Adames on Mets sweep: 'We're making a statement'

NEW YORK -- Immediately after the Brewers finished off their season-opening sweep of the Mets with a 4-1 win on Sunday, Willy Adames -- one of the team's veteran leaders -- stood on the field for his postgame TV interview and delivered a message to the rest of the baseball world.

"We're just making a statement," Adames said. "We're making a statement that we're going to compete this year."

The 2024 Brewers, despite the team's run of success in recent seasons and its NL Central title last year, faced a lot of questions entering the season as the club began a new era under first-year manager Pat Murphy.

But the new-look Brewers -- with a new ace in Freddy Peralta, a new lineup cornerstone in Rhys Hoskins, a new phenom in Jackson Chourio and more -- are off to a flying start.

"There's a lot of people saying we don't have it this year," Adames said. "After this series, I think the guys, they know that we can make it happen."

Milwaukee rolled through the Mets for three straight games at Citi Field. It's the Brewers' first sweep to start a season since 2018, the season that began their run of five postseason appearances in the last six years.

"We're going to come every day with the right energy, and we're just going to try to win today," Adames said on the field. "We'll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. That's going to be the mentality the whole year."

Win today. That's been the mantra from Murphy. Well, mission accomplished for the first series of the Pat Murphy Era.

"They're game to compete," Murphy said of his team. "We stayed on it for nine innings. I hope they understand that if they play all nine, it doesn't always matter how much experience you have, and it doesn't always matter if there's some pretty great players over there on the other side. It doesn't always matter. They can go ahead and compete with anyone."

The Brewers' stars set the tone for the team to follow all season.

Adames finished the series with back-to-back multihit games on Saturday and Sunday. So did catcher William Contreras, who had three hits on Saturday and a pair of doubles on Sunday as well as a key pickoff of DJ Stewart in the opener.

Hoskins led by example with his hard-nosed play on Opening Day and his monster game the next day, when he crushed his first home run as a Brewer while being booed heavily every at-bat.

Peralta pitched like an ace in his first Opening Day start, spinning six innings of one-hit, one-run baseball with eight strikeouts to win Game No. 1.

Chourio had an electric debut series, picking up his first career hit and stolen base in the opener and his first extra-base hit, an RBI double off the right-field wall, in the finale. He also made several excellent plays in right field -- a jumping catch against the wall to take an extra-base hit away from Starling Marte on Opening Day, and a sliding grab to rob Pete Alonso on Sunday.

And Christian Yelich had two of the biggest plays of the series. Yelich cracked the team's first home run of the year on Opening Day and followed up with a beautiful throw from the left-field warning track to second base on the fly for an outfield assist in Game 2.

Yelich has been with the Brewers from the beginning -- his arrival in Milwaukee and MVP run in 2018 started Milwaukee on its path to being a perennial playoff team -- so he knows what it takes for the team to win. He was proud of what the 2024 club showed in the Opening Series.

"What I liked this series was just how hard everybody played," Yelich said. "We played aggressive. Guys were making things happen. That's what we're going to have to do this year. The thing I took away from these three days was the way everybody competed, on all sides of the ball."

The formula has been established. The Brewers proved how they can win in 2024. As they head into their home opener on Tuesday in Milwaukee undefeated, they just have to keep doing it.

"I think to be a good team, you kind of have to know yourself and how you're going to win games," Yelich said. "You can't really try to play different brands of baseball. We know what we want to try to do."