MILWAUKEE — This all started with Chris Taylor making that damn catch.

Since then, the postseason has brought the Brewers nothing but pain.

There was Juan Soto’s liner taking a left turn in 2019, Brent Suter losing all concept of the strike zone in 2020, Freddie Freeman doing the unthinkable and hitting a left-on-left homer against Josh Hader in 2021 and the Big Three crumbling in 2023. The small market Brewers deserved all the credit for making the postseason year after year, but couldn’t crack the code once they got there.

They hoped this year would be different, with a new manager, the league’s stoutest bullpen and a slew of fresh faces who ran the bases with abandon and played some of baseball’s best defense. But it’s happened again -- and this one might be the most excruciating exit yet.

With lights-out closer Devin Williams on the mound and the Brewers two outs from snapping their streak of five consecutive first-round exits, slumping Mets slugger Pete Alonso hit Williams’ best pitch -- a changeup so good it has its own nickname, The Airbender -- for an opposite-field, three-run home run that sent the Brewers to a 4-2 loss in Game 3 of the National League Wild Card Series at a stunned American Family Field.

Just like that, what had been a magical night for the Brewers was spoiled. Rookie Tobias Myers delivered five brilliant, scoreless innings in his postseason debut. Trevor Megill and Nick Mears followed with scoreless innings before the Brewers finally got some cuts against a pitcher who wasn’t Mets starter and longtime Milwaukee nemesis Jose Quintana -- and cashed in with back-to-back homers from Jake Bauers and Sal Frelick in the seventh.

It was all so improbable. Myers is a 26-year-old rookie who’d been traded three times, designated for assignment twice, waived and then released, and was coming off a 1-15 record and a 7.82 ERA when he signed with Milwaukee as a Minor League free agent in the fall of 2022. Bauers batted .199 in the regular season. Frelick hit two homers all year, the last on May 15.

It continued when Freddy Peralta, who was so disappointed to be pulled after four innings before Game 1 went sideways, emerged from the bullpen for a 1-2-3 eighth inning that positioned Williams, with a fresh arm after spending the first four months of the season recovering from a back injury, to close out the ninth.

It seemed Milwaukee’s postseason demons were about to be exorcised.

Then, they emerged again.