Rediscovered Magic

Image courtesy of Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images

Brewers Video

Where did that damn magic go? The Brewers—these Pat Murphy Brewers, who are some extension of the Craig Counsell version that emerged almost a decade ago but are a different thing, too; who are transcending what that team was and maybe what baseball teams themselves are—are supposed to have a durable magic that makes them unique. They hit with runners in scoring position. They string together gritty at-bats and line drives and bloopers. They drive you insane as they drive you, slowly, into the dirt. They beat you with timely hitting that no other team can produce as consistently. But suddenly, they couldn't produce it, either.

The sweep in San Diego laid that bare. The Crew had 28 at-bats with runners in scoring position over three games, and collected just three hits. That's not even the half of it, though. It's been weeks of this: living life as a normal team. It sucks. It's hard. And it's been eroding their cushion in the NL Central. This team that has frequently felt like an exception to baseball's rigid rules of regression and sequencing and old-fashioned luck has been mortal, lately.

Too many damn fastballs. It's the perpetual lament of Jack Stern and the bane of so many Brewers' fans existence. This team throws too many damn fastballs. They do it for good reasons. They're not bucking the prevailing trends of an ever-smarter league out of unbridled hubris. Still, it's a strategy that comes with costs, and sometimes, those costs are maddening. Sometimes, those costs feel avoidable and massive and far greater than the benefits. In the bottom of the sixth inning Thursday night, Antonio Senzatela and William Contreras decided to throw too many damn fastballs.

Senzatela's cutter is about 5 MPH slower than his true heaters, a sinker and a four-seamer, and it works a bit like a slider. Throwing his cutter to Max Muncy wasn't such a terrible idea. But Contreras felt the pull back to the fastballs he loves to call, and he obeyed that pull too readily. When the cutter didn't go quite where Senzatela wanted it to, he tried to help his pitcher power his way out of trouble. A sixth straight hard pitch was plenty for Muncy. He got on time and launched a scoreboard-flipping three-run home run. It was too many damn fastballs, is all.

A bad loss—a very, very bad loss. Another one. That's what this game was sure to be. After three losses in San Diego, this was going to be a fourth in a row. This team has kept winning, even while rendered mortal by their sudden lack of runners-in-scoring-position magic and even while throwing too many damn fastballs, but now, they're not winning. And those pesky Cubs won't stop coming. They lost Thursday in Washington, but they've been winning too much lately; they're closing the gap. This wouldn't just be any other bad loss. It would be one more lost opportunity for a much-needed turnaround win.

Contreras was right back in the center of the frame. He's looking like the goat, even on a team that hasn't lost anything important and doesn't have to cast blame anywhere at the moment. The Dodgers' first run scored when Contreras tried to sweep a tag down on an incoming runner faster than the play required, and left the ball behind. Their other three scored when he wouldn't stop calling fastballs. And when he came up to lead off the ninth inning against Edwin Díaz, he did everything wrong. Of the three competitive pitches Díaz threw him, he swung at the one outside the zone and stared at the two that caught it. One up, one down.

And then: magic. It all came rushing back, and, funny thing: it happened because Díaz threw too many damn fastballs. First, Joey Ortiz got one on the inner third and hit a line-drive single. It was just a spark, but you can't have fires without those.

Next came David Hamilton, whom Díaz had right where he wanted him after he got a swing on a slider slicing in toward Hamilton's legs to get ahead 1-2. He tried another slider, but it was a bit less tempting, and Hamilton laid off. On the ensuing 2-2 offering, he went back to the fastball, and made another mistake. Another line drive; another single. A bit of real heat, now.

Jackson Chourio has begun to show that locked-in understanding of the strike zone that was missing before. If he can hold onto that skill, he's headed for superstardom, after all. He didn't come up with a game-breaking long hit against Díaz, but he put together a great, gritty at-bat. Poor Díaz. He made mistakes to Ortiz and to Hamilton, but you're supposed to be able to get away with those against those guys. He executed superbly against Contreras, and other than missing the outside edge with a fastball on the fourth pitch, he executed everything against Chourio. Still, reaching out to protect the plate with two strikes, Chourio flipped a bloop single into right field, spoiling an out pitch of a slider. This is how the Brewers drive you crazy.

Suddenly, the Brewers just needed one more hit to tie to the game. They just needed one more player to take a perfectly good pitch and ruin it. Garrett Mitchell did just that. Díaz hit the inside edge with a first-pitch fastball, but Mitchell knew that that would beget a biting slider headed down and in off the same plane on the next pitch. He got it, and he hit another line drive. Simple, but magical.

It was time to get greedy. How back was the magic? Could the Crew actually take the lead? Dave Roberts tried to stop the bleeding by going to Alex Vesia and putting Jake Bauers in a left-on-left matchup. Maybe if Vesia had stuck to his own fastball, that would have worked. Unfortunately for the Dodgers, after getting ahead with two fastballs up and away, he got worried that Bauers would adjust and cover that pitch. He tried to get him out with a slider down. In fairness to Vesia, Bauers didn't hit a line drive. He didn't even dunk a blooper into the outfield. He hit the ball pretty much straight into the ground, but lo, it snuck through.

Magic, made of line drives and bloopers. A few too many fastballs, but from the opponents this time. And after Trevor Megill slammed the door shut, Thursday night turned out to be a good win—a very, very good win. Another one. Every time you think what has made the Brewers unique is starting to falter, they flip the switch back on. Every time you think they might let up too much and get caught by the onrushing Cubs, they snatch an unexpected victory away in their last at-bat. Their resiliency might be their real magic, and unlike sequencing or batted-ball luck, it might be something they can sustain for a few more years.