'Pretty special': Hader in fine relief company

CLEVELAND -- Josh Hader likes his free time to be free time. The only baseball games he watches, he said, are the Brewers’ games.

If he looked around a little more, though, Hader would see that the consistency Milwaukee has enjoyed from its bullpen during his tenure is not the norm. It’s a highly volatile and inconsistent area of the game, but you wouldn’t know it from watching Hader put up sub-1.00 WHIP marks every year since 2017.

Hader, though, realizes that what he achieved earlier this week in notching his 30th save of the season was special. It marks his second 30-save season in the last three years (he led the National League with 13 saves in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season) and puts him in fine company. Dan Plesac (1988-89), John Axford (2011-12) and Francisco Rodriguez (2014-15) are the only other Brewers closers with multiple 30-save seasons.

“I think it’s pretty special,” Hader said. “Obviously the guys the Brewers have been able to have in their ‘pen, and also just coming up in 2017 and having the ‘pen we had, is great. I’m just enjoying the time I have here, and the fans and the team we have each year.”

Hader was a revelation when he arrived, catching the league off-guard with his wicked fastball and slider, and almost instantly becoming manager Craig Counsell’s multi-inning game-changer. Hader's staying power in the time since has been both his ability to stay healthy and greater incorporation this year of a changeup that has limited opposing hitters to a .133 average and .133 slugging percentage.

“There’s a lot of things you can learn in this game, even if you’re having success,” Hader said. “There are things you can learn from and make yourself better, whether that’s physically on the mound or whether that’s looking at what you eat and how you’re working out, how you’re preparing, how your routine’s going. There are so many things built into it. So I think it’s just the next step for me to advance what I had going on off the field to on the field and make sure I can stay recovered and as healthy as possible.”

Hader said taking on more traditional closer duties and getting away from the multi-inning role has been vital his career.

“I’ve been able to get into more games,” he said. “The health is the biggest thing for me. Being able to feel ready each and every day, to just recover and feel 100 percent.”

Worth noting

• There is nothing new with Willy Adames’ timetable as he nurses a strained left quadriceps, but he did begin doing some light running in the outfield grass on Friday at Progressive Field.

• The Brewers continue to be cautious with Avisaíl García’s right hamstring by not starting him on an everyday basis, but he was back in the lineup for Friday’s series opener against Cleveland. Counsell would not speculate on whether the club would be more aggressive with García at this stage if it did not have a comfortable lead in the NL Central.

“I think that question is going to come, you're going to ask that question, you could ask that question a lot,” Counsell said. “Right now [this plan] is the right thing to do and that’s probably the easier way to do it.”

• Having three off-days in an eight-day span allows the Brewers to rest and set up their pitching in advance of the postseason. But Counsell said it’s the position players who benefit most.

“With this many off-days, we’re going to have guys wanting innings, actually,” he said. “The way we ran through the homestand, it was an odd homestand in terms of pitching for us. Really, we’re in pretty good shape. I’m not worried about the innings part. I think for the position players, it’s a better stretch because some guys who’ve been going pretty hard are going to get some off-days with the three off-days.”