Pat Murphy Should Surrender Some Control and Let Jose Quintana, Chad Patrick Pitch a While in NLCS Game 4

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

You can't entirely blame Pat Murphy for trying. He's gone, over and over, to the handful of arms he recognizes as being good enough to dominate even the two very good offenses his team has encountered in this year's postseason run. When Freddy Peralta is scheduled to start, Murphy doesn't mess around. When he has a chance to utilize Aaron Ashby, Abner Uribe, Jacob Misiorowski or Jared Koenig, he doesn't hesitate. He's even gotten a bit creative to deploy Trevor Megill (who is clearly working under certain workload constraints, though the nature of them hasn't been fully laid out by the Brewers in public) to the greatest possible effect.

As the games have progressed, Murphy has also occasionally allowed himself to trust Chad Patrick, the rookie swingman who saved the team's season with a tremendous showing in Game 5 of the NLDS. Whenever it's been time to let anyone else have the ball and attempt to give the team some quality innings, though, Murphy has balked, Again, you can't quite blame him—but now, it's time to let them at least try.

Quinn Priester struggled in his lone outing against the Cubs, and wove in and out of trouble during his stint against the Dodgers earlier in the NLCS. Murphy hasn't trusted Jose Quintana, Tobias Myers, Robert Gasser or Grant Anderson, meanwhile, with anything resembling an important stretch. Those guys only pitch when Murphy believes the game is essentially decided, one way or the other. He seems intimidated, by proxy. He's not giving his second-division arms any chance to be the reason why the team is eliminated. In this, he's far from alone. It seems like skippers throughout the league suddenly forget that their pitching depth got them this far, every fall. Staffs are effectively bifurcated, with one group serving only as shock troops in support of the real hurlers whom the manager actually uses to win games.

The logic is (almost) impeccable—you have to throw your best at the imposing lineups you encounter in the postseason tournament, right?. But it has its limits, and the whole league has gotten bad at keeping those limits in view. October is becoming Sore Shoulder Awareness Month, giving way to Long Nap November for the too-weary trusted arms and Restless December for the hurlers who could have given more but were denied the chance. As compressed and high-stakes as everything feels, the fact is that using the same series and sequence of pitchers every day overexposes them to certain matchups within a series; erodes their stuff; and cannibalizes the team. Murphy is managing exactly the way his peers have managed all October, and the way they all did last October and the one before that—but it's time to zig against the zag.

At this point, the Brewers have to win four games in a row to reach the World Series. Firstly, they'll need their bats to wake up and actually do something, to make that possible. That's a topic for another article. Secondly, though, they need some new roadmaps from Out No. 1 to Out No. 27. Uribe, Ashby and Koenig can't pitch every game. They (especially the first two) are already cracking and crumbling under their heavy usage. It would be great if the team had an obviously trustworthy third starter healthy, like Brandon Woodruff, but it just isn't so. In his absence, they have to stop trying to bullpen their way from one Peralta appearance to another, pausing only long enough to savor an electrifying Misiorowski showing now and then. 

Quintana should start Game 4, with Patrick as his piggyback partner. Murphy's hook should be slow; the plan should be to get seven innings from that pair of hurlers Friday night. If the season ends there, so be it. The path to a series victory, by now, is more like a tightrope. The team might as well walk it with confidence. Quintana has gotten too few chances to show whether his slopfest of an arsenal can fool and frustrate just enough hitters to keep the Crew in the game this fall. Patrick has been dominant, and having pitched just once (three days ago) in this series, he's the natural next-man-up when Quintana falters.

Murphy hasn't been stupid, to this point. He's been doing what teams hope their managers will, each October: seek winnable matchups, be aggressive, and communicate to the team that he believe in them. On the last score, though, it's time to walk the walk. The Brewers can't win this series, now, without lots of help from Quintana, Patrick, Priester, Myers and Anderson. Murphy has to embrace that idea and let some of his less famous moundsmen into the fray.

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[Thurston Fluff]

At some point a rested Anderson is better than Uribe pitching three games in a row and going more than one inning in some of them. I felt the last two appearances from Abner crossed that line.

[Brian]

Yes, I believe a fresh pitcher would have been a lot better. I even commented when Uribe was brought in that it was a mistake as well as Aaron Ashby who has an ERA of over 11.00 + in this series. Both with decreased velocity. 

But we have to score runs also. So the Brewers better get it together. I'm totally ok with our vet Q starting tonight. 

[Samurai Bucky]

It seems to me that the strategy is akin to how a College World Series would be managed.  Ashby should not have had to have pitched every game.

Of course, we may not know how injured certain people are.