The Brewers keep winning with their bullpen, and Pat Murphy’s latest call only sharpened that identity.
Through six postseason games, Milwaukee’s relief group has been the engine of the run. The unit has logged 28.2 innings, given up just one earned run, and on Monday night became the first bullpen ever to throw five perfect innings in a postseason game. It’s been enough to carry the Brewers through the NLDS and into a 2-0 lead in the NLCS while the club still waits for a true marathon outing from one of its starters.
What makes the October version of this pitching staff interesting is that Murphy hasn’t used it exactly the same way he did in the regular season. Abner Uribe, who spent most of the year as a classic eighth-inning setup man, has been deployed more like a matchup weapon against the opposing lineup’s strongest right-handed bats. The hard-throwing righty has pitched in all six playoff games and has handled the new assignment well.
Aaron Ashby’s role has shifted too. During the regular season, he never really settled into one fixed job, but plenty of people expected him to take the seventh before Uribe and Trevor Megill handled the last two innings.
In Game 1 of the NLCS, though, Ashby was asked to bridge the seventh and eighth, throwing 26 pitches across those two frames. That made him a candidate to sit out Game 2 on Monday afternoon.
Murphy didn’t play it that way.
Instead, he went back to Ashby in a critical spot. With one out in the eighth, Ashby entered for Uribe, and the move was about matchups, not about Uribe’s work.
Ashby needed only a few pitches to finish the inning, striking out Freddie Freeman and getting Teoscar Hernández to ground out to first. The bigger surprise came after that.
Brewers fans expected Megill to take over for the save, but Murphy stayed with Ashby for the ninth because the Dodgers had left-handers Shohei Ohtani and Max Muncy due up.
Ashby handled the job cleanly. He got Ohtani, Will Smith, and Miguel Rojas, who pinch-hit for Muncy, and the Brewers’ series lead grew to 2-0.
The choice immediately raised the question of how much it would tax Milwaukee’s bullpen going forward, and whether Ashby would be out of play for Game 3. But the off-day on Tuesday changes the picture.
Ashby wants to pitch every day, and with that rest day built in, he should be ready again. That leaves the Brewers in good shape and gives the Dodgers a little less exposure to Megill.
That part matters in a seven-game series. Hitters start gathering information on relievers, and the more they see a guy, the more comfortable they become.
Murphy said that was part of the thinking after Game 2. Ashby gives Milwaukee more ways to attack because he has four pitches to work with, while Megill leans on just two overpowering offerings.
The contrast showed up in Game 1. With a one-run lead, Megill needed to avoid giving Muncy anything he could drive, so he threw him four straight curveballs.
If Megill had seen Muncy again in Game 2, the Dodgers slugger would have had another look at him, and maybe another clue about how Milwaukee’s closer wants to work. By leaving Ashby in, Murphy kept that extra layer of familiarity away from Megill for now.
There’s also a workload angle that works in Milwaukee’s favor. Ashby threw 47 pitches over two days, but the October calendar softens those concerns.
If Murphy needs him in Game 3 tonight, he should be there. Megill should be fresh too, after two straight days of rest, and there’s even a path for the All-Star closer to handle more than three outs if the situation calls for it, just as he did in Game 1 of the NLDS.
In the end, Murphy’s decision to ride Ashby for five outs in Game 2 paid off on the scoreboard and in the bigger series picture. It protected Megill a little, kept the Dodgers from getting another read on him, and still leaves Milwaukee’s bullpen positioned to answer the bell again tonight.
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