CHICAGO -- Sixty-five-year-old Brewers skipper Pat Murphy has two grown children well into their professional careers, and two more in grade school. So maybe he’s just the right man to juggle this job.

On one hand, he’s the manager of a Major League team comfortably atop the NL Central after the Brewers’ 3-2 win over the Cubs at Wrigley Field on Wednesday. On the other hand, the longtime collegiate coach is still that -- a coach, balancing Milwaukee’s winning culture that has produced five postseason berths in the past six seasons with the imperative to continue developing for the future.

This week, that balance felt particularly delicate. In a score of small ways in a loss to the Cubs on Monday and a win on Tuesday, the Brewers’ youth showed through. But the series concluded for Milwaukee on a high note, with rookie Jackson Chourio and sophomore Brice Turang contributing run-scoring singles and another sophomore, Blake Perkins, turning a leadoff single in the ninth inning into the go-ahead run when he sped home on William Contreras’ winning double.

When Joel Payamps secured his fifth save of the season to close out a well-pitched bullpen game that saw Bryse Wilson and Jakob Junis combine for seven innings of one-run ball, the Brewers finished a productive 4-1 road trip and sat six games over the second-place Cardinals with 60 games to go.

“Murph is trying to navigate the teaching with the winning,” said Christian Yelich, whose own future is uncertain as he faces another flare-up of his troublesome back. “It’s something you kind of knew would happen coming into this season for a team rolling this young.

“But also it’s three months into the regular season, and this is Major League Baseball. We’re trying to develop, but we’re also trying to win. Some of that stuff needs to be cleaned up.”

There were any number of instances of “that stuff” in the Brewers’ series against the Cubs, from rookie starter Tobias Myers’ troubles in Monday’s 3-1 loss to some puzzling decisions in the batter’s box and on the basepaths in Tuesday’s 1-0 win.

Murphy knows the Brewers will have to clean it up if they are to win another division title, so he began a dialogue with his first- and second-year hitters on Tuesday night, right in the middle of the clubhouse. The discussion continued Wednesday with another 45-minute session behind closed doors with Chourio, Turang, Perkins, Joey Ortiz, Sal Frelick, Garrett Mitchell and Andruw Monasterio along with Murphy, associate manager Rickie Weeks Jr. and first-base coach Quintin Berry.

“He’s trying to make guys better,” said Turang. “Sometimes he may say things you don’t like, but it comes from a good spot, and it comes from him trying to make you better and him wanting to win games.”

Said Perkins: “It’s a lot of just getting more experience. I know for me personally, stuff can happen really fast in the game while you're on deck or something, and the plan that you had going on deck changes quickly. That's not an excuse. I'm just saying that, with how fast the game is played now with the pitch clock, there's not a lot of time to reevaluate the situation.”

Perkins went through a very public example of that earlier this season when he popped up a bunt with the tying runner on third base to end a loss to the Reds. In that case, Perkins and Murphy talked it through and Perkins shared his plan going into the at-bat.

The same thing happened Wednesday morning when Turang explained his thinking in opting to bunt a 3-0 pitch with a runner in scoring position in a scoreless game the night before. Murphy said he may have disagreed with the plan, but he appreciated that there was one.

“We’re playing a type of offense that they haven't been familiar with,” said Murphy, whose speed- and defense-oriented Brewers collected only one extra-base hit -- Contreras’ go-ahead double -- in back-to-back wins in Chicago. “It’s hard for these guys to have a perspective on the game when they have to compete, and I’m just standing over there watching. It’s way easier to watch.”

Now Yelich will be watching for an undetermined amount of time, too. He’ll continue to do his part to help the young Brewers win and learn the little things at the same time.

“Guys are less polished on that kind of stuff when they come from the Minor Leagues than they’ve ever been in the past,” Yelich said. “Teams are basically all young players now, and there’s maybe 3-4 veterans. It used to be the other way around.

“But they want to do the right thing. They’re great kids and they care about winning. Mistakes aren’t coming from a lack of effort, they’re coming from inexperience. When you’re a rookie, that’s part of it.”