Dodgers 1, Brewers 0: Despite Corbin Burnes gem, Brewers swept thanks to deficient offense
LOS ANGELES – Corbin Burnes delivered a Cy Young-level performance Thursday night at Dodger Stadium.
Nobody else on the Milwaukee Brewers offered any assistance.
The Brewers offense came up empty against Los Angeles Dodgers starter Lance Lynn and the bullpen, particularly in key situations with men on base, as it had another rotten night.
Setup man Joel Payamps, who relieved Burnes following seven shutout innings, allowed a go-ahead home run to a backup catcher batting .129 and without a homer in 42 games this year.
Add it all up and you get a brutal, deflating 1-0 loss to complete a sweep at the hands of the red-hot Dodgers in which the only thing more absent than rain in southern California over these three days was the Brewers offense.
"It still goes down as a loss," said Burnes after silencing one of baseball's elite lineups. "It’s one more in the loss column. We couldn’t get that big hit tonight. We had guys on base and had some guys in scoring position but we just came up a little short. Lance threw the ball well and their bullpen came in and shut it down.
"You kind of got to tip your cap. But overall, it’s a loss."
Corbin Burnes' magnificent outing goes to waste
Burnes, with the Brewers coming off consecutive sloppy, uncompetitive losses to the Dodgers the previous two games and needing a stopper, delivered.
He went seven scoreless innings against a lineup averaging nearly seven runs with an OPS of .871 in the month of August. Burnes struck out nine and allowed only two hits. He dealt with little traffic on the whole, though his toughest jam came right from the jump in the first inning thanks to shaky command.
Burnes escaped it with some of his best pitch execution of the season.
Burnes gave up a leadoff single to Mookie Betts in the first, then walked Freddie Freeman on five pitches.
After that? He allowed two base runners. Only one reached second base, and it was as a result of a Burnes balk with two outs in the third.
"Probably just juices flowing in the first inning, but then he worked out of it with some really good pitches," Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. "Then it got a little better in the second, and then it just took off. He was great, especially those last four innings. It was outstanding. Seven great innings in a big environment was great to see."
It was the type of performance a frontline ace puts on display when his team needs it.
And Milwaukee wasted it.
Brewers squander golden chance in the sixth
Through five innings, the Brewers offense had gotten almost nothing going against Lynn – although their three at-bats with runners in scoring position were more than they had in either of the series’ first two games – but they opened the sixth with consecutive singles from Tyrone Taylor and Christian Yelich to put runners on the corners.
Then things went south.
Taylor got caught between third and home on a comebacker to the mound and was thrown out with ease after a short rundown.
Carlos Santana, in a continuation of a series full of miserable luck for the Brewers bats, hit a 107 mph rocket on a line, but right at the first baseman Freeman.
Sal Frelick then popped out, dropping the Brewers to 0 for 10 with runners in scoring position in the series and squandering what was by far their best chance to score all night.
"Obviously not scoring is a pretty tough way to win," Counsell said.
Joel Payamps gives up go-ahead bomb to the most unlikely of candidates
To call Austin Barnes’ numbers this season at the plate ugly might be too kind.
The Dodgers backstop was batting .123 with a .206 OPS, .139 slugging percentage and abysmal .345 OPS. He had two extra-base hits in 42 games and had not had a multi-hit game all season.
But if anything could go wrong in this series – this most forgettable series – for the Brewers, it would.
And did.
With no margin for error because of the negligible offense, one elevated slider burned Milwaukee.
With one out in the bottom of the eighth, Payamps left a pitch up in the zone, Barnes got his hands in on it and pulled it 371 feet down the line in left for a solo shot that sent the Dodger Stadium crowd, which got to celebrate an 11th consecutive victory by its home team, into a frenzy.
Evan Phillips then recorded the save by striking out Willy Adames, his fourth punch out of the night, with the tying run at second.
The Brewers offense was lackluster in the sweep
The slider to Barnes was not, to be clear, a well-executed pitch by Payamps, but the onus for the loss does not lie in the arm of the right-hander.
It, instead is on the offense that scored three runs on 10 hits all series, the offense that has the worst OPS and batting average in the National League, the offense that is simply deficient in far too many areas.
"It looks like our bats had a hole today," Adames said.
"I’ve been trying to the whole year," Adames continued. "It’s not working for me, but we have to be better overall. We have to be better and have to play better baseball, including myself. I have to be better."
It was an ugly series from the Brewers' bats.
Sure, they couldn't buy an ounce of luck, but good offenses make their own luck. They were 0 for 11 with runners in scoring position and had just one hit with a man on base — Yelich's seeing-eye single against Lynn in the sixth Thursday.
The Brewers scored three or fewer runs over a three-game span for the fourth time in 2023.
They did that four times from 2017 to 2022. Combined.
"Well, we had a tough series," Counsell said. "I don’t think it means anything going forward."
The Brewers have high aspirations. The offense is what might hold them back.
Milwaukee can hope Counsell's assessment is true, but it flies in the face of nearly all the evidence up to this point in the season.
It is time to face the music with the Brewers offense, if it hasn't already been faced. It's the middle of August. This offense hasn't been good. It hasn't even been average.
Relative to the rest of the league, it's been bad.
It's hard to point fingers at any one area and it probably isn't all that productive to do so, anyway.
But this unit has turned into Christian Yelich, William Contreras and then everyone else ― a hodgepodge of hitters with solid track records who are underperforming, a hodgepodge of hitters with league-average or worse track records who are underperforming and then a handful of rookies.
And, yet, a hitter whose 115 wRC+ with the Brewers last season would rank third on the current team, who has hit 20 homers in 73 games and has a .969 OPS at Class AAA while still in the organization, hasn't gotten a sniff at the majors this year.
The fact that the Brewers remain in first place, although by only two games now after the lead was just 3 1/2 about 28 hours before the final out was recorded Thursday in Los Angeles, remains somewhat incredible.
The Brewers' team OPS+, a stat that adjusts OPS for park factors and is weighed against league average, currently stands at 87. Only two teams have made the playoffs with an OPS+ that low since 1973 excluding the shortened 2020 season that saw 16 teams make the postseason.
The pitching remains incredible. Burnes is pitching like an ace once again. So is Freddy Peralta. Brandon Woodruff is at that level since returning, too. You won't find a better reliever this year in the NL than Devin Williams.
Optimism, at least, still exists in the Brewers clubhouse.
"Obviously it was a tough series," Burnes said. "If we want to win the World Series we’re going to have to beat teams like this. I think we have the team to do it. We can score runs when we need to. We can pitch and we can play defense. That’s what it takes to win the World Series."
On a night like this one, where the scenery was picturesque on the west coast but the Brewers' bats were anything but, it's an arduous task to think of this team and the World Series in the same sentence.
It may require some squinting, but squint hard enough and you still might be able to see it — as long as you can look past all those flashing warning signs from the offense.
Brewers schedule coming up
Friday – Brewers at Rangers, 7:05 p.m. Milwaukee RHP Brandon Woodruff (2-1, 1.99) vs. Texas LHP Andrew Heaney (9-6, 4.17). TV: Bally Sports Wisconsin. Radio: AM-620.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Corbin Burnes pitches a gem but Brewers shut out by Dodgers anyway
