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The Brewers' luck finally ran out

Alex Trautwig / Major League Baseball / Getty

The Milwaukee Brewers should've died ages ago.

With three weeks left in the season and their playoff hopes already in dire straits, superstar Christian Yelich was lost to a freak injury. That should've been it.

A team so plainly meh couldn't possibly keep up with the Chicago Cubs - or even with the bevy of comparably middling teams vying for the second National League wild-card berth - without its best player.

Inexplicably, however, rumors of Milwaukee's immediate demise proved false.

The Brewers won the day Yelich fractured his kneecap in Miami to improve to 76-68. They proceeded to win all but five of the 18 games remaining on their schedule, ultimately hoisting themselves past the Cubs and into the wild-card game.

As expected, the Brewers' offense shriveled in Yelich's absence, but their who's-that-guy pitching staff carried the freight, with the likes of Jordan Lyles and Drew Pomeranz et al - defective arms manipulated into competence by manager Craig Counsell - collectively authoring a 2.93 ERA over the season's final two-plus weeks. It beggared belief.

Still, all that improbable run earned Milwaukee was the right to a slightly more dignified death in the wild-card game - this time at the hands of the demonstrably superior Washington Nationals, who had a better record, a better run differential, home-field advantage, and, most importantly, Max Scherzer on ample rest. Scherzer, the three-time Cy Young Award winner who made a strong case for a fourth this season before missing time with an injury, appeared to be a mountain that couldn't be climbed, not without Yelich. The Brewers should have been dead. Again.

Yet, as evening turned to night on Tuesday in D.C., the Brewers seemed poised to defy their mortality once again Their continuing opportunism at the plate and a coterie of suddenly awesome "out-getters" - they long ago rejected the starter-reliever nomenclature - afforded them an early 3-1 lead that persisted well past the point of comfort for the 42,993 Nats fans in attendance.

From the very first plate appearance of the game, the Brewers looked to possess this inscrutable ability to be successful in spite of themselves. After working the count full against Scherzer, leadoff hitter Trent Grisham - the rookie outfielder filling in for Yelich - took a fastball over the outer third of the plate, just below his knees. It could've been called a strike. It was called a ball. The next batter, Yasmani Grandal, ripped a first-pitch heater into the bullpen in right field. Prior to Tuesday's game, Grandal had gone 1-for-16 in his career against Scherzer, slashing just .063/.167/.063. This is how things have gone for the Brewers of late.

Meanwhile, Milwaukee starter Brandon Woodruff - bequeathed a two-run lead that was extended to 3-0 in the second inning by Eric Thames' solo home run - overpowered the Nationals' potent lineup with triple-digit heat, ultimately allowing only one run over four innings before yielding to Brent Suter.

Suter threw a scoreless inning. Pomeranz followed with two shutout frames. And as Josh Hader, the team's late-inning dynamo, came charging in from bullpen in the bottom of the eighth, entrusted to protect a 3-1 lead and punch his club's ticket to the NL Division Series, it looked like the Brewers' formula - mix and match with the out-getters and hopefully get a timely hit or two - was going to pay off again.

But it didn't. Finally, in the bottom of the eighth, Milwaukee's luck ran out, with Hader and Grisham playing pivotal roles in the Nationals' three-run uprising that revealed truths that the Brewers' September surge had obscured: They weren't going to realistically contend without Yelich, and any team that puts this much strain on its bullpen is destined for heartbreak.

Just to get here, the Brewers had Hader throw more innings in September than all but 11 MLB relievers. The state of the "rotation" had necessitated it. And perhaps that's why Hader's command was nowhere to be found in that pivotal eighth inning.

With the bases loaded and two out, Juan Soto lined a single off Hader into right field, which ought to have scored two runs to tie the game. Instead, a misplay by Grisham - who watched the ball scoot by him as he tried to pick it up - allowed all three baserunners to score, gifting the Nationals a one-run lead while amplifying Yelich's absence in the most wrenching fashion imaginable.

And that was it. Daniel Hudson needed only 11 pitches to navigate the bottom of the Brewers' order in the top of the ninth, working around a harmless one-out single to Lorenzo Cain.

"It was a wonderful effort," Counsell told reporters after the game. "Things didn't go our way tonight, but I'm incredibly proud of what they accomplished. It's an incredible group. They accomplished a lot. They should be proud. This is a difficult night. No reason to hang your heads with the season we have, absolutely none for us. I'm really proud of what we did."

And he should be. After all, the Brewers weren't a good team by any objective metric. Their 89-73 record, for one, belied their plus-3 run differential, which was considerably worse than, say, the New York Mets and Arizona Diamondbacks. Outside of Yelich, Grandal, and rookie Keston Hiura, who was only with the club for about half the season, the lineup was largely devoid of impact players. Mike Moustakas and Cain coped with injuries throughout the season. The pitching, meanwhile, was Hader and a melange of nobodies. Yet the Brewers came within a few outs of securing a date with the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLDS. That's impressive.

At some point, though, reality was bound to kick in.

On Tuesday night, it did.

Jonah Birenbaum is theScore's senior MLB writer. He steams a good ham. You can find him on Twitter @birenball.

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