MILWAUKEE -- They toil in relative obscurity on good days and stand in the spotlight on bad days, like an offensive lineman who lets an edge rusher reach the quarterback in the fourth quarter. When they do their job, you might not notice them. When they have a hiccup, everyone notices them.
So, let us pause to appreciate the Brewers’ bullpen, which shined in Thursday’s 7-4 win over the Mariners at American Family Field to finish a perfect series for those unsung heroes on the bench in left-center field.
They combined to pitch 16 1/3 scoreless innings in the three-game series against Seattle, capped by 5 1/3 innings in the finale from Chad Patrick, Aaron Ashby and Trevor Megill after left-handed starter Robert Gasser looked like he was going to give back all of the runs the Brewers had scored in the first inning.
Mariners starter George Kirby was also shaky, surrendering two-run doubles to Gary Sánchez and Garrett Mitchell as four different Brewers drove in a run and six different players tallied hits. Milwaukee, two days removed from a record-setting 22-0 win in the series opener, appeared off and running again.
Instead, they were in for a grind of an afternoon, because Gasser responded to that scoring outburst by walking Taylor Ward to start the second inning on a full-count fastball way out of the zone. It was one of three times in Gasser’s 3 2/3 innings that he put the leadoff hitter on base, and after the Brewers’ lead shrunk to 6-2 in the second inning and 6-4 in the fourth, manager Pat Murphy and his pitching gurus opted against giving Seattle’s hitters a third look at the left-hander.
They called upon right-hander Patrick for seven critical outs, then left-hander Ashby for six, and, after Mitchell’s solo homer in the eighth stirred a crowd of 35,909 on a weekday matinee, Megill for the final three.
The trio of Patrick, Ashby and Megill will be key to the Brewers’ chances in October.
Megill earned his 23rd save and continued a stretch in which he’s allowed only one run over his last 26 innings all the way back to June 10. He also navigated a 57th consecutive inning without surrendering a home run, the third-longest active streak in MLB.
That’s part of a larger stretch of success for the Brewers’ hard-worked bullpen, which has combined to yield only two runs in 26 2/3 innings over the team’s last seven games.