[ad_1]
MILWAUKEE – Craig Counsell was 12 years old the last time the Milwaukee Brewers won a series of league championships. His father, John, worked for the team and drove Craig to St. Louis for the last two games of the world series. The Brewers needed a win for the championship. They did not understand it.
Counsell was sitting on the upper deck. He waited a long rain delay in a defeat in the sixth match. He saw the Brewers take the lead in the seventh game, then give them in the middle of the innings. The details are blurry for Counsell now, but he knows how he felt.
"What I remember is that it was a good month – that's what I remember," he said recently in his office as a director of the Brewers. "It was really exciting to be part of it all. I do not necessarily remember the loss. Obviously, you're upset – they were standing, 3-2 – but I just remember the month, looking back fondly at the month. "
This month is still here. The Brewers hosted Friday the Los Angeles Dodgers in the first game of the National League series, their first visit since 2011, when they lost – again! – to the cardinals. This series marks the end of Counsell's playing career, culminating in two more satisfying seventh games than he saw at 12.
Counsell was the Florida Marlins' 1997 start-stop and Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001, winning the World Series twice. The Diamondbacks did it with the strength of two starters, Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, who combined for 116 of the 195 outs recorded by Arizona pitchers.
On Friday, in the first game, the Brewers faced Clayton Kershaw, a three-time winner of the Cy Young Award, who had the longest start to the playoffs: eight shutouts of the series against Atlanta. The Brewers responded with Gio Gonzalez, who had already made six starts in the playoffs without ever exceeding five innings.
Thus, Gonzalez is perfectly suited to Milwaukee, who swept the Colorado Rockies in the first round with three-inning starts (Brandon Woodruff), five innings (Jhoulys Chacin) and four and two-third innings (Wade Miley).
For Counsell, however, the Brewers simply apply their own version of the principle that guided Johnson and Schilling's Diamondbacks: Use your best guys as much as possible. For a manager deeply rooted in baseball, it's just a modern twist to an old idea.
"That's what it is," said Counsell. "You use your team's talents in the best possible way to win games. For this team, it was the best way to do it. For this team, we have to think about things differently because of the talents of some of our players.
"That's all we try to do; we are not trying to eliminate the need for an excellent pitch. I mean, Randy Johnson would probably be first in my tentative list. If you could pick a player I would take in the series, I would tell him right away. "
Unfortunately for the Brewers, Johnson, 55, has retired and is registered with Cooperstown. The second best thing to do is an All-Star left-handed guy with long hair, a three-quarter performance and a devastating range of fast balls and sliders: Josh Hader.
Hader, 24, set a major league record this season with a left-handed defender (143), becoming the first pitcher to have made at least 80 innings and averaging more than 15 out of 9 outs. long way since his debut as an AA class in 2015, when the Astros traded him to the Brewers under a contract between Mike Fiers and Carlos Gomez.
"There were some questions at that time to know if he was a starter or a replacement, and if he was a reliever, what kind of relief he would be," said Brewery's general manager David Stearns, who was then assistant in Houston. "But I will say there were people in the Astros office who, while discussing, mentioned the name of Andrew Miller. It was at the time when Miller was becoming a force. "
The Cleveland Indians have used Miller 10-times in the playoffs of 2016, still for more than one inning. The strategy earned Miller the title of A.L.C.S. Most valuable player award and almost drove Cleveland to a championship.
Like these Indians, the Brewers are supporting their multi-handed southpaw with dominant right-handed – Jeremy Jeffress and Corey Knebel, who have combined with Hader for 43 saves this season. Counsell uses all three interchangeably and it does not bother them.
"Just going out," said Hader. "You do not really focus on a role. Your role is to get outs, no matter the round. "
The Brewers had planned this from the beginning. Although a large part of the sector expected that they would target runners in their contracts last winter, they devoted most of their resources to the field companies, the signing of Lorenzo Cain and the trading of Christian Yelich. The Brewers – believing they have enough starters to start with, are targeted markets such as Chacin, who has pitched for five teams in the previous four seasons, and Miley, who led the majors in walks last season.
Miley, who signed a contract with the minor leagues, made 17 starts, including the playoffs, with a score of 2.43 E.R.A. Chacin, who signed a $ 15.5 million contract over two years, was 15-8 with a combined average of 3.50; he was the only brewer to have completed more than 160 innings or to win more than nine wins.
Miley will start the second match and Chacin the third. They understand what Counsell wants from them.
"Just go out, participate in competitions, try to keep the team in the game and get as many outings as possible," said Miley. "The way the game is going now, especially with an enclosure like ours, the games are a bit shorter for beginners."
Source link
