Crew isn't fretting over struggling closer
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MINNEAPOLIS -- Josh Hader has been saying he feels great, maybe the best he has ever felt at this point of a season. Recent results have been wobbly at best.
How does the Brewers’ All-Star closer explain that dichotomy?
“Life,” Hader said. “Baseball.”
Highlight-reel plays from center fielder Jonathan Davis and second baseman Kolten Wong, as Brewers pitchers and defenders fought off Twins rally try after Twins rally try on Wednesday, were footnotes after Hader served up a walk-off three-run home run in the Brewers’ 4-1 loss at Target Field.
A day after recording his Major League-leading 27th save in the Brewers’ 6-3 win, Hader pitched in a non-save situation and didn’t record an out. He walked Jorge Polanco and surrendered a single to Max Kepler before Jose Miranda slugged a home run on a 1-0 slider right down the middle.
“It’s a quick turnaround for me, but I’m not going to use that as an excuse,” said Hader, who like the rest of the Brewers and Twins had to rise and shine for a noon CT game following a night game that featured three rain delays. “The slider wasn’t working the way it was [Tuesday]. Maybe I trusted it a little bit too much.”
“That at-bat,” Miranda said, “I was kind of sitting slider. I kind of knew he was going to throw me one. He hung it, and then I got a good swing on it.”
Hader was not the first Brewers pitcher to play in heavy traffic. Starter Aaron Ashby and relievers Trevor Gott, Brad Boxberger and Devin Williams combined to strand 13 baserunners while holding the Twins 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position through the first eight innings before Hader finally cracked.
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It was a 1-1 tie from the third inning into the bottom of the ninth, thanks in no small part to defensive gems from Davis and Wong with Boxberger on the mound in the seventh. Davis tracked down Polanco’s deep fly ball with a runner aboard and crashed into a padded support at full speed. It had shades of June 29 at Tampa Bay, when he dived headfirst into the center-field wall to make a critical catch in a Brewers win. This time, Davis didn’t leave his feet, but he still found the wall.
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“I wish we could have got a few more runs across, because we played good defense,” Davis said.
The Brewers finished with four hits and were 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position.
The Twins weren’t finished in the seventh. They had the bases loaded when Ryan Jeffers hit a bouncer up the middle. Wong, positioned nicely behind the bag, had to navigate a tricky hop that he said forced him onto his heels, meaning he had to race Gio Urshela to the bag.
Wong dived just in time, and Boxberger and the Brewers had escaped with the tie intact.
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“This has been our game all season, we’ve had stressful innings and stressful games,” Wong said. “That’s just going to build us up for the second half and the push that we want. We know how good we are. I think it’s been good for us. We’ve been tested this whole first half.”
Hader has been tested of late, navigating both the birth of his first child and the stresses of an MLB season. His season began with 19 consecutive scoreless outings, giving him 40 straight scoreless regular-season appearances to match the Major League record.
In 13 outings since, Hader has been scored upon in six games while allowing nine runs on 14 hits in 12 innings. He has allowed runs in four of his past five outings and has been asked if he is dragging a bit as the All-Star break nears.
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Consistently, Hader has declined the notion that fatigue is an issue.
“I don’t know if he’s dragging. He’s not making pitches. I don’t think he’s dragging,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said.
Can’t those two things often be related?
“Yeah, but I don’t think that’s what it is,” Counsell said. “He fell behind the first hitter 3-0 and had to battle for that hitter. Those are uncharacteristic things. Just not quite locked in with the delivery and making pitches and getting ahead.”
Hader referred to it as “just baseball.”
“You dwell on these little errors here and there and you just get yourself in a hole,” Hader said. “So you just keep moving on. It’s 162 games for a reason. It’s a big deal that we lost today, but at the end of the day it’s just a little blip. It’s not really going to make or break anything.”