Once reliever Drew Pomeranz got to a two-strike count against Brewers left-handed hitter Brice Turang, Cubs fans rose to their feet, their cheers swelling, as if they could will him to a third strike.

“Those are the moments that, when I didn’t play for a few years, you’re not getting that anywhere else but in a baseball game,” Pomeranz said after the Cubs’ 8-7 loss Thursday. “To do it here and sell out, like, every night, that’s why I wanted to keep playing, those moments right there.”

When he got Turang to whiff on a heater, the crowd — an announced attendance of more than 41,000 — erupted. Pomeranz had escaped the ninth inning with two runners on in a one-run game, his ERA still unblemished. And the Cubs had another chance at a comeback.

The fans stayed standing through the bottom of the inning, buzzing with hope. But three batters later, the Cubs’ early deficit would prove insurmountable.

“I put us in a hole there,” starting pitcher Jameson Taillon said.

The Cubs hit three home runs — by Pete Crow-Armstrong, Dansby Swanson and Ian Happ — and made a late push, capped by Nico Hoerner’s RBI single in the eighth inning. Pomeranz and Chris Flexen, who limited the Brewers to one hit in three innings, kept their seasonlong streaks without an earned run going.

But Taillon allowed five runs in four innings, and left-handed reliever Genesis Cabrera surrendered a three-run home run in the fifth, a combination that ultimately dashed the Cubs’ chances of sweeping the two-game series against the Brewers.

It was a rare outing for Taillon. Tied for his shortest of the season, it ended his streak of six quality starts.

“This is a team that getting ahead is pretty important against, and we just didn’t do a good job throwing first-pitch strikes,” Taillon said. “That’s something I feel like I’m usually pretty good at, and today it just wasn’t something I was sharp with. So I felt like that kind of made me a little more one-dimensional than usual, which makes it tough.”

He noted that he might have needed a shift in mindset on a few early-count curveballs but overall chalked up his struggles to mostly feel.

“I didn’t really throw any good sliders today,” Taillon said.

One of those sliders he hung to Rhys Hoskins, who hit it over the left-field wall for a game-tying solo homer in the second inning.

Later that inning, Taillon missed over the middle of the plate with a cutter to Caleb Durbin, who lifted a two-run homer into the second row of the bleachers in left-center.

While Taillon has pieced together a relatively consistent season, those two long balls brought his season total to 18 home runs allowed, tied for the third-most in the majors as of Thursday afternoon.

“It’s one of those things, when I’m scouting teams, I need to probably start being even more aware of where their damage is,” Taillon said. “I like pitching to my strengths; I like doing my thing. But now it’s to a point where it’s like, OK, where are guys hitting homers, where are they doing their damage, where should I avoid? Because being up there in the top couple in the league in homers is never something you want to be known for.”

He also pointed to his slider as an area for improvement. Last season, opposing hitters had a .181 batting average against that pitch, according to Statcast. Going into Thursday, it was up to .259.

“I just don’t have the same feel for it,” Taillon said. “So I’d really like to right the ship there, and I think that should help.”

Still, the Cubs clawed back and had the top of the order up in the ninth.

“That’s how the game goes sometimes,” Swanson said. “We made them earn the 27 outs, and they just ended up scoring more runs than we did. But that’s why you play so many of these games.”