MILWAUKEE -- If Joey Wiemer keeps this up, barbers are going to be busy in these parts.
“He got a good haircut and now he’s the best hitter on the planet,” Corbin Burnes said.
Said Christian Yelich: “It’s going to be the haircut of the summer in Milwaukee.”
Whether Wiemer’s new cut, variously known as the Kentucky waterfall, the Camaro cut, the neck-warmer and, of course, the mullet, is already the haircut of the summer in Milwaukee, and has been for a long time, is a debate for another day.
What’s not debatable is that Wiemer is “on one,” as they say in baseball clubhouses, after he followed Tuesday’s walk-off hit with a 4-for-4 performance in Wednesday night’s 10-2 win over the Orioles at American Family Field.
The Brewers’ 24-year-old center fielder delivered the full Joey Wiemer experience and set up Milwaukee’s bid for a three-game sweep in Thursday’s matinee.
Wiemer had his first career three-hit game by the sixth inning, then his first career four-hit game and first career multi-homer game when he went deep for a second time in the seventh. He finished with a career-best five RBIs.
And, as if to remind everyone why he’s been playing center field almost every day since the Brewers lost Garrett Mitchell to a shoulder injury in the middle of April, Wiemer added a sliding catch in the eighth that helped Burnes through what was easily his most dominant performance of this uneven season.
Burnes logged eight scoreless innings of two-hit ball to go with no walks and a season-high nine strikeouts. At 96 pitches, he was denied a chance for his first career complete game only because the Brewers had a 10-0 lead going into the ninth inning.
Wiemer led the way, starting with his third home run of the season off a right-hander (he’s hit five off lefties in far fewer at-bats) and continuing with a bloop RBI single in the fourth, a 100.1 mph double off the wall in left-center field in the sixth and one more at-bat in the seventh with a chance to be the first Brewers player not named Yelich to hit for the cycle since 2011.
Instead, Wiemer homered again, a towering two-run shot to cap a four-run inning that gave the Brewers a double-digit lead.
When Wiemer’s batting average slipped south of Bob Uecker territory at the end of May, he’d shrug and tell interviewers, “I’ll be fine.” Now, that is starting to be true.
With Wednesday’s four hits, Wiemer extended his hitting streak to eight games, during which he’s batting .481 (13-for-27) with lots of loud contact: five doubles, three home runs, nine RBIs, nine runs scored, five walks and a pair of stolen bases.
“I’ve still got a long way to go,” Wiemer said. “I’m not going to say it’s completely here. You’re always working. You’re always trying to figure out something new and keep going.
“Just going to try and keep swinging every day.”
That clear approach has impressed manager Craig Counsell since Wiemer was called up after infielder Luis Urías suffered a strained hamstring on Opening Day.
“That’s one of Joey’s strengths,” Counsell said. “He’s just a very pure competitor. No matter what happened in the previous moment, he’s looking forward to the next moment.”
“All the young guys,” added Burnes, “they came out swinging hot early. [Then] the game got a little fast and it kind of caught up to them a little bit. But Joey has done a good job of keeping his head down, keep working hard.
“He knows he’s a player who can have an effect on both sides of the ball.”
“He’s just so much fun to watch,” said Willy Adames, who announced his return from a concussion with a home run in his first at-bat to get the Brewers started.
Wiemer described his simplified thinking like this: “Obviously, you want to take the good and ride with that, but it’s a two-way street. With bad days, you kind of wash it off and go to the next one.”
Speaking of wash it, there’s the hair. During the Brewers’ previous series in Cincinnati, where Wiemer played college ball, his friend Dondrae Bremner turned Wiemer’s curly mop into something special.
“He’s cut my hair for the last, like, six years,” Wiemer said. “He might not be the most precise barber of all time, but he’s my barber.”
Is he taking credit for the hot streak?
“Yeah,” Wiemer said. “It probably is like 95 percent him on this.”
Teammates are watching Wiemer and considering cuts of their own.
At least Burnes is.
“We’ve talked about it,” said the Brewers’ ace, who promised he would go for it if the team makes it to the postseason. “My wife said if you do that, then when the postseason is done, you’re taking it all off. I can agree with that.
“If we get to the postseason, I think we’ll have a lot of guys who are bought into it.”