Inside the decision that made all the difference in Crew's 1-0 loss

MILWAUKEE -- The Brewers could have made it a lot easier on manager Pat Murphy and the men alongside him who confer on pitching decisions by scoring a run or two in Sunday’s 1-0 loss to the Padres at American Family Field. Unfortunately for Murphy & Co., that proved exceedingly difficult. So, the outcome hinged on one decision at the start of the seventh inning.

Ask starter Freddy Peralta for one more batter, with Padres star Manny Machado set to lead off the seventh.

Or turn to lefty reliever Rob Zastryzny, who was ready in the bullpen?

Murphy and the Brewers called for Zastryzny. Machado smacked his second backbreaking, late-inning home run of the series, a solo shot that provided the game's only run and gave the Padres the series after the Brewers stranded 10 runners on base -- all over the final five innings.

“For one second, I was thinking to come back,” Peralta said. “At the same time, we took the decision that it was enough for the day, and to bring somebody else.”

“We had to talk to Freddy first to see how he felt, and he was out of gas,” Murphy said.

Here are the other factors Murphy and the Brewers were working with:

• Peralta carried a no-hitter into the sixth before allowing a leadoff single in what became a scoreless, 13-pitch inning. He had thrown 90 total pitches.

• The Padres had right-handed-hitting Machado leading off the seventh -- who walked and grounded out against Peralta on Sunday and was 1-for-10 lifetime with six strikeouts. After Machado, four of the next five hitters were left-handers.

• But as noted by Brewers TV stat man Dom Cotroneo, it wasn’t straightforward. Machado is hitting .393 with a .967 OPS this season when facing a pitcher for the third time in a game. Machado also was hitting .318 with a 1.031 OPS against left-handers entering the day.

• Had Peralta returned to the mound for the seventh, it would have been after a long layoff. The Brewers sent six men to the plate in the sixth while loading the bases against Padres reliever Yuki Matsui.

• Peralta was working on four days’ rest, which is not necessarily “normal rest” for a Brewers team that has prioritized rest. Half of his 14 starts (seven) have come on more than four days’ rest.

• Five days earlier in Cincinnati, the Brewers made a different decision in a similar spot. Peralta was at 92 pitches, and the Brewers and Reds were tied at 2-2 after six innings when he went back to the mound for the seventh, walked a batter and gave up a double before yielding to Zastryzny. The Reds took the lead on a go-ahead sacrifice fly in a 4-2 Brewers loss.

• Zastryzny has been generally excellent since signing with the Brewers last month. He hadn’t been charged with a run in any of his first nine appearances.

Murphy and his decision-makers considered all those factors and went to Zastryzny, who lamented falling into a 3-0 count to begin the matchup. Machado wound up connecting with a full-count fastball.

“I fell behind and had to challenge him three times,” Zastryzny said. “And he got me the third time.”

Machado has done that a lot of late, with seven homers in his last 16 games. He also made a brilliant defensive play look casual in the fifth.

"I hit it down the line, and I was like, 'That's not an easy play,'" rookie Caleb Durbin said. "But I knew who was playing there."

Machado was lustily booed throughout, as he has been since raising Brewers fans’ ire with the Dodgers during the 2018 NLCS. Like Friday's series opener, when Machado’s solo homer punctuated the Padres’ 2-0 win, he had the last word on Sunday.

“Seven, eight years later and they don’t forget about it,” Peralta said. “Sometimes I feel bad about him. I know he probably doesn’t care, but it’s been, like, seven years, and I think he apologized already. But you know how it is. If they don’t like him, they’re going to keep doing it.”

Would that at-bat have gone differently with Peralta in the game? On one hand, he said he felt as good after his 90th pitch as he did for his first. But on the other hand, Peralta said, “When I finished the sixth, we all knew I was done.”

“If he would have said, ‘Hey, no, I want the seventh,’ we would have let him do it,” Murphy said. “We did that last start and it didn’t go well in Cincinnati. So you’re trying to protect him a little bit. … Coming off [103] pitches and because it was shorter rest, he said, ‘I’m gassed.’

“But he was brilliant. Let’s give Freddy the credit he deserves. He was brilliant.”