Brewers’ Devin Williams after botched save – ‘No one feels worse’

MILWAUKEE — The moment was exactly as the Milwaukee Brewers wrote it. But as is sometimes the case in Hollywood, a well-crafted script doesn’t always translate into a satisfying ending.

At least not for the Brewers and certainly not for the star of that script, closer Devin Williams, who gave up a season-ending three-run homer to Mets slugger Pete Alonso with one out in the ninth, giving him a 2-0 lead in Milwaukee turned into a 3-2 deficit. New York won 4-2 on Thursday to win the deciding game of the three-game NL wild-card series.

Thus concluded an exciting season for one of baseball’s most exciting and tight-knit young teams. Then, and true to form, Williams confronted the media and took the blame.

“This is the closest team I’ve played with,” Williams said. “That makes it all the more disappointing. Everyone did their job except me. I feel like I let everyone down.”

The setup was perfect. Brewers were up by two, ninth inning, as their star closer took the ball. Williams converted 14 of 15 save chances after returning from injury during the season. Just 24 hours earlier, he flawlessly closed out Milwaukee’s Game 2 victory. The entire ballpark was about to erupt.

“It was a great script for us,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “Devin has been as good a closer as there has been in baseball in the two and a half years he has been playing.”

Sure, some nervous energy crept into the ballpark when Francisco Lindor drew a walk, holding back a swing on ball four. Then Brandon Nimmo hit a screaming single to right.

And sure enough, Alonso stomped on the plate and squeezed the handle of his bat so violently that he might have left a trail of sawdust behind him. And of course Williams fell behind 3-1. Yet this was Devin Williams, and Alonso, as dangerous as he is, hadn’t homered in more than two weeks. And Williams? He allowed just one home run all season.

“He’s the best closer in the game,” Brewers starter Tobias Myers said after pitching the most memorable game of his young career, shutting out the Mets for five innings. “It’s just a crazy game we’re playing, it can happen anytime. But no one loses confidence in that guy. He’s one of the best for a reason.”

Williams said the pitch, one of his signature changes, on the outside of the plate, wasn’t terrible. Only the results were.

“It could have been better, but it wasn’t the worst pitch I’ve ever thrown,” Williams said. “I wanted to run with it. I got it there. It was a good hit.”

As American Family Field fell into a kind of buzzing silence that almost resembled reverence, demons from October’s past ran around the rafters of the enclosed ballpark. As close as the Brewers came to finally breaking through, the result was the same: five straight losses in the last six years, all after the Brewers were one win away from the 2018 World Series.

It happened again.

“You can look at history if you want,” Murphy said. “But I think the best part of history, if you want to report on history, is that the Brewers have been to the playoffs six out of seven years on one of the smallest budgets and in one of the smallest markets in baseball .”

In the hallway outside both clubhouses, the scene after the match was as completely different as you could imagine. Family and friends of the Brouwers comforted each other. Around the bend, just out of sight, there were raucous cheers and shouts on the Mets side. It was a stark portrait of playoff baseball, right off the field.

Inside the Brewers clubhouse, the team’s bond was evident as players and coaches circled around, hugging, slapping hands and cheering each other on. And of course, no one wanted to let Williams carry the burden alone.

When told about Williams’ comments, outfielder Sal Frelick said, “Devin is very professional, so obviously he’s going to tell you that. But we all know he’s not alone.

“We had plenty of opportunities early in the game. We left a lot of guys in scoring position. Obviously we went into the ninth with a two-point lead and everyone did their job to the best of their ability. That’s a team loss right there.”

Frelick, who homered twice on the season, hit a dramatic shot into the field in the seventh after pinch-hitter Jake Bauers charged into the crowd with a shot to right. Unfortunately, such triumphs are impossible to celebrate when a must-win game fails.

“That is certainly the case with the birth of my child,” Bauers said. “It’s hard, man. It’s hard to be excited about it now.’

The home runs gave the Brewers the cushion they carried into the ninth. The two-run margin was far from insurmountable, especially for a Mets team that has shown a knack for clutch drama. But the Brewers had Williams.

The script was letter perfect up to that point.

“Just a lot of disappointment,” Williams said. “We’ve been working all year to get to this point. They gave me a two-point lead there in the ninth. That’s how you set it up. I couldn’t get through for the guys. Nobody feels worse than me.”