Trio of Brewers relievers delivers in series win -- and will be key in October

MILWAUKEE -- They toil in relative obscurity on good days and stand in the spotlight on bad days, like an offensive lineman who lets an edge rusher reach the quarterback in the fourth quarter. When they do their job, you might not notice them. When they have a hiccup, everyone notices them.

So, let us pause to appreciate the Brewers’ bullpen, which shined in Thursday’s 7-4 win over the Mariners at American Family Field to finish a perfect series for those unsung heroes on the bench in left-center field.

“When we’re getting zeroes,” said center fielder Garrett Mitchell, “it keeps it light for us. I think this was a team win today, for sure.”

The backbone of a good team is its bullpen, and the Brewers’ has been very good of late despite being without ace setup man Abner Uribe (10-day IL with a right forearm strain) and despite the heavy workload that comes with carrying an especially young starting rotation -- and even the occasional veteran stumble like Dustin May’s two-inning dud on Wednesday night.

The relief corps rose to the task, combining to pitch 16 1/3 scoreless innings in the three-game series against Seattle, capped by 5 1/3 innings in the finale from Chad Patrick, Aaron Ashby and Trevor Megill after left-handed starter Robert Gasser looked like he was going to give back all of the runs the Brewers had scored in the first inning.

Mariners starter George Kirby was also shaky, surrendering two-run doubles to Gary Sánchez and Mitchell as four different Brewers drove in a run and six different players tallied hits. Milwaukee, two days removed from a record-setting 22-0 win in the series opener, appeared off and running again.

Instead, they were in for a grind of an afternoon, because Gasser responded to that scoring outburst by walking Taylor Ward to start the second inning on a full-count fastball way out of the zone. It was one of three times in Gasser’s 3 2/3 innings that he put the leadoff hitter on base, and after the Brewers’ lead shrunk to 6-2 in the second inning and 6-4 in the fourth, manager Pat Murphy lifted the left-hander in the middle of an at-bat against Randy Arozarena. Patrick took over with a 2-0 count.

“I was kind of hot. I was a little too emotional right there,” Murphy said. “You can’t walk guys.”

Patrick settled things down by recording seven critical outs, then left-hander Ashby got six, and after Mitchell’s solo homer in the eighth stirred a crowd of 35,909 on hand for a weekday matinee, Megill got the final three.

Mitchell made a pair of nice running catches to help Megill earn his 23rd save, continuing a stretch in which he’s allowed only one run over his last 26 innings all the way back to June 10. He also navigated a 57th consecutive inning without surrendering a home run, the third-longest active streak in MLB.

That’s part of a larger stretch of success for the Brewers’ hard-worked bullpen, which has combined to yield only two runs in 26 2/3 innings over the team’s last seven games. Impressive, considering this is the time of year bullpen arms tend to drag.

“Research will show that relievers are very volatile, and so you can predict that,” Murphy said. “But it comes down to these guys understanding that it’s not going to happen to me because I can make pitches. And maybe I’m not 97 [mph], but maybe I’m 95, maybe I’m 94, but I can throw it over a gnat’s [backside]. You know what I mean? Gnats are pretty small.”

Brewers relievers have come up big, and the trio of Patrick, Ashby and Megill will be key to the team’s chances in October. So will Uribe -- and potentially Antonio Senzatela.

But Ashby was quick to note that it does not stop there, arguing that Thursday’s win was impacted by Wednesday’s loss, when Grant Anderson, DL Hall, Bryse Wilson and Senzatela worked seven scoreless innings to not only give the Brewers a chance to cut an early 7-0 deficit as close as 7-5, but keep the club’s high-leverage arms fresh for the finale.

“It helped us win the game today, for sure,” Ashby said. “Anytime you can have a guy down there go more than he’s used to or supposed to, there’s this bond that happens down there.”

Ashby knows what that is like. He’s been part of the low-leverage wing of Brewers bullpens over the years.

“It is unfair. They’re the unseen backbone of the bullpen,” Ashby said. “Chad does it. DL does it, Billy [Wilson]. I did it a little bit early in the year. To contribute in that way, it gets overlooked when you do it, but I think everybody in the room knows how valuable that can be.”