How would Murphy describe 1st-place Crew? 'Undaunted'

MILWAUKEE -- “Undaunted.”

If you want to understand how 65-year-old Pat Murphy approaches his job managing the plucky, first-place Brewers, Wednesday was a good day to visit. At 3:30 p.m. CT, a little more than three and a half hours before rookie starter Tobias Myers threw eight scoreless innings and Milwaukee rode a torrent of two-out-hits to a 9-0 win over the Pirates at American Family Field, Murphy gathered coaches and players in the clubhouse for a monthly look under the hood of what he calls “the bus.”

“The people in there,” Murphy said, nodding toward the locker room, “that’s the bus. We don’t discuss MLB or what’s going to come or the Trade Deadline. None of that’s going to affect us. Let’s just worry about the bus.

“Moods don’t matter much to me. It’s the behavior of the dudes on the bus. And I thought I’d give them a gift.”

The gift was a T-shirt with “Undaunted” written across the chest in the script found on the Brewers’ alternate uniforms. Murphy says he first came across the word in a newspaper clipping from 1932 about his father’s high school football exploits, and at first didn’t know what the word meant.

So he looked it up. He had the definition printed and placed at each locker Wednesday along with the shirt.

Not intimidated or discouraged by difficulty, danger or disappointment.

Perhaps that mindset is part of how the Brewers can be down so many pitchers, from Corbin Burnes (traded) to Brandon Woodruff (injured at the end of last season) to veterans like Wade Miley and top prospects like Robert Gasser and DL Hall (all injured since the start of this season), yet lead the National League Central standings every day since April 30.

It’s thanks to victories like Wednesday’s, the foundation of which was laid with two outs in the first inning when the team’s All-Star outfielder, Christian Yelich, “a superstar, a guy who’s been in the league for 10 years,” Sal Frelick said, “hits a ground ball to first and runs a million miles an hour to beat it out.”

The hustle turned into a two-run rally when Willy Adames doubled and Frelick followed with a single. Both finished with three hits -- Adames a triple shy of the cycle with four RBIs and Frelick a home run shy.

In the fourth, the Brewers’ other All-Star starter, catcher William Contreras, delivered two more runs with a two-out double.

In the fifth, Rhys Hoskins made it 5-0 with a two-out home run, his third homer and fourth extra-base hit in the past five games following a stretch in which Hoskins had four extra-base hits in the previous 28 games. And in the seventh, Andruw Monasterio added yet another two-out RBI with a single that made it 6-0.

“After yesterday,” said Hoskins, referring to the Brewers’ 12-2 loss the night before, “we needed one like that.”

Along the way, the Brewers got eight brilliant, scoreless innings from Myers, a 25-year-old who was traded twice, designated for assignment twice, waived and then released -- all before landing with Milwaukee as a Minor League free agent at the end of 2022.

That’s being undaunted, as the manager sees it.

“For me, it just means continue to do what I’m doing, and that’s taking it one pitch at a time, one day at a time, not looking too far ahead,” Myers said. “Just simple.”

Myers only spent a season and change in Milwaukee’s Minor League chain but said he heard the stories about the “hilarious” Murphy, who was the Brewers’ bench coach for eight seasons before taking over this year as manager.

For veteran free agent pick-up Hoskins, however, this is all new.

Hoskins felt Wednesday’s team meeting was fortuitously timed, even though it was on the schedule before the Brewers played what Hoskins felt was their first “flat” game in a long time in Tuesday’s loss.

“It was nice we could acknowledge that as a group,” Hoskins said. “We got our butts kicked and then we got back to what we do well. With how young we are as a team, those reminders are important -- and they don’t just happen in these meetings. The jokes, keeping us light, getting on us when we need him to, they’re great reminders of what it takes from a mindset standpoint to get where we all want to be: Playing baseball in October and November.”

Said Frelick: “What makes [Murphy] so unique is being different. That’s what we want to do as a team this year.”

The Brewers will need more of that against Pirates phenom Paul Skenes in Thursday’s series finale. It helps to be undaunted against triple-digit fastballs.

“I think it’s a good way to live,” Murphy said.