Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy was opining earlier Saturday about his team’s recent struggles and when it becomes appropriate to begin worrying about how things are going.
“I set standards very, very high. That’s what I go by,” he said. “Are we living up to those things? You can complain, you can blame, you can explain – none of that helps you.”
The Brewers could use some help with key cogs Christian Yelich, Jackson Chourio and Andrew Vaughn all sidelined by injury. But none is coming anytime in the immediate future, leaving them to deal with the here and now with what they have.
And it’s just not been enough of late, as evidenced by their 6-3, 10-inning loss to the Pittsburgh Pirates on April 25 – one in which a punchless offense remained stuck in neutral and Angel Zerpa’s struggles out of the bullpen continued with a third consecutive shaky outing.
“When you’re going through a spell where you feel like nothing’s going right, it seems like everything backfires,” Murphy said after his team’s fourth straight loss left the Brewers with a 13-13 record and in last place in the National League Central standings.
A night after managing a lone single against Paul Skenes, Milwaukee rapped out six hits. But only two were for extra bases, just one of those was hit hard and for the sixth straight game there was no home run, marking the Brewers’ longest such drought since July 25-30, 2015.
Brice Turang’s homer last Sunday in Miami is the only homer for Milwaukee in its last 10 games.
To the offense’s credit it did pick up starter Jacob Misiorowski twice – first in the fourth inning when he plunked the leadoff batter leading to a 2-0 Pittsburgh lead and again in the sixth when he nicked Ryan O’Hearn in the leg with a pitch that Pirates manager Don Kelly successfully challenged home plate umpire Scott Barry’s initial ball call.
An ensuing single and then a wild pitch by Misiorowski set the stage for a Spencer Horwitz sacrifice fly that scored O’Hearn with the go-ahead run in the sixth.
“Obviously not the way you want to start an inning,” Misiorowski said. “I didn’t think I hit him but someone in New York says I did and you move on. Obviously, you want to get out of an inning without any runs and once one goes across you’ve got to limit it and let only the one go through.”
A bloop single by Jake Bauers and bloop double by Tyler Black in the fourth led to a run-scoring groundout by Garrett Mitchell and a sac fly by Sal Frelick that tied things up in the fourth, then a single by Bauers in the sixth was cashed in by another Frelick sac fly that left it a 3-3 game.
Misiorowski, who began the game with a four-pitch strikeout of Oneil Cruz that featured three pitches of at least 102.6 mph, finished with nine strikeouts in all over his six-inning, 91-pitch start.
“Felt the same as any other start,” Misiorowski said when asked about the at-bat against Cruz. “I honestly don’t even know what I hit.”
He also generated 20 swings and misses en route to finishing the night with a major-league-leading 51 strikeouts over his six starts.
But it wasn’t the sizzle that impressed Murphy with regard to his young right-hander – it was the way Misiorowski persevered through a messy fourth that featured all sorts of soft contact among the Pirates’ three hits and then again in the sixth when things could easily have gone off the rails after Pittsburgh again took the lead.
“He’s been good, and when the going’s good, he’s good,” Murphy said. “But the fact that the going wasn’t good and he still competed the way he did, I told him I’m really impressed with the way he handled himself and he did a great job today.
“Really proved something to himself. ‘I’m not going to be the hero of the game. But I really competed.’ A really good sign.”
Aaron Ashby (two) and Abner Uribe (one) followed Misiorowski with scoreless innings, and in the bottom of the eighth Mitchell missed breaking Milwaukee’s homerless streak by a few feet with a 100-mph double off the top of the wall in right-center.
But the Pirates walked Frelick to face light-hitting Greg Jones, and Jones struck out to keep it a 3-3 game.
“He hit two balls on the nose,” said Murphy, and indeed his 109.1-mph groundout in the fourth was the second-hardest hit ball of the game. “Who did we have to hit right there against that righty (Dennis Santana)? The matchup wasn’t good for anybody we had on the bench right there.”
Zerpa struck out Cruz to start the 10th but walked pinch-hitter Marcell Ozuna and perennial Brewer killer Bryan Reynolds followed with a run-scoring single to left. It marked the third consecutive appearance has Zerpa allowed a run; in his previous outing on Thursday he surrendered a game-tying homer to Jahmai Jones in an eventual loss to the Detroit Tigers.
Grant Anderson then entered and gave up a two-run single to Nick Gonzales, sealing the deal.
“Hopefully it makes us better,” Murphy said. “That we remember this, how tough it is to win a major league game. The Pirates are a couple games ahead of us, but you’d think they’re in fist place. They’re playing with such great confidence.
“The Pirates have done everything right in this series so far and we’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. We’re in striking distance. We’ve just got to keep playing hard. There’s nothing wrong with the effort of the team. There’s nothing wrong with anything.
“It’s guys going through major league baseball. It’s tough to win a major league game.”
What time is the Brewers game tonight?
Time: 6:10 p.m.
What channel is the Brewers game on tonight?
TV channel: Brewers.TV.
Brewers lineup
Pirates lineup
Brewers schedule
Brewers vs. Pirates, April 26, 1:10 p.m.: Milwaukee LHP Kyle Harrison (1-1, 3.06) vs. Pittsburgh RHP Carmen Mlodzinski (1-1, 3.28). TV – Brewers.TV. Radio – AM-620 WTMJ.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Brewers 6, Pirates 3 (10 innings): Losing streak stretches to four
Reporting by Todd Rosiak, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
