How 28-year-old rookie Isaac Collins embodies the Brewers' winning ways

New York Times

2 days ago

Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of the game.
The text message came to Isaac Collins from Garrett Schilling, a teammate on the 2022 Hartford Yard Goats. It was early December of that year, and Schilling was following the minor-league phase of the Rule 5 draft, being held at the winter meetings in San Diego.
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Collins, relaxing at home in Arizona, was not.
'It said, 'Brewers,' exclamation mark,' Collins said. 'And I was like, 'Uh…what?''
That punchy declaration – Brewers! – is overtaking Major League Baseball this summer. Milwaukee has swept four series in a row, with a 12-game winning streak propelling the team to the majors' best record, at 76-44. It's as if Bernie Brewer is sliding upwards, somehow, on an anti-gravity joyride.
'We have a group of guys that are just humble enough to understand that what's most important is winning, not my stats and how much I'm getting paid,' Collins said. 'It's 'Let's win, and this will elevate all of us.''
Collins — a switch-hitting outfielder drafted for $24,000 from the Colorado Rockies' farm system — beat the New York Mets last Sunday with his eighth home run of the season and first walk-off blast of his life. He's hitting .288 with a .384 on-base percentage and .448 slugging percentage, and his .833 OPS leads all National League rookies with at least 300 plate appearances.
Some rookies have more homers, like Miami's Agustín Ramírez (17) and Atlanta's Drake Baldwin (13), but Collins could be the leading candidate for NL Rookie of the Year. His team almost never loses when he's in the lineup: the Brewers are 56-18 (.757) when Collins starts.
'He's a winning player,' manager Pat Murphy said. 'It started to shine through when given the opportunity early in the season, and then we couldn't get them out of there.'
Opportunity is the word that Mike Collins, Isaac's father, has always stressed to his sons. Sports offer precious few chances, so seizing them is critical. A starting defensive back for West Virginia in the early 1990s, Mike Collins roamed the pro ranks for a job: cut by the Buffalo Bills and injured in NFL Europe tryouts, he retired after a season in Arena Football with the St. Louis Stampede.
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That was all before Isaac was born in 1997. He grew up consumed by sports, constantly dribbling a basketball, learning to switch-hit so he could bat lefty like his older brother, Roman (who went on to play in the minors for Kansas City), and dreaming of playing college football for the Mountaineers, like his dad.
Collins' own family will grow in the next few days, as he's expected to miss this weekend's series against the Reds for the birth of his first son.
'I would tell Roman and Isaac, just from my experience, play as long as you can,' Mike Collins said. 'Because once it's over, it's over.'
For Mike Collins, it was basically over with the 1994 Sugar Bowl, a 41-7 humiliation by Florida that ruined an undefeated season. The polls had squeezed West Virginia out of the Orange Bowl — which matched No. 1 Florida State and No. 2 Nebraska — and the Mountaineers, he said, could not shake that letdown.
'The difference between that experience and what the Brewers are doing now is that the Brewers have everything within their control,' Mike Collins said. 'They don't have to rely on somebody putting them into a game. All they've got to do is continue to win and play the way they're playing — being selfless and next man up — which is what they've done all season.'
The Brewers will almost surely reach the postseason for the seventh time in the past eight years, still searching for the first championship in franchise history. Their summer streak could be another tease, but they've overcome plenty just to get here.
Milwaukee opened the season in the Bronx, losing three to the Yankees by a combined score of 36-14. Collins was there, but only because another outfielder, Blake Perkins, had broken his shin with a foul ball in spring training. The team was unsure of Collins' defense — he'd played more second base in the minors — and his bat.
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'We didn't think he'd be with us full-time; we thought he'd be an up-and-down guy, to be honest,' Murphy said. 'He didn't show the ability to swing left-handed last year. And even in spring, we were like, 'Eh, he's a right-handed hitter off the bench.' But it was a nice security blanket — and he's the right kid, we knew that. He gets it.'
For the Brewers, there was a lot to like. In selecting Collins from the Rockies — who had left him off their 38-man Triple-A roster after the 2022 season — they saw a versatile switch-hitter with speed (30 steals in Double A) who understood the strike zone. Those qualities always help.
'We sometimes joke about dumpster diving here in a way that is actually a lot of fun,' general manager Matt Arnold said. 'We have a lot of guys that have been overlooked for a lot of years, and you always have to try to find value in (those) spots. I think it shows up all over our roster, but especially with somebody like Isaac Collins.'
The opening series was a 'yard sale,' Arnold said, so it was easy to miss what Collins did. He didn't start, but in his first at-bat of the opener, he saw nine pitches before grounding out. In the ninth inning, he drove a one-hop double off the wall in deep right-center. The next afternoon, Collins went 1-for-2 again.
The opportunities kept coming, and Collins kept producing. He has stayed sharp on the mental side by working with the team's sports psychologists and said that makes a difference, too.
'For me, it was just 'What's within my control?'' Collins said. 'That's my mind, body and craft. And if I can really get the best out of all three of those three things, then I'm going to give myself the best chance to win.'
The Brewers – the Brewers! – are making the most of those chances, and winning more than anybody else.
The Seattle Mariners travel to Williamsport, Pa., for Sunday's Little League Classic against the Mets. If aspiring young pitchers want to learn a new pitch, they should seek out tips from Matt Brash.
Brash, a 27-year-old right-hander from Kingston, Ont., deploys one of baseball's most devastating sliders. No American League pitcher (min. 30 innings) throws the slider more often than Brash, who uses it more than 60 percent of the time. And why not? Batters are hitting .188 off Brash's slider, with no extra-base hits until Jackson Holliday beat him with a double in Baltimore on Wednesday.
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A fourth-round pick from Niagara University in 2019, Brash was traded from San Diego to Seattle at the 2020 deadline for righty Taylor Williams. After leading the majors in appearances in 2023 with 78, Brash underwent Tommy John surgery and returned this May. As the primary setup man for All-Star Andrés Muñoz, Brash has a 1.42 ERA.
Here are some thoughts on his signature pitch:
A teammate's tip made the difference: 'I've always been able to spin the ball really well, just from childhood. I used to throw a knuckle curve more going into college. In my junior year one of my teammates, Tyler Howard, threw a lot of sliders. I think he only threw in the low 80s, but it was a really good slider and I was like, 'What's your grip?' You know, just ballplayers shooting the (bull). And I started trying it and it was okay, but once I got into pro ball, my velo started to tick up and the slider has gotten better and better each year. Now I'm just super comfortable with it, and I can throw it in any count, at any time.'
The old guys were nasty, too: 'My dad's a huge Jays fan, and I was a huge Jays fan growing up. So I've seen some of Dave Stieb's stuff, maybe just like old clips of it, and he had a great slider. I love seeing some of the older pitchers throwing crazy stuff. I feel like we throw really good stuff now, but back in the day, there were still big sliders, big sweepers, whatever you want to call it.'
A trade and a year off helped: 'I just saw it as a new opportunity. The Padres were kind of trying to change some stuff with my delivery — maybe they didn't love the way I threw — but when I got to the Mariners, they were like, 'Hey, just keep doing what you're doing.' And it helped after the COVID year I went from mid-90s to touching 100 that next spring. I worked really hard in the COVID year. I feel like my arm maybe needed a little break and I got my shoulder healthy and probably gained another 15 pounds and I did a real throwing program for the first time, maybe, ever.'
Play that funky movement: 'I've had hitters, especially righties, say that it doesn't get that normal depth and sweep on it. They think it's going to drop, but it kind of just stays across and sweeps across the zone, so I get a lot of guys swinging underneath it. I think that paired with my velo, there's just something about it. It's a good pitch and I get whiff on it, so I throw it a lot.'
Dos and Don'ts: 'When I get underneath it, it sometimes just gets spinny and isn't as sharp. So I try to stay on top of it, almost like a curveball, and when I catch a seam, I get that good horizontal (movement). I always tell guys: 'Middle finger inside the horseshoe, index is actually off the ball when I release. Throw it like a heater and let the grip do its thing.' A lot of guys try to throw the big slider and sometimes you can see them trying to manipulate the ball. I feel like the good ones are coming right off your heater grip, same arm speed, obviously, and just with a lot of conviction. I feel like that's why mine's really good, too: I'm not trying to get big sweeping numbers, I don't really care. As long as I'm throwing it hard and (with) full conviction, that's what I'm going for.'
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Whenever the Immaculate Grid asks for someone who played for the Phillies and Dodgers, I think of Pat Zachry. This is unusual, I know — his rarity score was .05, meaning that just .05 percent of some 46,000 Grid players chose Zachry for that spot.
But we're all a product of our experiences, right? And Zachry pitched mop-up relief for the Dodgers in Games 3 and 4 of the 1983 National League Championship Series at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. I was there, eight years old, totally enraptured by the whole scene. Two years later, Zachry ended his career with the Phillies. So that's why he came to my mind.
Most people remember Zachry for something else. When he died last year, the headline of Zachry's obituary said he was 'known for a lopsided trade.' That's true enough; it was Zachry's fate to be the one pitcher the Mets acquired from the Reds when they foolishly traded The Franchise, Tom Seaver, to Cincinnati in 1977.
Zachry went 41-46 with a 3.63 ERA in six seasons with the Mets. His peak would always be 1976, when he was the co-Rookie of the Year and helped the Big Red Machine win a championship. He started and won Game 3 of the World Series, the first at the renovated Yankee Stadium, which gave writers the chance to share something truly memorable about Pat Zachry.
Here's Stan Hochman in the next day's Philadelphia Daily News. Never accuse Hochman of burying the lead:
Baseball, see, is a game of inches. Fractions of an inch, sometimes. Like the way the brass bullet barely missed shattering Pat Zachry's spine back in Waco, Tex., nine years ago.
'I had this little accident with a gunshot,' Zachry said before going out to pitch the Reds past the Yankees on a raw, windy night.
'I was where I didn't belong and the guy mistook me for a prowler,' Zachry said. 'The bullet went through my kidney, through my lower intestine. Missed my spine by an eighth of an inch.
'Trying to steal something? Nah, just some old guy's daughter. Lucky it was a brass bullet, a .22. They gave me lots of blood and I came out of it okay. I remember my daddy getting there, seeing me laying down in the ambulance. He said to me, 'Maybe next time you'll use the front door and ring the doorbell.' I know from then on it was a long time before I went in anybody's yard after dark.'
Pat Zachry ventured into somebody's backyard after dark last night. The Yankees' backyard.
That, folks, is sportswriting at its finest. Rest in peace, Pat Zachry.
On Aug. 15, 1965, the greatest band in rock history reached the pinnacle of its fame at Shea Stadium. The Beatles had never played before a crowd so big — 55,600 fans, screeching so wildly that John Lennon played the organ with his elbows; sound quality didn't matter, anyway.
'At Shea Stadium,' Lennon would say years later, 'I saw the top of the mountain.'
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The Mets, who shut out the Astros in Houston that day, will be home on Friday at Citi Field, on the site of the old Shea parking lot. Ushers who worked at that 1965 Beatles concert will throw out the first pitch.
Howie Rose, the Mets' venerable radio voice, was not there; he was only 11 years old then. But Rose cares as deeply and passionately about the Beatles as he does the Mets, which is saying something. The fact that those worlds once collided — even for just 30 minutes, many decades ago — has always had a powerful impact.
'In 2006, when we had the 1986 reunion, it was the first time they set me up as the emcee out at second base, which is where the stage was,' Rose said. 'So I'm not exaggerating, the entire time I was out there, I'm looking up and I'm thinking, 'This is exactly the view that the Beatles had.' And some of these (players) had become friends over the years, right? These are guys I like and I want to punch up the introductions. (But) I'm just sailing through introducing these baseball players, and it was all I could do to stop myself from breaking out into 'I'm Down' or 'Baby's in Black,' which I thought were the two best numbers in that concert.'
On the ground floor at Citi Field, which opened in 2009, the hallway walls commemorate some of the great moments at Shea. To Rose, the image of the Beatles transcends the baseball highlights.
'We couldn't have foreseen that, 60 years later, their music would still be a part of the culture that exists three generations out,' Rose said. 'I'll look at that picture, without fail, every night on my way to my car. I look at it and I go, 'Wow — wow! That happened here.''
(Top photo of Isaac Collins: John Fisher / Getty Images)
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