Brewers Notebook: Bauers Keeps Raking, Henderson, Contreras Takeaways
Milwaukee continued its winning ways against top NL competition this weekend, taking two of three from the Braves for its third straight series win.
After a semi-rocky start to the month of August, the Milwaukee Brewers appear to be cruising once again. They followed a huge series win against the Dodgers in L.A. by taking a three-game set against the Mariners at home. This weekend, they kept the momentum going in Milwaukee against the Braves.
The matchup between two of the top three teams in the NL started with a bang on Friday in a showdown between team aces: Jacob Misiorowski versus Chris Sale. It was the former who ended up coming out on top as the Brewers edged out a 2-1 victory.
Saturday featured another matchup between two of the NL’s best starting pitchers as Logan Henderson squared off against Martín Pérez. Once again, it was the Brewers who came out on top.
The Braves did get to Henderson early, going walk-strikeout-single before a Michael Harris II double gave Atlanta an early 1-0 lead. Henderson settled down immediately after that, though, as he induced flyouts to get out of the inning and allowed no more than one baserunner per inning over the rest of his six-inning start.
Milwaukee took the lead for good in the third as an RBI single by William Contreras and a two-run homer by Jake Bauers gave the Crew a 3-1 lead. Cooper Pratt added an insurance run on a sacrifice fly in the fourth, and that was all she wrote as the Brewers secured their third straight series with a 4-1 victory.
The Braves, for their part, did end up salvaging one game in the series on Sunday night. Despite a late Brewers rally, Atlanta held on for a 4-2 win in the Little League Classic in Williamsport, PA.
Jake Bauers Continues His Breakout Year
The exclamation point of Saturday’s game for Milwaukee was Bauers’ homer in the third. All it took was a mere 23 pitches before he drove the ball 413 feet to center field.
Those 23 pitches came during Bauers’ first two plate appearances of the game against Pérez. In their first encounter in the first inning, the former caused the latter to throw 11 pitches, five of which were fouled off. Bauers wound up drawing a walk.
“I think it was pretty clear that was gonna have to be the approach, just kinda try and grind him down as much as I could,” Bauers said after the game. “He was making really good pitches, kind of living on the edges, not giving me much to hit, so I was prepared to keep going for as long as it took.”
The second matchup saw Bauers up the ante and force Pérez to throw 12 pitches, seven of which were fouled off. The final pitch, which was just the second four-seamer thrown in the at-bat, was deposited over the wall.
“That one felt good,” Bauers admitted. “I got into the dugout and I told Murph that might’ve been the best at-bat of my life. Obviously, it means a little more when you’re 12 pitches deep and trying to get a job done, so just happy I was able to come through.”
Bauers is having the best year of his career by far, slashing .273/.382/.503 with 23 homers and 75 RBIs, all of which would be career highs. His 143 wRC+ is currently sixth among qualified lefties, ahead of sluggers like Munetaka Murakami, Kyle Schwarber, CJ Abrams, and Bryce Harper.
“I think Jake has been through enough in his career that he’s come into his own,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said after the game. “He has a belief system now. He understands who he is.”
Logan Henderson Keeps Accumulating Quality Starts
Though Misiorowski garners a majority of the attention in the Brewers’ starting rotation, Henderson has gotten off to a historic start of his own to his career. He kept that trend going on Saturday afternoon.
Henderson had a final line of six innings pitched and one earned run allowed on five hits and two walks while striking out four. He reached 100 pitches for the first time in his career, throwing 62 for strikes.
While the final line looked good, Henderson found himself battling a bit more than normal. He threw just 50% of his first pitches for strikes on the day (12 of 24), which was far down from his normal rate of 67.4% on the season.
“I certainly didn’t have my best stuff today,” Henderson said after the game. “I think I was trying to be too fine with the changeup today. I knew that they were gonna be aggressive coming into it, I think mentally I tried to place it instead of just throwing it with conviction.”
“[Brewers pitching coach Chris] Hook did a great job of reminding me that the changeup is really good, you need to sell it more instead of trying to place it in a good spot. I was able to make the adjustment in one of the innings in the middle of the game and I feel like that carried through and helped to finish the outing.”
Either way, the outing continued his streak of starts with three earned runs or fewer to begin his career. Having done so 18 times now, he and Zac Gallen of the Diamondbacks are the only pitchers since 1893 to have given up three earned runs or fewer in each of the first 18 starts of their careers.
“He’s just such a wonderful person and he cares so much about the team that he feels so responsible to his team that he competes that way,” Murphy said of Henderson. “And it’s so evident, and guys want to play behind him.”
“Anytime he goes on the mound, I’ve said this before. Whenever he goes on the mound, I feel him because I know he feels that awesome sense of responsibility.”
William Contreras has Been Waking Up at the Plate
Brewers star catcher William Contreras has been experiencing some of the lowest slash numbers of his career, with his OBP (.337), slugging percentage (.390), and OPS (.727) currently on track to be his lowest marks since his rookie 2021 season.
That’s particularly been the case over the middle of the summer, which tracks with his career. Contreras’s worst months by OPS for his career are June (.679) and July (.750). Luckily for the Brewers, two of his three highest months happen to be August (.872) and September/October (.827).
It appears as though his bat has started to wake up accordingly. Contreras had eight hits during the series with the Braves, including a 4-for-4 outing on Friday and a 2-for-4 game with a double and an RBI on Saturday.
Contreras is now a scorching 13-for-29 with two doubles, a homer, and six RBIs, as well as a 1.106 OPS over his last seven games. He has shown better discipline of late as well, with three walks to just two strikeouts over that span.
“I think William knows he’s being way more disciplined,” Murphy said on Saturday. “Just look at his ball-strike recently and what he’s faced. He’s faced two of the best pitchers in the league the last two days and look at how he’s kept himself disciplined.”
The Brewers’ manager was asked before Saturday’s game about how the veteran has navigated a season with perhaps some more offensive struggles than normal. Murphy praised how the veteran has approached things while not lowering his expectations of himself along the way.
“William’s a very emotional guy and he loves baseball and has very, very high standards for himself. Players go through this, you know,” Murphy said. “He’s done amazing things, but he’s so hard on himself.”
“I think he’s having a really good year, but results are the key for him,” Murphy continued. “That’s trying to get him more involved in the process, understanding that, hey, this is a good at-bat. Not when he leaves the zone, no, but when he hits the ball on the screws, that’s a good thing. So I think he’s doing better than he gives himself credit for, and his expectations are really high.”
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Matt Carroll is a writer for Just Baseball and former site expert at Reviewing the Brew. He studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently…