Woodruff, Turang lead Brewers to 5-2 win over Marlins

Apr 18, 2026; Miami, Florida, USA; Milwaukee Brewers starting pitcher Brandon Woodruff (53) delivers a pitch against the Miami Marlins during the fourth inning at loanDepot Park. Mandatory Credit: Sam Navarro-Imagn Images | Sam Navarro-Imagn Images Today was a matchup of two of the early 2020s biggest pitching stars, a former Cy Young Award winner versus a two-time All-Star and top-five Cy Young finisher. But it was the elder Brandon Woodruff who got the best of an uncharacteristically wild Sandy Alcantara today, and Brice Turang reached base four times, homered, and knocked in three runs to lead the Brewers to a comfortable 5-2 victory.

On Alcantara’s second pitch of the game, Sal Frelick hit a well-placed soft line drive to shortstop that was fielded on a bounce by Otto Lopez, who could not get it to first base in time to beat the speedy Frelick. But Frelick was followed by two Brewers who made solid contact, but weren’t as lucky with their placement: William Contreras hit a 101 mph fly ball to center, which was caught, and Brice Turang hit a hard ground ball up the middle, straight at Lopez, who was positioned to easily turn a double play. The Marlins were aggressive against Woodruff in the bottom of the first, and made some decent contact, but had nothing to show for it: Woodruff needed just nine pitches to retire Jakob Marsee, Xavier Edwards, and Agustín Ramírez.

Alcantara struck out Gary Sánchez and got a groundout from Jake Bauers to start the second, but with two outs Luis Rengifo lined a double into the left-field corner—in a bizarre statistical quirk, that gave Rengifo six doubles out of only nine total hits on the season. Garrett Mitchell followed with a walk, but Brandon Lockridge grounded out to end the inning and the Brewers couldn’t quite come through on the two-out rally. They did, however, make the ultra-efficient Alcantara throw 22 pitches in the second inning.

Woodruff got ahead of Liam Hicks to start the bottom of the second, but couldn’t put him away, and Hicks ended up at first with an infield hit when Ortiz was able to dive and stop a ground ball but was unable to make a throw. Ortiz made a nice play on the next batter, when Lopez hit a chopper to short that Ortiz threw him out on (with the aid of a nice pick from Bauers). Connor Norby, though, came through with a clean ground-ball single up the middle, which scored Hicks from second.