The Brewers’ bullpen is a talented, mysterious puzzle

When the Brewers were leading 4-0 in the eighth inning of Game 3 of the NLCS, I was screaming at my television. “Don’t bring in Hader! Don’t bring him in! Save him, you fools!”

When the Brewers were leading 4-0 in the ninth inning of Game 3 of the NLCS, I was screaming at my television. “I’ll bet you wish you could bring Hader in right now!” Which is to say that I was spending my time parsing the differences between four-run leads.

Welcome to the Brewers’ bullpen, which has been a strength all season and is as confusing as heck. It’s a strength, it’s a weakness, it’s a floor wax, it’s a dessert topping, it’s a Rorschach test, unless it’s a cat in a box with a flask of poison. You get to decide what the Brewers’ bullpen is. And when you figure it out, I’d really appreciate it if you could email me.

Start with a disclaimer: We won’t know how Josh Hader’s appearance in Game 3 will affect his availability for Game 4 or Game 5. He threw eight pitches — eight ridiculously dominant pitches — which probably shouldn’t eliminate him from consideration for Tuesday night. While Hader doesn’t often pitch in back-to-back games (he did it five times all season), when he did, it was usually after he threw a modest number of pitches in the game before. In April, he came back the next day after throwing 12 pitches. In June, he came back after two pitches, in July after four pitches, and early in August, he came back after nine pitches. There’s a precedent, here.

(After throwing 24 pitches and allowing four runs in another August appearance, Hader came back the very next day as a figure-out-what-was-wrong day, but that was a very notable exception to the rule.)

So Hader isn’t ruled out for Game 4. The evidence suggests that he’ll pitch as long as he needs to, actually. Save the screeds and missives. Another 10 pitches, and we would have got to use them, dang it.

But Hader’s will-he/won’t-he is a very unique wrinkle to this postseason. Usually the postseason is when teams start screwing around in the laboratory. October is when Clayton Kershaw pitches on short rest again and again. It’s when Madison Bumgarner is a reliever two days after he was a starter, when Randy Johnson is the ace reliever to get the Diamondbacks into extras in Game 7. There’s a real “You can sleep when you’re dead” pace to the postseason, and this is what we’re used to.

It’s not the case with Hader, and that’s not to suggest that the Brewers are wrong for not grinding him into a powder. They know their talent, and there’s a very, very good reason why they’re not using him for 30 pitches every game. I’m not even going to hedge with a “probably a very, very good reason” there. They would love to use him for 30 pitches every game. That they don’t suggests that the risks are greater than the rewards, which suggests the rewards aren’t as guaranteed as we think. They’re using their superweapon judiciously because they have to.

This is a new wrinkle in the postseason portfolio, a reliever who can’t be worked too hard. I love it.

I love it because it makes bullpen management seem like a turn-based strategy game. Pardon if this gets too esoteric, but Hader is like something from X-COM or Into the Breach. You have a unit that can shoot his plasma cannon six squares or whatever, but you have to account for the cooldown period.

EDITOR: Grant, can you jump on a call real quick? Got some questions about Tuesday’s column.

Forget it, I’m rolling. We’re talking a magic unit in a strategy game, and you could absolutely devastate the entire board if you didn’t have these limitations.

But you do.

So.

Once Hader is gone, the Brewers bullpen is still very good, but it’s good in a remarkably ordinary way. Corey Knebel is a strikeout deity, but he allows a fair amount of dingers, and his ERA/FIP let you know that not every inning is a clean inning. Jeremy Jeffress is a talented all-star, but he isn’t that far removed from being a totally disheveled enigma. Rangers fans don’t remember him as an all-star, so when he’s doing things like loading the bases in the bottom of the ninth inning, they’re thinking, “Yeah, I remember this guy.”

Again, despite what they’ve shown in this NLCS (and parts of the NLDS), the Brewers’ bullpen should be a strength. Unless there’s fatigue beyond the normal level, and we’re just not aware of it, this is a collection of pitchers that should help the Brewers hold leads. They should help the Brewers win.

And in the middle of it all is a magic pitcher who can’t be used the same way that Andrew Miller was in 2016. Even though it feels like he should be.

It’s going to affect every decision Brewers manager Craig Counsell makes for the rest of the postseason. His decision to bring Hader into a 4-0 game was extremely questionable. If you know that your ace reliever isn’t built for a three-game stretch of 90 combined pitches, there’s no sense in bringing him into a game when the Brewers had a 97.8-percent chance of winning and a solid reliever (Joakim Soria) in. If David Freese decided to foul off a dozen pitches against Hader, it might have won Game 4 for the Dodgers, even if it didn’t do much for Game 3.

Except nobody fouls off a dozen pitches against Hader. Which is the point. There is definite value in quasi-guaranteeing a 2-1 lead in the NLCS, and I can respect that.

Still, this isn’t the super-bullpen we’re used to in the postseason. This isn’t the 2014-15 Royals. This is an extremely top-heavy bullpen, with one verifiable bullpen monster and several very good bullpen arms. Those several good arms are similar to the several good arms that the other teams have in the LCS, for better and for worse. It’s hard to get to the LCS without them. What the Brewers have is a not-so-secret weapon and a starting staff that sure needs that weapon if they’re going to win the championship.

As of this writing, they’re closer to winning the World Series than any other team in baseball, so they’re doing just fine. But when it comes to roster permutations like this, I’m not sure if we’ve seen anything like it. When it’s all done, Craig Counsell will probably deserve a raise, unless he deserves to be fired.

It’s a fine line. Be glad you don’t have to walk it. I stress out too much when I’m playing X-COM. I can’t imagine this.