Comeback win helps Brewers reach elusive franchise milestone

ST. LOUIS – For the first time since the year they changed leagues in 1998, the Brewers are back to .500 as a National League franchise.

All it took was winning records in eight of the last nine seasons, qualifying for the playoffs in seven of the last eight seasons and a climb to 23 games over .500 this season with Monday’s come-from-behind, 4-3 win over the Cardinals at Busch Stadium. With that, the Brewers were 2,261-2,261-1 as an NL club – back to even for the first time since going 57-57 to start their inaugural season in the Senior Circuit.

The ‘98 Brewers lost the next game to the Reds, 17-0, and hadn’t sniffed .500 since. But that changed Monday, when starter Shane Drohan delivered a quality start and David Hamilton and Brice Turang delivered two-run hits in a go-ahead seventh inning to give the Brewers an opening victory in this five-game, four-day marathon series against rival St. Louis.

“This locker room has bought into, ‘We’re winning games,’” said Turang. “We’ll figure out any way how we can win a game. If we could walk home with a win every night, that’s what we’re going to try to do.”

That sounds so elementary, but for long swaths of Brewers history it wasn’t that way. So does a historical footnote matter to a club with postseason ambitions today, or to players like Turang who hadn’t been born yet in 1998? Not really. But it’s yet another good sign for a franchise that didn’t manage a winning record for 14 consecutive seasons from 1993-2006, and fell as far as 196 games under .500 as an NL club as recently as 2016 during a quick rebuild.

There are only a few Brewers employees who have witnessed the entire evolution, and two of them are with the club in St. Louis. Director of clubhouse operations Tony Migliaccio started as a batboy in 1978, at the front end of Milwaukee’s American League heyday, and has been equipment manager since ‘85. Farm director Tom Flanagan also started as a batboy, in 1990, and moved into baseball operations in ‘96.

They were right in the middle of the Brewers’ move from the AL to the NL for the ‘98 season, a natural move since the Milwaukee Braves had won the World Series as an NL club. The marketing phrase at the time was, “We’re taking this thing National.”

“It was an exciting time, just because it was different,” Flanagan said. “It was back to the old NL roots, so to speak.”

Both men will take the excitement of perennially pushing for the postseason over the excitement of changing leagues.

“Yes, no doubt,” Flanagan said. “It’s a little different.”

The Brewers in recent years have rebuilt their culture, winning ballgames more often than not because of nights like Monday, when an untimely injury to Cardinals reliever Justin Bruihl in the seventh while fielding Garrett Mitchell’s infield hit set the wheels in motion for Milwaukee’s go-ahead rally.

“Our offense is inevitable. They’re going to come through when we need them,” Drohan said.

That’s a rather generous assessment of Milwaukee’s recent clutch hitting, but it was certainly the case on Monday. Bruihl’s exit forced a move to righty reliever Ryan Fernandez to face Sal Frelick, who capitalized with a ground-rule double. Fernandez then bobbled Cooper Pratt’s dribbler in front of home plate for an error that loaded the bases for Hamilton’s two-run double, during which the speedster developed left hamstring tightness and had to leave the game.

Three batters later, Turang delivered a go-ahead, two-run single. With Drohan limiting the Cardinals to three runs (one earned) in six innings despite a series of defensive miscues that drove up his pitch count, including during a 35-pitch third, the Brewers stayed within striking distance. And with Chad Patrick’s two perfect innings as part of a recent resurgence, and Trevor Megill’s 14th save, the Brewers won for the 43rd time in 63 games since April 26.

It’s the best record in the Majors over that span, and just what Milwaukee needed to get back to the break-even point as an NL club.

“If I was to tell you after a game that the first four in the order were to have one hit, and I was to tell you we were going to make three defensive miscues … who would you take?” manager Pat Murphy said. “It’s a testament to the guys.”

“Murph does a great job of setting the tone,” Patrick said, “and we have such a great group. The guys have bonded together really well, and that goes a long way in a big league clubhouse. We buy into each other and we play well together.”