SEATTLE – If it’s a choice between free hamburgers and the long-term interests of the 6-foot-7 mound monster who might be the Brewers’ best pitching prospect ever, they’ll err on the side of going hungry every time.

So, with the entire city of Milwaukee hoping to trigger a burger bonanza that’s as much a part of being a Brewers fan as seeing the M and B hidden inside the logo, the club played it safe and pulled right-hander Jacob Misiorowski after 11 outs and 64 pitches on Tuesday, leaving everyone to wonder how that decision might have impacted the course of a 1-0 loss to the Mariners at T-Mobile Park and the end of Milwaukee’s 11-game winning streak.

There will be no free hamburgers this time. It’s a tradition that goes back to the 1940s, when local restaurateur George Webb predicted that the Minor League Milwaukee Brewers would win 12 consecutive games. The big-league Brewers did it in 1987 and again in 2018, but fell one game short this time after being shut out on two hits by a brilliant Logan Gilbert and four Seattle relievers, and sunk by Cal Raleigh’s MLB-leading 39th home run off Nick Mears. That was in the seventh, three innings after manager Pat Murphy had gone to the mound to take the baseball from Misiorowski.

“The kid knows we’ve got his best interests in mind,” Murphy said.

“It’s the right thing,” pitching coach Chris Hook said.

The Brewers’ small army of data analysts and decision makers have been mulling Misiorowski’s usage for a while now. He threw 97 1/3 innings last season between Double-A and Triple-A and was already at 89 innings this season between Triple-A Nashville and his first five starts in the Majors – 90, if you count his scoreless eighth inning for the National League in the All-Star Game.

And at the same time, Misiorowski had not been extended in a while. His final start of the first half was his 12-strikeout gem against Clayton Kershaw and the Dodgers on July 8, one full week before his 18-pitch inning in the All-Star Game. Then he got another full week of rest before his second-half Brewers debut.

It made sense to set up some guardrails.

“Hook gets to be the bad guy and deliver the news to me,” Misiorowski said.

“I didn’t tell him a number, but I did tell him it would be short,” Hook said. “I didn’t want to put a number in his head. But we had a number we wanted him to get to.”

The Brewers planned for 55-65 pitches and no more than four “ups,” which is how pitchers and coaches describe innings nowadays. What did Misiorowski think about those targets with the benefit of hindsight?

“Obviously, I want to go six or seven [innings],” he said. “But we’re looking deeper season-wise. … There’s no real conversation. They’re like, ‘This is what’s going to happen.’ And you live with it.”

“It’s the short-term call and the long-term call,” Hook said. “We’re talking about volume and intent, right? There’s a lot of intent there, so we had to make sure we controlled the volume tonight.”

That intent was on full display in the first two innings, including a 10-pitch battle with Raleigh that ended with a flyout in the first inning – “It’s like, I just got warmed up. Now let’s go,” Misiorowski said – and a second inning that was capped, he thought, by a 2-2 backdoor slider against Mariners right fielder Dominic Canzone to end the second. Misiorowski was already a few steps off the mound when he realized the plate umpire had called Ball 3. After he struck out Canzone for real with a 98.8 mph fastball, Misiorowski didn’t contain the celebration.

“I thought [the slider] was there, but it didn’t get called,” Misiorowski said. “Then the crowd started getting behind it because they were trying to say something about me trying to walk off the field because I thought it was a strikeout. It kind of fired me up a little bit.

“I wanted to say other things to the crowd, but you have to keep it PG. I showed it off a little bit, you know? Like, let it eat. If it’s there, celebrate.”

Said catcher William Contreras: “He’s a young guy and he has to learn a little bit about it, but I play like that, too. You feel [emotion].”

Misiorowski lowered his ERA to 2.45 and now has 40 strikeouts in 29 1/3 innings over his six starts after seven more strikeouts on Tuesday. But it was clear to Murphy that it was the right decision to engage the brakes. After 14 of Misiorowski’s 20 pitches in the first inning topped 100 mph, none did over the remainder of his outing.

“You could see that he hadn’t been out there in a while,” Murphy said. “I was very proud of what he did. This is a young kid who’s had a lot coming at him, and, again, he didn’t give up anything.”

“He struck out seven in three innings, what do you want me to say?” Contreras said. “He’s nasty. He wanted to keep pitching.”