Brewers embrace Pat Murphy’s “Undaunted” motto in win vs. Pirates

MILWAUKEE — “Undaunted.”

If you want to understand how 65-year-old Pat Murphy approaches his job managing the plucky, first-place Brewers, Wednesday was a good day to visit. At 3:30 p.m. CT, a little more than three and a half hours before the first pitch of a 9-0 win over the Pirates at American Family Field, Murphy gathered coaches and players in the clubhouse for a monthly look under the hood of what he calls “the bus.”

“The people in there,” Murphy said, nodding toward the locker room, “that’s the bus. We don’t discuss MLB or what’s going to come or the Trade Deadline. None of that’s going to affect us. Let’s just worry about the bus.

“Moods don’t matter much to me. It’s the behavior of the dudes on the bus. And I thought I’d give them a gift.”

The gift was a T-shirt with “Undaunted” written across the chest in the script found on the Brewers’ alternate uniforms. Murphy says he first came across the word in a newspaper clipping from 1932 about his father’s high school football exploits, and at first didn’t know what the word meant.

So he looked it up. He had the definition printed and placed at each locker Wednesday along with the shirt.

Not intimidated or discouraged by difficulty, danger or disappointment.

That concept has stuck with Murphy ever since. And, as you might have guessed, it explains his approach to a Brewers team coming off postseason appearances in five of the past six seasons, which plays in the league’s smallest media market and which traded away its top starting pitcher (Corbin Burnes), is without its injured co-ace (Brandon Woodruff) and has had as many as nine pitchers on the injured list at one time this season.

Despite that, the Brewers have so far been undaunted. They have led the National League Central standings every day since April 30 thanks to victories like Wednesday’s, the foundation of which was laid when the team’s All-Star outfielder, Christian Yelich, beat an infield bouncer to first base with two outs in the first inning.

The hustle turned into a two-run rally when Willy Adames doubled Yelich home and Adames scored on Sal Frelick’s ensuing base hit.

In the fourth, the Brewers’ other All-Star starter, catcher William Contreras, delivered two more runs with a two-out double.

In the fifth, Rhys Hoskins made it 5-0 with a two-out home run, his third homer and fourth extra-base hit in the past five games following a stretch in which Hoskins had four extra-base hits in the previous 28 games. And in the seventh, Andruw Monasterio added yet another two-out RBI with a single that made it 6-0.

Along the way, the Brewers got eight brilliant, scoreless innings from starter Tobias Myers, a 25-year-old who was traded twice, designated for assignment twice, waived and then released — all before landing with the Brewers as a Minor League free agent at the end of 2022.

That’s being undaunted, as the manager sees it. The Brewers will need more of that against Pirates phenom Paul Skenes in Thursday’s series finale.

“I think it’s a good way to live,” Murphy said.