Buntin' Brewers go small ball on 3 straight ABs to squeeze out series win

MILWAUKEE -- Pat Murphy had MLB Network on the TV in his office on Thursday morning at American Family Field, like it always is, and saw a segment about the Cardinals’ embrace of small ball. If he’d looked on his iPad, he might have seen some of the recent stories about the Rays bunting other teams to death.

Murphy chuckles. He likes to believe that his Brewers were on the front end of baseball’s trend back to basics.

It’s how they scored an old-school, 2-1 win over the Blue Jays in the series finale, with a breakout performance from rookie starter Brandon Sproat and a slew of small ball, featured by three consecutive bunts in the Brewers’ go-ahead seventh inning.

No, you have not transported back to 1987. The bunt is back in some corners of Major League Baseball.

“Gosh, growing up playing the game, small ball was huge,” said Sproat, who set the stage with a career-high 6 2/3 innings of one-run ball. “You get to the big leagues, and you don’t see too much of it. But it still works.”

Tied at 1-1 since the fourth inning, Garrett Mitchell’s pinch-hit walk leading off the bottom of the seventh put the Brewers in business. He advanced on Greg Jones’ successful sacrifice bunt in Jones’ Milwaukee debut. Then David Hamilton greeted lefty reliever Joe Mantiply by bunting for a single.

Joey Ortiz followed by giving the Brewers the lead, deadening a 1-1 changeup right in front of home plate. Mitchell scored the go-ahead run.

“Once we got the leadoff runner on, we knew we had to get him around the bases,” said Jones, the versatile journeyman who was called up in the wake of Christian Yelich’s groin injury. “We weren’t swinging the bats the best, so getting the ball on the ground, moving the baseball, is an easy way to get the guy to the next base.”

It’s actually not that easy, which is one reason why bunting fell out of favor -- because the idea a Major League hitter should be able to bunt is a different thing from actually executing. As pitching got nastier, velocity got higher and teams collected reams of data about actual outcomes, the bunt faded into near-obscurity.

But with that big velo has come big bodies, and big-bodied pitchers naturally have a harder time defending against bunts. That’s one of the factors leading certain clubs to bring back the bunt as a weapon. The Brewers and Rays are tied for the Major League lead with nine sacrifice bunts this season.

“It’s obviously a very difficult thing for a pitcher to do his job the way we do it today. We have a lot of big men pitching,” Murphy said. “To have to break down, secure the baseball, get your eyes on the target and make a good throw with that type of adrenaline, I think it’s legit.”

It’s not for all teams, so the data doesn’t reflect an uptick in bunts across the league. Going into Thursday’s games, 0.8 percent of plate appearances in April ended with a bunt. In 2025, 0.8 percent of April plate appearances ended in bunts.

What isn’t reflected in that data, however, is how many times hitters have shown bunt. That can also have a positive impact, as Murphy and the Brewers see it, because of the way it impacts infield positioning.

“I think it’s coming back,” Murphy said.

Milwaukee has been playing this brand of baseball for a couple of years based on the club's speedy, aggressive personnel, but right now it's a matter of necessity. The Brewers are playing without three of the first four hitters in their projected starting lineup, with Yelich's injury expected to keep him sidelined at least a month, while Jackson Chourio and Andrew Vaughn are recovering from fractured hands.

And the Brewers aren’t alone. The Blue Jays scored Thursday’s lone run with Tyler Heineman’s squeeze bunt in the third inning. It was the only mark against Sproat, who allowed four hits with one walk and six strikeouts.

Aaron Ashby, Trevor Megill and Angel Zerpa took it the rest of the way. Zerpa logged his second save and Megill earned a standing ovation from the home crowd for a bounce-back performance, along with some sharp words from the frustrated Blue Jays. They didn’t like the way he was rubbing baseballs on his pants leg.

Ashby recorded only one out but picked up his Major League-leading fifth win -- all in relief. He wished it had gone to Sproat. In turn, Sproat credited the Brewers’ creative offense.

“The three bunts there were awesome to see,” Sproat said. “There’s multiple ways in this game to get runs across, and bunting is one of them.”