Brewers' playoff demons strike again in Wild Card finale

MILWAUKEE -- This all started with Chris Taylor making that damn catch.

Since then, the postseason has brought the Brewers nothing but pain.

There was Juan Soto’s liner taking a left turn in 2019, Brent Suter losing all concept of the strike zone in 2020, Freddie Freeman doing the unthinkable and hitting a left-on-left homer against Josh Hader in 2021 and the Big Three crumbling in 2023. The small market Brewers deserved all the credit for making the postseason year after year, but couldn’t crack the code once they got there.

They hoped this year would be different, with a new manager, the league’s stoutest bullpen and a slew of fresh faces who ran the bases with abandon and played some of baseball’s best defense. But it’s happened again -- and this one might be the most excruciating exit yet.

With lights-out closer Devin Williams on the mound with a two-run lead and the Brewers two outs from snapping their streak of first-round exits at four, slumping Mets slugger Pete Alonso hit Williams’ best pitch -- a changeup so good it has its own nickname, The Airbender -- for an opposite-field, three-run home run that sent the Brewers to a 4-2 loss in Game 3 of the National League Wild Card Series at a stunned American Family Field on Thursday night.

Going into the day, teams were 105-7 when leading going into the ninth inning of winner-take-all postseason games, including 82-2 when leading by multiple runs. But after bucking those odds against one of baseball’s best relievers, it’s the Mets who are moving on to the NL Division Series.

“It felt like a tragedy,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said.

Said Williams: “No one feels worse than I do.”

If the seating bowl was stunned, imagine the scene in the clubhouse afterward. The Brewers lost for the 11th time in their past 13 postseason games, starting with a Game 7 loss to the Dodgers in the 2018 NLCS that turned on Taylor’s diving catch of a Christian Yelich line drive. Now the streak of postseason series losses is at six and counting.

? Uecker returns to booth, consoles Crew after WC loss

“After we lost, we stayed here for 15 minutes and nobody moved from the chair,” said Willy Adames, the biggest of the Brewers’ pending free agents. “Silent. Quiet. That tells you right there that there’s a special talent and a special chemistry among ourselves.

“I’ve never been in a clubhouse with that chemistry. And to see that pain through everybody’s eyes, it was kind of emotional.”

Just like that, what had been a magical night for a Brewers team that wasn’t supposed to get this far in the first place was spoiled. Rookie Tobias Myers delivered five brilliant, scoreless innings in his postseason debut. Trevor Megill and Nick Mears followed with scoreless innings before the Brewers finally got some cuts against a pitcher who wasn’t Mets starter and longtime Milwaukee nemesis Jose Quintana -- and cashed in with back-to-back homers from Jake Bauers and Sal Frelick in the seventh.

It was all so improbable. Myers is a 26-year-old rookie who’d been traded three times, designated for assignment twice, waived and then released, and was coming off a 1-15 record and a 7.82 ERA when he signed with Milwaukee as a Minor League free agent in the fall of 2022. Bauers batted .199 in the regular season. Frelick hit two homers all year, the last on May 15.

It continued when Freddy Peralta, who was so disappointed to be pulled after four innings before Game 1 went sideways, emerged from the bullpen for a 1-2-3 eighth inning that positioned Williams, with a fresh arm after spending the first four months of the season recovering from a back injury, to close out the ninth.

“I wanted to be available for me, for the team, because we have done great things this season,” Peralta said. “It was the day that everything was going to be decided. Even if I wasn’t going to pitch, I wanted to be available.

“It was very exciting for me knowing that if I was going to get the three outs, then Devin was coming.”

It seemed Milwaukee’s postseason demons were about to be exorcised.

Then, they emerged again.

A homer off Williams? Rare. A homer off a Williams changeup? Almost impossible. He’d allowed one home run in 22 2/3 innings in 2024, including his perfect ninth in the Brewers’ victory over the Mets in Game 2. And over the more than 2,300 changeups in his regular season and postseason career, only six had been hit for homers.

Now you can add the 3-1 pitch to Alonso.

“You go through those scenarios as a little kid,” Alonso said. “It’s like, ‘All right, you’re in the playoffs, you’re down by two runs…’ I don’t know. Words can’t explain it.”

Williams shouldered all the blame, saying he put himself in too many bad counts as the Mets scored four runs on a costly leadoff walk to Francisco Lindor, a costly hit-by-pitch against Jesse Winker and three hits, including Alonso’s homer -- making him the first player in MLB history to hit a go-ahead homer while trailing in the ninth inning or later of a winner-take-all postseason game -- and Starling Marte’s run-scoring single.

It was redemption for Alonso, a free agent to be, who had five hits in his past 41 at-bats, with no extra-base hits and only one RBI since Sept. 19.

“It could have been better but it wasn’t the worst pitch I’ve ever thrown,” Williams said of the fateful changeup. “I wanted to go away with it and I got it there, but it was a good piece of hitting.”

He added, “This is the closest team that I’ve played on. That’s what makes it much more disappointing. Everyone did their job except for me. I feel like I let everyone down.”

“Devin is being a professional, so he’s obviously going to say that to you guys, but we all know that’s not his fault out there,” Frelick said. “That’s a team loss there.”

It meant the Brewers will continue to have to hear about early exits instead of praise for joining the Astros, Braves, Dodgers and Yankees as the only teams that can claim at least six postseason berths in the same span.

“You can look at history if you want,” Murphy said. “But if you want to report on history, it’s that the Brewers have been to the playoffs in six out of seven years with one of the smallest budgets in one of the smallest markets in baseball. I think that is something the organization should be commended for.”

They’ll try again in 2025.

“I love this team,” Murphy said. “I’ll never be able to duplicate 2024.”