Winning the Sausage Race: Brewers Have Often Been Frustrating, But They Keep Winning

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Jackson Chourio didn't get a great jump, and he paid for it. In the top of the fourth inning of Tuesday night's game in Chicago, Chourio tried to steal third base with one out, to position himself to score what would have been the first run of the game. Instead, though, he was thrown out by Cubs catcher Carson Kelly, sliding right into a deft tag by third baseman Alex Bregman. That was the injury.

The insult, for Brewers manager Pat Murphy, came when he turned his head toward second base after Chourio was thwarted, and didn't see Brice Turang there. Turang, the trailing runner on the play, didn't follow Chourio, and remained at first base. That meant he wasn't even in scoring position, and there were two outs. A handful of pitches later, the inning was over.

Murphy's agita can only have worsened in the bottom half of the frame. Robert Gasser issued a leadoff walk to Seiya Suzuki. Bregman hit a singularly weak bouncer to Gasser's left, but neither he nor Andrew Vaughn could get to the ball fast enough to make a play on it, putting two on with nobody out despite no healthy cuts being taken by Chicago. Tyrone Taylor cashed in the hosts' luck with a two-run double into the left-field corner. Things got even more frustrating, though, when Nico Hoerner hit a more conventional grounder toward first base. Vaughn ranged far to his right and made a fine play, but because he'd gone so far, the result was a play with slightly awkward timing as Gasser arrived to cover the bag. The hurler had trouble finding the base and arresting his momentum to wait for the ball, and the relatively long throw from Vaughn clanked off the lefty's glove. Hoerner reached on the error, and worse, Taylor came around to score.

To his credit, Gasser bore down after that and escaped without further damage. Even as the fifth inning began, though, Murphy had justification for frustration. After two quick outs to start the top of the inning, Luis Lara hit a liner down the left-field line that (with two outs and nobody on base, and given Lara's speed) has to be a double. Taylor got over to the ball well and threw it as soon as possible back toward second base, but the peg was neither especially accurate nor especially strong. It didn't matter, though. Lara hadn't seen his opportunity; he held up at first base. Instead of being in scoring position, Lara was still two hits (or a stolen base and a hit, or an extra-base hit, but you get the point) from scoring the Crew's first run.

Of course, that's when the Brewers demonstrated who they really are. Joey Ortiz and Cooper Pratt came up with the very back-to-back hits the team needed to get Lara home, after all. Chourio couldn't plunge home the knife thereafter, but in the sixth inning, the visitors did break through. Two ground balls that could have been outs turned into a single and a double to begin the inning. A fly ball down the right-field line wasn't caught. Suddenly, the Brewers had chased Matthew Boyd, tied the game, and had the go-ahead run in scoring position. Christian Yelich teed off on a Daniel Palencia slider, and just like that, the team had a lead they would only expand the rest of the way.

This season, Murphy has held several players—Turang, Ortiz, Pratt, Gasser, David Hamilton, Brandon Sproat, Shane Drohan and more—accountable for lapses he considers unacceptable. He's been criticized for some of those choices, but the underlying reason for each of those actions traces back to something he expressed in spring training: this team has the highest potential of the three he's managed since taking the helm in 2024. They haven't consistently played to that potential.

As Murphy has stressed at each turn, the shortfall is never in effort. A better word for what goes missing might be 'intensity,' or 'focus'. For many players on the roster, there's still a learning process taking place on a day-to-day basis—not only in how opponents will pitch them or which key mechanical adjustment will unlock their next level, but in how constant must be one's concentration within a game played at the highest level in the world. A half-second of hesitation, confusion or distraction can be fatal, and the only way to avoid those crucial failures is to remain on high alert from the first pitch to the last in every game. That's what makes the game so grueling; it's why the grind is so difficult to manage. Murphy has excelled at managing that grind, but he's been unable to stop the occasional crack from showing.

What the skipper saw in February remains very much within this team. Turang, Chourio, Contreras, Jake Bauers and Garrett Mitchell have all looked like superstars at some points this season. Jacob Misiorowski and Kyle Harrison front perhaps the deepest and best pitching staff of Murphy's tenure. It's reflected in their record, too. If you don't watch any of the sausage get made, it's easy to wonder why Murphy seems a bit eager to come down on players who make certain kinds of mistakes. This is the best team in baseball, by run differential and by wins and losses. What's the big deal?

As Murphy cracked (with a forgiving smile) to one reporter from a local TV station earlier this year when asked how great it must feel to be dominating the league: "Have you watched us play?"

He doesn't mean that his squad has gotten lucky. They haven't. He just means that they can play considerably better than they actually have for big chunks of this season—and that they will absolutely need to do so, in order to avoid another October disappointment.