The Milwaukee Brewers had their second-best offensive showing of the season on Tuesday.
The host Detroit Tigers will try to cool them off during the second contest of a three-game series on Wednesday night.
Milwaukee pounded out 16 hits in a 12-4 thumping of the Tigers in the series opener on Tuesday. That output included a seven-run eighth inning. Leadoff hitter Brice Turang led the way by driving in four runs.
The Brewers, who have won five of their past six games, reached double digits in runs for the second time. They scored 14 in their season opener against the Chicago White Sox last month.
Right-hander Casey Mize (1-1, 2.78 ERA) will make his fifth start of the season for Detroit on Wednesday. Mize finished 2025 with a 14-6 record in 28 starts and has been even more impressive this season — although his win-loss record doesn’t reflect that.
Mize allowed five runs in 4 1/3 innings to Minnesota under miserable weather conditions on April 6. Otherwise, he has given up just two runs combined in his three other outings, spanning 18 1/3 innings.
His last effort was his best, as he limited Boston to three hits and one walk over 6 2/3 scoreless innings. He struck out seven but got no offensive support as the Tigers lost in 10 innings, 1-0.
“I feel good,” Mize said. “I feel like I’ve had three good [starts] and one bad one. I feel fine, but we’ve got to translate them to wins. That’s what I care about the most.”
He’ll get his share of victories if he remains this effective.
“We had a good game plan,” Mize said. “I was able to execute at a pretty high clip (Friday). I felt like I was moving well and the ball was coming out well. When you execute, more times than not you are going to have nights like this.”
Mize was the top pick in the 2018 draft and, after some injury issues during his career, is pitching like an ace.
“Casey was incredible,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said about his most recent performance. “What I told him afterwards was that’s the best combo of stuff execution, the way his body’s moving, I mean, he was excellent.”
Mize has lost his only career start against Milwaukee, in 2024, giving up five runs in 5 1/3 innings.
Right-hander Chad Patrick (1-0, 0.95 ERA), Mize’s mound opponent on Wednesday, is coming off his best outing of the young season. He held Toronto to one run and three hits over 6 2/3 innings in his team’s 2-1 victory last Wednesday. He struck out only two, but that didn’t faze him.
“I think everything’s coming together,” he said. “I’m not going to do anything sexy out there. It’s here you go, hit it, swing and miss, do what you do. My job is to get weak contact and swings and misses, they come and they go.”
Patrick is more than capable of getting strikeouts. He had 127 in 119 2/3 innings last season as a rookie and recorded 11 in nine postseason innings.
“Anytime I face a lineup, it’s pretty aggressive,” Patrick said. “I feel like I’m a strike thrower. Anytime I’m facing a team, I think that’s the message over there.”
He’ll face the Tigers for the first time in his career.
–Field Level Media
