Corbin Burnes And The Brewers Come Up Short On Opening Day

One game into the Major League Baseball season is too early to make any sweeping generalizations but one thing is certain at this point in the Milwaukee Brewers’ 2022 campaign:

They will not become the first team in MLB history to go 162-0.

The chances of making such history went by the wayside with a 5-4 loss to the Cubs Thursday afternoon at Wrigley Field.

So what did Game No. 1 tell us? In the grand scheme of things, very little. Making broad assumptions or sweeping generalizations after a single, nine-inning game may be the way sports-talk radio hosts make their money but they’re also the reason Freezing Cold Takes has more than a half-million followers on Twitter and another 200,000 on Instagram.

There were reasons for optimism and there were reasons for concern.

Reigning Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes, though not dominant, was more than effective in the first Opening Day start of his career and made it through five innings despite not having command of his best pitch, his cutter, for most of the game.

Burnes held the Cubs to just a single hit through the first four innings but ran into trouble in the fifth when Selya Suzuki and Jason Heyward singled to open the inning and after Patrick Wisdom’s sac fly, Burnes put a bad spin on a slider that Nico Hoerner crushed to left-center for the first home run of the season.

“We did a lot of great things today,” Burnes said.

While the Brewers were pleased to see Burnes show flashes of his 2021 self, seeing the same from the offense was certainly one of the more disappointing aspects of this particular season opener.

After struggling to generate offense on a consistent basis last season and especially during the playoffs, the Brewers managed just one hit in 10 opportunities with runners in scoring position Thursday; an all-too-familiar refrain from a year ago.

Some of that can be credited to Chicago starter Kyle Hendrcks, the veteran right-hander who has held Milwaukee to two runs or less in six of his last eight starts with a 3.31 ERA during that stretch.

An off-speed specialist with a fastball that tops out in the mid-80s, Hendricks was especially tough when throwing his changeup Thursday and relied heavily on the pitch to notch seven strikeouts in his 5 1/3 innings of work.

On the bright side, the Brewers managed to put the leadoff batter aboard in seven consecutive innings and were able to bring the go-ahead run to the plate with one out in the ninth inning. There were other positives, too, like Andrew McCutchen picking up hits in each of his first two at-bats; Rowdy Tellez collecting two more and even Christian Yelich drawing a walk and bringing home the tying run with a sac fly in the seventh.

Which brings us right back to where we started: the Brewers won’t go undefeated in 2022 but with 161 more chances, it’s highly unlikely they won’t go through the season winless, either.

“We’re at the start of the marathon,” manager Craig Counsell said.