The spotlight was on Eric Haase as he sent a Michael Lorenzen changeup a dozen rows into the bleachers in left field in the third inning Tuesday night against the Kansas City Royals, but his greatest impact on the Milwaukee Brewers’ first win of the season may not have been anything he did at American Family Field.
Behind the plate, Haase helped Chad Patrick, making his first major-league start, get through nearly five scoreless innings as the Brewers won, 5-0, wiggling in and out of jams with the help of some deft receiving and game-calling.
But the tale of the backup catcher, relegated to a life of sporadic playing time and generally paltry offensive statlines, is never about what you see. It’s about what you don’t.
Haase, in his eighth year in the majors, knows this by now. But it’s not only that.
He also lives it.
While Patrick was attached to his couch Monday night battling not only an illness that kept him from even attending the Brewers’ home opener earlier that afternoon but also trying not to stress over the biggest start of his life, Haase was glued to his laptop. The 32-year-old sifted through every pitch thrown by Brewers pitchers hours prior to the same Royals hitters he would have to help Patrick navigate in short time.
Haase didn’t just do this because a rookie was set to pitch the next day, or because he was slated to catch. The Brewers’ backup backstop does it after every game he doesn’t catch, watching, analyzing and taking notes.
“I’m pretty OCD about it,” Haase said. “After the game I try to go back and watch every single pitch. Try to see what the hitter’s showing you what kind of adjustments they made.”
Typically, Haase’s starts come at the end of series when William Contreras needs – or is forced – to take a day off from squatting. That’s fine by him; it allows him at least one game’s worth of opponent swings to study, typically more.
“I’ll watch everything from the side (live), but from the side it’s really tough to tell,” he said. “You see what happens but you don’t know what we’re trying to do, what the thought was, so going back gives me a really clear view of what the hitters are showing me. Regardless of who’s on the mound, every hitter’s got tells on what their approach is, so trying to figure that out. It worked out well for us today.”
Also working in Haase’s favor was his familiarity with Patrick. The two spent the first three months of the season together a year ago at Class AAA Nashville, allowing the veteran to get on the same page as the youngster.
So when push came to shove under the big-league lights, the former knew more about the latter than the pitcher himself.
“A lot of confidence with him,” Patrick said. “He called a really great game. Mixing in and out, high and low, cutters in, cutters away.”
When push came to shove and Patrick had runners on second and third with two outs in a scoreless tie in the second, preparation and familiarity won out.
Patrick fell behind Royals centerfielder Kyle Isbel, 2-1, with a couple of bad fastball misses. The wheels were spinning a bit on the mound. A pitch had to be made to get back in the ...
