The unsung bullpen fueling the first-place Milwaukee Brewers; plus more ‘Sliders’

Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of baseball

The edges of a major-league roster are sand dunes in a storm. If that’s where you stand, you’re never comfortable. A gust from any direction and you’re tumbling out to sea.

“I was up quite a bit last year, but I was only active a handful of times,” said Bryan Hudson, by phone from the Milwaukee Brewers’ clubhouse this week, describing his experience as a rookie with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

“I would be on the taxi squad for the paternity list or the bereavement list. It depended on the situation and what other guys were going through, the guys that were set in stone on our roster.”

In Milwaukee, Hudson said, “They were like, ‘You’re our guy. We’re not going to go out and get other guys if you fail.’ They made me feel more at home, like I wasn’t so expendable.”

Hudson, a lefty with a 1.00 ERA, is critical to the busy, bargain bullpen underpinning the first-place Brewers. He is surrounded by relievers just like him: castaways who washed ashore on Lake Michigan and became vital cogs to the team atop the National League Central.

At 40-28, Milwaukee easily leads its division despite asking more from its relievers than any other team. Through Wednesday, the Brewers’ bullpen led the majors in innings and victories, with a 3.34 ERA that ranked sixth among the 30 teams.

The eight active members of the bullpen, all imported from other organizations, earn around $8.6 million combined this season — nearly $2 million less than Aroldis Chapman’s salary as a setup man for the division-rival Pittsburgh Pirates. Few teams, if any, do better on a budget than Milwaukee.

“We have to find a way,” pitching coach Chris Hook said. “We’re just not going to let a dude go without a lot of effort, without exhausting everything that we could have possibly thought of. And I think that’s what’s different about us. We’re not willing to give up. We can’t and we won’t.

“A lot of times, these guys that are going on the waiver wire, they bounce in, they don’t have success and they’re quickly bounced out. We tend not to do that. We may have to, but I think that we put in a little bit more thought and a little bit more resolve than most organizations.”

The rest of the NL Central is a mediocre jumble, and the Brewers would be part of it without the success of their bullpen. Their rotation has averaged just 4.7 innings per start while lasting seven innings only three times, the fewest in the majors.

To be fair, the attrition has been constant. The Brewers lost one ace, Brandon Woodruff, to shoulder surgery last October. They traded another, Corbin Burnes, to Baltimore in February. Four more starters — Robert Gasser, DL Hall, Jakob Junis, Wade Miley — have been injured during the season, placing an even greater burden on a bullpen that lost closer Devin Williams in March with stress fractures in his back.

“I keep reminding everybody that (I’m) a placeholder still, and I’m just out there to get three outs until Devin gets back,” said Trevor Megill, a hard thrower with a wicked curveball who earned his 11th save on Wednesday. “That’s probably helping me stay grounded a little bit.”

Megill is 6-foot-8, like Hudson, and taller pitchers often take time to find compact mechanics that allow them to repeat their deliveries. Both are pitching for their third organization, arrived in Milwaukee in a trade for a minor leaguer and have ERAs below 2.00.

So does Jared Koenig, a 6-foot-5 lefty who played for five independent teams, plus another in New Zealand, to start his pro career. The Brewers are his third major-league organization, too.

“I was passionate, and I just wanted to keep playing baseball,” Koenig said. “I was like, ‘There’s always time to work and make money and do a regular job, per se. I might as well try and have baseball take me places.’ That’s why I went to New Zealand.”

Koenig — who was once released at 3 a.m. after a 15-hour bus ride by a team called the Salina Stockade — has a 1.72 ERA in 22 games. Righty Elvis Peguero (traded from the Los Angeles Angels for Hunter Renfroe) and Enoli Paredes (a Houston castoff), have had similar success.

Righty Joel Payamps, an alum of five MLB teams, and lefty Hoby Milner, now with his fourth, have been veteran mainstays.

Milner, a Brewer since 2021, has the longest tenure in the bullpen. A conventional starter in the minors for the Philadelphia Phillies, he converted to a sidearm reliever after a coach, Rafael Chaves, noticed him throwing to the bases from that angle.

“I’d always thought it’d be fun to throw sidearm,” Milner said. “So it was pretty easy to sway me to do that — especially when they said, ‘You’re pretty much going nowhere if you don’t.’”

The Brewers — who had once hoped that Burnes, Woodruff and Peralta could carry them to a title — lean so thoroughly on the bullpen that they produce an in-house web series, “The Firemen,” focused on the relievers. They’ll probably need more from the starters as the season goes on, but at least the bullpen should get deeper this summer with the return of Williams, who is throwing again.

Williams looks “really, really good,” Hook said, but whatever happens in his comeback, the team in baseball’s smallest market will make no excuses. They weathered the loss of manager Craig Counsell to the Chicago Cubs, making a seamless transition to Pat Murphy, the former bench coach. And they’re thriving without their bigger-name pitchers, too.

“I think what’s cool is when you walk through this city, there’s an expectation level for our group,” Hook said. “They don’t care who’s part of it, they expect us to perform well. When you come into this room there’s an expectation to win a division, and if you don’t, it’s not a good year. So we’ve got a standard to live up to, and we’re going to do everything we can.”

Gimme Five

Mel Stottlemyre Jr. on the lessons from his father, Mel Sr.

On Father’s Day weekend, let’s visit with the Miami Marlins’ Mel Stottlemyre Jr., a pitching coach just like his father, Mel Sr., who guided the staffs of both the New York Mets and Yankees to World Series titles.

Mel Sr., who died of multiple myeloma in 2019, pitched 11 distinguished seasons for the Yankees before a torn rotator cuff ended his career in 1974. The same type of injury curtailed Mel Jr.’s big league career, which lasted 13 games for the 1990 Kansas City Royals. (Brother Todd had the sturdiest shoulder and the longest career, at 14 years.)

The family’s history makes Mel Jr., 60, especially attentive to the physical risks of pitching. He’s dismayed by the injury wave that has sidelined so many hard throwers, including some of his own, like former Cy Young Award winner Sandy Alcantara and a possible future ace, Eury Pérez.

“They all throw 100,” Stottlemyre said of his injured pitchers. “It’s hard (to tell them otherwise), because the industry and front offices have asked them to. They get paid for it. But I have absolutely no fear when it comes time to talk about guys making pitches or getting deeper in games and not giving into what’s going on.”

It doesn’t always have to be this way, as Stottlemyre knows from his father’s example. Here are five things he takes from his dad.

Always be direct. “Guys would look him in the eye and respect what he had to say, because his message — even if it was a tough-love conversation — was never out of control or angry. It was to the point, direct. I think the players welcome that, because there are so many people pulling at them. So the one thing that I hope that my pitchers can get from me is knowing that I’ve got their back and I work hard for them. I’ve seen a lot and I shoot them straight.”

A good resume helps (at least back then). “He commanded respect from his career, first and foremost. He pitched in the World Series, five-time All-Star, put some good numbers up. So they definitely knew more of my dad, especially back with that generation. I was in conversations with him and Andy (Pettitte), sitting there with him and Roger (Clemens) and Coney (David Cone). And there was never any (nonsense) just thrown off the side of the wall. It was all substance. He didn’t say a lot; he wasn’t one of them rah-rah guys or anything. He took interest in them as people without getting overly personal, so there was always a mutual respect.”

Andy Pettitte and Mel Stottlemyre Sr. with the Yankees in 2002. (Richard Drew / Associated Press)

Watch for the subtleties. “And I remember him telling me, to this day, it absolutely resonates: ‘I wish I could climb inside their head, to really know where their thoughts are and what they’re thinking.’ Because there are times when we think, as pitching coaches, that (when) they make bad choices, maybe their thoughts have strayed and it’s getting in the way of their focus. But he was really good at seeing beyond that. He could read my brother and I and without even asking, he knew where we were with our thoughts by watching our bodies or our eyes. He could get it. And I can see it in my guys, too.”

Remember to laugh — but be careful. “Oh, he was a prankster. He was a man’s man, but you have to have a little fun. It’s been hard for me, because I’m more on the harder side, definitely demanding. It’s tough to be a prankster in this day and age; you have to watch it, players are a little more sensitive to it. They pulled some nasty pranks back then, stuff that I can’t share that we did in hunting camps or things around our friends. Life has changed, people have changed. The lighter side of the game, I’m constantly having to remind myself what these guys are going through and this game is not easy. Sometimes I have to remind myself to keep it light.”

It’s not a velocity contest. “His philosophy was: Command your stuff, control your misses, add and subtract, get soft contact — things that are not spoken about as much now. It’s swing and miss, go as hard as you can go. I try to balance and blend and mesh, respect the guys with that stuff and try to create some pitchability and understanding you’re not going to out-stuff this league. You’re not going to out-stuff the New York Yankees. You have to make pitches. You have to get good counts. You have to control your misses, you have to add and subtract and you have to read a swing. That’s what pitching is. He made a living doing that.”

Off the Grid

A historical detour from the Immaculate Grid

MVP with 40 career Wins Above Replacement

The Cincinnati Reds had three consecutive Most Valuable Players from 1938 to 1940. But here’s a tip: stay away from using them in the Immaculate Grid. I’ve been burned multiple times by outsmarting myself with that trio.

Last Saturday, the Grid asked for an MVP with at least 40 career wins above replacement. There were 116 possibilities, but my choice, Ernie Lombardi, was not among them.

Lombardi won the 1938 National League MVP Award with 19 homers, 95 runs batted in and an NL-best .342 average. He made eight All-Star teams, won two batting titles, led the Reds to the 1940 championship, and slashed .306/.358/.460 with a 126 OPS+ for his career. And he was a catcher, too.

Yet somehow, Lombardi compiled only 37.7 WAR. Maybe he grounded into too many double plays. Maybe the mysterious formula deducts points if your nickname is Schnozz. Maybe WAR thinks the Hall should have only one Reds catcher capable of holding seven baseballs in one hand.

Hey, all’s not fair in WAR.

The 1939 MVP, pitcher Bucky Walters, had more than 50 WAR — but not 200 wins or 2,000 strikeouts, which are frequent Grid categories. The 1940 winner, first baseman Frank McCormick, had fewer WAR than Lombardi and missed two other frequent Grid categories by the slimmest margin: His single-season high for runs was 99, and his career average was .299.

So if the category is simply a Reds player who won MVP, by all means, use Lombardi, Walters or McCormick. But match them with a statistic at your own risk!

CLASSIC CLIP

Matt Cain’s post-perfecto Top 10 List

Thursday marked the 12th anniversary of Matt Cain’s perfect game, the second of three in the majors during the 2012 season. It wasn’t a trend: The next 10 MLB seasons brought zero perfect games, a stretch that finally ended with Domingo Germán’s gem for the Yankees in Oakland last June.

On Cain’s big night, for the Giants against the Astros, he tied Sandy Koufax’s record for strikeouts in a perfect game with 14. He went on to win the All-Star Game the next month and started the clinching games of the division series, National League Championship Series and World Series that October.

Cain also got to deliver a Top 10 list on “The Late Show With David Letterman,” expressing his wish to pitch an inning without his pants.

(Top photo of Bryan Hudson: Stacy Revere / Getty Images)