Brewers pounce on Martin Perez in opener

Jonathan Villar homered twice and collected five RBIs to lead the Brewers over the Rangers 8-3 Monday night at Globe Life Park.

Pitching: The Brewers started the third inning with three consecutive hits against Martin Perez and took a 3-0 lead. Domingo Santana’s single to center field scored two in the inning. They scored two more in the fifth to take a 5-2 lead on a two-run homer by Villar. Perez stayed in the game into the sixth inning and surrendered a three-run homer to Villar that gave Milwaukee an 8-3 lead. He was replaced with two outs by Jeremy Jeffress, who forced a groundout on three pitches for the final out of the inning. He pitched a perfect eighth and retired all four batters he faced on 16 pitches (11 strikes).

Hitting: The Rangers scored twice in the third to pull to within 3-2. Nomar Mazara led off with a walk and Elvis Andrus, Carlos Gomez and Ian Desmond followed with singles. Consecutive doubles to start the fifth by Andrus and Gomez added a run to close the Brewers’ lead to 5-3. Gomez and Andrus combined for six of the Rangers’ eight hits.

Notable: Andrus collected his 39th multi-hit game and 13th game with three or more hits ... Gomez had his eighth multi-hit game with the Rangers and second three-hit game ...

This story was originally published September 26, 2016 at 9:58 PM with the headline "Brewers pounce on Martin Perez in opener."