Kovacevic: 'It's like this place is haunted or something'

MILWAUKEE -- Francisco Cervelli was still shaking his head as he buttoned up to the shirt collar. It was as if he'd never seen a ghost before.

At least not this one.

"Let me ask you something," the catcher came at me with the role reversal. "This has been going on for a long time, right?"

The Miller Park thing, he meant. This just after the Pirates lost here yet again, 5-3, to the Brewers on a Thursday night that looked no different than any other meeting of these teams in this place over the past decade-plus.

So how best to answer this relative newcomer to the House of Horrors?

Oh, yeah: The graphic graphic. Which I just happened to have on the phone ...





"Wow!" Cervelli said. "That's just crazy."

Sure is.

"But wait a second," he added. "What's this thing about a sausage?"

Ha! Rookie!

I don't know about you, but I'm through trying to process, much less explain why this happens. How a team that's 30 games over .500 can get swept by a team that's 20 games under .500 not just this time but also coming out of the All-Star break. With a playoff berth, first place in the Central Division and maybe more on the line.

So I asked Neil Walker, anything but a rookie to this experience, how this could have happened yet again, and with the Pirates bound next for St. Louis for what should have been a showdown series but now is just one team looking up 6 1/2 games at the other:

https://youtu.be/cRvc2B8Q-lY

(And no, I didn't actually ask Bernie Brewer anything, though you saw in that video that he would have been all too glad to go out of character and comment!)

Let's turn to another member of the Milwaukee side, another guy who wears a mask.

“I don’t know. That’s hard to say,” Jonathan Lucroy, the Brewers' wonderful catcher, said of the Pirates here. “Some teams struggle in certain places. It’s hard to put a finger on it. They have a really good team."

After a pause, he continued: “But you can’t discount the fact that we’ve thrown the ball really well against them. We also swung the bats well in this series.”

Fair enough. Milwaukee outscored the Pirates, 21-11, and outplayed them in all three phases. Significantly at times.

But come on. That was Zach Davies, a 22-year-old, 150-pound American Legion pitcher Wednesday coming up with the biggest hit of the evening. And another kid, Taylor Jungmann, smashing a double of his own Thursday while silencing the Pirates over six.

I asked Aramis Ramirez, who's been on both sides.

"What, you think I'm going to say it's like extraterrestrial or something?" he replied. "I don't believe in that. It's just one of those things in baseball. One of those crazy things."

OK.

Frankie's fastball lament

The Pirates had won 10 consecutive games when Francisco Liriano started, but it was clear early in this one he'd be more passenger than driver: He'd get charged with four runs on seven hits and five walks over five-plus innings, and the truth is the line easily could have been worse.

Get this: In the first, Liriano threw nine pitches. Seven were balls. Another was a lineout. Another got him a double play.

I asked him to describe Milwaukee's approach:

https://youtu.be/8kJzYJsN3Lo

Catch that part about the fastballs?

When the topic arises of the Pirates being awful inside the division, this hardly ever comes up, but it should: Their opponents know them best. The Brewers had a plan to wait out Liriano's slider -- he has the lowest percentage of pitches inside the strike zone of any starter in the majors because it fools so many -- and hang on until the fastball came.

Other teams undoubtedly have the same information, but the Brewers, Reds, Cubs and Cardinals all have experienced enough first-hand to execute it.

Just a thought.

Happ-less no more

• The previous time the Pirates passed through St. Louis -- just three weeks ago -- they passed right over J.A. Happ in the rotation. So it's a powerful indicator of how far he's progressed in that span -- two total earned runs in 23 innings over four starts -- that he'll open this series Friday night.

I asked Neal Huntington, who's on this trip, about the Happ acquisition, and he described it as one that began way back.

"We've liked J.A. for maybe three years," the GM said. "We've looked at him, talked about him several times, and this was an opportunity where we could get him."

So what's gotten into Happ since his 21 starts in Seattle produced a 4.64 ERA, and his Aug. 4 debut with the Pirates lasted 4 1/3 innings and four runs?

Well, one thing I've uncovered on this trip is that Ray Searage's humility remains intact. When I'd quizzed Searage about Happ in New York a couple of weeks ago, he disavowed having anything to do with Happ. No tinkering, no nothing, he insisted with what I should have recognized then as a devilish smile.

I'm now informed that Searage pressed hard into Happ's past to rediscover some points of consistency, mostly studying film of his strong April with the Mariners. And with Happ a willing pupil, it came together quickly.

Next time, I'll safely assume Searage is always the answer.

Good riddance!

I'll leave Clint Hurdle with the final word from this place in 2015:

https://youtu.be/_5hw8KFRlow