Brewers: Another Depressing Loss Puts Playoff Chances In Further Doubt

It’s very difficult to make the playoffs. It’s even more difficult when your offense can’t support Freddy Peralta when he throws six no-hit innings and the Brewers lose despite allowing just two hits all night.

In the Brewers world, things are trending in the wrong direction. They’re just coming off seven games in 10 days against the best team in the NL in the Los Angeles Dodgers, and they actually won three of those seven, which isn’t too bad. But the final two games in LA were blowouts and in between there was a series loss to the Cubs.

Now, the Brewers return to Milwaukee for some home cooking. Freddy Peralta is on the mound and was dominating. Six innings for Peralta facing the minimum, allowing no hits and throwing 82 pitches but that would be all he did.

Craig Counsell would turn to Matt Bush out of the bullpen for the 7th inning. Things went downhill after that.

The Brewers suffered a soul-crushing loss to the Cubs on Friday as their postseason hopes grow slimmer by the day.

Matt Bush comes in and the first hitter grounds a ball to third base that Luis Urias wasn’t able to handle. The no hitter was still intact as the play was marked an error, but the Brewers slim 1-0 was in a fragile place at that moment. Then, the next hitter, Ian Happ, crushed a two run homer for the Cubs’ first hit of the game and gave Chicago the lead.

The Brewers had numerous opportunities early in the game with runners on base but could not do anything with them. The only run they had to that point was a solo homer from Tyrone Taylor.

It went down to the bottom of the 9th, where Rowdy Tellez tied it with a solo blast of his own. But again more baserunners reached and were stranded. It went to extras, Happ hit another two run homer for the lead just two pitches in to Devin Williams‘ outing. The offense, again had runners on, but with the bases loaded and one out, Jace Peterson grounded into a double play to end the game.

The Brewers’ hopes of reaching their fifth straight postseason are dwindling with a little over a month left in the regular season. While it’s too early to fully declare their hopes dead, they aren’t exactly inspiring a lot of life and hope here.

Ever since the trade deadline, the Brewers’ mathematical playoff chances have been dropping and they now sit around 50-50. But are their actual chances really that high? The way they’ve been playing it doesn’t feel like it.

The offense has been inconsistent and even when they’re going good, they haven’t been that good. They’re reliant on the home run ball and struggle to manufacture runs without it, leaving a large number of runners stranded in scoring position.

Milwaukee sits six games behind the Cardinals in the division. St. Louis is playing well with an MVP candidate on their roster while the Brewers are playing poorly in nearly all facets of the game and don’t have an MVP candidate. Coming back from down six games with this much season left has happened before, but the Brewers were getting hot and playing great all around baseball in 2018 when they did that. They aren’t doing that now.

Is this a playoff team? They haven’t looked like over the past month. The Brewers are 8-14 in August. The bullpen has had consistency problems, the offense has lacked explosiveness, and the rotation has been dealing with injuries and hasn’t been dominating like they need to. But then when they do dominate, such as Peralta did against the Cubs on Friday, the team can’t get them a win.

If the Brewers are going to make the postseason and actually have a decent chance of advancing, they need to get hot and get hot soon. There is no time to waste with the hole they’ve dug themselves. The NL Central is already looking out of reach and they aren’t doing themselves any favors in the Wild Card race either.

The time is now to start making a run. If they can’t make it soon, they won’t be able to make one at all this season. After that, it’s going to be a very long offseason before this team can regroup.