The idea that the Milwaukee Brewers can keep playing the same game over and over again and getting the same result is an interesting one. It's probably not a sustainable one, because baseball does not tend to operate that way, but you keep watching for something different from them, and it always turns out the same.
This would be a problem for them if they were somehow failing at this playoff thing, but rather they seem to have it down pat. Through five games, the formula is simple: Starting pitcher goes four innings, the same four relievers maintain the status quo, the hitters make three runs stand up in victory, and then everyone goes to the clubhouse for a beer and shower and comes back again the next day to do it again.
Surely this cannot be sustained, if only because at some point Abner Uribe's arm will accordion back into his chest cavity. At some point in this postseason they either have to break out a 10-run game, get blown out the same way, have the bullpen melt into slag ... or maybe Jacob Misiorowski throws a three-hit complete game shutout just for giggles and candy.
But if not—if games like Sunday's 2-1 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers is just what they do, the way they do it—then you have your champion, and Major League Baseball will have to spend the winter and spring saying you didn't see what you saw, because baseball is being ruined by all the anti-Brewer big spenders in the sport, of which there are, well, maybe five? Three?
It takes a lot to defy a corporate narrative, but the Brewers have been doing just that all season. To see it done now in front of national audiences and realize what they are doing is throwing a daily custard creme sheet cake in Rob Manfred's face is a wondrous and life-affirming thing, we can all agree. This though is unfair to the even more intoxicating concept of rooting for a team that is willing to use all its legal advantages to build the best team it can, for a fan base willing to pay to watch it.
In other words, you'll read no anti-Dodger screeds here. They are the team you wish you had in your town, and baseball's current negotiating position that every city should have the Baltimore Orioles is fraught with its own horrors.
But the Brewers are also the Dodgers in that they have built an apparently seamless operation that almost runs itself, or at least has given off that vibe through the first five games of their postseason. Sunday was Game 1 of the Division Series against San Diego, or maybe it was Game 2, or maybe Game 4. They all blur because they are all the same thing—the other guy scores first but cannot make a big inning out of its opportunity, the Brewers catch up quickly and then pull just barely ahead with a quaint effervescence that only teams that have done this kind of thing before can deliver, and then manager Pat "Goddamnit, Merrill" Murphy, who is absolutely renting the face of a guy who runs a neighborhood bar, does a wash-rinse-repeat thing that would be annoying if it wasn't so well-constructed. It's Uribe, then Aaron Ashby, then Trevor Megill to close, unless Murphy goes all madcap and does Ashby, Uribe and then Megill.
The Brewers had the best team in the regular season for the same reason they have the best team now: They don't let you steal a game late. In a postseason in which offense has been ruthlessly stifled, the Brewers have been best of all. Their bullpen is sporting a 0.38 ERA so far this postseason, and opposing hitters are batting .163 against them. Uribe (the first such Abner since Abner Dalrymple was the scourge of the game in 1891), Ashby, and Megill have been the signature pieces, doing in unison what the sport used to rely on one player for, and letting the Brewers' modest offense get away with averaging three runs a game and still feeling good about itself. Milwaukee's collective slash line in these five games is a semi-pathetic .247/.342/.354 with an OPS of .697, which would get you a new manager and maybe even a new general manager under normal circumstance, but this October it makes you the best offense in the game.
Like we said, this is probably not sustainable in quite the same way every day. The Dodgers still have that indomitable vibe, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the stealth best pitcher in the game, goes Monday night against Logan Henderson in a game that could easily end with a 0-to-minus-1 score. Maybe Uribe, who has pitched every game so far, or Ashby and Megill, who have pitched in four of the five, get a day off just out of human mercy and decency, but the Brewers have done this thing so often all season that we wouldn't be surprised if Murphy didn't keep running them out until Halloween. It is difficult to defy something that obviously works, but baseball usually has a way of reinventing even the most hidebound methodologies with something absolutely ridiculous. We're good with that, too. The Brewers can close out an 11-10 game just like it was 2-1, 3-2 or 4-3.
