Brewers' path to postseason hits speed bump in LA

LOS ANGELES – The Dodgers can’t “crack the code” against Eric Lauer, to borrow a Dave Roberts-ism, but they put up video game numbers against the rest of the Brewers’ pitching staff.

Leaving no doubt which team has its postseason ticket all but punched and which is trying to stay alive in the playoff chase, the Dodgers made Adrian Houser miserable in his emergency return from the injured list and handed the Brewers a 12-6 loss at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday.

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The Brewers haven’t had a winning season against the Dodgers since 2014 and this won’t be the year they break the streak. Wednesday’s result gave L.A. a 4-3 edge in what amounted to a seven game “series” over the past 10 days, with the Dodgers bouncing back from a shutout loss against Lauer & Co. on Monday by thumping the Brewers by a 22-7 margin over the final two games.

Just how lopsided were those two nights? Both ended with position players pitching the ninth inning for each team. Wednesday’s loss would have been worse had Hunter Renfroe not skied a two-run home run off Dodgers infielder Hanser Alberto.

“You play 162 games and you’re going to have games like this,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “We’re at the end of a stretch that was a tough stretch for our bullpen guys. That’s a good team we’re playing. So, you chalk it up to you’re going to have nights like that. When you play a really good team, they’re going to put pressure on you to do things right.

“And we did things right, really, a lot of good things, for five of the seven games against them. We pitched exceptionally well for five out of the seven games against them. We pitched in a way where you can beat this team.

“We didn’t pitch that way the last two days.”

The Brewers have exactly six weeks left to close some of the gulf between them and the Dodgers. Most importantly, the Brewers must make the postseason. Wednesday’s loss, Milwaukee’s 13th in 21 games this month, came on a night the Cardinals and Padres also lost, so the Brewers remained 5 1/2 games behind St. Louis in the National League Central standings and 1 1/2 games behind the Padres in the race for the NL’s final Wild Card.

Houser was supposed to start for Triple-A Nashville on Sunday in Jacksonville, but his Minor League rehabilitation assignment was cut short after lefty Aaron Ashby reported shoulder discomfort while playing catch that day at Wrigley Field. Houser instead joined the Brewers in Los Angeles for what was supposed to be a short start in front of a well-rested bullpen. Willy Adames even spotted Houser a 1-0 lead with his 25th home run in the top of the first inning.

Houser’s start was indeed short. He needed 81 pitches for seven outs and was charged with five earned runs on five hits and four walks with four strikeouts. Four of the runs scored in a 39-pitch first inning marred by three walks.

“That’s a great lineup over there and you can’t give them free bases,” said Houser, who walked Mookie Betts and Trea Turner to start his night. “Walking the first two guys of the inning is definitely not how I wanted to start. I think that’s the story right there: I wasn’t able to establish the strike zone early and I wasn’t able to throw a lot of strikes and they took advantage of it. I got them on a roll.”

The Dodgers kept rolling. They scored in five of the first six innings to deny the Brewers any hope of a comeback. After Victor Caratini pitched a mop-up inning on Tuesday, it was utility man Pablo Reyes’ turn on Wednesday. He threw a 1-2-3 inning with some wicked 39 mph changeups.

It was too late for comic relief, however.

“They have a really, really good team,” Adames said of these seven games against the Dodgers. “They can do damage in any inning. You have to be 100 percent in the game with them; if you make a mistake, you know they’ll make you pay.”

Confidence is so critical to success in baseball. How can the Brewers’ confidence not be shaken by back-to-back blowouts against a team they hope to contend with in October?

“We don’t give up,” Adames said. “We know they can score a lot of runs if you make a mistake, but I feel like everybody here stays positive. We know what we are capable of. Like I said, they took advantage of every mistake we gave them and they scored a lot of runs, but I feel like that’s not going to make us put our heads down and just up.

“If we play them again this year, we’re going to come even stronger and try to beat them as bad as we can.”