In case you hadn't noticed, William Contreras has emerged as one of the best players in baseball

PITTSBURGH – It was just another standard series between the Milwaukee Brewers and Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park.

Close games. Plenty of lead changes. A bit zany. Unpredictable until the finish.

This week’s four-game set between the National League Central opponents had just about everything that’s come to be expected when the two sides face off – save for the rain.

After the first three games were all pitching duels decided by a combined five runs, the offenses broke back out alongside the sun Thursday afternoon for the finale and it was a home run from an unlikely source against a longtime friend and former teammate that decided things when Gary Sánchez took Pirates reliever Aroldis Chapman deep while pinch hitting in the eighth inning trailing by a run.

The two-run home run flipped a one-run deficit into a slim lead for Milwaukee, which would hang on for a 7-5 win to split the series.

“It was tremendous, man. Tremendous,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “He’s a veteran hitter and he’s given us a big lift doing that. It won the game for us. Changed the momentum of the game. He did it off one of the best closers in a long time. This guy’s been doing it for a long time. Gary came up big.”

Here are three takeaways from the game:

Gary Sánchez is starting to come around at the plate

It was a slow start to the year for Sánchez, who signed with the Brewers late in the off-season and then missed the first half of spring training battling a hand injury. The veteran catcher was hitless in his first 13 at-bats with the Brewers and entered this week hitting just .107 with a .352 OPS.

“He had an abbreviated spring and with William (Contreras) catching every day, it’s been tough for Gary to get at-bats,” Murphy said. “We haven’t seen many lefties. That’s kind of why he was signed.”

The Brewers faced only one left-handed starting pitcher over their first 21 games and it came on opening day in New York with Jose Quintana on the mound. The streak of 20 straight games against a right-handed starter was finally broken Tuesday in Pittsburgh – and Sánchez responded by cranking a homer off the southpaw, Bailey Falter.

Then he came off the bench Thursday, hitting for Sal Frelick against the southpaw Chapman in the eighth.

No catcher had caught Chapman more in his career than Sanchez, his former teammate with the Yankees.

Chapman threw an 0-2 102-mph sinker that tailed up and out of the zone. Sánchez reached out and got his bat head on the ball, sending it into the right-field bleachers above the 21-foot wall.

“He’s a tremendous pitcher,” Sanchez said in an interview with Bally Sports Wisconsin after the game. “That was a great pitch that he threw. I don’t even know how I got it.”

Murphy was quicker to give his catcher credit.

“Gary, he studies the game,” Murphy said. “This isn’t just a kid who hits a lot of home runs. He studies the game and he’s not only familiar, but he applies that to his swing. That was beautiful.”

Trevor Megill earns first save in yet another impressive bullpen showing

Freddy Peralta had by far his roughest outing of the season Thursday, allowing five runs and not being able to get through five innings. His command was poor, which led to five walks as well as a three-run homer from Joey Bart.

But there, once again, was the Brewers’ bullpen to step up.

Hoby Milner, Abner Uribe, Jared Koenig, Joel Payamps and Trevor Megill combined to record the final 13 outs without allowing a run.

Brewers relievers threw 14 ⅔ innings over the four games with a 0.61 ERA after giving up just one earned run.

They’ve been a heavily-used group through the first month of the season, working in succession of a starting staff that has the fewest innings of any team’s starting pitchers in baseball.

The workload hasn’t seemed to bother them, though.

“Look at the numbers,” Murphy said. “They’ve been great. And these are relatively unknown guys. Nobody knows Koenig or Uribe or Payamps or Megill, to be honest with you. These aren’t household names. They’ve just earned their way and they’re hungry and they’re consistent. They’ve been unbelievable for us.”

Murphy for the second consecutive game lined Megill up for the highest-leverage situation late in the game with a slim lead.

In Wednesday’s 3-2 win, Megill faced the middle of the Pirates order in the eighth. A day later, Megill worked the ninth because the bottom of the order was due up in the eighth, so Murphy gave the inning to Payamps.

Megill earned his first career save just five days after coming one out short of a six-out save in an eventual 10-inning win for the Brewers in St. Louis.

“He’s in a good spot,” Murphy said. “Very consistent for us. He came on last year and you could see it coming last year. He felt he kind of found a home with the Brewers. He’s gotten through a little bit of a freak injury and now he’s back on track.”

William Contreras is emerging as a real star

Perhaps the rest of baseball is beginning to notice the burgeoning star on the Brewers.

Either way, what William Contreras is doing doesn’t go unnoticed in Milwaukee.

Contreras opened the game with a 448-foot moonshot at 114 mph off the bat as the second batter of the afternoon against Pirates starter Mitch Keller.

It was the fifth home run and 22nd run batted in on the year for Contreras, who reached base three times while also stealing a handful of key strikes behind the plate.

Contreras has played in every game this season and caught all but five of the team’s 24 contests. Dating back to the all-star break last year, he’s only missed one game.

Contreras is the modern-day version of an ironman behind the plate – and sometimes it feels like he’s carrying the offense with superpowers, too.

Conreras is now batting .365 with a .446 on-base percentage and .573 slugging percentage.

Since last year’s all-star break, Contreras is fourth in all of baseball in Wins Above Replacement, according to FanGraphs. Backdate it to the start of the 2023 season and he’s tied for eighth.

And he’s doing it all while catching just about as often as anyone in baseball, doing all the game calling for one of the most successful pitching staffs in the league and while never taking a day off.

“This is impressive,” Murphy said. “This has been an impressive 24 games or whatever we’ve played.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: William Contreras has emerged as one of the best players in baseball