That five-game losing streak?
It's already a distant memory for the Milwaukee Brewers, who save for a late hiccup by the bullpen put together a second consecutive inspired performance on Sunday afternoon at Miller Park.
Jimmy Nelson struck out 10 over seven innings in his strongest start of the season and Domingo Santana hit his first career grand slam in the fourth as the Brewers beat the Arizona Diamondbacks, 9-5.
Nelson's outing came on the heels of Chase Anderson's seven-inning, no-hit performance on Saturday while every starter other than Hernan Perez collected a hit for the Brewers, who earned a series split with the Diamondbacks.
Coming off a loss his last time out, Nelson had his good stuff going early as he racked up seven strikeouts through the first four innings. Arizona got to the right-hander for five hits over that span, but the first four never left the infield.
The Brewers grabbed a quick 2-0 lead against Diamondbacks left-hander Patrick Corbin, who surrendered a triple and a pair of walks to start with Perez driving in the first run with a groundout and Manny Pina the second with a double.
Chris Iannetta's fourth-inning RBI double pulled Arizona within 2-1. Then singles by Jonathan Villar and Orlando Arcia and a walk by Broxton loaded the bases for Santana, who sent a long drive out to right-center to break the game open.
It was the first grand slam of Santana's career and the first of the season for the Brewers.
Milwaukee tacked on insurance runs in the fifth and sixth to stretch its lead to 8-1. Nelson faced just one over the minimum over his final three innings, and after fanning T.J. McFarland to close out the seventh received a standing ovation from the sellout crowd of 41,698 on Robin Young bobblehead day.
Nelson (3-3) fell one shy of matching his career high for strikeouts. And with Anderson fanning 11 on Saturday, the Brewers had pitchers register double-digit strikeouts in consecutive games for the first time since Marco Estrada and Mike Fiers accomplished the feat against the Houston Astros on Sept. 29-30, 2012.
Arizona made things interesting by scoring four times in the eighth against Oliver Drake and Carlos Torres. It also had pinch-hitter Paul Goldschmidt up with a runner on third and two outs, but Jacob Barnes induced a flyout to end the threat.
Santana doubled and scored on a Travis Shaw double in the eighth to cap the scoring for Milwaukee. He was one of six Brewers players with two or more hits on the day, with Pina leading the way with three.
Barnes fired a scoreless ninth to earn his second save of the season.
