Counsell: ‘Our job to respond’ after recent skid

MILWAUKEE -- Corbin Burnes isn’t buying the narrative that the Brewers were unraveled by the Trade Deadline, even after Sunday’s 4-2 loss to the Reds in 10 innings sealed a series loss to Cincinnati at home on the heels of getting swept in Pittsburgh.

Burnes pitched six quality innings and Keston Hiura hit a tying home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to extend the game, but a pair of defensive miscues contributed to another loss hung on Milwaukee’s bullpen and the team’s sixth loss in its last seven games. Five of those losses have come since the Josh Hader trade.

“That's the easy route, is to make excuses for the way we played this last weekend and blame it on someone else,” Burnes said. “But we’ve got to point the fingers at ourselves here. Get back on track. Play better baseball.”

The Brewers fell two games behind the red-hot Cardinals in the National League Central standings after Milwaukee held the top spot from June 23 until Saturday. Not surprisingly, the statistical models don’t like the current trajectory. A week ago, the Brewers were 85.5 percent to win the division and 93.4 percent to make the playoffs according to Fangraphs’ calculations. As of Sunday morning, those percentages had fallen to 49 percent and 67.7 percent.

And that was before Burnes allowed only one run and struck out nine over six quality innings on a stiflingly humid afternoon, and bullpen newcomer Matt Bush delivered his first scoreless inning for the Brewers in his third try, only to see another newcomer in Taylor Rogers, pitching in an eighth inning that typically belonged to Devin Williams when Hader was around, surrender the go-ahead run on a couple of hits in the eighth.

Hiura homered leading off the ninth inning for a 2-2 tie, but the Reds pushed right back in front against Williams in the 10th. Third baseman Mike Brosseau charged an infield single and threw it away for a costly error that allowed one run to score and set up the next.

Since the Trade Deadline, Brewers relievers are 0-3 while allowing 24 hits and 15 runs (11 earned) in 20 1/3 innings.

“I think we’ve got better baseball to play,” Burnes said. “It’s easy to say we're a first-place team and [the Reds] are scuffling, we should go out and we should win this baseball game. That’s not how baseball goes. You’ve still got to play good baseball and get after it.

“Part of being a first-place team is everyone wants to beat you. The Pirates played a tough series against us. The Reds played a tough series against us. I don’t think any of us in here are happy with how we’re playing. We all know that there’s better baseball to be played. But that's just part of a long season. Fortunately, it's early August so we have plenty of time to turn around.”

The Brewers have done that already this season. Right fielder Hunter Renfroe pointed to an eight-game losing streak in early June that included Hader’s first blown save. They also lost eight of 11 games leading into the All-Star break.

This particular losing streak happened to coincide with a series of Trade Deadline moves that shook up the pitching staff, but not the offense, despite efforts.

“I think that is all behind us,” Renfroe said. “The guys we’ve gotten, we’ve got a lot of confidence in those guys to go out there and perform every day. … I think Hader obviously was a lifeblood of the team. He did a great job for us for a long time. It’s one of those things where, you lose a closer like that, it’s going to be tough for you for a little bit, but I think Devin’s got the stuff that he can come out there, step forward and do what he needs to do. I think everybody in this clubhouse believes that.”

With Sunday’s loss, two-thirds of the Brewers’ regular season is in the books. They were 33-21 in the first third but 25-29 in the second third.

The final third will determine whether a fifth consecutive postseason berth is in the offing.

“We didn’t have a good week, but we have to look forward because we have a lot of baseball left,” manager Craig Counsell said. “The season is going to throw you things that you don’t like. We know that. … It’s our job to respond to it and to bounce back from it and look forward to a fun [54] games and look forward to the challenge of trying to do it.”