CHICAGO -- Give this to the Brewers under new manager Pat Murphy: Even when they lose, they tend to make the most of all nine innings.

In Saturday’s 6-5 loss to the Cubs at Wrigley Field, Chicago starter Jameson Taillon departed after six innings with a 5-0 lead and saw the Brewers, with a rally that included Oliver Dunn’s RBI triple and Blake Perkins’ two-run home run, put the tying run in scoring position before either of Taillon’s two replacements recorded an out.

Alas for the visitors, Milwaukee’s rally ended there, and another in the ninth inning left the tying- and go-ahead runs on base.

"We continue to say that we're in the fight until the last out's made, and it showed again today,” Perkins said. “I think we need to do a better job earlier in the game to get on these guys -- all of us included."

There are few moral victories in the world of professional sports, but the Brewers have been a hard team to put down. Atop the National League Central at 20-12, a game ahead of the Cubs, the Brewers have brought at least the tying run to the plate in the final inning of seven of their 12 losses. And only two of those losses have come by a deficit of more than four runs -- a pair of blowouts against the Yankees last weekend.

“The guys are always competitive, man. They make you proud to be part of them,” Murphy said. “It’s part of their character, part of who they are that they keep battling no matter what. Look no further than [William] Contreras. He didn’t have his best day and then he came up big at the right time.

“We had a million ways to tie it up or win it.”

Contreras singled home a run with one out in the ninth to salvage a 1-for-5 day in which Milwaukee left eight runners on base. But Cubs righty Héctor Neris, one of a series of relievers Chicago manager Craig Counsell has used in search of stability in the ninth inning, retired Tyler Black and Willy Adames to end the game.

“They got ahead early and it makes it tough to dig yourself out of that hole,” Murphy said. “Especially when their starting pitching was as solid as it was.”

The Cubs flirted with a blowout when their leadoff man, Nico Hoerner, hit Brewers starter Tobias Myers’ third pitch for a solo home run in a 37-pitch, two-run first inning. Christopher Morel hit a two-run homer before Myers recorded the first out of the third. When Patrick Wisdom launched a long solo shot off Thyago Vieira in the sixth, the deficit was 5-0 and the Brewers had done little against Taillon, who allowed two singles, two walks and no runs over six innings to lower his ERA to 1.13.

“I was trying to give as much as I can out there,” said Myers, who did get through three innings and preserve the bullpen from even more work on Day 2 of 13 consecutive game days. “Nothing felt really great coming out. I had to adjust a couple of things in my delivery there. It’s something we can definitely work on moving forward.”

The Brewers will need Myers moving forward. Sunday’s scheduled starter, Freddy Peralta, still faces a suspension; he was levied five games after his previous start against the Rays and appealed. In one scenario, he’ll pitch Sunday opposite Cubs scheduled starter Javier Assad and then drop the appeal, serve his five games and line up to start again on Saturday.

Against Assad, the Brewers will be bidding to score before the seventh inning for the first time in the series. They had no such luck against Taillon, but stirred against reliever Keegan Thompson, who faced four batters in the seventh and retired none. Rhys Hoskins walked and scored on Dunn’s second career triple. Perkins then hit a fastball into the basket atop the right-center-field wall for a two-run homer that made it 5-3, and Jackson Chourio singled and scored when the Cubs fumbled Sal Frelick’s double off Mark Leiter Jr. to make it a one-run game at 5-4.

Leiter provided relief after that, retiring the heart of the order -- Contreras on a groundout and Black and Adames on strikeouts -- to preserve Chicago’s narrow lead.

Was it simply a matter of getting into the Cubs’ bullpen?

“Yes,” Perkins said, “but I would have liked for it to have happened earlier.”