The Brewers are on the brink.
And not in a good way.
Happy Tuesday, fellow rich people.
Or should I say that I hope this winds up being a happy Tuesday.
The Brewers embark on Game 4 of their National League Division Series with the Braves at 4 p.m. today, facing elimination after a pair of absolute duds offensively.
If it wasn’t for a Rowdy Tellez homer in Game 1, they could very well have been eliminated already.
But—and here’s the important part—they haven’t been. And they are one game away from getting Corbin Burnes back on the bump in a decisive Game 5 at home.
We were planning on doing a series-end newsletter wrapping it all up but a couple things stood out from the first three games and I didn’t want to lose them in the shuffle of trying to wrap up an entire series (or season).
Let’s converse.\
Time to come out swinging
~Curt
Oftentimes, short series in baseball can be tricky to decipher.
How much of what happens is based on one team playing well and how much is based on the other playing not-well?
That is the precise situation surrounding the Brewers and Braves as we go into Game 4.
Through three games, the Brewers, save for one swing by Rowdy Tellez, have not played well offensively. They have two runs in 27 innings. Meanwhile, the Braves pitching has been excellent.
So which wins out? Would these Braves arms be shutting down every lineup in baseball or have the Brewers just been that bad?
I think it’s safe to say there has been a little bit of both.
Charlie Morton, Max Fried and Ian Anderson have all featured good-to-great stuff and have flashed plus-command. They have been good.
But let’s talk about the Brewers side of things and, specifically, an area in which their approach has hurt them.
The Brewers offense is not particularly great, especially as far as playoff teams go, but they are one of the best teams at having long at-bats and seeing lots of pitches.
This can be a useful trait of an offense, particularly if it features multiple hitters who excel at spoiling off pitch after pitch until finally burying anything over the plate.
The Brewers, however, have not been good in that area this series.
They were relatively patient in Game 1 against Morton, swinging at six of 14 pitches in the zone on a 0-0 or 1-0 count. Stuff-wise, Morton was the toughest pitcher to hit all series (which makes it ironic that he’s the lone arm the Brewers have scored on), so there wasn’t much to do damage with. But when they sat back and let Morton get ahead in counts whenever he wanted, it usually ended in a punchout unless your name is Rowdy Tellez and you get a fat pitch with two strikes.
Against Fried was where the Brewers went into a more defensive approach. It burned them.
Fried threw 17 pitches in the strike zone in a 0-0 or 1-0 count. The Brewers swung only five times. Of eight first-pitch fastballs seen, only two were swung at.
Batters hit .329 off Fried on first-pitch heaters this year and .429 on first-pitch curveballs. Yet, the Brewers watched as pitches like these went by early in the count, getting behind the 8-ball against a good pitcher.
Now, not every pitch in the zone should be swung at whether ahead in the count or not; Fried made plenty of pitcher’s pitches. But he made a lot more pitcher’s pitches later in the count. Fried also did a good job of mixing looks on first pitches, throwing five curves, four sliders, four fastballs and one change to right-handers on the first pitch. (He didn’t mix much to lefties in five PA and there is a conversation to be had about the Brewers stacking the lineup too much when Fried has no left-right splits for his career but that’s for another day.)
Of the 26 pitches thrown with two strikes, only five were put in play and just one went for a hit.
Then Ian Anderson happened. Armed with a changeup that could put away any batter in the lineup, the Brewers swung at just one of the first nine strikes on either the first pitch or when ahead in the count. Willy Adames bucked that trend by swinging at (and missing) three times when ahead in the count in the fourth, but Garcia and Tellez got it right back on track by taking fastballs for strike one before striking out with Christian Yelich on base.
The make-them-work approach wasn’t necessarily a bad one coming into the series. The Brewers are not only good at extending at-bats but are solid at hitting with two strikes; they have batters with an OPS with two strikes above league average.
After three games, though, it clearly has not been working. With their backs against the wall and nothing else working, it may be time to mix things up.
Let’s talk about Craig Counsell’s decision
~Curt
As expected, Twitter went up in arms over a managerial decision when, in Game 3, Craig Counsell opted to pinch-hit for Freddy Peralta in the top of the fifth inning.
Let’s revisit the decision, starting with the situation Counsell was faced with.
The Brewers and Braves were in a scoreless tie after four. Luis Urias was hit by a pitch to lead off the inning and Omar Narvaez doubled down the left-field line to move him to third immediately after.
Milwaukee desperately needed Lorenzo Cain to get the runner from third in not only to crack the scoreboard but to avoid putting itself in a precarious situation with the pitcher coming up next. Cain hit the ball hard--101 mph--but Dansby Swanson made a diving stop, the runner couldn’t advance, and Cain was out at first.
Peralta’s spot was due up. Do you pinch hit for him and go for some much-needed offense or let him hit so he can keep pitching?
Here are the facts.
The run expectancy with men on second and third and one out is 1.42 runs.
Peralta is not only a poor hitter as a pitcher (career .083 hitter) but also not strong enough handling the bat to put on a squeeze play. Okay, you may say, why not just see if he can put it in play and bring home a run? That’s not a good idea, either, as he struck out 22 times in 43 at-bats this year.
Batting Peralta, therefore, is essentially giving up an out and relying on Kolten Wong to bring the runs in with a two-out hit. The run expectancy with second and third is 0.6 runs--and in case you haven’t noticed, timely hits aren’t exactly on the Brewers side right now. By batting Peralta, you lose almost one full run in run expectancy.
Games aren’t played in a run matrix, though, and the situation Counsell was facing was a bit different from what you would expect.
The Brewers, in case you have been stranded on a floatation device in Lake Michigan without cell service until this very moment, have struggled to hit the ball.
He was faced with an offense that had scored two runs over 21 innings and none over the last 14. This was not only a good opportunity to score but possibly the best chance his team would get the rest of the way.
Taking Peralta out obviously comes at a cost. You are taking out a guy who has been good (albeit not great) after four innings and hoping Adrian Houser and Hunter Strickland can put up zeroes in the innings that Peralta otherwise wouldn’t have had.
So, it comes down to this: Is the drop-off from Freddy to Houser for the next inning (or maybe two) worth taking a shot at scoring runs? When there is a very real chance that the situation at hand is the best scoring chance you will get (and end up getting) the rest of the game?
The Brewers could have kept Peralta in for two more innings, hoped that he put up zeroes, and effectively punted on their best chance to score. Best case, it would have probably been 0-0 after six. (And this is assuming Peralta got out of the next two innings unscathed after having to wiggle his way out of two jams already.)
You can’t win without scoring runs. The Brewers chased runs and trusted the combination of Houser and Strickland.
Daniel Vogelbach, if you’re going to go to the bench there, was the right move. Sure, you could argue for Eduardo Escobar, but Vogelbach is going to give you a good at-bat, likely put the ball in play and potentially put it in the air. Vogelbach also had a wRC+ against righties far higher than Escobar this season.
He ended up hitting the ball 96 mph but right at Austin Riley. You can’t use him failing to bring in the run because he hit it right to a fielder as a reason why Counsell’s decision was wrong. If Vogelbach bloops that ball at 70 mph but into the outfield for a hit, nobody is upset and the Brewers potentially could have a big inning. But alas.
The move backfired not only after Kolten Wong lined out and the Brewers pulled their starter and had no runs to show for it, but when the new guy came in, Adrian Houser did not have The Goods. It was bad. Perhaps you saw what happened.
That is when the hindsight managing began in earnest.
But here’s the thing about the Houser situation. Say Peralta goes six scoreless. The Brewers still haven’t scored by that point and it’s 0-0. Who would the Brewers turn to in a 0-0 tie in the seventh? If only we had any evidence from such a scenario from earlier in the series to turn to and help us figure out which pitcher would have entered the game….
….oh.
Perhaps the quick ramp-up was what burned Houser. He isn’t used to that type of situation, so having to get loose quickly before entering the game may have had adverse effects. If Houser had a normal ramp-up before coming in for the seventh, maybe he comes out with better stuff and better command.
I wouldn’t bet on that being the case, though. If Houser came in the fifth and gave up single-single-ding dong johnson, I don’t feel great about the seventh going much better when one entire run was the margin of error.
And, oh yeah, as we all saw, the Brewers didn’t score the rest of the way after the fifth. So unless the pitching staff was going to allow -1 runs, it was going to be tough sledding.
The process was sound. The results backfired. Badly.
It was the perfect storm.