PEORIA, Ariz. — Brewers left-hander, climate activist, mound gymnast and dugout percussionist Brent Suter is not a man prone to dark thoughts. Yet there he was at home in Cincinnati in early October, unable to eat. He watched replays of the nightmare he had just lived through in Game 1 of the National League Wild Card Series against the Dodgers, when his quick tempo spun out of control, he couldn’t harness his breathing and a pitcher known for filling up the strike zone suddenly couldn’t find it with a map.
For days, Suter sunk into a depression.
“You know, when you compete and you work all year for the postseason and then have a heartbreaking performance like that, it just stays with you a little bit,” Suter said. “But it motivates you. You learn from it. You get better from it.
“It was fuel for the fire for an offseason of work. So, I’m looking to help the team any way I can this year and try to be a much better pitcher than I was last year.”
Suter took his first steps toward the 2021 regular season on Wednesday when he struck out a pair of batters and worked around a walk in a not particularly efficient, but nonetheless scoreless, hitless inning in the Brewers’ 8-5 win over the Padres at Peoria Sports Complex. Suter debuted a slider, a pitch he worked on over the winter and plans to incorporate into his funky, breakneck and entertaining style of pitching in the coming season.
First, he had to pick himself up.
Last fall, after the Brewers made the postseason for a third straight year despite a sub-.500 record, Suter became their latest unconventional Game 1 starter because Corbin Burnes was down with an oblique injury and Brett Anderson had a blister.
Suter was a viable choice.
He had already made four spot starts during the regular season — lasting at least three innings each time — and he didn’t allow a run in any of the final three. That included a start one week earlier in St. Louis when the Brewers had to win in order to remain in the hunt for MLB’s expanded playoffs. And Suter had pitched in the postseason before, throwing a scoreless inning at Washington in the 2019 NL Wild Card Game.
Yet this time, the situation spiraled on him after Mookie Betts led off the bottom of the first inning with a double. Three of the next four hitters walked, including Dodgers catcher Will Smith to force home a run. Two batters later, Suter walked AJ Pollock to force in another run, making Suter the first pitcher in history to walk in multiple runs in the first inning of a postseason game. With five walks in all, he matched another dubious all-time mark for a postseason appearance shorter than two innings.
The Brewers lost, 4-2. When they lost again the next day, their season was over and the Dodgers were on a path to being World Series champions.
“I came home, I didn’t really want to eat,” Suter said. “I was kind of in pretty much depression for a little bit.”
How long did the feeling last?
“It lasted the whole offseason, but it was really bad the first week or week and a half,” Suter said. “I was pretty much in depression for the first 7-10 days. I had to get my wife to snap me out of it. It was mostly my wife, my parents. Those were most of the people we were seeing because we were trying to keep our circle small. And then some teammates, former and current teammates, called to pick me up and all that stuff. And then there were people in the Milwaukee community who were unbelievably supportive.
“Like, it was unbelievable. Brewer nation picked me up when I was down. I really can’t thank them enough for that.”
Said one of those teammates, Drew Rasmussen: “Brent, you guys know him, he’s one of the greatest humans on Earth. But also he’s one of our leaders. It makes me happy to know that he felt like we had his back. That set him into the offseason with a little added motivation more so than what he normally has.”
Suter said he turned the corner once he started his offseason workout program and began looking ahead to 2021.
There was a process, he said, of accepting what happened. That included rewatching the outing a couple of times and noticing how he had failed to commit to his breathing exercises. He also saw the mechanical issue — stepping too far across his body and getting too far out in front in his delivery — he’d gotten away from during the regular season, when he posted a 3.13 ERA in 16 games and 31 2/3 innings and was one of manager Craig Counsell’s most versatile relievers. Suter vowed to clean up those issues over the winter.
Then he decided he’d seen enough. He does not plan to watch that video again.
“I’ve been doing a lot of meditation and relaxation techniques over the offseason to just try to make sure the tempo doesn’t get away from me and I’m able to control the game, rather than have the game speed up on me,” he said. “I’m trying to get back up and be the best teammate I can to the guys and all the fans and family that supported me in everything. I’m trying to be all that much better for it.”