That should've been the kind of gut-punch that turns into a long night for whichever bullpen absorbs it first — instead it was Milwaukee's lineup that made sure nobody remembered the score was ever competitive.
Four runs in the second and three more in the fourth buried this one early, and the Brewers piled up 13 hits against Stock and the Mets pen while their own relief corps, thrust into a bullpen game with zero notice, held New York to a single run on 9 hits. Stock's final line won't do him any favors after a start built around missing bats his last time out — the stuff just didn't hold against a lineup this deep.
This was the back half of a two-game set, and the Brewers had actually dropped the opener to the Mets before flipping the script here — a reminder that New York, even at 60-72, isn't an automatic pushover for a team running away with the NL Central. Milwaukee still took the head-to-head split and kept rolling on a season that's produced the best record in the sport.
For the Mets, this one mostly reinforces where the season already was — Andy Green's club is playing out a lost year while it waits on Juan Soto to work his way back from a calf issue and Mark Vientos to return from his hand injury, with Jorge Polanco's year already over. For the Brewers, a negative X-ray on May is the only headline that matters; everything else was just a lopsided Wednesday in Queens on the way to October.