Article: The Third 54 Report: No Rest for the Weary

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Brewers just climbed to 13-5 on this young (but maturing) season. They've already ensured a winning record on a very tough 10-game road trip. It's all good news, as long as the team and their fans can stay standing long enough to enjoy it.

Image courtesy of © Steven Bisig-USA TODAY Sports

The Brewers needed a nice, easy game in the worst way Tuesday night. Their series in San Diego included two easygoing blowouts (one in each direction), but those were bookended by a pair of taut, hard-fought wins. That came after a three-gamer in Arizona that served as a clear early notice: the Diamondbacks will be pesky this year. Brandon Woodruff will be out for multiple months, and Corbin Burnes is now nursing a minor injury. The team needed a little bit of a tension-breaker.

No dice. Baseball will, sometimes, sense your fatigue and your desperate need for a rest, and ruthlessly deny it. Even in April, the length and layers of the 162-game grind can occasionally rush up and elbow you into a wall, leaving your ribs sore and your ego bruised. The Brewers had to withstand some early damage in Tuesday night's game, as stopgap starter Colin Rea had an up-and-down outing. The Mariners looked stumped by Rea's stylish new sweeper the first time they saw him, but they took the measure of that pitch and its purveyor in a four-run third inning. 

It would have been understandable if everyone quietly, professionally switched things off for the night at that point. The score was just 4-3, but Rea was scuffling, and Craig Counsell felt little choice but to keep him out there to grind through some extra outs. With Woodruff and Burnes eating fewer innings than expected, the bullpen has borne a heavy load in the early going. Milwaukee's schedule has been unforgiving, anyway, with fewer off days and a tougher road trip than April typically includes. It would have been ok if this one had simply slipped away, one of those 54 pre-programmed losses a team has every year.

No dice. The Brewers showed a resiliency and a hunger that have quickly become their signature, and they fought back, even on a night when everyone seemed a bit less than their very best. Rea got through the fifth without allowing any further runs, despite some loud contact. Willy Adames, whose at-bats have seemed more systematic and calculated this season, got a pitch up and away in the top of the sixth and drove it out of the park to right field, tying the score.

Counsell, to his credit, never lets his team's heart go to waste. If they show him that they have the fight to win on a given night, he responds by pushing every button he believes will increase their chances of winning. So it was that Hoby Milner, making his ninth appearance already in the team's 18th game and working on a second consecutive night, got four outs for the Brewers. Joel Payamps and Matt Bush also came back on no rest, and Devin Williams--who threw 33 pitches Sunday and got warm Monday night before the Brewers' ninth-inning insurance runs allowed him to shut it down--worked the ninth with the score still tied.

Payamps is up to eight appearances. Bryse Wilson, who navigated the tumultuous 10th and 11th, has thrown 11 innings already, all in relief. Just three weeks into the season, the heavy schedule and the Brewers' unusually rigid bullpen construction (with Wilson, Payamps, and Javy Guerra out of options, and Gus Varland unable to be sent down without being offered back to the Dodgers) have them dealing with much more in the way of fatigue and workload questions than a team would ordinarily be worried about by this stage of the season.

Part of that, of course, is that they just keep winning, and that happened again Tuesday night. Unless a team is a historic juggernaut, winning comes with some costs. Close games pile up, and the pitchers used to secure victories in them, wear down. Position players get fewer breaks, too. In this case, that state of affairs is also complicated by the youthful exuberance of the Brewers' youngsters. Garrett Mitchell suffered a shoulder subluxation on a desperate (though successful) slide into third base in the top of the 10th. Mitchell wasn't able to throw at full strength on the game-tying sacrifice fly in the bottom half of that frame, and he left the game immediately thereafter. That emptied out the Brewers' bench. No one is getting off their feet, and no one is ever taking it easy out there.

Top 10th - Mariners challenge call that Garrett Mitchell is safe at 3B; call confirmed, runner is safe. Powered by @Zoom. pic.twitter.com/NcRqlBG5Sa

— MLB Replays (@MLBReplays) April 19, 2023

That's the magic of this team, really. They're admirably hard-charging, relentless, and eager. Counsell pushes for every win he can get, on the theory that he'll be able to work with or work around whatever ramifications there are for that urgency. If Williams, Bush, Milner, or Peter Strzelecki wears out or wears down, well, Counsell has been giving Payamps and Varland auditions in situations that allow him to gauge their fitness for high-leverage roles. If Mitchell has to go on the injured list (which seems likely), Sal Frelick could come up to replace him. The Brewers' success throughout Counsell's tenure has depended on that capacity for taking chances and deploying every available resource to win games. They're not going to change that approach now, and the individuals they've brought into the clubhouse clearly buy in to it. It's paying off beautifully in the early stages of 2023, but the bill for this success will come due as the spring leans toward summer.

Third Bucket Record: 6-0

 

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[kalle8]

The Brewers, right now, are a joy to watch.

 

[Playing Catch]

Another great win.

Kudos to Trueblood. This series is well-conceived and features excellent writing. Granted, I look forward to it more when the Third Bucket Winning Percentage is 1.000.