The Brewers’ season ends with a heartbreaking 4-2 loss to the Mets

Box score

The Milwaukee Brewers and New York Mets met tonight in a winner-take-all elimination game. It was the only third game of the Wild Card Series this year. It was a game that bipartisan fans would surely call a classic, a pitching duel between unlikely forces (newcomer Tobias Myers and 35-year-old Jose Quintana) and unlikely heroes.

But for Brewer fans, this game will be relegated to infamy; a game in which they held the Mets for eight innings, playing perfect, dramatic baseball until the very last moment, before a collapse by one of the franchise’s icons handed the fan base one of the most painful defeats in team history. With that, Milwaukee’s magical season was over.

Francisco Lindor started things off with a hustle double to center field. He was almost thrown out at second, but Brice Turang couldn’t handle the throw and Lindor was safe. But Myers struck out Mark Vientos and Brandon Nimmo and got Pete Alonso to fly out to end the inning. Stopping Lindor from advancing after the leadoff double was a big opening moment.

Jackson Chourio, whose contributions to this team are hard to describe, led off the first with a single. He moved to second when William Contreras struck out the ball a few batters later, but was stranded there after a popout by Willy Adames.

Myers managed a lineout by Jose Iglesias, a groundout by Jesse Winker and a lineout by Starling Marte on just 10 pitches in the second inning. Gary Sánchez led off the bottom of the second with a double, but like the Mets in the first inning, the Brewers couldn’t push it further as Rhys Hoskins and Sal Frelick struck out and Joey Ortiz popped out to end the threat.

Tyrone Taylor flied out to right center to start the third, and Myers followed with a strikeout off Francisco Alvarez. With two outs, Lindor threw his second hit of the game – a single to right – and moved to second on a pitch in the dirt. Vientos hit one pretty hard, but Frelick held firm on the warning track and Myers had another scoreless inning.

The red-hot Turang led off with a hard liner to second base in the bottom of the third, but Iglesias made a good play and threw Turang out. After Chourio retired with a softliner to center, Blake Perkins got a two-out infield hit, but Contreras struck out to end the inning.

Myers worked through a quick 1-2-3 inning to start the fourth and was on track at that point. Adames reached the top of the inning with an infield single, stole a base and reached third on a groundout, but he was left hanging there when Frelick grounded out to Quintana.

Myers hit Winker with a 1-2 pitch to get New York’s leadoff man on board in the fifth. But he struck out Marte and Taylor and got Alvarez to pop out, and he went scoreless five times with just two hits allowed – both to Lindor – and just 66 shots, bringing the sellout crowd to its feet.

Ortiz and Turang began the bottom of the fifth with groundouts. Chourio drew a two-out walk and stole second with Perkins at the plate, and Perkins had a long hit, but it grounded out to shortstop to end the inning. Quintana wasn’t quite as efficient as Myers on the night and had to deal with a little more traffic, but he was just as effective as both pitchers had five scoreless innings.

And Myers only had five innings as he was struck out in favor of Trevor Megill in the sixth inning. I understand the reasoning, even if I don’t love it – this is baseball in 2024 – but I have to respect Murphy for making the (analytically sound) move, even after he felt compelled to make a similar move with Freddy Peralta in the suffered some grief in the first game. It worked, at least in the short term: Megill threw a 1-2-3 sixth, setting the stage for the Brewers’ order in the bottom of the inning.

But Quintana was still strong. He got Contreras to fly up the middle, striking out Adames and Sánchez for an easy sixth. At this point, it felt like both offenses were pushing, desperately looking for something, anything, to get them going.

In the seventh, a surprising face took the mound for the Brewers: righty Nick Mears, who has struggled this season, was asked to line up in the middle of the Mets’ order. He rewarded his manager’s confidence by striking out Alonso, getting Iglesias to groundout and striking out Winker. Nick Mears! Who would have thought? (It was perhaps also worth noting that Freddy Peralta – who had started the first game two days earlier – was beginning to warm up in the bullpen at this point in the game.)

Quintana was knocked out in the bottom of the seventh and lightning struck American Family Field. José Buttó, New York’s new pitcher, was greeted by pinch-hitter Jake Bauers, who came in for Hoskins, and he worked a full count before throwing one into the right-field stands to break the deadlock. But the Brewers weren’t done there: Sal Frelick, of all people – Sal Frelick, who crashed into a wall less than a week ago and looked like he broke his back, and Sal Frelick, who hasn’t hit a home run since his impact only home runs of the season In consecutive games on May 14 and 15, he hit a shot down the right field line to double the Brewers’ lead.

Buttó got Ortiz to come to short, and the Mets – quickly running out of options – played their trump card, bringing Edwin Díaz closer with one out in the seventh. Díaz started things off with a walk to Turang, who stole second base. Chourio flew low to the left and Díaz also passed Perkins, brought up Contreras – to “Díaz’s music”, of course – and Díaz dropped back again and Alvarez watched as Turang and Perkins made a double steal. Díaz managed to strike out Contreras to end the inning, but he needed 20 pitches to get the last two outs of the inning.

The Brewers had to make a decision in the eighth inning as their usual pitcher in that spot, Megill, had pitched the sixth inning. In a game full of surprises, it was actually Peralta who provided the assist. He started by getting Marte to second base, then he got Taylor to fly to right and got Alvarez to ground out to third base. Peralta, who hadn’t been substituted in over two years, looked completely at ease and ensured the Brewers would hand the game to Devin Williams with a lead in the ninth. That lead would only remain two; Díaz looked much better in the eighth round, clearing Adames, Sánchez and Bauers.

Williams was in the ninth against the top-ranked Mets, and Lindor, who will likely finish second in the National League MVP voting, did his best to keep New York’s hopes alive by holding an eight-run lead pitches scored. Williams came back to bat Vientos and he singled Nimmo, but there was an 0-2 pitch up the middle for a base hit that put runners on the corners and Alonso got an out. Williams fell behind Alonso, and the worst happened: He hit a changeup, left just over center, just over the wall in right, to flip the scoreboard and give the Mets a 3-2 lead.

Williams grounded out Iglesias, hit Winker (who stole second), and Marte put a ground ball through the right side, scoring Winker from second – a huge insurance run. Williams was taken out of the game in favor of Joe Ross. Ross only needed one pitch to end the inning, but now the Brewers needed a miracle comeback of their own to keep their postseason going.

Frelick led off in the ninth against David Peterson, who – in a depleted Mets bullpen – was making his first relief appearance of the season, and Frelick wasn’t quite ready for the end: he hit a single to left to start the inning. But Peterson struck out Ortiz and Turang put a ball hard to short, which Lindor turned into a double play. Ironically, Turang probably could have beaten the throw if he had made the weaker contact that he did for most of the second half. The game ended with Chourio on deck.

It was such a wrong game. Jake Bauers, Sal Frelick, Tobias Myers and Nick Mears were heroes. Devin Williams, the National League’s best closer and one of the most dominant relievers of the last half-decade, melted down a day after being so dominant in another elimination game.

This is a painful loss, one of the worst in the team’s 50-plus year history. It’s almost harder to bear because you can’t criticize the decision to bring Williams into the game. Naturally that was the right decision. It just didn’t work.

There will be more autopsies and summaries and all sorts of things, but for now we have to deal with the pain of that loss that was imposed on us at that time so close. Sports can be cruel. Fandom can be torturous.