Brewers' win over the Reds featured 3 desperately needed performances
· Yahoo Sports
The Milwaukee Brewers were seven for their last 64 with runners in scoring position when Joey Ortiz stepped to the plate in the bottom of the eighth. Ortiz himself hadn’t gotten a hit with a runner in scoring position since June 1.
With the score tied and two outs, the odds weren’t in the Brewers’ favor.
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The full moon on the rise above the right field bleachers, though, was.
Ortiz’s go-ahead, 418-foot blast sent the Brewers to a 5-3 win over the Cincinnati Reds on June 29 at American Family Field on a night when they had trailed 3-0 in the sixth.
As Ortiz ran to first, he shouted at the ball to go the entire way. During a stretch when the offense hasn’t found any luck, this time the ball listened.
“I was telling it to get out, to be honest,” Ortiz said. “I didn’t know I got it. I knew the ball was flying pretty decent today but I was yelling at the ball to get out and get over the fence. God willing, it did.”
The Brewers trailed 3-0 in the sixth and still only had one hit with a runner in scoring position when Ortiz came to bat in the eight.
“That was a Brewers win tonight,” manager Pat Murphy said. “We’ve seen that before. It was gritty.”
Led by Ortiz, there were much-needed performances for three Brewers in the victory.
Joey Ortiz, at last, delivers
Ortiz didn’t remember the crowd chanting his name as he came to the plate, the elation on the basepaths or the jubilation in the dugout after scoring. All he recalled was the pitch, the swing and seeing the ball carom off the batter’s eye.
“It was a pretty fun moment,” Ortiz said. “I don’t even remember it. I blacked out.”
With the swing, Ortiz also hopefully erased the last couple weeks from his memory.
Since June 10, Ortiz had struggled, going 6 for 33 with just one extra-base hit, nine strikeouts and no walks. Even with a strong start to the month, Ortiz’s OPS in June coming in was .561, and he didn’t help that cause by going 0 for 3 and stranding three men on base to begin the series opener with the Reds.
Ortiz’s playing time dwindled during that stretch as Cooper Pratt was called up and has played virtually every day at shortstop. Yet that shift in role has almost seemed to free Ortiz up.
“I’ve seen a great attitude,” Murphy said. “I’ve seen him having fun again. I’ve seen a kid that’s accepted his role and looking forward to being a good Major League Baseball player for a while.”
When Reds reliever Tejay Antone started his at-bat in the eighth with a pair of sweepers – one for a strike, the other for a check-swing ball – Ortiz figured another was coming. When it caught enough of the plate, Ortiz went with it and hammered it high to center.
“The guy has done so much for us over the last two years, playing an elite shortstop and a trusted shortstop,” Murphy said. “Going through everything he’s had to go through this year, and then getting a chance to play short again, he makes an error and then he comes through the way that he did, the team was so happy for him. It’s really special.”
Brice Turang stays back
Murphy held a meeting with the Brewers position players prior to the game and sent a stern message about their poor at-bats of late, imploring them to regain their edge on offense.
“I wasn’t really nice,” Murphy said.
Milwaukee entered the day in the pits on offense, with underlying numbers to match the poor results. Since June 20, the Brewers offense with runners in scoring position had a 39.4% whiff rate, 34.2% chase rate, 60% zone-swing rate and .131 expected batting average.
Translation: They were doing everything wrong.
“It’s not what a championship ballclub does, if we were interested in that,” he said. “It’s got to change.”
Murphy didn’t directly say it, but through his answers in recent days it could be inferred one of the hitters whose at-bats he was referencing was Brice Turang, who has taken a step back in June as his plate discipline has regressed and he’s been caught in between with his swing.
So when Turang made an adjustment in the middle of his at-bat in the seventh and slugged a tying homer off Chase Petty, it was notable.
Turang admitted after the game he’s been early on breaking balls and late on fastballs. Against Petty, he was early on a pair of sweepers to begin the at-bat.
But by the time Petty threw Turang a third one, the second baseman stayed back and crushed it.
“He’s been working at it,” Murphy said. “You saw yesterday, what did he do? It’s like a sprinkler head, right? When you’re trying to get everything going over here, what does a sprinkler head do? It comes back. He did it. Yesterday he hit three balls to the left side. It was just a matter of time before he timed himself up.”
In recent weeks, a bat has been constant in Turang’s hands as he looks out into the distance at an imaginary pitcher, moving his hands and front leg to try and time everything up.
In the end, Turang learned that less may have been more.
“As baseball players you know what you can do, so you try and reach that,” Turang said. “Sometimes you need to take a step back and let the game be the game. Like they always say, meet the game halfway. Sometimes we force things, we want things to happen right now. You want things to change right now at that moment.
“Sometimes you have to take a step back and control what you can. I wouldn’t say I’ve been frustrated. For me, it’s learning and trying to understand it for the next time so you’re quicker to get out of it.”
Chad Patrick throws gas
In recent outings, Chad Patrick has been lit up. This time, he was doing the lighting, flashing his best velocity yet over 1 ⅓ scoreless innings in relief of Robert Gasser.
Patrick hit 98.5 mph against the Reds with a four-seamer, a full mile per hour faster than any pitch he had ever thrown before in the regular or postseason. His fastball averaged 97.2 mph – a velocity he had only reached four times prior.
Perhaps the newfound velocity can help Patrick get back on track after allowing 14 earned runs and five home runs over his previous six outings.
“That’s a fastball you got to honor,” Murphy said. “You can’t go up there looking cutter.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Brewers' win over the Reds featured 3 desperately needed performances