The Milwaukee Brewers’ Sisyphean run through the 2022 season rolls on. 

Staked to a 4-0 lead with one out in the sixth and a chance to make up ground in the National League wild card race, the Brewers pitching staff was on a roll, setting up a finish with the preferred bullpen lined up. 

Instead, Brad Boxberger and Taylor Rogers surrendered back-breaking home runs, the latter of which was a go-ahead grand slam by Francisco Lindor, to send the Brewers to a 7-5 defeat at American Family Field on Tuesday night.

Milwaukee’s playoff hopes are still alive, but they sure are slip-sliding away. 

"Obviously, we have to get it right," said shortstop Willy Adames, who did all he could to try and pick up a win with four hits and two runs batted in.

More:How close are the Brewers to a wild card spot? Let's take a closer look at Milwaukee in the National League standings

More:Milwaukee Brewers players injury updates for the 2022 season

The Brewers had a chance, with a win, to draw within 1½ games of the Philadelphia Phillies for the final wild card spot. For much of the night, it seemed that they were going to do so. 

A three-run second inning featured RBI hits by Andrew McCutchen, Omar Narvaez and Willy Adames. Kolten Wong made it 4-0 in the fifth with a two-out single to score Adames. 

Aaron Ashby returned from the injured list and jump-started a bullpen game with two scoreless innings, stranding the bases loaded in the first. 

The combination of Ashby, Peter Strzelecki and Hoby Milner combined to retire 14 consecutive hitters when Milner was removed one out into the top of the sixth after going 1⅔ innings. 

"Absolutely, the game went as we hoped it could go (through that point)," Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. "Strzelecki and Hoby, Ash, they all did really, really nice jobs. Three guys got us to an out in the sixth inning and that’s as much as we could’ve hoped for."

Dominance quickly devolved into a nightmare. 

Boxberger hit the first batter he faced and then allowed a single on a Francisco Lindor grounder that snuck past the glove of Rowdy Tellez at first base. Pete Alonso followed with a towering three-run homer to center, his second in as many nights, to cut the lead to 4-3 before Boxberger even recorded an out. 

Rogers, considered a critical reason the Brewers felt comfortable enough to trade away Josh Hader because they figured he could serve as an effective replacement as a late-inning lefthanded arm, relieved Boxberger with one out in the seventh and nobody on. 

He walked Darin Ruf. Then James McCann. Then Brandon Nimmo. 

Twelve balls and three strikes. 

"I went through the whole encyclopedia," Rogers said of his attempts to solve his command woes mid-outing.

Rogers recovered to strike out Mark Canha for the second out but fired a first-pitch fastball that was up in the zone and caught a chunk of the plate – as well as the fat of Lindor’s bat. The ball carried 413 feet out to left field, resulting in a smattering of boos that were overshadowed by a chant of “Let’s go Mets” from the visiting faithful seated above the third-base dugout. 

"There’s just no excuse for it," Rogers said. "You can say new place, new catchers, new all this stuff, but you just got to keep the ball in the yard. I haven’t been doing that."

Rogers has a 6.63 earned run average since being acquired by the Brewers in exchange for Hader, who had had a string of really poor outings in his own right. Hader has a 10.97 ERA with the Padres, blowing one save and picking up another loss, but has pitched six straight scoreless outings with four saves. 

Rogers’ time with the Brewers has been marred by three blowup outings as homers continue to be his demise. Rogers has allowed six long balls since joining Milwaukee, a stark contrast to the one he gave up over 42 games in San Diego – a stat that Rogers himself pointed out followed, coincidentally, by a knock on wood, in his first media interview as a Brewer.

"I don’t have an explanation for that," Counsell said. "I don’t think we’ve found one for that. It’s certainly confusing."

Rogers’ implosion outings have been detrimental to Milwaukee. He has accumulated a total win percentage added of -.883, meaning his performances in context have cost the Brewers nearly one expected win; Hader has, on the whole, hurt San Diego but to a lesser degree with a WPA of -.594 entering the day. 

Between the actual results on the field, the clubhouse confusion it wrought and Dinelson Lamet pitching well since being designated for assignment two days after being acquired, the trade has not gone as the Brewers had hoped. At best, it has lacked positive results. At worst, it has backfired immensely. 

Still, the Brewers had a chance to rally in the bottom of the seventh, bringing the tying run to the plate with two outs. They pinch hit for Keston Hiura, who has a .944 OPS against righthanded pitchers this year, against righty reliever Trevor May with the lefthanded hitting Jace Peterson. Peterson struck out. 

Counsell indicated the reverse splits were a consideration to keep Hiura, who was 0 for 2 for the game and entered the day just 2 for his last 22 at-bats, in but ultimately went with Peterson. Those recent at-bats were a factor, Counsell said. Peterson, though, was just 3 for his last 21.

The Brewers tacked on a run with Adames' RBI single in the eighth, bringing Tellez to the plate as the tying run but he struck out as New York summoned closer Edwin Díaz, who then blew out the candle with ease in the bottom of the ninth.

The loss was the latest in a string of crushing defeats over the past month-plus for Milwaukee.

There were the three blown leads in a sweep in Pittsburgh immediately after the trade deadline. The consecutive one-run losses at Wrigley Field, including the one fumbled away when Christian Yelich muffed an exchange on a pop fly, in late August. The extra-inning loss to the Cubs a week later when Chicago had only two hits. The blown 6-1 eighth-inning lead in Colorado in early September. And, then, Tuesday night happened.

Severity of the game aside, what matters most is simple: it was a loss. The Brewers can hardly afford many more of those.

They not only have to make up the 2½ games they trail the Phillies in the standings, but tack on another game to that because they don’t have the tiebreaker between the teams. 

"Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of frustration," Ashby said. "It’s getting down to the end of this thing and we’ve got to start putting some games together. I don’t think there’s any better time to get hot than now. Everyone's trying to plug away. It’s just a couple of things don’t go our way. It just seems like it’s not going our way right now."

With 14 games left, time is running thin. It will require a collapse by the Phillies (or Padres, though that is looking less likely by the day), a two-week stretch of play at a level Milwaukee hasn’t displayed since the middle of May or both. 

Since then, the Brewers haven’t necessarily been bad. But they certainly haven't been good. They've gone 46-52 since getting off to the hottest 50-game start in franchise history. It's been insipidly mediocre. 

Among the primary causes of that was on display against New York. A pitching staff expected to be elite has only been run-of-the-mill, entering play Tuesday with the 17th-best earned run average in baseball. Time and time again, Milwaukee has needed its pitching to spark an extended run of winning and has yet to get it. 

Injuries to the starting rotation, have played a role in the underwhelming dynamic of the season Brewers pitching has had, but even then, the front office touted its bolstering of the bullpen at the trade deadline. Since then, Brewers relievers are 20th in MLB in earned run average. The team has lost 24 times since August 3; nine of those have come when the offense has scored five or more runs, including Tuesday.

Still, because the Phillies and Padres have been unable to pull away in the wild-card race, for the most part treading their own water for the past month, Milwaukee is still alive. Philadelphia is 15-15 over its last 30 games; San Diego is 20-20 over its last 40. Neither team seems intent on pulling away from the pack, as evidenced by the Phillies allowing 18 runs in loss Tuesday.

"We’re in this thing," Counsell affirmed. "We’re in this thing and we got to win games. That’s the bottom line. There’s gonna be another disappointing loss. There’s gonna be nights that don’t go our way. We’re in it. That’s a great opportunity for the last two weeks of the season."

Yet it simply won't matter if the Brewers continue to roll that boulder up the hill, never taking advantage of the opportunities in front of them, never reaching the top.