MILWAUKEE — The Brewers don’t always hit home runs, but they can still beat you.
That doesn’t surprise old friend Willy Adames.
“They know that they have to play great defense and good baserunning to win games the way they’re doing it this year,” said Adames, the Giants’ shortstop whose 87 home runs during his three full seasons with the Brewers from 2022-24 led the team by a wide margin. “I know for a fact that they put even more emphasis on playing clean baseball and great defense and doing what they have to do to win a game.”
Sometimes, winning a game requires hitting a baseball over a fence somewhere. Adames smacked a pair of solo homers in his old stomping grounds — the first on the first pitch he saw after a sellout crowd of 41,716 welcomed him back with a standing ovation — before the Brewers walked off with a 5-4 win Friday at American Family Field by playing highlight-reel defense and fighting to within their final out in the bottom of the ninth inning, when William Contreras hit his first career walk-off homer for Milwaukee’s Major League-leading 81st victory of the season.
“I hope that I can do that a thousand more times,” Contreras said.
Maybe next time he’ll remember circling the bases. This time, the usually controlled Contreras let out the emotion of a trying season as he catches triple-digit fastballs with a fracture in the middle finger of his glove hand, not to mention the frustration of the top of the ninth inning, when he couldn’t block Brewers closer Trevor Megill’s game-tying wild pitch.
“I went in the dugout there and smacked him pretty hard and told him to pick me up,” Megill said. “And that’s exactly when he did. That’s what good teammates do.”
When he did, Contreras took his time enjoying it.
“It was so long to get [around the bases] that I was like, ‘When’s this guy going to touch home plate?” Brewers starter Jose Quintana said. “That was amazing. I’m really happy for him and the whole team. Sometimes we have to fight, and we did it tonight.”
It was a quintessential 2025 Brewers win. Quintana and three relievers were backed by mostly stellar defense, including leaping catches for shortstop Andruw Monasterio (starting because Joey Ortiz landed on the injured list earlier in the day) in the third inning and first baseman Andrew Vaughn in the fifth, second baseman Brice Turang’s mad dash to catch a pop-up in shallow right field in the sixth, and center fielder Brandon Lockridge’s throw to cut down a runner at third base in the seventh when the game was tied.
For Brewers hitters, meanwhile, it was death by a series of paper cuts for most of the night. Two wild pitches contributed to two runs for a 2-2 tie in the fourth inning, and a go-ahead, two-run seventh began with Monasterio being hit on the elbow by a pitch before Turang legged out a bunt single.
When the Giants rallied to tie the game in the top of the ninth with their own version of a Brewers rally — Dominic Smith’s single off Megill’s right calf moved the tying run to third base for the ensuing tying wild pitch — Contreras and the Brewers had one last answer for Adames and the Giants.
“There was a special vibe in the air, for sure,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “We were talking today about how we lost a lot [in the] last year, nothing more than Bob Uecker and what he meant to our organization and our players. But we also lost some really good players, none bigger than Willy Adames. What he meant on the field, playing a critical position so well. Hitting the 30 homers like he does. But what he meant to our culture, and how he represented how we play the game and how we compete and how we treat others and how we mold the locker room no matter where you’re from, no matter if you’re old or young. Willy did all of that. He did a wonderful job.
“So it was special. But he started to tick me off a little bit with the second homer.”
When Contreras delivered a homer of his own, it gave the Brewers their ninth walk-off victory and fourth via the home run after hitting none in 2024. Their four walk-off home runs are the most for the team since 2018.
“You look at the names and they don’t blow you away as far as household names, other than maybe Yelich. But they do everything well,” Giants manager Bob Melvin said. “They’re second in pitching. They’re second in runs behind the Dodgers in the National League. They obviously steal a lot of bases.
“They create a lot of havoc.”
And they keep on winning.
“I think I’m more surprised about the way they act every day. They handle themselves so well,” Adames said. “They have a bunch of young guys that handle themselves like veteran guys in the league. Obviously, the talent has always been there. It’s just now, they’re stepping up and taking the team to the next level.”
