MILWAUKEE – For Brewers fans, it was a day to meet two of the new guys – and to appreciate one who stuck around.
The team introduced two of its Trade Deadline acquisitions before and during a 4-2 win over the Pirates at American Family Field on Tuesday, when the Brewers set a plan for Dustin May’s debut in Thursday’s series finale vs. Pittsburgh, saw the much-rumored (but not traded) Logan Henderson deliver a quality start and then called on Antonio Senzatela to work a scoreless seventh inning of a victory that made Milwaukee the first team in the Majors to reach 70 wins this season.
It’s the earliest in franchise history that the Brewers have logged 70 wins. That’s after they also reached 60 wins, 50 wins and 40 wins earlier than ever before, and matched the club record for the 30-win mark.
“I was stoked,” said May of his move up the NL Central standings from the fourth-place Cardinals to the first-place Brewers. “I mean, being able to come to a team that’s leading the division by a lot, a great ballclub [with] a really good chance to go to the playoffs and make a run, I’m very thrilled to be a part of it.”
Jackson Chourio homered and drove in two runs to back Henderson’s six innings and Andrew Vaughn also went deep for the Brewers in their first game after adding a trio of arms at the Deadline: May and reliever JoJo Romero from the Cardinals and Senzatela from the Rockies. Romero is still recovering from an appendectomy and won’t pitch until later this month, but May and Senzatela got right to work – Senzatela after arriving at the ballpark only 30 minutes or so before Tuesday’s first pitch, according to Brewers.tv reporter Sophia Minnaert.
“I just got off the plane, got here, got ready to throw in the game and then the first name they called was me,” said Senzatela, who wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. “I love to pitch. It’s nice to compete. Even though I was tired, it was a good game I threw out there.”
It started with a pitcher who was not among the dozens of players changing teams in the past 24 hours. Henderson, the 24-year-old right-hander, who was one of the Brewers’ most sought-after commodities in trade talks over the past few days but he stayed put, then held the Pirates to a pair of solo home runs over six solid innings capped by a trio of strikeouts when he earned an opportunity to face the heart of Pittsburgh’s order for a third time in the sixth.
Henderson was happy to still be wearing Milwaukee’s uniform.
“I just saw [president of baseball operations Matt] Arnold earlier, and I said thank you for not dishing me away,” Henderson said. “I love this team.”
“With us adding a starting pitcher, then you have to consider, ‘OK, who needs the work in Triple-A? Who needs to go down? Who can move to the ‘pen?’” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “You look at all of those options and [sending down Sproat] was the choice.
“It’s really about what’s best for the player, what’s best for the team. You combine those, and that’s what you come up with.”
Of Sproat, Murphy said, “He’s got some leeway [in Triple-A] to work on some things, to ask some questions, try things, to kind of formulate his arsenal, which works in-zone. Because the free bases, the wild pitches, the walks, the hit-by-pitch. That’s got to stop. You can’t pitch in the big leagues doing that.”
May, 28, was 5-7 with a 4.38 ERA in 21 starts for St. Louis, including a gem against the Brewers in late May in which he carried a no-hit bid into the eighth inning of an eventual loss to Milwaukee.
With more than seven years of Major League service, he has nearly five years’ more experience than any of the Brewers’ other current starters.
“I’m a completely open book,” May said. “I’ve been through a lot of the highs and definitely been through some of the lows. I feel like I have a very good mix of how the game can go very well, very fast and it can also go very bad, very fast. I would like to say you can talk to really anybody in my past that I’ve conveyed that to, that I’m a complete open book and you can ask me any question. I’m going to do my best to give my best outlook.
“They’re getting a guy with a lot of fight. I definitely show a lot of emotion on the mound. I’m very fiery, and you’ll be able to see that on Thursday.”
