The Brewers didn’t need a long offensive surge to separate themselves from the Cubs on Wednesday night. They just needed their bullpen to do what it has done over the past two nights at Wrigley Field: shut everything down.
JoJo Romero, Antonio Senzatela, Abner Uribe, Aaron Ashby and Trevor Megill pieced together five scoreless innings, allowing only one hit and one walk as Milwaukee closed out a 9-5 win. By the time Megill finished the game, the Brewers’ lead over Chicago in the National League Central had stretched to a season-high nine games with 22 games left.
That gap has been built, at least in part, by what’s happened out of the bullpen in this series. Milwaukee’s relievers protected a one-run lead in Tuesday’s 9-4 win, then handled a much tougher assignment a night later after Jacob Misiorowski was knocked around for five runs in the first two innings and needed 92 pitches to get through four.
The Cubs had turned Wednesday’s game into a back-and-forth slugfest, the kind Wrigley Field can produce on a hot September night. They were still within a run in the fifth when Milwaukee’s relief corps took over and slammed the door.
“It was a great job by our relief corps again to hold them at bay,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said.
“Again” is doing a lot of work there.
Romero, acquired from St. Louis at the Trade Deadline and back after working his way through an appendectomy and a long layoff from Major League competition, made his Brewers debut Tuesday and delivered two outs in a one-run game. Less than 24 hours later, he was back on the mound.
“I was full throttle, ready to go, whatever they needed me for,” Romero said. “Today was coming in that spot, and glad I was able to execute the way I wanted to and get through that.”
Milwaukee’s bullpen now gives Murphy a mix that can attack hitters from both sides. Romero said the group’s left-handed options, including Aaron Ashby and DL Hall, pair with a right-handed core built around Uribe and Megill.
“You just have a lot of different ways to attack teams,” Romero said. “From the left side, me, DL and Ash, that’s as good a lefty combo as it gets. And then from the right side, you’ve got a bunch of power arms that can do a bunch of different things with their shapes.
“I think it’s something special.”
From Chicago’s side, the contrast has been obvious. The Cubs came into Wednesday with a 6.62 bullpen ERA over their previous 10 games, and they had already given up six runs over 3 2/3 relief innings on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Milwaukee kept adding on after the Cubs turned to their bullpen, scoring against Daniel Palencia in the seventh and then tacking on two more in the ninth after Jacob Webb exited when a Christian Yelich comebacker struck his right forearm.
“We had very good at-bats,” Cubs manager Craig Counsell said. “It was kind of a pass-the-line against Misiorowski and I thought we did a pretty darned good job.
Their bullpen pitched very well and put the game in order. We swung the bats better than the results, but their bullpen did a really nice job.”
Uribe, who returned from the injured list Tuesday after some time away, was asked afterward about being back in the mix. But the bigger story was the same one that had played out the night before and carried through Wednesday: Milwaukee’s relief group kept the Cubs from making a game of it.
And with every zero, the Brewers pulled a little farther away.
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