Murphy keeping faith in 'sputtering' Brewers

MILWAUKEE -- In the midst of an uplifting season, Brewers starter Colin Rea didn’t have his best stuff on Tuesday. The same could be said for the Brewers’ young hitters.

“We’re sputtering a little bit,” manager Pat Murphy said.

Milwaukee sputtered to a 7-2 loss to the Dodgers at American Family Field, with Rea setting dubious career marks for hits (10) and home runs (four) allowed while Milwaukee hitters continued to experience the downside of the ups and downs of baseball.

After scoring 42 runs in a four-game stretch from Aug. 8 through Friday, the Brewers have scored eight runs in the four games since, including three consecutive losses. The only team in the Majors yet to endure a four-game losing streak this season will have to put that status on the line when the series continues Wednesday night.

“Some of it is due to the pitching,” Murphy said. “I’m not going to get too down on these guys. They’re young and they haven’t had too many stretches like this. I still have a lot of faith in them. They didn’t seem like themselves, all of them. A couple in particular just didn’t seem like they were having their normal at-bats, but it’s not for a lack of effort.”

Rookie Jackson Chourio had a nice night with a double and two of his three outs hit north of 95 mph, according to Statcast. For some of the Brewers’ other hitters it was an unproductive night against talented young Dodgers right-hander Gavin Stone, just as it was an unproductive night Monday against older Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw.

The best at-bat of the night belonged to Brewers catcher William Contreras, who worked Stone for 10 pitches on the way to a solo home run in the third inning that halved the Brewers’ deficit to 2-1. But that came an inning after one of the Brewers’ costliest at-bats of the night in the second, when Sal Frelick popped out on the infield with runners at second and third with one out. When rookie Joey Ortiz struck out to strand both runners, a promising rally was suddenly over.

“We didn’t have a left-handed hitter get on base but [two times] on a hit by pitch,” Murphy said, referring to Garrett Mitchell and Tyler Black each reaching that way on a night Milwaukee’s lefty hitters combined to go 0-for-13. “That’s not going to work.”

Said Frelick of the Brewers’ recent offensive slide: “I feel like for two weeks you’re seeing beach balls, and the next two weeks you feel like you’re just battling up there. That’s what we’re going through as a team right now.”

The loss secured the season series for the Dodgers, who have won four of the first five matchups with two games to go. Last year, the Dodgers won five of six games between the teams.

“They’re really, really good,” Murphy said. “You can create reasons, but they arguably have the three best players in the game to lead off the game. … They don’t go in too many slumps.”

The task of taming that Dodgers lineup fell to Rea, who was coming off seven scoreless innings in Atlanta in his last outing and entered the night with the NL’s eighth-best ERA at 3.38. By night’s end, his ERA was 3.72 after the Dodgers got home runs from Will Smith in the second inning, Shohei Ohtani in the third and Gavin Lux and Andy Pages in a five-run fourth.

“I just felt like every mistake we made, they took advantage of it,” Rea said. “Even with two strikes, they seemed to hit the ball pretty hard. I wouldn’t say my fastball had great life to it like it had the last 3-4 [starts], but they definitely hit those mistakes.”

Rea did deliver six innings to help keep Milwaukee’s pitching in order for Frankie Montas’ start Wednesday, as the team continues through a challenging stretch of 13 games in as many days.

It doesn’t get much easier; after the next two games against the Dodgers, the AL Central-leading Guardians come to Milwaukee.

“These guys have overachieved all year and I’m not going to get down on them, that’s for sure,” Murphy said. “We’re going to go through rough patches, and we really haven’t yet. Like, rough, rough patches. I think these guys will stay afloat. They have a lot of pride and they love each other. They’ve been blasted a lot. They’ve taken a lot of shots. And they just keep going.”