MILWAUKEE — You could zero in on the details of the Brewers’ 7-1 win over the Pirates at American Family Field on Monday, from Brice Turang hitting the first leadoff home run of his career to Christian Yelich making it 22 home runs this season for No. 22, to a surprise squeeze bunt from slugger Andrew Vaughn and culminating with Milwaukee becoming the 10th team with multiple 10-game winning streaks in a season during the Divisional Era (since 1969).
Or, with the Pirates in town, you could reflect on how the Brewers got here.
It was a good night to do that because this crazy run began against the Pirates on May 25, a Sunday getaway day at PNC Park. The Brewers woke up that morning with a 25-28 record, having already held two grim postgame meetings and with the manager, Pat Murphy, wondering aloud where his team had misplaced its edge. It was not what you want.
The Brewers were four outs away from absorbing another loss when rookie Caleb Durbin fouled off five straight pitches before delivering a game-tying two-run double on an 0-2 count in the eighth. Turang followed with a go-ahead double to break a 1-for-24 funk.
When the Brewers finished a 6-5 win, it was their first multi-run comeback victory all season.
“That,” Murphy said afterward, “is how we’ve got to play.”
Since then, it’s exactly how they’ve played.
Starting with that Sunday in Pittsburgh, the Brewers have vaulted to the very top of the MLB standings by winning 49 of their next 65 games, including the current stretch of 25 of the last 29 with an 11-game winning streak on the front end and now, a 10-game winning streak and counting.
It’s a rarity to string together multiple double-digit winning streaks in a season, much less over the span of five weeks. These are the only teams since baseball expanded in 1969 and organized into divisions who have done it:
Better yet, the Brewers improved to 30 games over .500 on a night the Cubs were idle and the Reds lost, which extended Milwaukee’s lead to 6 1/2 games over second-place Chicago (67-50) and 13 games over third-place Cincinnati (62-58).
