Counsell closing in on 'Scrap Iron' in record books

MILWAUKEE -- It’s been 23 years since Phil Garner managed his last Brewers victory, but he can still smell the sweet corn on the back roads to his rented home on Oconomowoc Lake, and he says he still cares about his former team.

So, "Scrap Iron" has been waiting to tip his cap from South Texas as current Brewers manager Craig Counsell overtakes him as the winningest manager in regular-season franchise history. Counsell was two wins away after the Brewers swept a Memorial Day doubleheader at Wrigley Field, then he was one away when the Brewers took the opener of this homestand against a Padres team managed by Bob Melvin, Garner’s onetime bench coach and Counsell’s mentor when he started thinking about managing himself.

A week later, Counsell is still a win away. Thursday’s 8-3 loss to the Phillies was the Brewers’ sixth defeat in a row and eighth in their last nine games.

Garner has been there, done that. He managed the Brewers through trials and tribulations, ranging from Paul Molitor’s fraught departure via free agency to Robin Yount’s retirement to the 1994 strike to the fight to fund the construction of Miller Park.

“Once free agency hit, we didn’t get to hang onto all of the players I would have liked, but my players played hard and the people of Wisconsin were wonderful to us,” Garner said in a telephone conversation last week. “Every manager in his own era has his own challenges. For Craig to accomplish it in today’s world, it’s a pretty big deal.”

Counsell hasn’t accomplished it just yet. Regular-season victory No. 563 -- the one that would tie Garner -- has proved elusive.

If not for a ninth-inning comeback against the Padres to open the homestand, the Brewers would be on a nine-game losing streak. Instead, they are 1-8 over that stretch while batting .202 -- even with 11 hits on Thursday -- and scoring 24 runs for an average of 2.7 runs per game. During their six-game losing streak, the Brewers have been outscored, 38-9.

“Look, when you're in a streak like this, we're not doing a lot well,” Counsell said. “But we know this is a good team. We’ve played [59] games and we’re sitting in a pretty good position. It's a good baseball team.

“We did not play good this week. You've got to look in the mirror with that. That's a fact. Don't try to duck that. But it's a baseball season. That's what a baseball season does to you. And how we recover from that, respond to that, that's part of the season.”

The fact that Willy Adames homered in his second game off the injured list and Hunter Renfroe did the same in his third presented positives for the Brewers, although those steps forward coincided with another long day for ace Corbin Burnes. He threw a total of 208 pitches in his two starts on the homestand but only totaled eight innings, and his 113 pitches on Thursday against the Phillies were a season high. He did manage to limit the damage to three runs (one earned) on three hits and four walks, with eight strikeouts.

“It's funny, I was just looking back at my journal and it was around the same time last year that I had two duds in a row,’ Burnes said. “So, I don't know if it's just the time of year when the body's just feeling a little funky. I’m not sure what it is, but we'll get back to work and get ready for the next one.”

Asked to assess the team’s frustration, Burnes said, “We're at our toughest stretch of the schedule, but we feel like we're still hanging around and playing pretty good baseball. We just have to kind of bear down, get through this stretch and we know things are going to get better.”

Burnes said it feels like the Brewers have been on the road for a month and a half, and they're not done yet; their third consecutive three-city trip takes them to Washington, New York and Cincinnati beginning Friday night.

Garner will be following the box scores from Texas, where he’s been trying his hand at ranching.

“The old saying is records are made to be broken, although it is cool to be in the record books. It shows you stuck around long enough and got some wins,” Garner said. “When you start breaking records with an organization, it shows your ability to get along, your ability to lead, to cooperate through ownership and your general manager and, in today’s game, all these statisticians. Everybody’s got an opinion of how you should set your lineup nowadays. Add the players, and you’re managing a lot of people.

“So, to do it this long and get that many wins, you’re doing it right.”