MILWAUKEE – With less than a month of the regular season remaining, and a potentially pivotal stretch against the Cubs looming, the Brewers are right where they want to be. Just don’t suggest that to the two-time defending National League Manager of the Year, because Pat Murphy is pulling every string he can think of to keep his players in the mindset that they are playing for their lives.
A fourth consecutive division title? The No. 1 seed in the National League for the second straight season? One hundred victories for the first time in franchise history? All are there for the taking over the next four weeks. But Murphy doesn’t want to hear about any of it.
“This is a really young team,” he said. “You can’t divide their attention on things like that.”
They kept plugging away Friday, when William Contreras drove in three runs and Logan Henderson, Milwaukee’s Mr. Reliable, matched his season and career highs by pitching seven innings of a 6-1 win over the Rangers at American Family Field, pushing the Brewers 33 games over .500 and eight games ahead of the Cubs in the NL Central standings. Those are season highs on both counts, even if Murphy doesn’t want to hear it.
He’s also not ready to talk about the Brewers and Cubs playing seven games over a 10-day stretch beginning Monday, or that the Brewers appear intent on making it so they can’t be caught by their Interstate 94 rivals. The Brewers have won nine of their last 12 games and are a Major League-best 84-51 – three games clear of the Dodgers and 3 1/2 games ahead of the American League-leading Rays with 27 games to go.
But that’s for fans and pundits to follow. Murphy would rather his players avoid a scourge he mentions frequently these days: “divided attention.”
“Guys, I still say it. You guys laugh at me, but we’re not in the postseason,” Murphy said. “When we get in the postseason, then we can plot: ‘OK, what’s next? Well, let’s get a better seed if we can.’ … It sounds simple. It sounds cliche. But that’s mental toughness, to stay in the now.
“How do we stay in the now? It’s tough for me, and I’m supposed to be good at it. So can you imagine how [it sounds] to a 22-year-old player, to stay in the now? ‘This idiot’s telling me to not have divided attention? I’ve got cars to buy and awards to win, and I’m 22 and I want to get my numbers and I want to get a contract.’ There’s so much to divide their attention. It’s very difficult, but that’s the journey.”
Jacob Misiorowski gets the headlines with his eye-popping velocity and strikeout numbers, but Henderson is quietly having a breakthrough season of his own. The only Rangers hit against him for seven innings was catcher Danny Jansen’s home run with two outs and the bases empty in the third, when Henderson was pitching with the lead thanks to William Contreras’ RBI groundout and Christian Yelich’s left-on-left RBI double off Rangers starter Cody Bradford in the first.
Other than that, Henderson was as tough as ever. He allowed that one baserunner over seven innings, with no walks and seven strikeouts, including three of them on his high-spin changeup.
The Brewers have won 16 of his 19 career starts beginning with his Major League debut last April, and he’s still never allowed more than three runs in any game. Henderson (19 starts) and Zac Gallen (23 starts from 2019-20) are the only pitchers since 1893 to allow three runs or fewer in at least 19 starts to begin a career, if you exclude openers or pitchers who had relief appearances mixed into those streaks.
Only Misiorowski (0.75) and Yoshinobu Yamamoto (0.89) have a lower WHIP than Henderson (0.87) among pitchers with at least 10 starts this season.
“It’s a credit to everybody in the clubhouse. We’re all pulling on the same rope,” Henderson said.
“We knew what they were going to do, and they did it,” said Rangers manager Schumaker, who spoke before the game about the Brewers as a blueprint of what he wants his club to become. “They executed exactly what their game plan is, and they’ve been doing it all year, and that’s why their record is what it is.”
Part of the secret of that success is avoiding divided attention.
“I think this group does a good job of taking it one day at a time,” Henderson said. “‘Win today’ has been preached as long as I’ve been in the big leagues here, and even throughout the organization. We’re focused on today, and now that today is pretty much done, we’re focused on tomorrow.”