CHICAGO -- Pat Murphy says anybody who considers the Cubs the underdogs to the Brewers at this point has things backwards. Don’t try to tell the skipper that his club still has a seven-game lead in the National League Central standings even after dropping both ends of Tuesday’s doubleheader at Wrigley Field, 6-4 in the opener and 4-1 in the nightcap. And certainly don’t mention that Fangraphs’ computer models peg Milwaukee’s odds of winning the division at 90.6 percent and Chicago’s at 9.4 percent.
“Are they underdogs? Seriously? They’re the underdogs in this series?” Murphy said as this five-game, four-day showdown began. “Look at the lineups. They’ve got All-Stars, they’ve got MVP candidates. … You’ve got veterans, you’ve got Gold Glove winners, you’ve got world champions.
“I mean, what don’t they have? They’re not the underdogs, trust me.”
That’s a mindset Murphy wants to keep for his “Average Joes,” his “woodpeckers,” his “cliffhangers” who are trying to hang onto their spots in the big leagues. Monday produced one of their team-wide efforts for a win. Tuesday offered a reminder that nothing is won just yet.
In both games, the Brewers looked poised to author one of the pesky comebacks that are the trademark of their recent run. They trimmed a 5-0 deficit in the fourth inning of the opener to 5-4 in the sixth, but stopped there. In the nightcap, they had one of their fleetest baserunners, Brice Turang, tagging from third and chugging home with eyes on a run that would have made it a two-run game, only to see Cubs utility man Willi Castro throw him out at home plate.
"You've got to credit them,” Murphy said of the Cubs. “They played inspired."
And the Brewers?
“We didn’t play poorly,” Murphy said, “but we didn’t do the things we normally do. We didn’t take the free bases. We didn’t get that 50/50 play. It didn’t go our way today. But credit the Cubs for that.”
If Tuesday’s result was jarring, it was because the Brewers had only lost back-to-back games on three occasions since Memorial Day -- one two-game losing streak in June, a pair of two-game losing streaks in July and none in August. They have not suffered three consecutive defeats since May 7-10, a lopsided loss to the Astros at home followed by two one-run losses to the Rays in Tampa.
Along the way, they surged to the best record in baseball, putting them in a “dang good spot,” said Brandon Woodruff, who saw the Brewers win each of his first seven starts off a multi-year comeback from shoulder surgery before they finally fell in Game 2 on Tuesday. He battled a stomach bug and Cubs hitters, who coaxed 94 pitches from Woodruff in 4 1/3 innings.
“Coming off 14 wins in a row, you feel like you can't lose another one,” Woodruff said, “and then when you lose two in a row, it feels like the world is falling apart. But it's really not. We're doing just fine."
There’s the tricky part. Logically and mathematically, the Brewers are doing just fine in their bid for a seventh postseason appearance in eight years. But they’ve been their best when they’re in the underdog role as Major League Baseball’s little engine that could, playing against behemoths like the Dodgers, Mets and Cubs.
“Goodness gracious, we’ve played such good baseball here of late that the media kind of flips that script for us in a sense,” Woodruff said. “But in the room we’ve still got the same hungry guys, grinder-type guys. That’s what it will always be for us.”
“We want to come in with the underdog mentality,” Brewers GM Matt Arnold said. “That doesn’t mean we’re not confident, but I think it is important to be humble, no matter what your record is.”
That’s how Arnold and Murphy like it. Murphy, the former Notre Dame coach who has Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger among the contacts on his phone, loves the underdog label and believes it fits players like Andrew Vaughn in spite of his pedigree as a No. 3 overall Draft pick, since he was scuffling in Triple-A for the last-place White Sox when the Brewers traded for him and he took off. Or shortstop Joey Ortiz, who might have wondered whether the Brewers might pick up an infielder at the Trade Deadline. Or 5-foot-7 third baseman Caleb Durbin, one of a handful of Brewers taking on a new position this year.
“How many of our 13 [position] players make the Dodgers?” Murphy asked rhetorically. “It’s like, that’s what’s beautiful. They’re our guys. So, we’re always going to be [underdogs] because of who these guys are. You can’t measure it.”
From the other side of the diamond at Wrigley Field, it’s not always been so beautiful to watch the Brewers do what they do. Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer said Chicago’s internal projections had Milwaukee as a much more formidable opponent than the public projections suggested, so he’s not surprised to see the Brewers contending.
But still, Hoyer said, “No one expected them to play .750 baseball for two and a half months.” That’s what the Brewers did while winning 53 of 70 games coming into this series, with separate winning streaks of eight, 11 and a franchise-record 14 games.
“If it’s totally predictable, it wouldn’t be fun, right?” Hoyer said. “That’s the nature of our sport: It’s unpredictable. And through that is the joy of having a really special season where everything clicks.”