{"id":85210,"date":"2024-09-08T22:01:31","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T02:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=85210"},"modified":"2024-09-08T22:01:48","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T02:01:48","slug":"september-slump-slowing-brewers-quest-top-seed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/09\/08\/september-slump-slowing-brewers-quest-top-seed\/","title":{"rendered":"September Swoon, Daunting Schedule Slowing Brewers&#8217; Quest for Top Seed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">MILWAUKEE \u2013 The normally affable and occasionally verbose Pat Murphy needed just a handful of words to sum up his team\u2019s last few days.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThat was a tough homestand,\u201d the Milwaukee Brewers manager said Sunday after his team fell, 4-1, to the lowly Colorado Rockies. In the process, they lost a second consecutive series to an opponent likely to spend October watching the playoffs on television.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Along with dropping two of three to the Rockies, the Brewers also managed just one victory in a three-game set against the St. Louis Cardinals earlier in the week and have lost five of their last seven games, overall.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>September Slump Continues for Brewers<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The slump hasn\u2019t made much of a difference in the Brewers&#8217; quest for their second straight National League Central Division title \u2013 and third in four seasons \u2013 but it did knock Milwaukee back of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies, who currently hold the two best records in the NL and stand to receive first-round byes in the postseason.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With 20 regular season games remaining, there\u2019s still time to catch either of those two teams, but doing so will be an even greater challenge thanks to a daunting slate of opponents over the next few weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Brewers hit the road Tuesday for a three-game set at San Francisco before heading to Phoenix where they\u2019ll face the red-hot Diamondbacks. When they return home a week from Monday, none other than the NL-best Phillies will be waiting for them followed by another series against Arizona.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThis was a week when we could have made up some ground and really done some things,\u201d Murphy said. \u201cNow we\u2019ve got some great opponents \u2013 we usually play better against great opponents but we\u2019ve got some great opponents \u2013 we\u2019ve got the Giants on the road and they have one of the best home-field advantages in all of baseball and then we\u2019ve got the hottest team in baseball seven times and then the Phillies, who have the best record in the league.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe\u2019ve got to go in there right.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Colorado held the <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Brewers?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Brewers<\/a> offense in check in the series finale and Milwaukee suffered their fourth loss in the last five games. <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/BrewersFinalPitch?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#BrewersFinalPitch<\/a> | <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ThisIsMyCrew?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#ThisIsMyCrew<\/a> <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/DBWoZm1uak\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/DBWoZm1uak<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Bally Sports Wisconsin (@BallySportWI) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BallySportWI\/status\/1832889097519542529?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">September 8, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For the Brewers, \u201cright\u201d means getting back to the principle that Murphy has tried to instill in his young, inexperienced team from the first day of spring training: win tonight.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Milwaukee\u2019s unexpected, season-long stranglehold on the division lead happened by adhering to that dictum, predicated upon two other buzzwords Murphy continues to lean on this season: relentless and <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/07\/17\/brewers-remain-undaunted-second-half\/\" target=\"_self\">undaunted<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>How to Right the Ship<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Brewers were winning games by focusing on each pitch, each play, each moment. But in the recent slide, Murphy sees a team that\u2019s gotten away from those characteristics.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cEverybody goes through swoons. They could be tired. They could be feeling it,&#8221; said Murphy. He added, &#8220;They could be trying too hard. The young guys have to make a decision. The game\u2019s not just going to come to you. You can\u2019t just decide you\u2019re going to get a result, you have to get into the process and meet the game halfway and you have to be ready to do that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThere\u2019s a responsibility and an awareness there and the young guys, they\u2019ve gotta learn that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s reason to believe the Brewers will, since of all the factors leading to their success this season, none has been bigger than an ability to keep their slumps to a minimum. Milwaukee is the only team to lose no more than three games in a row this season.<\/p>\n<p>Plus, despite struggling with teams lagging behind them in the standings, the Brewers have held serve against some of the game&#8217;s best, owning a 45-35 record against teams above .500 this season.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;You\u2019re going to have down moments so you have to figure out how to maintain yourself and focus on the things you control,&#8221; shortstop Willy Adames said. &#8220;We\u2019re still in first place, we just have to play better, execute, and make the adjustments. Everybody here knows. We have a lot of young guys but they know what to do. They\u2019ve done it all year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">&#8220;It\u2019s just been a tough week.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: \u00a9 Benny Sieu-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MILWAUKEE \u2013 The normally affable and occasionally verbose Pat Murphy needed just a handful of words to sum up his team\u2019s last few days. \u201cThat was a tough homestand,\u201d the Milwaukee Brewers manager said Sunday after his team fell, 4-1, to the lowly Colorado Rockies. In the process, they lost a second consecutive series to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5129,"featured_media":85213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27,1071],"tags":[92,296,645,21201,268,3174],"class_list":["post-85210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brewers","category-mlb","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-mlb-playoffs","tag-nl-central","tag-pat-murphy","tag-philadelphia-phillies","tag-willy-adames"],"modified_by":"Lewis Masella, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}