It wouldn’t be entirely fair to be surprised. Abner Uribe has thrown a lot this season, and relievers who throw a lot from April to September tend to get tired in October, especially if they’ve never worked that hard before. Uribe made 75 appearances in the first 162 games, including 69 that lasted at least three outs. Now he’s paying the price, just like the Brewers.
In four postseason outings, Uribe faced 21 batters. He’s only allowed three hits, but he’s also walked four and has just four strikeouts. This isn’t a huge surprise, as his velocity has declined significantly – a trend that didn’t start this month, but in September.
If Uribe doesn’t throw at full speed, he won’t miss strikes at his usual rate, or even keep the ball on the ground as well as he usually does. He worked his way beautifully over the final two innings of Game 5 of the NLDS, but even then the Cubs made hard contact against him and even lifted the ball a bit. They just hit the ball right at the Brewers defensive players. Uribe hasn’t had as much luck so far in the NLCS.
For many fans (already wary of the skipper’s tendency to go hard on his pitchers), the temptation is to blame Pat Murphy for Uribe’s demise, but the manager did his best to manage his relief ace’s exposure and workload in the second half. Before the All-Star break, with the Brewers recovering from a rough start and chasing the Cubs in the NL Central, Uribe threw a ton. He made 40 appearances by the end of June. During the first half, in total he made 13 appearances with zero days off and another 17 with one day off. After the break, however, Murphy only turned to him seven times for zero days off and 13 times for one day. Even in the midst of the month-long hot streak following the hiatus, Murphy has been pretty judicious with his best relief arm.
Once the Crew essentially won its third straight division title and earned the inside lane with a first-round bye in the playoffs, Murphy backed off as much as circumstances allowed. Uribe had a full week off in the first half of September and two appearances with three days off in the second half of the month, between which Murphy tried to keep Uribe in a rhythm that would feel more familiar to him in the postseason.
Unfortunately, the whirlwind of other injuries and stresses involved prevented Murphy from doing more to limit Uribe’s workload. Trade deadline acquisition Shelby Miller blew out her elbow. Right-handers Nick Mears and Trevor Megill were each on the injured list. There just weren’t enough healthy pitchers to work around Uribe as many times as Murphy might have liked, especially over the last couple of months.
Murphy certainly bears some limited blame for Megill being injured, as he too was heavily used at times. There were games in which Uribe, Megill, Aaron Ashby and/or Jared Koenig appeared when they simply didn’t need to, and it caught up to Milwaukee at the worst possible time. On the other hand, the team won so hard over a two-month period that a significant build-up of work for the high-leverage relief branches was inevitable – and, after all, winning games is the point of this effort. Winning all of those games is how the Brewers earned their bye week and the home-field advantage that helped them overtake the Cubs.
In hindsight, the front office probably should have acquired an additional, more reliable reliever at the trade deadline. By targeting Miller, they got a useful weapon for virtually no prospecting costs, instead taking dead money from the Diamondbacks. There is, however, a reason why Miller was available on these terms. A stronger, fresher arm would have made a world of difference for the team in the final round and could still confer advantages here in the NLCS.
Matt Arnold and company must strike a wise balance. It was a calculated risk not to add more in July, and it made sense to take a measured stance. They were a little burned. Brandon Woodruff’s injury put more pressure on the bullpen, forcing pitchers who otherwise might have been shortened to work in important roles down the stretch and into October. Megill’s limited availability this month goes unnoticed, but it poses a significant constraint. The fact that he and Miller missed September guts and Mears ran out of steam in the second half left Uribe overexposed, and all of that made it impossible for the Brewers to keep pace with the Dodgers’ extraordinary pitching in the first two games of the NLCS.
The series is not over. The Brewers just need a somewhat unexpected hero to emerge on the pitching staff during the rest of this set — and, of course, for the offense to wake up from its slumber during the off day in Los Angeles. It’s unfortunate, however, that they found their pitching staff so thin at the most critical time of the season, when it was arguably the most complete corps in the league during the regular campaign.
