Milwaukee’s bullpen finished Game 5 and the World Series, and on Friday the bullpen will be honoured on Wisconsin Avenue. JoJo Romero, Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill closed a 4-1 win over Tampa Bay after Jacob Misiorowski left with a calf cramp, having thrown five and two thirds scoreless innings. The sequence was not dramatic in the way a walk off home run is dramatic. It was methodical, professional and, in the end, inevitable: three relievers, each doing his job, each handing the game to the next man with the lead intact.
The bullpen’s season was built for exactly that moment. Milwaukee’s relief corps led the league in several measures of effectiveness, and the club’s strategy all season was to get a lead to the bullpen and let it hold. That strategy worked in the regular season, when the Brewers finished with the best record in baseball, and it worked in the postseason, when they won 11 of 13 games. Game 5 was the strategy in miniature: a rookie starter who gave length, a bridge that did not wobble, and a closer who finished without drama.
The parade as a roster celebration
Friday’s parade, beginning at 10 a.m. at North Fourth Street and West Wisconsin Avenue and finishing at Henry Maier Festival Park, is a roster celebration rather than a star celebration. Around 400,000 fans are expected downtown, the festival grounds are free until capacity, and the amphitheater rally seats sold out on Thursday. The players recognised at Lambeau Field on Thursday night will now be recognised in Milwaukee, and the bullpen, which rarely receives the attention of a starting lineup, will ride through the city it helped to a title.
Cooper Pratt’s contribution should not be forgotten in the pitching story. The 22 year old drove in two runs in Game 5 and set a Series rookie record with six straight hits, a performance that gave the bullpen a lead worth protecting. Championships are won by the interaction of hitting and pitching, and Game 5 was a perfect example: timely hitting created the margin, and relief pitching preserved it.
Why bullpens win titles
Bullpens win titles because the postseason is a bullpen game. Starters pitch fewer innings, matchups matter more, and the team with the deeper relief corps has an advantage in every close game. Milwaukee understood that all season, building a bullpen that could cover for a starter’s early exit, as it did in Game 5, without losing the lead. The Brewers set the celebration for Friday, October 30, with a parade and rally that honour that understanding, and the bullpen’s ride down Wisconsin Avenue will be the most fitting part of it.
By Friday evening, Romero, Uribe and Megill will have gone from the mound in Tampa Bay to a parade in Milwaukee, with a trophy in between. That journey, from the bullpen to the main street, is the story of a team that won as a group, and it is the story Milwaukee will tell about this season for years.
