Brewers hold closed-door meeting after ugly series loss in SF

SAN FRANCISCO -- Brewers manager Pat Murphy called this four-game series at Oracle Park the poorest defensive showing he’s seen in his 10 years with the club. So, in the wake of Thursday’s wrenching, 6-5 loss at Oracle Park, the second time in the first 26 games of this season, in Murphy’s estimation, that the Brewers have collectively given a game away, he decided it was a good time to have a group chat.

He kept the clubhouse doors closed after the game for 30 minutes to unpack what unfolded over the past four days and to reinforce what kind of unit the scrappy, speedy, slick-fielding, stingy-pitching Brewers want to be -- will need to be -- over the next five months to earn another berth in the postseason.

“As a leader, I needed to say something,” Murphy said. “It was about love and discipline. Maybe I need to give more love and we need to have more discipline. This team can’t be an elite team unless we play a little bit ‘uncommon.’ Unless we have an edge like you saw a lot of last year -- not all of last year, but you saw it a lot -- we can’t compete the way we want to compete unless we have that.”

They did not have that edge this week while dropping three of four games against the Giants, and they certainly did not have it on Thursday, when baserunning errors stymied scoring chances early, and late defensive mistakes or missed opportunities helped the Giants take the lead in the eighth inning of a Brewers loss that dropped them back to .500 at 13-13.

Here are some of the things Murphy didn’t like:

? Brewers starter Tobias Myers walked four batters in his four innings while making his first start off the injured list, and Brewers pitchers walked seven in all, one shy of a dubious season high.

? The Brewers scored one run in the first inning but could have had more. Sal Frelick ran into a double play on the basepaths when he tried for a stolen base but lost Christian Yelich’s sacrifice fly to center field.

? Later in that same inning with runners at the corners, Joey Ortiz produced a rally-killing final out when he pushed a bunt to first base instead of third.

? In the eighth, after Tyler Alexander allowed a leadoff walk and a Wilmer Flores’ single to put runners at the corners, the Brewers briefly froze the tying runner at third on a bouncer to third baseman Vinny Capra, who did a good job of checking the lead runner. in a perfect world, Capra might have gone to second base for the one out on the play. Instead, he went to first and the go-ahead runner moved into scoring position.

? Then, the Brewers appeared well-positioned to cut down that tying runner at home plate when Mike Yastrzemski hit a soft bouncer to second base with the infield pulled in. In hindsight, Brice Turang said he could have charged through the bouncing ball and thrown home, though it still would have been close. As it was, Turang waited back, and his throw home was high. The run scored easily.

? The Giants then took the lead when Yelich misplayed Willy Adames’ line-drive sacrifice fly. That run probably would have scored even if Yelich had made a clean catch, but it was an ugly end to an ugly week for the Brewers.

"Everybody knows. When you make a mistake, you know you made a mistake and you need to be better,” Yelich said. “But just to address it and make sure it’s not something that keeps spiraling is a good thing.”

As far as the team-wide defense, was it a blip, or something to be concerned about?

“Probably just a blip,” Yelich said. “We obviously didn’t play well these four days, really in any aspect. It’s uncharacteristic of us, and we’ve got to clean it up.”

“It was a weird series,” Turang said. “We’ll be alright. We’ll get through it.”

The purpose of the postgame discussion was to find that path.

“It was not meant to be brow-beating, it was meant to be awareness and a talk about responsibilities,” Murphy said, “Hopefully it was productive. You never really know. …

“But you don’t join the Brewers and just show up and say, ‘Well, we didn’t spend enough money,’ or, ‘Well, we don’t have a power-hitting third baseman.’ When you join the Brewers, you join knowing that if we’re going to win, you’re going to have to play a certain way. We just have to get everybody to understand that.”