MILWAUKEE — In any other season, in any other month, the Milwaukee Brewers' August 20 matchup with the Chicago Cubs -- a 9-5 home victory -- would've seemed like any other game.
Nothing of particular significance had come about in those nine innings, at least on the surface. The Brewers, coming in, were falling apart, performing like one of the National League's worst teams, down 18 games in the NL Central. Very little was going Milwaukee's way, but this game -- following back-to-back losses -- was at least a victory.
Still, August 20 seemed nothing out of the ordinary for the Brewers. What did seem unusual was what began to happen after that 9-5 victory. Milwaukee started winning. And didn't stop.
The Brewers would win 24 of their next 30 games after that seemingly insignificant contest. The standings began to show a completely different, rejuvenated team -- a team that might just have an outside shot at the playoffs.
Before that date, the postseason was an afterthought. A pipe dream. Even many of the Brewers' players would admit later that they didn't expect to play many meaningful games in September or October.
Of course, with a loss on Sunday to the Astros, Milwaukee was eliminated from postseason contention. But without the Brewers' August and September turnaround -- one that has made them baseball's best team through Sunday since that day in August -- elimination would've come much, much sooner in Milwaukee.
So what happened on that day to turn things around? What did August 20 and beyond mean for the Brewers?
Brewers pitcher Marco Estrada can remember the series before fairly clearly. The Brewers had been outscored by the Phillies 3-12 in the final two games of that series at home. Things just hadn't been going right.
But suddenly -- in the blink of an eye, it seemed -- everything was going right. After falling behind that day against the Cubs, 3-1, Milwaukee's offense exploded in the bottom of the fifth like it never had before. The Brewers scored eight straight runs in one inning -- their biggest single-inning output of the season.
It's an inning that, maybe, could have sparked an offense. But Estrada doesn't think that's it. It was a much more subtle turning point, he thinks.
"It was right after that series that everything clicked," Estrada said. "I don't remember anything that happened in particular. It's not like we were working harder or anything . . . We were doing everything the same, but you know what it was? It was the little things. The little things went our way.
"If you look at a lot of the games we've lost, they were all by maybe one or two runs. We were always in the game, but we'd hit a hard ball right at someone and stuff like that. After then, after August 20, we'd do the same thing, but it would find a hole or you'd get the random strike three call. I think (karma) is all it was because I don't remember changing anything. Everybody looked the same, acted the same, I thought we were playing the same, just things went our way."
Brewers manager Ron Roenicke had a quick answer to why that turnaround was so sudden: the bullpen.
"Things changed when the bullpen started throwing well," Roenicke said. "We were playing very good ball way before that point. But we weren't finishing games."
From that point on -- it's true -- Brewers relievers seemed to turn the page almost immediately on their awful first half of the season. John Axford, the ninth-inning leader of Milwaukee's bullpen, turned a 5.22 ERA and record of 18-of-26 on save attempts before August 20 into a 3.86 ERA and record of 15-of-16 on save attempts after. Francisco Rodriguez, Milwaukee's much-maligned setup man before that date, improved his 5.13 ERA from before that date to tally a 2.76 ERA after. With both playing so well as of late, the Brewers haven't had to worry about giving up games in the final innings.
But the results on the field showed more than just a change in the bullpen. It was an all-around change. A change that swept across the Brewers clubhouse like a tidal wave.
Offensively, the changes have been immense. Players in the Brewers' everyday lineup -- not including Jean Segura, who joined just a few weeks before August 20 -- improved their batting average by an average of 33 points. Of those improvements, NL MVP candidate Ryan Braun made the largest -- from .305 before August 20 to .367 after. At the plate, the Brewers' lineup could do no wrong after that date.
"Honestly, I feel like we've been the same team all year," first baseman Travis Ishikawa said. "This last month or so, I just feel like we've been playing, I don't know, better? And as a unit? I didn't know there was a turning point. I just think that this team, through the good and the bad, we've been a good, positive clubhouse . . . We've had that mentality all year, and everything has felt all the same."
There may be no explaining what switch turned on that day or what small, insignificant twist of fate turned the Brewers' season from a stinker into one of the more memorable final months in years. Baseball works in mysterious ways sometimes.
But no matter the reason, the Brewers' final month gave credence to their own belief all along: that this team was so much better than its record through August had implied.
And with the playoffs now out of reach, perhaps that will be legacy of this year's Brewers: a team that's record never matched its output -- even with all the magic of the final month and a half of the season.
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