The Milwaukee Brewers lose at bullpen roulette

By following their pre-determined bullpen scheme rather than reacting to the situation in front of him, the Milwaukee Brewers are sent packing.

If ever a game illustrated the concept of bullpen roulette, it was Tuesday’s wild-card game between the Milwaukee Brewers and Washington Nationals.

Craig Counsell’s Brewers entered the game with a pitching plan: Use Brandon Woodruff for four innings, grab a lead, follow with Brian Suter and Drew Pomeranz, and close with Josh Hader, possibly the National League’s most feared late-innings option.

For most of the night, the plan worked perfectly. Two batters into the game Yasmani Grandal hit a two-run home run, Eric Thames followed with another in the second, and the Brewers led 3-1 most of the way.

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Meanwhile, Woodruff, Suter, and Pomeranz took turns stifling the Nationals on a solitary home run and three hits through the seven innings. Pomeranz, the last of the three to work, was especially effective, retiring all six Nationals he faced in order.

In the modern game, front offices and managers absolutely adore mapping out strategies as if the contest were a table-top exercise. It isn’t: it’s an actual labor engaged in by humans not all of whom always perform as anticipated. Even the best have bad days.

They forget that, and in the process of adhering to their pre-determined script, they also forget something your daddy told you: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The caution against relying on bullpen roulette as a strategy is based on that advice. It cautions that a manager who goes to his pen frequently enough will eventually find the one guy, even if he’s viewed as an ace, who doesn’t have his stuff on that particular night. In the eighth inning Tuesday, Counsell followed his pre-set plan, played the game like the table-top exercise he and Milwaukee Brewers execs had scoped it out as rather than a living, breathing “must-win” struggle, and found Hader.

Counsell’s fondness for Hader is understandable. In 61 appearances, he has compiled a 2.62 earned run average with 37 saves, striking out 138 of the 292 batters he faced: that’s 47 percent.

Still, there have been warning signs. Since Sept. 15, Hader had made a half dozen appearances, encompassing 6 and two-thirds innings in which he had allowed three earned runs including two home runs. One of them was a killer by Colorado’s Sam Hilliard just the previous Saturday.

He had, in other words, been entirely human for the previous two weeks. Counsell doubtless would respond to that reality thusly: He’s our guy.

On Tuesday, Hader was human, which by definition means he was prone to fall. He struck out the first batter he faced, albeit on a 3-2 pitch. The victim, Victor Robles, abetted his own downfall by chasing a shoulder-high fastball for strike three.

But then Hader also went to 3-2 on pinch hitter Michael A. Taylor and fired a boring fastball that drilled Taylor, or the bat handle. The Brewers thought the latter, but the umps ruled the former, video review let that call stand, and Taylor took first base.

Trea Turner fanned for the inning’s second out largely because Turner chased two high fastballs. But pinch hitter Ryan Zimmerman dropped a hit in front of Lorenzo Cain in center, and Hader – pitching too cautiously to Anthony Rendon – walked him on another 3-2 count.

To that point, Hader had thrown 27 pitches, 17 of which had missed high, and he had escaped an even worse circumstance only due to the impatience of Robles and Turner. The next hitter, Juan Soto, would not render further assistance.

Soto fouled off one pitch, took another, then drove a four-seamer in front of Trent Grisham in right field. The shot was guaranteed to score the tying runs, and Rendon also scored when Grisham – in his haste to make a play that couldn’t be made – overran the ball for an error.

Would the outcome have changed if Counsell had forsaken his faith in bullpen roulette to allow Woodruff, Suter and/or Pomeranz to work one more inning? We’ll never know. That wasn’t in the plan. We do know, however, that at the moments they were lifted, those three had permitted a collective four base-runners, and we do know that the last of them – Pomeranz – had retired all six batters he faced on a total of just 26 pitches.

We know one other thing. Because of their slavish adherence to a pre-determined plan, the Milwaukee Brewers will watch the rest of the post-season from the comfort of their lounge chairs.