'He’s getting better': Houser's impressive '21

MILWAUKEE -- On a staff with Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff and Freddy Peralta, it was 28-year-old sinkerballer Adrian Houser who finally ended the longest complete-game shutout drought in Major League history.

But Houser’s three-hitter on Saturday did not come completely out of nowhere.

“I think Adrian is having a really nice season,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said Sunday, a day after Houser became the first Brewer since Kyle Lohse in September 2014 to pitch a shutout. “Just look at the numbers, look at the body of work.”

Houser is 8-6 with a 3.41 ERA this season and sports the lowest opponents’ batting average of his career at .230. His 59 percent ground-ball rate is the highest in baseball for a pitcher who has logged at least 120 innings.

“It’s clearly a step forward if you measure it over a season’s length,” Counsell said. “He’s getting better. As much as anything, it’s experience. I think his sinker is better this year. That pitch is a better pitch this year, and there’s a lot of metrics that bear that out. It’s been a more effective pitch. Everything else gets lumped in there -- command and secondary pitches.”

Houser threw his sinker 71 times in 100 pitches against the Cardinals on Saturday night. It rates as the most valuable sinker in baseball, according to Statcast’s run value leaderboard, ahead of the electric sinker the Brewers just saw from the Giants’ Logan Webb on the last road trip.

“I think they weren’t picking up the back-door sinker very well there early on,” Houser said of the Cardinals. “I was getting that pitch going, and that’s just been a product of all the work we’ve been putting in between starts, finally getting back able to establish that back-door sinker to use it well and finally be effective with it.”

Brewers catcher Luke Maile, the recent callup who caught Houser’s gem, referred to Houser as a “throwback” in an era dominated by swing-and-miss pitchers like Burnes, Woodruff and Peralta.

Houser’s 18.2 percent strikeout rate ranks 62nd of the 72 pitchers who’d worked at least 120 innings as of Sunday morning.

“He is able to throw a sinker and kind of tell you what’s coming. It’s his best pitch, right?” Maile said. “He has a lot of success with that. When he’s able to command both sides of the plate with it, you rely on it. Make them prove we need to do something else there.

“We did a little bit more of mix about halfway through the game. I thought we were on the same page. It was simple. It was just basic baseball. Throw strike one and then expand when you have to. You feel like you’ve got an advantage.”

Houser is improving at an opportune time. He is arbitration-eligible this winter for the first time and will get a significant pay raise.

Tip the cap to Maile
Counsell had what qualifies as high praise when he conjured a comp for Maile’s performance behind the plate on Saturday.

“I thought, ‘Erik Kratz’ when he was catching,” Counsell said, referring to the veteran who left his mark on a 2018 Brewers team that played to a Game 7 of the National League Championship Series. “I very much though that. Just very comfortable, able to put a game plan in place and execute what we have discussed in meetings. He did a nice job of that.”

Maile signed with the Brewers last December but spent most of this season in the Minors, behind Omar Narváez and Manny Piña on the organizational depth chart. The Brewers called him up last week when Piña landed on the 10-day IL with an oblique injury.

With a left-handed starter on the schedule for the Cardinals on Saturday, Houser and Maile had advance notice they would be the battery.

“Luke and I talked a little bit in San Fran when he first got there, and then we talked a little bit [Friday] during the game,” Houser said. “That’s just a credit to him for how hard he works and being ready to fill in, step in for Manny. Kind of like everybody so far this season, one guy goes down and the next guy steps up and is ready to play the best they can.”

Said Counsell: “I think this is part of the tools Luke brings to the table. It’s something he’s good at. We know he’s good at it. He’s very capable of executing a game plan with pitchers that he’s not familiar with, and that’s a skill, right? He did a wonderful job of doing that.”

Maile has shown he can hit a bit as well. He hit an RBI double and scored a run in the Brewers’ 4-0 win.

“Those are the bonus points,” Counsell said.

Last call
• With Brett Anderson on the IL with a bruised left shoulder, the Brewers are navigating his absence by pitching Peralta on regular rest for his next start, instead of the extra day they have built into the rotation for most of the season. Peralta threw only 53 pitches on Friday in his first start off a short stint on the IL for shoulder inflammation.

“It was the plan for Freddy from the start, to pitch him short and bring him back in four days,” Counsell said. “With the off-days, we have a lot of flexibility in how we move forward after that.”

• Anderson is improving after taking a line drive off his pitching shoulder in his last start. He played catch Saturday and Sunday without any problem, Counsell said.