WASHINGTON — Too often, August can slip away like a moment in time — especially in baseball season, when the push down the stretch is what teams are playing for.
But for the Brewers, they’re savoring every moment of it. For the first time in club history, the Crew entered August with the best record in baseball. And the Brewers (65-44) only improved upon that record, matching their season-best 21 games above .500 (from three days prior, when they were 64-43 on July 29).
There was some thought, or disappointment, that the Crew didn’t get a power bat at the Trade Deadline on Thursday. Turns out, they had plenty of power all along.
In the eighth month of the year, it was also the eighth game of the year in which the Brewers had every starter record at least one hit. And the hitting palooza — a season-high 25 knocks — paid off big-time, as Milwaukee knocked Washington starter Mitchell Parker out of the game before he had recorded an out in the fifth inning, tagging him for eight runs on 12 hits.
“It was a good game tonight — our guys were locked in,” manager Pat Murphy said. “They did a nice job. You look at the output of Contreras, Perkins, [Andrew] Vaughn, [Christian Yelich] gets a couple hits, and [Brandon] Lockridge gets a couple hits in his first game for us. … And [Andruw] Monasterio getting four hits, Joey Ortiz got — he had five quality at-bats. I mean, that’s contagious. It was nice to see guys swing it.”
Realistically, “swing it” might be an understatement. Wanting almost seemed like it was enough, because the hitting never ceased. Contreras homered in the seventh and Vaughn hit his 11th homer of the year in the eighth inning. All told, eight Brewers had multi-hit games, including at least three hits apiece from five (Contreras, Monasterio, Vaughn, Caleb Durbin and Ortiz).
Per the Elias Sports Bureau, it was just the second instance this season of five starters with three or more hits in a game (Houston on June 18), and the fourth instance of a team having eight players with multiple hits in the same game (the Mets on April 28, the Padres on May 10 and the Red Sox on June 28.
And of course, it didn’t hurt that Milwaukee got a solid start from Jose Quintana, who allowed just two runs over five innings. The Nationals’ first-inning run was the first he allowed in his past 27 innings vs. Washington.
But really, it was the offense that stole the show. Before the Deadline, some might have said that the Brewers never needed anything more than some “thump” to add to the lineup.
And while most managers wouldn’t be willing to admit to a mild form of futurecasting, Murphy was willing. And, to a lesser extent, so was Perkins — albeit in different ways.
Perkins doesn’t believe the team really thinks about the future, doesn’t get too far ahead of itself. But even so, he’s (in a way) living for the hope of finishing atop the National League Central again — or at least in front of one specific team.
“We kind of know what it’s like to be in the situation, and I think we’re just keeping going, one day at a time,” Perkins said. “I know it’s cliché, but I really think that if you come in here and see us a lot, it’s how it is. Like, we’re just friends, hanging out, playing ball. …
“Everybody’s trying to get to a spot to be ready for the end of the season. There’s a long way to go, and I would really like to, like, really be in front of the Cubs. So that’d be really cool, like how it’s been the last few years, everything.”
But Murphy, he’s living for the hope of it all. The hope of September, October and the postseason. And, in a way, the hope of still taking it game-by-game.
“Hope. Hope and possibility,” Murphy said. “Yeah, it’s OK to believe in that, but you got to do it every day. You can talk about it, but you got to live it. Everybody else can talk about how we are, but if it ain’t real, and we really don’t know how to do it and we’re not working on it, it’s difficult. So yeah, I’m hopeful.”
