Aaron Civale threw six shutout innings and Willy Adames connected on a three-run homer to help the Milwaukee Brewers to a 5-3 win over the visiting Cleveland Guardians in the opener of their three-game series Friday night.
Civale (4-8) allowed four hits, struck out four and walked one, winning back-to-back starts for the first time since July of last season. Civale was drafted by the Guardians in 2016 and played his first 3 1/2 major league seasons with Cleveland.
Joel Payamps pitched the ninth for his sixth save for the Brewers, who have won three in a row.
Cleveland starter Gavin Williams (2-5) allowed five runs and six hits in four innings, striking out five and walking two.
Jose Ramirez and David Fry homered and Will Brennan contributed three hits for the Guardians, who had their five-game winning streak snapped.
Adames came up with two runners aboard in the first and lifted a four-seam fastball deep over the fence in right-center field for a 3-0 lead.
Williams got into trouble again in the third, issuing a one-out single to Tyler Black followed by a walk to William Contreras. After striking out Adames, Garrett Mitchell rolled an RBI double through the right side for a 4-0 lead.
Adames committed two errors on a potential double-play grounder by Andres Gimenez with one out in the fourth inning, allowing Josh Naylor to go from first to third, but Civale got Jhonkensy Noel to pop out then struck out Daniel Schneemann to bail out Adames.
Joey Ortiz drove the ball into right-center field just out of the reach of the diving Brennan in center with one out in the fourth for a triple. Brice Turang followed with an RBI single up the middle through the drawn-in infield to extend the lead to 5-0.
After Elvis Peguero pitched a scoreless seventh, Bryse Wilson came out for the eighth and surrendered a leadoff single to Brennan, followed by a two-run blast from Ramirez to cut it to 5-2.
One out later, Fry took Wilson deep over the center-field fence on a full-count pitch to trim it to 5-3. Nick Mears then came in and struck out the next two batters.
–Field Level Media
