How Pitch Calling and Defense Will Sustain Brewers' Run of Strong Starting Pitching

[Spencer Michaelis]

The job of a big-league pitcher has evolved quite a bit. Though the ability to miss bats and rack up strikeouts has always been valuable, they've never been more in vogue than they are right now. In the not-so-distant past, the ability to generate soft contact was seen as a more valuable trait.

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports

While there is no debating the fact that strikeouts are valuable (they nearly guarantee that a batter will not reach base, nor will they allow a baserunner to advance), not every pitcher’s repertoire allows them to pitch that way. Should those pitchers simply be thrown by the wayside? Do they no longer have a place in the game? The Brewers, as well as many other teams, don’t see it that way.

Taking a look at the Crew's projected rotation for 2024, it’s clear that while they are missing their two horses from the past (Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff), they do still have some pitchers who can miss bats and rack up strikeouts. Freddy Peralta had a 30.9% strikeout rate for 2023, which was eighth-highest in baseball among pitchers who made at least 15 starts. DL Hall was pitching in relief last season and only threw 19 1/3 MLB innings, but he posted a strikeout rate of 28.4%. He also posted a 32.3% rate in Triple-A, when he was mostly being used as a starter. Jakob Junis also largely came out of the pen, though he did so in longer stints, and he posted a 26.2% rate in 86 innings. Per TruMedia, the league average for pitchers who started at least 15 games last season was 22.8%.

There are two names that are expected to be in the rotation who fall into the below-average range. Neither Colin Rea (21.3%) nor Wade Miley (16.1%) were at or above league average this past season. Another candidate for the rotation, Joe Ross, has a career strikeout rate of 21.3% as well.

During his time in Arizona, Jack Stern wrote about Rea’s pitchability and how he gets outs despite his “average stuff”. While most of the impetus falls on Rea to execute his pitches, he also made it a point to credit William Contreras's pitch calling in his most recent post-game availability.

Contreras is the latest in a long line of strong game-callers whom the Brewers have had behind the plate. Game-calling seems to be a skill the Brewers value when acquiring catchers, but they have also shown an ability to develop that skill once the catchers have been brought in. 

What may surprise some people is the goal that catchers have when they are calling pitches. For the most part, they are looking to induce early, weak contact, as often as possible. They aren’t going into an at-bat chasing a strikeout, the majority of the time. There are always extenuating circumstances, such as a runner on third base with less than two outs, In that scenario, a catcher and pitcher will often be looking to go after a strikeout from pitch one. Closers and high-leverage relievers are normally pitchers that you are going to want to have the ability to miss bats as well. But in most situations, especially early in games? Soft contact can still reign supreme.

When calling a game, there are a number of factors that catchers take into account in order to create the type of contact that limits hits, while also limiting the number of pitches thrown.

First, there must be an extremely strong knowledge of the pitcher they're catching. They have to know the pitcher’s repertoire just as well as the pitcher does. They need to know how each pitch moves, what pitches pair well with each other in sequence, as well as which ones do not play well off of each other.

Sequencing pitches can sound like a relatively easy thing to understand and implement as a catcher. A high fastball pairs well with a big curveball. A low fastball away from a left-handed hitter could pair well with a changeup. Most people have seen the GIFs that Pitching Ninja posts on Twitter, showing how pitches tunnel with each other. Those are very appealing to the eye, and they do show how one pitch can help another. However, there is a lot more to sequencing than just tunneling pitches.

Catchers also need to sequence pitches to change eye levels, to ensure that hitters aren’t able to cue in on one area of the zone, something that makes a hitter's job a lot easier. This is something Burnes needed to make some adjustments to in his final season and a half in Milwaukee, in terms of always wanting to throw low cutters. Eventually, hitters just started sitting on it, and despite the pitch’s impressive characteristics, they were able to ambush it more often as time went on. 

While certain pitches often pair well with a different pitch, a catcher also has to make sure that they’re not sequencing the same way every time they use a certain pitch. For example, if a catcher always follows a high fastball with a curveball (or vice versa), teams will pick up on that. Although conventional wisdom might tell them to call a certain pitch, they can’t just keep throwing down the same sequence every time.

Sequencing also involves the ability to “read swings”. A hitter will often tell you what pitches he is seeing well, as well as which pitches he might be struggling with. This is the job of a catcher, but also of the pitcher. Wade Miley is the king of using a hitter's swings against him. Vinny Rottino did a breakdown on Bally Sports Live last season that perfectly encapsulates how Miley used future teammate Mark Canha's swings against him. during a plate appearance against the Mets.

As the video shows, while location is important, timing will always reign supreme for hitters. If a hitter is on time, and a pitcher makes a mistake, he will probably not get that mistake back. What strong sequencing and reading swings can do, though, is to give the location of those pitches a larger margin for error. A hitter who is not on time might be able to get a barrel to a mistake, but he’s not going to be able to hit it at the ideal launch angle. Christian Yelich’s rocket choppers, especially in 2021 and 2022, are a great example of what it looks like when a hitter’s timing is off and they can’t truly punish the mistakes. Pitchers and catchers are aiming to create that type of timing discrepancy.

Brewers catchers have done a strong job limiting hard contact through pitch calling. Last year, out of 95 catchers who caught at least 1000 pitches at the MLB level, Victor Caratini was 16th in lowest average exit velocity against. William Contreras was also above average in that regard. Former Brewers catchers Manny Piña and Omar Narvaez were in the top 10, and the recently acquired Gary Sánchez was, as well. 

Calling pitches is only half of the battle, though. In order to turn weak contact into outs with consistency, your defense needs to work in conjunction with the pitch calling. The Brewers have also excelled in that regard, as they finished first in Outs Above Average in 2023. They also finished second in Baseball Prospectus's "Deserved Runs Prevented". The combination of defense and pitch calling are a recipe for success, but how do the Brewers specifically partner these two facets of the game?

In early March, our own Matthew Trueblood spoke to Pat Murphy about defensive positioning and game planning.

“There’s a guy upstairs named Fox," Murphy said, referring to Director Baseball Research and Development Andrew Fox. "It’s a collaboration. Andy Fox, [Jason] Lane and [Matt] Erickson, [Quentin] Berry, and Fox. They get together. And then the starting pitcher has a little say in there, where they say in there, ‘I’m gonna throw this guy this way.’ Then we’re gonna do it that way.”

Based on that quote, it sounds as though the pitcher and catcher game planning likely happens prior to the defensive positioning. That way, the defensive game plan can be adjusted based on how the battery plans to attack certain hitters.  An example of this could be a pitcher planning to only throw a certain hitter pitches away. The defense wants to know that, so that they can align themselves a bit differently to account for the higher likelihood of the batter taking that pitch the other way.

"You can’t dictate what’s going to happen in a game, how the ball is going to be hit, whatever," Murphy summarized. "You can’t. You just do what you can to try and put them in the right positions, and put your best defenders out there that you can have, and still put together a complete team."

Baseball can be a confusing and frustrating sport. Sometimes a pitcher, catcher, and the entire defense can do everything right. They can have the defense positioned exactly how they should be, and then a soft batted ball will still find a hole for a hit. On the other side, sometimes a hitter will square up a line drive at 110 MPH and it will hit the center fielder in the chest for an out. 

While pitchers certainly get lucky from time to time, the odds of recording outs are much higher when the ball is hit softly, and that will always remain the goal of a battery. Despite the loss of pitchers like Burnes and Woodruff, the Brewers have the type of defensive personnel (as well as the pitch callers) to generate and capitalize on that soft contact more often than most teams.

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[Jake McKibbin]

Brilliant piece Spencer!

[Ron750]

Interesting article. Not the same old stuff, most sportswriters write. Thanks. 

[Trax]

Great article, the insight from pitchers and catchers invaluable.  

[groyce]

Across a large swath of the game pitch calling is managed from the dugout. With so much at stake in MLB, there’s absolutely no way it’s being left to chance and choice there. The pitching coaches are making some if not all of those calls.

[Diamond Dog]

The Brew Crew SP will be a work in progress all year, with several surprises yet to come. 

The D will help some, but IMO the O with way too may K's will hurt.  OBP and BA need to improve, and Willy hitting .270 would be a blessing. Get Black up ASAP and watch the team take off.

[eddiemathews]

Apropos of nothing...Burnes always seemed to get more than his share of bloops and bleeders.

[eddiemathews]

Just now, eddiemathews said:

Apropos of nothing...Burnes always seemed to get more than his share of bloops and bleeders.

But I won't miss Houser's smashed groundballs getting through being labeled bad luck.