Hope, and the Absence of It
Saturday's uplifting victory over the NL-leading Atlanta Braves unintentionally revealed the malaise hanging over the Milwaukee Brewers for most of 2023
It was the best victory of the year. The Milwaukee Brewers stood tall and defeated the mighty Atlanta Braves Saturday night, 4-3. It was also the rare nationally-televised game that treated a national audience to a thrilling, compelling game, and the Brew Crew didn’t crap themselves in front of said audience.
It’s already known as The Sal Frelick Game. After rolling out sub-replacement level hitters all season at the 9, Frelick, the Brewers #2 prospect, got called up from Triple-A Nashville on Friday night to assume the position. A moment to remember Brewers right fielders this season: Brian Anderson, Blake Perkins, Tyrone Taylor, Raimel Tapia, Joey Wiemer, Jesse Winker, Owen Miller, Frelick.
As noted by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Brewers beat writer Curt Hogg, aggregate OPS at that position for a team hasn’t been this bad since 1941. Between injuries, trying in vain to fit a nut onto a bolt 1/16th of an inch too large, and a strange insistence on not tapping Frelick sooner, the front office was left with no other choice. And it was the best choice they made all year.
Frelick’s contributions toward Saturday’s win are well-documented: three hits, two RBI, one run scored, two wall-banging web gems, one crowd chanting his name at game’s end and two tanks of Gatorade dumped on him during the post-game interview.
In fact, this was as electric a crowd as I’ve heard at American Family Field all season (non-Illinois tourist division). It reminded me — and others — of October baseball, though we don’t necessarily want to think of the last time the Braves and Brewers met in October.
It also calls to mind a stark truth: the Milwaukee Brewers are in first place, lately playing better ball than they have all season, jockeying with an upstart Reds club that is cultivating the core elements of a fun divisional rivalry. Attendance, which has historically (current stadium) been upper-third in the league, remains stuck in the middle. Crowds have been flat, and during their ditch-riding May and June, they were waiting for the worst to happen (and it regularly did).
Sal Frelick did two things Saturday: he gave Brewers fans hope and something to cheer for, in so doing, he revealed just how little of both Brewers fans have had to this point.
A first-place team isn’t necessarily synonymous with a good team. As mentioned in this space before, standings only tell you how bad everyone else is. The Brewers’ success has come largely at the hands of the St. Louis Cardinals looking exceptionally ordinary, while they’ve also performed well against teams with a losing record. (Let us scrub from our memories that series against the Athletics.)
The roster has been ravaged by injuries and underperformance. Take Christian Yelich and William Contreras out of the equation and the Brewers remain a league-bottom offensive club. The bullpen’s ability to sustain an exceptional workload is in question. Brandon Woodruff was supposed to be back by now. It’s more than fair to be skeptical toward the Rowdy Tellez situation as it has been presented. Frelick, Yelich and Contreras are the only Brewers hitters interested in situational hitting or going the opposite way. Owen Miller at first base is not sustainable, neither is everyday Andruw Monasterio.
There are good reasons to be worried about the Crew’s viability down the stretch, but all of them disappeared Saturday when a Massachusetts kid put the team on his back and showcased everything he brings to the table. He just happened to also show us just how troubling and frustrating this 2023 campaign has been to date. He won’t put up those numbers on a daily basis: Frelick’s Sunday was a more modest 1-3 with a walk and run scored. Then what?
By the time the calendar turns to August, teams are pretty much what they are. The Brewers can buy here at the deadline, but nearly anyone they try to acquire is going to be an overpay, with the added incalculable cost of a fanbase’s hope.
Hope is a good thing: when properly situated within the scope of the real, it gives people reason to persevere and provides a framework for living in accordance with said hope. But hope is also necessarily a reflection of who we are without it: unmoored, adrift, lost. We already have a word for groundless optimism — delusion. For example, praying for healing from lung cancer while smoking two packs a day. Or renting Shohei Ohtani.
Is there enough faith in this roster to ground hope, go for broke and hammer down for the final two month stretch? I honestly don’t have an answer for that, but I can’t see how mortgaging the farm, or, to really extend the metaphor, opening a line of credit on the house, solves both immediate and long-term problems without inviting a host of new ones.
At the end of it all, though, dang. Saturday felt good. Hope will do that.