Alex Bregman has been the hottest hitter in baseball for weeks, and he picked a brutal opponent to keep proving it against. Coming off a 3-homer game against these same Brewers just days earlier, Bregman opened this one by taking Jacob Misiorowski deep for a 2-run shot in the first, then came back in the second with a 2-run single to give the Cubs a 5-3 lead. That's 4 RBIs on the night against a pitcher who'd allowed him almost nothing all year.
Alex Bregman is ALL OVER Jacob Misiorowski tonight. A two-run homer and now a two-run single for four RBIs. 😤
The homer and the single were two very different swings, but the underlying story was the same: Bregman finally solved a matchup that had owned him. Pete Crow-Armstrong, who entered the night 0-for-12 with 9 strikeouts against Misiorowski across the regular season and playoffs, drew a leadoff walk ahead of both Bregman hits — the first time all year he'd reached base against the right-hander at all.
None of it mattered in the end. Misiorowski's final line — 4 innings, 5 hits, 5 runs, 5 earned, 4 walks, 5 strikeouts — matched his career worsts in both runs and walks and snapped a streak that had him allowing 3 or fewer earned runs in every single start to open the season, one of the longest such runs since 1913. His ERA jumped to 1.97 after the outing, still elite, but a jarring outlier for a pitcher who's spent 2026 running away with the league's ERA and strikeout leads.
Jacob Misiorowski allowed a career-high number of earned runs in a rough night at Wrigley Field.
Milwaukee didn't need a vintage Misiorowski start to win, though. The Brewers had jumped out early themselves — 2 runs before the Cubs even batted in the first — and answered every Chicago lead the rest of the night. Jackson Chourio came a triple short of the cycle, Cooper Pratt kept his personal streak alive with an RBI in every game he's ever played at Wrigley, and a Brice Turang squeeze bunt fueled a 3-run fourth that put Milwaukee back in front for good.
The Brewers are back in front thanks to three runs and counting in the fourth, a very Brewers-y inning that included Brice Turang's squeeze bunt. t.co/RhhLEVGrFF
The bullpen closed it out from there, with Abner Uribe, JoJo Romero and Trevor Megill combining to shut the door on a Cubs offense that had clawed back twice already. Final: Brewers 9, Cubs 5 — Milwaukee's sixth win in 9 meetings this season, with 4 head-to-head games still left on the schedule and the division race all but a formality. At 9 games up with 22 to play, the Brewers can afford one bad Misiorowski start. The Cubs, chasing a wild card spot with the season series already lost, can't afford many more nights like this one, even with Bregman doing everything humanly possible to keep them in it.
Misiorowski, for his part, pointed to a mound issue that's dogged him on the road all year — he's a long-strider who lands well past where most visiting grounds crews groom the dirt, and he said afterward that he and the Brewers' coaches have ideas for fixing it but aren't sharing them publicly. It's the same complaint that flared up in Anaheim and New York earlier this season. For one night, it cost him his best season line — but with October in reach and the division essentially wrapped up, Milwaukee has every reason to let him work it out.