Brewers put shortstop Willy Adames on IL with hopes of healing quadriceps
The Milwaukee Brewers have to try to get Willy Adames healthy before the postseason. That’s how much he means to them.
The energetic shortstop was placed on the 10-day injured list Sunday after aggravating the left quadriceps strain that had nagged him since mid-August in the Brewers’ 4-0 victory Saturday night over the St. Louis Cardinals.
“He can’t play with it,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “That’s why he took some time off (earlier), because he was having problems with it. It’s to the point where there’s no reason to play like this and be compromised. Put him on the injured list and give him some time to heal.”
Adames’ quadriceps had been bugging him for a few weeks, prompting Counsell to give him time off recently. He sat out three consecutive games from Aug. 25-27 before seeing action as the designated hitter in the final two games of a three-game interleague series in Minnesota.
Counsell rested Adames again in the opener of four-game series last Monday in San Francisco before reinserting him in the lineup at shortstop. Adames was playing in his fifth consecutive game when he re-aggravated the strain.
“I think quads, what we’ve learned is that this injury, you can function with it, but to be fully past it, it just takes longer,” Counsell said. “We’ve got 10 days (minimum). We’ll see where we’re at in 10 days and go from there.”
Entering play Sunday, the first-place Brewers had 25 games remaining in the regular season and held a 10-game lead over Cincinnati in the NL Central. That gave them some cushion to try to get Adames healed, with the additional bonus that three of the next 10 days were scheduled off days.
“The hope is he misses 10 days (only),” Counsell said. “He’s on the injured list. I don’t have that answer for you know. The point is that this shuts him down completely and gives him a chance to heal faster rather than being active and trying to think about playing games.
“Shut him down and then just worry about getting better. (Don’t worry) about baseball and just worry about getting his legs (healthy). I don’t have the answer to an exact time frame.”
How big of a difference has Adames made with the Brewers since being acquired in a May 21 trade with Tampa Bay? The day before he reported, the team had a 21-23 record and was sitting in third place in the NL Central, four games back. Entering Sunday, the Brewers were 83-54 and 10 games on top.
That made the Brewers a remarkable 62-31 (.667) with Adames on the roster, giving them a 14-game swing in the standings.
The main impetus for the trade with Tampa Bay to acquire Adames was that Luis Urías, given the chance to be the everyday shortstop, was making two many throwing errors. The tipping point came on May 18 in Kansas City when Urías made two throwing errors in a 2-0 loss at Kansas City, giving him nine for the season.
Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns said he had talked with Rays baseball boss Erik Neander previously about Adames without gaining traction. This time, Stearns pressed the issue and struck a deal that sent relievers J.P. Feyereisen and Drew Rasmussen to Tampa Bay.
Adames joined the club May 22 and the Brewers immediately began winning, clicking off three victories in a row. Adames indeed stabilized the shortstop position in the field but did two other things that were not foreseen – jumpstarting an underachieving offense and injecting a huge dose of energy and enthusiasm to the club.
Adames got the Brewers off on the right foot in the first game of the second half in Cincinnati, contributing a home run, double and single with four RBI to spark an 11-6 victory in what became a hugely important three-game sweep. After that victory, Counsell left no doubt about the impact Adames was making.
“There’s no question about it, he changed our team,” Counsell said. “Our team changed when he got here.”
The Brewers kept winning, and Adames kept hitting, looking nothing like the player who was struggling so badly at the plate in Tampa Bay (.197 batting average, .625 OPS) at the time of the trade. In 88 games with Milwaukee, including 85 starts at shortstop, he has batted .294 with 17 home runs, 51 RBI, .905 OPS and 171 total bases.
Asked if trying to play through the quadriceps issue had sapped some of Adames’ energy, Counsell said, “I think a player gets frustrated by the injury, No. 1, and it’s not easy to play while you’re trying to kind of put a governor on yourself and I think that’s what we’ve been trying to do over the last five days. It’s hard to play like that.”
Lauer, Peralta to go on regular rest
Whenever possible, Counsell has tried to give his starting pitchers an extra day of rest between outings to protect their arms in going from the pandemic-shortened 60-game season in 2020 to the full 162 games this year. But lefty Eric Lauer and right-hander Freddy Peralta were slated to pitch on the regular four days of rest in the final two games of the Philadelphia series.
There were multiple reasons for going with Lauer and Peralta on regular rest against the Phillies. For one, it allows the Brewers to get by this week without replacing injured starter Brett Anderson (bruised shoulder) in the rotation, particularly with a scheduled off day Thursday.
Though Lauer went a season-high seven innings last time out in San Francisco, throwing 90 pitches. But he has not had a heavy workload overall, with 89 1/3 innings pitched for the Brewers.
In his first outing coming off the IL with shoulder inflammation, Peralta went only two innings, throwing 53 pitches in a shaky start (four runs) against St. Louis. Accordingly, Counsell thought he could handle coming back on the fifth day.
“It was the plan for Freddy from the start, to pitch him short and bring him back in four days, and then Eric, we bumped up a day,” Counsell said. “It was as stress-free an outing as you can have (for Lauer). I don’t think he was taxed.
“With the off days (coming), we have a lot of flexibility in how we move forward after that.”
Anderson, who went on the 10-day IL after being struck on the pitching shoulder by a line drive in San Francisco, is coming along well, Counsell said.
“He played catch today; he played a light catch yesterday, really with no issues,” Counsell said.
Houser had it in him
With so much attention given the Brewers’ “Big 3” in the starting rotation – Brandon Woodruff, Corbin Burnes and Peralta – and deservedly so, it probably surprised some folks that Adrian Houser would be the one to break a long individual shutout drought for the Brewers when he blanked the Cardinals in a 4-0 victory Saturday night.
Houser became the first Brewers pitcher to go nine innings in a shutout since Kyle Lohse on Sept. 14, 2014, a span of 1,011 games, a major-league record. No Brewers pitcher had gone nine innings, period, since Jimmy Nelson on June 18, 2017, in a 2-1 squeaker over San Diego.
Houser has been up and down since moving into the starting rotation during the 2019 season. He struggled badly during the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, going 1-6 with a 5.30 ERA in 12 games (11 starts).
This season, Houser had turned in more productive outings, going 7-6 with a 3.69 ERA over 23 games (21 starts). But he still had some notable hiccups, such as his previous start in Minnesota when he allowed six hits, three walks and five runs in six innings in a 6-4 defeat.
Houser was at his strike zone-pounding best against the Cardinals, throwing 76 of 100 pitches for strikes while issuing no walks. He surrendered three harmless singles while logging seven strikeouts.
“I think Adrian is having a really nice season,” Counsell said. “Just look at the numbers (8-6, 3.41 ERA with the Brewers going 15-7 in his starts), look at the body of work. It’s clearly a step forward if you measure it over a season’s length. He’s getting better.
“As much as anything, it’s experience. I think his sinker is better this year. That pitch is a better pitch and there’s a lot of metrics that bear that out. It’s been a more effective pitch. Everything else gets lumped in there – command and secondary pitches.
“The thing with Adrian is that the ball is on the ground (a lot). In general, lower strikeout rates and the ball on the ground, I think our improved defense matters for Adrian. That stuff factors into a pitcher like that.”
