Brewers on the brink of elimination after defense, 'pen falter in G1 loss

MILWAUKEE -- A 1-for-3 day might work for a hitter, but it’s not good enough for a team built to win with speed, defense and lights-out relief.

The Brewers’ aggressive brand of baserunning produced a pair of early leads, but a defense that ranked second in the National League during the regular season in outs above average and defensive runs saved and a bullpen with baseball’s second-best ERA all came undone during the Mets’ five-run fifth-inning rally, which sent the Brewers to an 8-4 loss at American Family Field in Game 1 of the NL Wild Card Series on Tuesday.

Just like that, the Brewers find themselves in danger of letting another terrific regular season turn into another short postseason. In the brief history of the best-of-three Wild Card Series, teams winning Game 1 have gone on to advance 14 out of 16 times. Of the 10 teams to take Game 1 on the road, eight have won the series, including seven via sweep -- and that includes last year’s D-backs right here in Milwaukee.

• NL Wild Card Series Game 2 FAQ

“This team, all year long, played with urgency,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “But they’re disappointed how this game went. It’s a big blow because we’re in control of the game, and 12 pitches later, we’re not in control of the game.”

Or the series.

After falling to 1-10 in their last 11 postseason games, beginning with Game 7 of the 2018 NLCS, and becoming the first team in history to surrender a multirun lead and lose in four consecutive postseason contests, according to STATS, the Brewers must beat the Mets the next two nights to avoid a fifth consecutive first-round exit.

It will be up to midseason pickup Frankie Montas to re-establish a more positive tone when he starts Game 2 on Wednesday, and a Brewers offense that finished Game 1 by going 17 up, 17 down.

“Like we’ve said all year, we are undaunted,” said shortstop Willy Adames. “We’re going to give 100% on the field out there, and we’ve got to win or we go home. The mentality is we’ve got to win, no matter what.”

The Brewers went into the fifth inning in good shape despite starter Freddy Peralta’s brief command lapse in the second, when a 2-0 lead turned into a 3-2 deficit with a rally built around Jesse Winker’s two-run triple, which produced some drama of its own. So the Brewers took the lead right back with a two-run fourth highlighted by Jackson Chourio’s game-tying RBI single, making him, at 20 years and 204 days of age, the youngest player in Major League history with multiple hits in his postseason debut.

With that, the Brewers turned the game over to a bullpen that delivered a 3.11 ERA in the regular season, second only to the Guardians across MLB. And Chourio helped the first man out of the 'pen, Joel Payamps, settle in by making a leaping catch at the left-field wall that took away at least a base hit. American Family Field was roaring.

But then Chourio took an awkward route on a Tyrone Taylor double that carried an 85% catch probability, and everything fell apart.

Two batters later with two outs, Payamps walked Francisco Lindor. Then the Mets tied the game at 4-4 when Payamps was a step slow covering first base on Jose Iglesias’ infield hit. Brandon Nimmo greeted Brewers reliever Aaron Ashby with another infield hit.

Before the third Brewers pitcher of the inning, Nick Mears, could extinguish the rally, six straight Mets had reached safely, including two-run singles from Mark Vientos and pinch-hitter J.D. Martinez off Ashby, who faced five batters without recording an out. It was a dramatically different story at the end of the regular season for Ashby, who emerged as one of Milwaukee’s most electric relievers with a 1.37 ERA over 12 relief outings beginning in late August.

“You can’t give them five outs in an inning,” Murphy said.

Said Payamps of his part in it: “That’s more or less a routine play that we’re able to practice. I stayed back on it because I thought that ball was going to be closer to the bag, and it wasn’t. It caught me by surprise a little bit. … Then things kind of unraveled from there.”

“I think it’s just a little uncharacteristic of us, not making plays that we’d normally make,” said first baseman Rhys Hoskins, who made a slick stop at the front end of that pivotal play. “Obviously, it’s unfortunate that it led to five runs there. Those are just the types of things that can’t happen in playoff games -- any games, really. But definitely in playoff games, and they took advantage of it.”

Peralta was left feeling just as empty. Murphy went into great detail about the decision to lift his starter after four innings and 68 pitches, citing the emotion being shouldered by Milwaukee’s longest-tenured pitcher, who has witnessed each of the postseason letdowns starting with the '18 NLCS -- and the fact the Brewers had a rested bullpen starting with Payamps, who ended the year with 12 consecutive appearances without allowing an earned run and a 1.03 ERA over his last 30 games.

No explanation, however, would console Peralta.

“It’s not the first time,” he said. “It happened in the past, too. I don’t understand the reason that I was taken out of the game, but there is nothing I can do about it in the moment. They came and said, ‘That’s it.’”

Asked whether he was angry, disappointed or somewhere in between, Peralta said, “I prefer to not answer that question.”

Now it’s on to the next question: Can the Brewers beat the Mets the next two nights to avoid elimination?

“I think we’ll respond,” Murphy said.