MILWAUKEE -- If you were watching the finish of the Brewers’ 4-3 win over the Pirates on Friday at American Family Field, you probably had precisely the thoughts that flashed through the mind of Milwaukee shortstop Willy Adames when he wheeled around and noticed Pittsburgh infielder Kevin Newman chugging towards home.

“What’s going on?” Adames thought. “Where’s he going?”

Newman was going nowhere. Adames threw him out with plenty of room to spare for an abrupt final out. It sealed a win in which Aaron Ashby delivered five competent innings in another step forward off the injured list, Adames hit his 17th home run and Josh Hader avoided a letdown thanks to the Pirates’ fateful gamble -- and Adames’ ability to keep his composure in the moment.

The Brewers handed Hader a two-run lead in the ninth and watched the lefty scuffle through the inning. For the second straight outing, Hader walked the leadoff hitter, this time Diego Castillo. Two batters later, Newman caught a break when his dribbler along the first-base line, an easy out at first, appeared to be erroneously called foul, giving him a second chance that he turned into a single. Two batters after that, with two outs, Daniel Vogelbach punched another base hit.

Right fielder Andrew McCutchen gathered it on a bounce and fired it back to Adames in the middle of the infield as Castillo scored easily. It marked the third straight appearance in which Hader has surrendered a run.

That could have been the end of the play. It should have been the end of the play.

But Newman, waved home by Pirates third base coach Mike Rabelo, kept on going.

“He really caught me off guard,” Adames said. “Obviously, I thought he was not going. … Especially with the top of the lineup coming up. I don’t know. I don’t know what was the thought process behind that play.”

Credit Adames for keeping his wits. His throw home to catcher Victor Caratini was right on the money for an easy, game-ending out.

“Your natural clock as a middle infielder tells you that there’s not going to be a play,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “So you turn around and look. That’s what he did. Then, obviously, you have to get ready to throw it, and he made a perfect throw.”

Was Newman surprised?

“After I was thrown out, maybe, but I figured maybe they kicked it or something happened out there,” he said. “My back is to the plate, so I’m kind of just going off what I see.”

Said Pirates manager Derek Shelton: “Mike’s done a nice job over there at third, and he’s made good decisions all year long. He got aggressive because of where he saw the throw coming out of [McCutchen’s] hand, but it ended up coming down and Willy made a good throw to the plate.”

It was not Adames’ only contribution. With his 17th home run this season, he remained on pace to break Robin Yount’s 40-year-old single-season franchise record for home runs as a shortstop.

Yount hit 29 homers in 1982, the year he won the first of his two American League MVP Awards and the Brewers won the AL pennant. With 85 team games in the books, Adames is on pace for 32 homers.

That doesn’t mean he’s happy about how he’s swinging the bat. As Adames stepped to the plate to lead off the seventh inning on Friday, he was 0-for-3 on the night and had two hits in his last 22 at-bats, with 11 strikeouts in that span. In the Brewers’ previous game, Adames had batted in the eighth inning with one out and the go-ahead runner at third, and didn’t get the runner home. The Brewers lost the game and the series to the Cubs.

“It’s been a little rough,” Adames said. “Obviously it hasn’t been going the way I want it to be going. Hitting is like that. You have to grind when it’s happening. I was just happy that I hit a homer today and I made a good swing on a ball. It felt a little weird because it’s been a minute, but it was great to put the barrel on the ball. Hopefully that turns to getting me hot, and we can continue to be better.”

What would 30 home runs mean to him?

“It would be great, but I don’t want to hit .190 or .200. I want to be better,” Adames said. “Obviously, if you hit 30, it is special, though. I’m trying to be better overall. I don’t want to be just a power hitter. I don’t consider myself a power hitter. I want to be better overall.”