Brewers’ Brice Turang shouldn’t have to explain HBP-that-wasn’t in last at-bat of Game 1 loss

That’s just how it is. In other words, a matter of pure instinct. Sure, some players have a knack for racking up HBPs. Turang’s teammate, Caleb Durbin, had 24 this season. Turang, on the other hand, was hit just twice. The questionable art of getting hit by the pitch could be called a practiced skill. But in today’s game of triple-digit heaters and toothy 92 MPH sliders, it’s one that teams don’t want their star players practicing. This isn’t the 1970s, when fastballs clocked in the 80s, not the upper 90s or 100.

These days, getting hit by the pitch involves a combination of immobility in the batter’s box, luck (good or bad?), and batting stance, crowding the plate so that there isn’t time to dance away, only to turn the shoulder as ball smacks flesh or bone. Turang is agile, doesn’t crowd the plate, and wasn’t lucky enough for Blake Treinen’s breaking ball to sweep a few inches closer to his leg.

The context of the at-bat also begs consideration. Two strikes, two outs, one-run game in the bottom of the ninth of a playoff game. Adrenaline is high. The bloodstream is jacked up with hormones screaming fight or flight. While one could argue that in a situation of that importance Turang should have “taken one for the team,” it’s also true that those very stakes made such a counter-intuitive, instinct-defying reaction that much more impossible.

These aren’t excuses. They are elements of real-time circumstances that cannot be re-created from the couch or on the floor of a televised studio set.

If there’s something Turang could be nitpicked for, it’s going after the 2-2 heater way up and out of the zone. Fair or not, after the HBP that wasn’t, the wayward hack was that much harder to stomach. That pitch or even that at-bat as a whole isn’t to blame for the loss. With Turang stepping up to the plate, the Brewers would be in a tie game, 1-1 with a chance to take the lead, had Abner Uribe not walked in a Dodgers insurance run in the top half of the inning.

Frustrating an end end as it was, the only thing the Brewers can do is dust themselves off and get ready for a must-win Game 2 behind ace Freddy Peralta.