MILWAUKEE — Sean Manaea was better.
Better than his most recent start, which also came against the Brewers.
Significantly better than his first three career postseason starts.
Better than opposing starter Frankie Montas — which for 7 ¹/₂ innings looked to be enough.
But on a night Manaea may have exorcised his postseason demons, Phil Maton may have gained a few in allowing the go-ahead runs in the bottom of the eighth of what would become a 5-3, backbreaking loss to the Brewers at American Family Field that set up a win-or-go-home Game 3.
Manaea will not be available for Game 3, and it is possible the pending free agent (assuming a declined player option) has thrown his final pitch as a Met.
If so, he would enter free agency having established that, yes, he can pitch in October.
On two counts, Wednesday can be viewed as a bounce-back for Manaea, who had pitched three times in the postseason — twice with Oakland and once with the Padres — and came away with a 15.26 ERA.
In holding the Brewers to two runs on six hits in five innings, that career postseason ERA now sits at a slightly more palatable 10.66.
“It was definitely a battle,” Manaea said after surviving those five frames and leaving with a 3-2 lead. “For the most part, I thought it was throwing everything for strikes and getting ahead of guys.”
Manaea also bounced back against these Brewers, who had torched him with six runs in 3 ²/₃ innings, including a first-inning Rhys Hoskins grand slam, on Friday in his final regular-season outing.
Wednesday began familiarly.
His third pitch of the game — an 0-2, down-the-middle sinker to 20-year-old phenom Jackson Chourio — was drilled into the right-field seats for the first of Chourio’s two home runs.
If there were any here we go again concerns, they disappeared quickly.
Manaea rebounded and pitched his way out of trouble a few times.
The Brewers put two runners on base in the third, and Manaea struck out William Contreras and induced a fly out from Willy Adames, then clapped his way to the dugout.
Sal Frelick reached first with a single an inning later, but Manaea stranded him there.
Manaea allowed his second run in the fifth, which was on the soft side: Brice Turang chopped a well-placed double down the third-base line, advanced on a groundout and scored on a sacrifice fly.
After the game, the 32-year-old could not celebrate, but he could exhale after a long day and a long career on days like this one.
“It’s crazy,” Manaea, whose velocity had spiked on what was his 33rd start, said about watching the final innings of the game from afar. “Definitely exhausted, but I think it’s a good thing.
“I left it all out there.”
