'We felt like we were a hit away': Crew endures 1st-round loss again

MILWAUKEE -- Down a game in this best-of-three National League Wild Card Series and down one of their “Big Three” starting pitchers, the Brewers needed the very best of Freddy Peralta in Game 2.

For four innings, they got it.

And then, it got away.

For Milwaukee, that’s a familiar postseason refrain.

In the span of five batters between the fifth and sixth innings of the Brewers’ season-ending 5-2 loss to the D-backs at American Family Field, Peralta went from working on a no-hitter with a 2-0 lead and two outs in the fifth inning, to trailing, 3-2, with nobody out in the sixth inning of a loss that gave Arizona a two-game series sweep and a date with the Dodgers in the NL Division Series.

“These chances are sacred for players,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “You get this window to have a great month of October, and so it hurts for it to be over.”

The Brewers made the postseason for the fifth time in the past six seasons with their third division title in that span -- a remarkable achievement in Major League Baseball’s smallest media market, and all under a manager who grew up with the Brewers at County Stadium while his dad worked in the team’s front office.

But it’s also true that Counsell’s clubs have not carried their regular-season successes into October. Since playing within one game of the 2018 World Series at the start of this run, the Brewers have been eliminated in the first round each of the last four times they qualified for the postseason. Starting with Game 7 of the ‘18 NLCS, the Brewers have lost nine of their past 10 playoff games while averaging 1.7 runs per game.

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“You play each series and hope you play well enough to advance. We just haven’t,” said Christian Yelich. “You get back enough times, and hopefully, one of those times you can make a deep run. That’s why it’s so special when it happens.”

Said Counsell: “The playoffs are a tough animal to conquer. They are. Unfortunately, we have not. We made a good run in '18, and then it's been some short series that we haven't been able to get over the hump in. It doesn't take anything away from those guys in my opinion at all.”

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You can add this series to the list of frustrating October days. The Brewers generated plenty of offense but not enough runs, putting 30 runners aboard via hits, walks or hit batsmen in two nights but coming away with five total runs -- none after the second inning of either game.

On the pitching front, the Brewers scored first in both games. When they did that during the regular season, it produced a victory 71 percent of the time (60 of 84). But they were 0-2 in this postseason.

“It’s baseball,” Brewers closer Devin Williams said. “It’s not basketball, it’s not football, where the best team wins nine out of 10 times. Especially in this scenario, where you’ve got only a three-game series, sometimes the chips just don’t fall your way. That’s the thing about baseball. It’s unpredictable.”

This October was supposed to be different, with an offense much improved since the additions of veterans Mark Canha and Carlos Santana at the Trade Deadline and an array of pitchers representing arguably the deepest staff the Brewers have ever assembled. Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, Peralta and Wade Miley were as solid a starting rotation as there was in MLB’s postseason field this year, and Williams lurked at the end of games behind at least five other good leverage relievers. It was as good a time as any to make a run, with Counsell in the final days of his contract and big-market teams already circling.

At least, that was the plan on paper.

On the field, the plan fell apart.

Woodruff was lost to a shoulder injury before the series began, a development with potentially ominous implications for 2024.

Burnes was spotted a 3-0 lead in Game 1 against Arizona and lost it by serving up a trio of home runs before Williams, pitching with the Brewers down a run, needed 31 pitches while allowing as many runs (two) as he recorded outs.

Peralta, coming off an illness in his previous start 10 days earlier, saw his velocity dip in the middle innings of Game 2.

As a result, the Brewers never even got to Miley.

“We felt like we’ve got a good team to win a championship,” Burnes said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t play good baseball the last two days, starting with me. You get chosen to be the Game 1 starter and set the tone, and I failed to do that. It feels like a lot of load is on me there, and I know Freddy is disappointed with how he threw the ball today, too.”

It was a whiplash kind of week for the Brewers, whose fortunes turned for the worse as quickly as Game 2 turned against Peralta. First, he left a fifth-inning changeup elevated to D-backs center fielder Alek Thomas, who slugged .278 against offspeed pitches in the regular season. But he became the third D-backs hitter aged 23 or younger to homer in the past two days.

In the sixth, Peralta walked Arizona’s nine-hole hitter before Corbin Carroll bounced a double down the first-base line, right past a diving Santana. In his two-plus months with the Brewers, Santana made that play a dozen times, but this time he had to contend with the barrel of Carroll’s shattered bat spinning his way.

“At the last moment, the ball jumped,” Santana said. “I wanted to dive and make a double play, but the ball jumped and the bat came. A lot of things were going on.”

“That obviously was a huge play,” Counsell said.

Ketel Marte followed with a two-run single that flipped a 2-1 Brewers lead into a 3-2 deficit, and the D-backs turned it into a four-run inning against Peralta and Abner Uribe.

Of course, a flurry of runs would have made it a different night, and the Brewers looked to be on their way when they coaxed 32 pitches from Arizona ace Zac Gallen in a two-run first inning. But nothing followed.

In the third, rookie Sal Frelick hit a comebacker at Gallen so hard -- 102.3 mph, according to Statcast -- that it knocked off the pitcher’s glove. Gallen recovered and started an inning-ending double play.

In the eighth, the Brewers loaded the bases with one out and prompted a call for rookie left-hander Andrew Saalfrank with Frelick due. Counsell considered pinch-hitting with switch-hitter Blake Perkins but stuck with Frelick instead, in part because Saalfrank has relatively even splits. Frelick hit a comebacker for out No. 2, and Willy Adames bounced the next pitch up the middle for an out that ended the threat.

“You can second-guess that one,” Counsell said. “That's fair.”

And in the ninth, Yelich’s two-out double brought the tying run to the plate -- the club’s MVP, William Contreras.

Contreras struck out to end the season.

“It was a night, again, where we felt like we were a hit away,” Counsell said, “where we needed something to fall. It didn't. That's how it is.”

He gathered the group in the clubhouse after the final out.

“This was a great team,” Counsell said, “and I told the guys, ‘As you move forward in your careers, you should want to create teams like this. You should use your leadership to create an atmosphere like this.’

“This was a team you wanted to be on. They celebrated each other. They posted. It's just a group that made baseball a lot of fun.”