The Would-Be Hero, the Hidden Goat: Brewers' Game 4 Loss Swung Wildly on Two Late Plays

The Rays don't seem to have any idea how to get Cooper Pratt out. You can see that in his stat line during this World Series: he's 6-for-16 with three extra-base hits and three walks. You can also see it in the at-bats, though. Tuesday night nearly became the sublime moment that altered the Brewers' identity as a franchise for the better, and it was Pratt who stood to become the hero of that contest. Over and over, he delivered the big hit, as he's done all series. He finished off the Rays in Game 2 with an opposite-field single. In Game 4, they tried to jam him up and in, and he was extremely ready for it. 

Pratt's steep swing produces a style of zone coverage that might surprise you, if all you knew was how much he dips his barrel as he addresses the ball. Many hitters with a steep bat path like the ball down and in, but Pratt prefers to keep his swing short and direct. That means focusing on attacking the ball up and in and adjusting to cover down and away; it often means that you can beat him down and in. The Rays, sometimes trying to set him up for something else and sometimes simply thinking they had a pitch type that would beat him in a given spot, repeatedly tried to get the ball by him in the upper, inner quadrant of the zone, but Pratt punished that strategy.

Pratt's game-tying double in the fourth inning came on a near-perfect pitch from Griffin Jax, in terms of execution. It just wasn't a good plan on the Rays' part—a rare miss for a team that usually nails scouting and gameplanning. Pratt also cracked a pair of solid singles, but the defining moment for him—the biggest moment in Brewers history, it briefly seemed, though that wouldn't last—came when Ian Seymour tried a fairly inexplicable offering. His 12th-inning sweeper broke toward Pratt, but stayed above the belt, and Pratt got to it before it could break far enough in to jam him. If it were a misplaced would-be back-foot breakiung ball, you could understand it, but the Rays seemed to want the pitch in that spot. They underestimated Pratt, and paid a dear price.

The celebration that homer nearly touched off will have to wait, at least one day. The game got away from the Brewers in the bottom of the 12th. In the scorebook (and in his own heart; he beat himself up in interviews after the game), Joey Ortiz will wear the goat horns. Officially, he committed a throwing error on the first at-bat of the Rays' comeback rally. In truth, though, he made a fine play. Jake Bauers had time and a reliable hop on which to catch Ortiz's long throw. The ball didn't skip unpredictably off the turf; Ortiz got it to the dirt cutout around the base. It came up to about waist height and didn't pull Bauers off the bag. The veteran first baseman just needed to field the bounce. Instead, alas, he was handcuffed by it.

Unfortunately, this was as foreseeable as Pratt's success on pitches up and in—but it's not the kind of thing a team can adequately plan for and avoid. On August 19, I wrote the following about Bauers's receiving of low and bounced throws, relative to Andrew Vaughn's good work on the same types of plays.

Quote

Alas, that's exactly where Jake Bauers struggles. The Brewers' bigger, more athletic, left-handed first baseman would rate as above-average, but for a few poor plays on which he's crouched awkwardly and unnecessarily when trying to pick low throws, with disastrous results.

Here's an example I gave at the time:

It's an unfortunate habit of Bauers's to get too low too early on throws that will bounce before arriving, leaving him unable to make late adjustments other first basemen might. He's been a fine receiver on all other types of throws, but this was the gun over the mantelpiece all along, and it fired at just the wrong time for the Brewers. In theory, when an unlucky ninth-inning sequence forced the Brewers to replace David Hamilton with Ortiz, Pat Murphy could have put Vaughn (who'd been called upon to pinch-hit but didn't really get the chance) into the game at first base, taking out Bauers. Murphy also could have elected to let Hamilton hit in that spot, instead of turning to Vaughn.

If Vaughn is there to field Ortiz's throw, the Brewers are probably champions already. That would have required a near-magical level of foresight from Murphy, though. If Hamilton were still in the game, on that particular play, the Brewers probably get an out, but Murphy has plenty of reasons to prefer Ortiz to Hamilton at third defensively, as Hamilton himself had showed earlier in the game.

No one is exactly at fault. As we talked about after the Brewers' Game 1 win, the World Series (and the playoffs, in general) will eventually find and expose your weaknesses. The Brewers' weaknesses are few and minor, compared to those of most teams, but the game found a way to shed light on one at a pivotal moment Tuesday night.

That needn't be the defining moment of the series, though, just as Pratt's didn't turn out to be. The Brewers have a bevy of advantages heading into Game 5. Emotionally, they'll have to respond. They'll have to ignore the wamble in their gut and the ringing in their ears and come back undeterred—or, as Murphy liked to ask of them in previous years, undaunted. History is obdurate. The Brewers have never won a World Series, and the universe sometimes seems to be trying its hardest to keep it that way. This team is too good to be dragged down by something as simple and foreseeable as extra-innings adversity, though. If they play the same game Wednesday night that they played Tuesday, they can expect to win it this time—warts and all.

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