Haudricourt: Brewers lose a tough game, a pitcher and any respect they had for Machado

LOS ANGELES – As Game 4 of the NLCS turned into an extra-inning marathon Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium, one of the teams was destined to absorb a very tough loss.

That team turned out to be the Milwaukee Brewers, who lost, 2-1, in 13 innings on a two-out RBI single by Cody Bellinger. 

Instead of taking a commanding 3-1 lead in the series, the Brewers fell into a 2-2 tie. They also had a personnel move to make with starting pitcher Gio Gonzalez exiting the game with a high ankle sprain in the second inning.

Manager Craig Counsell said afterward the Brewers would have to remove Gonzalez from the roster, which means his season is done. Once an injured player is taken off the NLCS roster, he is not eligible for the World Series.

"We'll have to put our heads together and look at what we've got," Counsell said. "We're in a little bit of a tough spot. That's the nature of a 13-inning game and losing your starter in the second inning.

"It's likely we're going to have to replace (Gonzalez)."

Among the choices the Brewers have to replace Gonzalez are Chase Anderson and Zach Davies, two former members of the rotation who have not pitched for some time, as well as Jordan Lyles, a swingman who also has been inactive.

Beyond losing the game and Gonzalez, and having Brewers players call Dodgers shortstop Manny Machado a "dirty player," Counsell had to answer questions about pitching to Bellinger with a runner on second and two down. Yasmani Grandal was on deck, followed by pitcher Julio Urias, with no position players left to bat for him. 

Bellinger lined a 3-2 slider from Junior Guerra, working his fourth inning, to right field on a pitch that Counsell said was not supposed to catch that much of the plate. If Bellinger walked, the plan was to walk Grandal to load the bases and see what the Dodgers did with Urias.

"We were trying to expand (the strike zone) on Cody Bellinger," Counsell said. "We just left a pitch too much up to Bellinger. I thought it was worth the risk to try to expand to Bellinger, and then if he walks, we walk Grandal and pitch to Urias. Once we had two strikes, we just got too much of the plate."

After the Dodgers scored a run in the first off Gonzalez on Brian Dozier's RBI single, they didn't score again until the 13th. Gonzalez's premature exit in the second prompted Counsell to go to rookie right-hander Freddy Peralta, who hadn't thrown a pitch in a game for 21 days. 

But, if there’s one thing we learned about Peralta during his 14 regular-season starts, he’s certainly not afraid. He issued two walks that inning but also struck out two batters and was off to the races.

Peralta would throw three hitless innings with three walks and six strikeouts before departing, the kind of relief outing that keeps a team in the game. Instead of going down by three or four runs early and watching the game get away from them, the Brewers trailed by only 1-0. No big deal.

After doing nothing against Dodgers lefty Rich Hill for four innings, the Brewers finally broke through in the fifth. And it was a familiar sight that allowed them to do it – another big pinch hit by Domingo Santana, who has been a revelation off the bench since returning in September from a two-month exile in the minors.

Santana’s double drove in Orlando Arcia from first base, and suddenly the game was tied, 1-1, much to the dismay of a Dodgers crowd that had been chastised the previous night by Los Angeles’ Kiké Hernández for not getting into the game as the Brewers took a 4-0 victory.

Suffice it to say that Hill did not take kindly to the Brewers tying the game. He returned to the dugout after the inning and laid waste to a container of candy, sending “Hi-Chew” flying in all directions. Sort of a preview of your children returning to the house after trick-or-treating at the end of the month.

Peralta was replaced by another rookie, Corbin Burnes, whose excellent work out of the bullpen this season was rudely interrupted by the Dodgers in Game 2. It was Burnes’ failure to retire any of the three hitters he faced in the seventh inning of that game that started the comeback that eventually saw Los Angeles erase a three-run deficit and take a 4-3 victory.

Burnes pitched two hitless innings with three strikeouts. So, combined, Peralta, 22, and Burnes, 23, allowed no hits over five frames, recording nine strikeouts. Brewers fans should feel pretty darn good about that, because there’s an excellent chance both will be in the starting rotation at the outset of the 2019 season.

Now, back to the Dodgers for a moment. Beyond Hernández being perturbed by the inertia of the home crowd the previous evening, Machado gave a puzzling interview to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic that was aired by FS1 before the game.

Asked why he doesn’t run hard to first base on groundballs, Machado said, “I’ve been thinking about it and it happens every time. There’s no excuse for it, honestly. I’ve never given excuses for not running. … I’ve done the same thing for eight years; I’ve been the same player.

“Obviously, I’m not going to change. I’m not the type of player that’s going to be ‘Johnny Hustle’ and run down the line and slide to first base and, you know, whatever can happen. That’s just not my personality. That’s not my cup of tea. That’s not who I am.”

What Machado has been in this series is a punk. He made two dirty slides into second base in Game 3, grabbing for shortstop Orlando Arcia both times to try to obstruct him. The Brewers asked for a video review the second time, and Machado was called for obstruction with a double play awarded.

Machado made a much dirtier move in the 10th inning of this game, driving his left leg into the back of Jesus Aguilar's leg at first base while grounding out to short. Understandably, Aguilar said something about it to Machado and the benches emptied to discuss it without further altercations.

Machado, who scored the winning run on Bellinger's single, will seek to get one of the biggest free-agent deals ever this winter and perhaps will do so but he has been a dirty player in this series, so buyer beware. MLB should take a good look at that play at first base and take appropriate action because there's no place in the game for a player to try to injure another player like that.

Aguilar said afterward he had talked it out with Machado but teammate Christian Yelich called it "a dirty play by a dirty player." Other Brewers made similar comments in their clubhouse.

Yelich went on to say, "He is a player that has a history with those types of incidents. One time is an accident. Repeated over and over again, it’s a dirty play. I have a lot of respect for him as a player but you can’t respect someone who plays the game like that. It has no place in our game. We’ve all grounded out. Run through the bag like you’ve done your whole life, like everybody else does.

"On the replay to us, it clearly looks like you go out of your way to step on someone. It just has no place in our game. It’s unacceptable. I don’t know what the problem is honestly. I’ve played against him a long time. It has no place in the game.”

"So many people were mad on the team," Aguilar said, "but we turned the page and we're going to come here tomorrow and play the game. We already talked. We're good. Everything is fine."

The Dodgers tried to pretend nothing really happened. Manager Dave Roberts said Aguilar had his foot on the bag and "didn't leave Manny a whole lot of room."

Told that Brewers players called him a dirty player, Machado said, "I play baseball; I try to go out there and win for my team. If that's their comments, that's their comments. I can't do nothing about that.

"You saw the replay. I was trying to get over him and hit his foot. If that's dirty, that's dirty. I don't know. Call it what you want."

Asked if he thought the slides at second base the previous night and the play at first were merely an indication of Machado trying to play the game hard, Counsell took his shot at Machado, saying, "I don't think he's playing all that hard."

Looks like it was a good thing that the Brewers didn’t get Machado back in July. Instead, they got his Baltimore teammate, Jonathan Schoop, who became such a disappointment at the plate that his playing time decreased dramatically, rendering him a non-factor in the postseason.

Counsell played a bit of a hunch and started Schoop against Hill despite having absolutely no success in the past (0 for 8, four strikeouts). The move didn’t work as Schoop went 0 for 5 without getting a ball out of the infield, not exactly Mr. October stuff.

Some trade-deadline deals work; some don’t. Schoop has fit in the second category since being acquired from Baltimore on July 31.