Perez and Jonathan Lucroy — went 5-for-7 with three walks and drove in all five of the team’s runs. Cincinnati jumped out to a 2-1 lead as Nelson retired only one of the first seven batters he faced. But the Brewers right-hander sat down 17 of his final 21 hitters, finishing with 7 1/3 innings of two-run ball and five strikeouts to pick up the win.

“All we can do is starters is try to put up zeroes and give us a chance to come back,” Nelson said. “That’s what the guys did. It was good. I found my fastball a little better after those first couple of innings.”

A day after snapping an 11-game losing streak, the Reds lost behind starter Brandon Finnegan. The left-hander pitched into the seventh inning and allowed four runs on six hits and four walks.

Blaine Boyer surrendered his first run in 12 appearances, with three-straight two-out hits coming on soft singles by Tyler Holt, Ivan De Jesus Jr. and Tucker Barnhart. But he struck out Jordan Pacheco, who represented the go-ahead run, to earn his fourth career save.

“Boyer is a good pitcher, pitching out of his typical role,” Reds manager Bryan Price said. “We were able to get some guys on base and do some things, some good two-out at-bats by the guys … and just weren’t able to finish it off. It was good to see that there was a lot of fight there in the end.”

MOMENTS THAT MATTEREDTake what you can: Villar’s trademark aggressive baserunning helped produce the first run of the game on Sunday afternoon. In the first inning, Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips made a running catch of a Perez popup in foul territory, but went to the ground after hitting his ankle against the padding on the wall. Villar, who led the inning off with a single, tagged up from first base and raced all the way to third, beating the hobbled Phillips’ throw. The heads-up play led to a run when the next batter, Lucroy, hit a sacrifice fly to center field to put the Brewers up 1-0.

“We kind of got [hurt] over there in the first with BP’s play he made,” Finnegan said. “It was a great play, he’s sitting there hurting, guy gets to run two bases and we kind of get [hurt] because the next two guys pop out. But I guess that’s part …

continue reading in source mlb.mlb.com