After head fake, Miley gets ball in Game 6 for actual start
Lefty hopes to pitch longer this time as club tries to stay alive
LOS ANGELES — The next time Wade Miley steps on the mound for the Brewers, on Friday at Miller Park in Milwaukee, with the season on the line, he promises it will be for real.
It will not be like his performance in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series on Wednesday, which was more acting than actual pitching. Days before, the Brewers had announced that Miley, a lefthanded pitcher, would start the game, and he participated in the customary news conference. To take advantage of the matchup, the Los Angeles Dodgers stacked their lineup with mostly righthanded batters.
But Miley faced only one hitter, the lefthanded leadoff batter, Cody Bellinger, who walked, and was replaced with Brandon Woodruff, a righthander who served more like the traditional starting pitcher. It was a surprising and bold move by Brewers manager Craig Counsell.
“Not many of them knew,” Miley said of his teammates. “We kept it a pretty good secret for most of the time.”
Once the Dodgers and even Miley’s own teammates saw Woodruff warming up in the bullpen in the first inning, they realized the tactical maneuver underway. Similar schemes have been pulled in the past, in the 1924 World Series and the 1990 NLCS, for example. This one fit squarely within the trends of modern baseball and the Brewers’ larger ethos, particularly during this postseason: employing creative strategies with a staff built around relief pitchers.
“That’s kind of just how we roll over here, man,” said Christian Yelich, the Brewers’ star right fielder. “It’s been working out.”
Believers in ‘bullpenning’
Although the Dodgers sit one game away from consecutive World Series berths after winning, 5-2, in Game 5, the surprising Brewers would not have reached this far without these unusual approaches. Some of it is known as “bullpenning,” the changing of the traditional roles for starting and relief pitchers to maximize matchups against an opponent.
Throughout the regular season, the Brewers followed a modern baseball tenet of preventing some starting pitchers from facing an opposing lineup a third time in a game because the hitter has the advantage.
Only three teams in the NL leaned less on their rotation this season than the Brewers; they averaged only 52⁄3 innings per start. This allowed the Brewers to rely more on their strength: their talented and deep group of relief pitchers, like Josh Hader, Corey Knebel, Jeremy Jeffress, Corbin Burnes, Woodruff and others. But even calling them relief pitchers is a misnomer.
“We’re trying to get away from what the word ‘starter’ and ‘reliever’ means,” Counsell said before the playoffs began this month. He added later, “We just feel like with the pitchers that we have available that they’re going to share the 27 outs.”
Thankfully for the Brewers, some of the pitchers stashed in the bullpen — Junior Guerra, Freddy Peralta, Burnes and Woodruff — have been starters this season and are accustomed to throwing more. In Game 5, Woodruff threw 51⁄3 stout innings but was charged with three runs (two earned) after he and Burnes sputtered some in the sixth.
Knebel, Hader ready to go
Perhaps one silver lining in the Brewers’ Game 5 loss was that their best relief pitchers, Knebel and Hader, were not used.
Coupled with Thursday’s day off, Hader and Knebel are ready to carry a heavy load in a win-or-gohome Game 6, and, if necessary, Game 7 the next day.
“We’re going back home, to me, in a position of strength,” Counsell said.
And that begins with Miley, who has tossed 101⁄3 scoreless innings this postseason. On Friday, he will become the first pitcher to start consecutive playoff games in a series since George Earnshaw in the 1930 World Series.
Miley’s “start” Wednesday served as his between-starts bullpen session. After warming up, he threw only five pitches in the game. He will essentially start Game 6 on regular rest. Although he agreed with the misdirection in the previous game, he said he was ready to pitch longer this time.