Brewers Get Some Overdue Comeuppance in Game Riddled with Familiar Mistakes

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-Imagn Images

Pat Murphy is working hard to be both accountable—"I blame myself first. I didn't communicate it the right way, I guess," he said of a Cooper Pratt baserunning mistake Monday night—and positive. But the manager has made it clear that he's not as impressed with his team's play as their record might lead an outsider to expect, or as the rest of the baseball world always seems to be. In his eyes, the team is not playing up to its potential, and the difficulty of this year's National League means they'll have to get back into a groove down the stretch in order to maintain their great playoff position.

If Murphy was at all worried that his team was learning the wrong lessons from a string of wins in which they didn't always play well enough to deserve the result, he can take reassurance from Tuesday's 4-0 loss to the Mets. In that contest, every mistake seemed to haunt Milwaukee—and there were lots of mistakes. Brandon Sproat couldn't command his fastball well enough to get the grind-it-out Mets lineup into swing mode, and they tortured him with a series of difficult innings. By and large, he worked out of trouble, surrendering just one run through his first four frames. That tally came on a solo homer, ironically, on a night when four walks and a series of clean singles meant the Mets seemed to have traffic at all times.

Sproat's stultifying pace seemed to leave the Brewers offense a bit stagnant in their turns, so it was 1-0 when the top of the fifth rolled around. Finally, inevitably, Sproat's luck ran out. After two straight flyouts gave the starter a chance to get through five innings with the team very much in the game, he made a final mistake, issuing a walk to Bo Bichette with three straight misses after getting ahead 1-2. Murphy went to Chad Patrick to finish the frame, but instead, things unraveled. First, Francisco Lindor hit a grounder that took a bad hop as Brice Turang tried to dive and collect it. Worse, it deflected off Turang's glove into no-man's land in shallow center field. Garrett Mitchell couldn't charge and fire fast enough to Pratt covering second to prevent the near-groundout from turning into a Lindor double, putting two runners in scoring position.

Then, the disaster became less subtle. Carson Benge hit a harder grounder, but one that went almost straight down and began a lazy two-bounce journey toward the are just to the right of first baseman Andrew Vaughn. However, the Brewers were playing their infield shaded toward that side of the diamond—a rarity for them—and Vaughn misread the play. Instead of collecting the ball himself and throwing to Patrick covering first, he took off for the bag, leaving Turang to try to run down the bounder. It eluded him and dribbled into right field, scoring two runs.

It could easily have gotten even worse. Charging the hit, Luis Lara ill-advisedly threw behind Benge from right field, allowing the Mets rookie to take second. Patrick settled down and kept the game 3-0, but the damage was done. Turang, the team's defensive whiz, came up short on two plays in a row, but none of Vaughn, Mitchell or Lara covered themselves in glory, either. Murphy called it an instance of "miscommunication" after the game.

The only really promising chance the Brewers had to rally came in the bottom of the sixth, but it was thwarted by more poor communication. Pratt and Joey Ortiz started the frame by reaching base, setting the table for the top of the order. After a bad at-bat by Chourio resulted in a strikeout, Turang worked a 2-2 count, and then a ball popped away from Mets catcher Luis Torrens. It clanked off his mitt despite being close to the zone, and it trickled far enough away for both runners to advance. Unfortunately, Pratt (perhaps screened by the pitcher, Zac Thornton) made the mistake of assuming too soon that the ball had been caught cleanly. By the time he saw that a chance had existed, it was gone—but it was no longer safe to stay at second base, either. Ortiz had correctly diagnosed the play as a chance to move up, but didn't check his lead runner before trying to do so. Compelled to take off way too late for third, Pratt was dead on arrival.

Murphy said the greater share of blame there rests on Ortiz, but counts it as a double error, so to speak.

"Yeah, it's on Joey to follow the runner, but it's on Cooper that you can't be indecisive," the manager said. Pratt's mistake the previous night was in the same class; he didn't break on a ground ball to the right side on which he could have scored from third base.

You can't win every game, and though Murphy is famously and proudly devoted to trying, he doesn't expect his team to be perfect. Occasionally, getting punished for slip-ups with an L on the standings page is important. It teaches the team to be as close to perfect as possible, to maintain their margin for error. Tuesday night, then, represented a good learning experience, even if it was a lousy result for Sproat against his old team. The Brewers are still running a higher winning percentage than they did in either of Murphy's previous two seasons at the helm. If they can avoid repeating that sloppy performance, they'll be fine—and given the personalities of Murphy, Pratt, Vaughn and the rest of the team, it seems likely that they'll fix these problems in a hurry.

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[Michael Trzinski]

That was an ugly game for sure, but for the most part, the Brewers have played pretty well this year. Hopefully they can get back on it and play impeccable, irreproachable, unblemished, and exemplary ball the rest of the year.