Adames' clutch homer answers ninth-inning challenge by Royals fans?

KANSAS CITY -- William Contreras was barely at second base after hitting a double with the Brewers down to their final strike and trailing by two runs on Tuesday night, when Willy Adames heard more of the chatter he’d been hearing all night.

Adames stood on deck, representing the go-ahead run if only Gary Sánchez could extend the night for Adames to hit in what was about to be a 6-5 Brewers win over the Royals at Kauffman Stadium.

All game, a group of fans on the other side of the netting had been all over Adames whenever he came within earshot. It was all good fun, Adames said, the sort of Midwest nice players don’t always get when they stand in on-deck circles around the Major Leagues.

“They were like, ‘We want Willy! We want Willy!’” Adames said. “I went close to them and said, ‘Are you sure you want me?’”

They told Adames they wanted to see him hit a three-run homer.

Adames smiled and said, “All right, bet.”

Sánchez walked on five pitches, and Adames got his shot. And two pitches later from Royals closer James McArthur, wouldn’t you know it? Adames smashed a three-run home run.

Adames glided around the bases, and instead of going to the dugout to be mobbed by teammates, he went straight toward those fans, yelling, “Oh my God, that was the coolest thing I’ve ever done!”

It was good for the Brewers’ first lead since a 2-0 advantage on back-to-back homers from Rhys Hoskins and Joey Ortiz in the second inning slipped away from Brewers starter Colin Rea (and right fielder Sal Frelick, who misread a leadoff triple to start things) in a four-run fifth.

Rea was back in the visitors’ clubhouse when Adames connected, watching on a clubhouse television with one of the relievers (Hoby Milner) who managed to keep Milwaukee close enough to stage a comeback.

“Me and Hoby were sitting here watching and saying, ‘This is kind of the perfect matchup for Willy,’” Rea said. “It kind of plays right into his swing, and he’s been unbelievable so far this year. It was just cool to see that.”

McArthur, not surprisingly, had a slightly different reaction.

“Really frustrating,” he said. “It was supposed to be a curveball down, hung it up in the zone a little bit. He’s a guy where you can’t make that mistake to, especially late in the game. He made me pay, made us pay.”

Said Brewers manager Pat Murphy: “That’s playing all nine. When you play all nine, you’ve got a chance. It came down to the last pitch.”

Nobody loves banter as much as Murphy, and he was eating up the exchange between Adames and the fans next to the on-deck circle.

When Sanchez walked, Murphy swears that Adames turned to the Brewers’ bench and said, “Watch this.”

“I’m being dead serious,” Murphy said. “I mean, it was like, ‘Did I just see that?’ It was a cool moment.”

Even better, it all happened on a day that was trending up for the Brewers before anyone threw a pitch. That’s because Milwaukee’s star outfielder, Christian Yelich, had another productive afternoon running the bases and hitting on the field as he nears a return from a stint on the injured list for a low back strain that has spanned nearly a month.

“I don’t want to put an exact day on when I’m going to be there, but I would say it’s pretty close,” Yelich said Tuesday afternoon. “I’ve made some pretty good progress the last five days or so.”

The Brewers weren’t ready to rule out sending Yelich to a Minor League affiliate to face live pitching for the first time since April 12 in Baltimore, where he departed after hitting a first-inning single. That boosted his early-season slash line to a robust .333/.422/.744, with four home runs in 11 games.

But Yelich, barring a setback, seems to prefer jumping right back into action in the next day or two. If he waits until Thursday at American Family Field, he would have the benefit of seeing the next-best thing to live pitching thanks to the Brewers’ new Trajekt Arc machine, which uses baseball’s plethora of data coupled with video of every opposing pitcher to spit out replicas of every offering a hitter might see on a given night.

“I’m letting him make that call with the medical staff,” Murphy said. “Obviously, we’ll all be charged up.”

Could they be more charged up than they were in the ninth inning on Tuesday?

After the game, Adames chatted with the fans some more and signed some baseballs. It was a consolation prize for seeing their favorite team lose in the ninth inning.

“We had a great time,” Adames said. “Fans, they can be very hard. These guys here, they were amazing.”