Williams completely melted down last night, but Megill got put in a bad situation and obviously would not have given up 4 runs in a typical situation (you don't often intentionally walk two guys in a row).
I thought Murphy had a very poorly managed game last night. He was ride or die with Williams and then managed the bottom of the 10th very poorly.
The lead runner got to third on a sac fly to left. The next guy up was Wilson Contreras and it was absolutely the correct move to intentionally walk him to set up an inning-ending double play. But then they intentionally walked Jose Fermin to load the bases. I guess they wanted to set up the possibility of a ground ball leading to a step on third and throw to first double play? However, Fermin is hitting 149 this year with a 458 OPS. Why in the world wouldn't you go after him and try to get the second out? It was a mind-boggling decision to walk him to go after Nolen Arenado. Arenado is not what he used to be, but he's still a 10 time all-star hitting 272 this year and is a guy you generally try to avoid. And you walked a guy who is their worst hitter to get to him? Mind bogglingly stupid.
I think the correct move is to go after Fermin and get that out. Then you intentionally walk Arenado and go after Nootbaar who his hitting 230 this year with a 707 OPS. Make those equivalents of Monasterio (or worse) beat you, not some potential future HOFer.
Today's game was not really a Murphy issue in my opinion. Mears wasn't getting gashed - he gave up 3 singles including one a 0-0 pitch that was at the guys eye level. The bullpen was used up last night and Williams and Megill might have been unavailable, so he had to keep that in mind. Mears just didn't do his job.
The real problem today (and for the playoffs) is that once you get by Contreras, Chourio, and Adames (who is very hit or miss), the Brewers just don't have enough offensive weapons. Hoskins has power, but it's mostly a lot of guys with similar skills - Turang, Mitchell, Ortiz, Monasterio, and Frelick are all good defenders, high effort guys, and are all barely league average hitters. Their OPS is all under 700. There's not much Murphy can do about that (although pinch hitting Monasterio instead of Haas for Turang was odd).
If you are an opposing team in a playoff series, you pitch around Contreras and make Adames chase pitches out of the strike zone and you've solved most of the Brewers offense. Chourio is great for a 20 year old, but he might be the guy that needs to emerge even more.
They really miss the close-to-vintage Yelich they were getting for large parts of this year.