Rowdy Tellez hit a two-run homer in the first inning and broke a tie in the top of the 10th with a sacrifice fly to lead the Milwaukee Brewers to a 4-3 victory over the Padres in San Diego in the opener of a four-game series.
Christian Yelich started the 10th at second as the ghost runner. After Willy Adames drew a leadoff walk from Luis Garcia, both runners advanced on a double steal. Tellez then hit a deep fly to right.
Devin Williams (2-0) earned the win after striking out the side in the bottom of the ninth. Joel Payamps earned his first major league save. Garcia (0-2) took the loss.
The bottom of the 10th opened with Padres ghost runner Brandon Dixon getting thrown out at third on a grounder to shortstop Adames.
The Padres’ Trent Grisham had tied the game with a two-run homer off Matt Bush with two outs in the bottom of the eighth. Grisham pulled a 1-1 breaking ball into the right field seats against Bush, who was the Padres’ first overall pick in the 2004 draft.
The homer took away a win from Colin Rea, another former Padres draftee who was called up from Triple-A Nashville to make the start for Milwaukee.
Rea, 32, gave up one run — a first-inning, opposite-field, solo homer by Manny Machado — on two hits and a walk with six strikeouts over 5 2/3 innings in his first major league appearance since the end of the 2021 season. He spent the past two seasons in Japan.
Rea retired the last 10 Padres he faced and 15 of the last 17 — with one of the three baserunners erased on a double play. Rea was a 12th-round draft pick of the Padres in 2011.
Home runs by Tellez and Mike Brosseau had given the Brewers a 3-1 lead.
Christian Yelich drew a game-opening walk from Padres starter Nick Martinez and came around on Tellez’s third homer of the season — a 370-foot drive into the right field seats. Machado hit his first homer of the season in the bottom of the first to halve the Brewers’ lead.
Brosseau made it 3-1 with a 413-foot drive to center leading off the fifth against Martinez, who allowed five hits and three walks with two strikeouts in six innings.
–Field Level Media
