This baseball postseason has a face, and it is Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy; standing on the bottom of step of his team's dugout staring 25 yards into the distance and letting the dual features of his conscience balance on opposite shoulders arguing with each other over Aaron Ashby. The good angel is crying out, "He works every day. He deserves a break," and the bad one snarls back like a cranky farmer, "But I need the milk now!"
And time after time, the bad voice wins out because, well, yeah, the milk.
The Brewers are two games up in the World Series after successive one-run victories over the Tampa Bay Rays, because that is their championship motif, letting the other guys score first and then slowly but inexorably catching up and passing them and then letting their formidable bullpen apply the pillow to the face. And by "bullpen," we mean Ashby more than anyone else because he is having the most unreasonable postseason of a fella's dreams. Unreasonable in that in a sport where no trend lives forever, every game he has pitched has been eerily similar.
Friday, in Game 1, he replaced Abner Uribe with one out in the seventh inning of a 2-1 game the Brewers eventually won, 3-2, and went strikeout, fly to right, strikeout, strikeout and grounder to short. Saturday, though, he went rogue, replacing Uribe with one out in the eighth and the Brewers leading 5-4 and went strikeout, grounder to second, double to right, strikeout, grounder to second, strikeout, game over, goofy grin during the postgame interview.
But that has been his entire postseason in summary, as the uncanny out-maker at the game's most treacherous point. The Brewers have played 10 games this postseason and won nine, putting them on a path to be the most efficient champion in 21 years, and Ashby has pitched in eight of them. He has pitched only one inning once, the rest of the time being used in multiple innings because milk. And his pitching line is simply Rivera-esque: 15 2/3 innings, five hits, no runs, three walks, 17 strikeouts. Of the five hits, three have been doubles that ended up as harrowing but harmless, including last night's leadoff line drive by Johnny DeLuca, and a fourth was a bunt single Ashby could not neutralize. And the pitches are largely fastballs in the high 90s, though the game's last at-bat, designated hitter Yandy Diaz, featured three changeups and two Bastard Level One curveballs, the last of which locked his swing in mid-attempt.
As for this being Rivera-esque, the last time a reliever had this much sustained postseason success was 1998 and 1999 by Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera, who had the one advantage in his 18 appearances in those two playoffs of coming in specifically to close games, and rarely for more than the ninth inning. Closers still exist, mind you, but in the modern postseason needs must be satisfied when Satan comes by for lunch, and Ashby's outings have included lengths of three, two and one-and-two-thirds innings multiple times, and begun anytime from the fifth through the eighth. You may argue the relative difficulties involved, and nobody is saying that Ashby is better than Rivera in any way, but the results are eerily the same.
Last night, though, was the first time Ashby caused anyone any agita, and not because of DeLuca's leadoff double in the ninth but because Murphy looked like he was momentarily toying with hooking him for actual closer Trevor Megill. Ashby has indeed pitched a lot, even allowing for the long breaks before the division series and before the World Series. And there was Murphy standing in the dugout looking professionally grizzled, making one wonder if he was going to acknowledge Ashby's workload and let Megill face Victor Mesa, Ben Williamson and Diaz, the latter two righthanded hitters. But he never moved, because he had decided yet again to vote for the milk, because Ashby rather than Megill was the horse he decided to saddle yet again. And Ashby threw 16 pitches, none of them fastballs, to get strikeout, groundout, strikeout, goofy grin. He chose bamboozlement rather than power, and it paid off as though he were consistently 99 on the black.
It would be simplistic to argue that Ashby is the sole difference in this Milwaukee run, and boy have you come to the right window for that. It is not, of course. Heed must be paid to the fact that they have allowed the first run seven times in these 10 games, and that for the second time in three games they spotted the opponents an early 4-0 lead and then allowed them nothing across a total 15 innings. The Brewers have run with resolute abandon, gotten rally contributions from every spot in the lineup and in every way have out-Rayed the Rays, unless of course you prefer to think of Tampa as not out-Brewing the Brewers. Milwaukee's motif has been almost alarmingly similar throughout the playoffs, and really throughout the season, with only one noteworthy difference, which is this:
Right now, in this moment, Aaron Ashby is the greatest pitcher who ever lived, because history doesn't matter until you decide it does. And this is true at least until Monday night. After all, the best way to produce failure in this sport is to rely on excellence being perpetual, and maybe next time Murphy will play a mad hunch and replace Ashby in a tight spot. That's not the way to bet, mind you, not in craps and not in baseball, but at some point the good angel may have his way.
