Brewers pitching

[Frisbee Slider]

I appreciate MLB.com rankings are meaningless. However, it seems MLB.com barely has Milwaukee with a ‘top 15’ pitching staff.

The Brewers had the fifth best team ERA in baseball last year. If the Tigers and Guardians didn’t have so many games against the White Sox, I believe Milwaukee would have had the third best team ERA in baseball.

Yes, we lost 21.2 innings of Devin Williams, but added Nestor Cortes in a contract year. Plus, Woodruff might be healthy and I feel like we have even more talented arms that will contribute in 2025.

Can Brewer pitching be even better than last year?

link

[Playing Catch]

50 minutes ago, Frisbee Slider said:

I appreciate MLB.com rankings are meaningless. However, it seems MLB.com barely has Milwaukee with a ‘top 15’ pitching staff.

The Brewers had the fifth best team ERA in baseball last year. If the Tigers and Guardians didn’t have so many games against the White Sox, I believe Milwaukee would have had the third best team ERA in baseball.

Yes, we lost 21.2 innings of Devin Williams, but added Nestor Cortes in a contract year. Plus, Woodruff might be healthy and I feel like we have even more talented arms that will contribute in 2025.

Can Brewer pitching be even better than last year?

link

Much like the posters here at Brewerfan, I think the authors of these puff-pieces are increasingly stat-savvy. To use the Brewers' ERA to defend the Brewers' worth or criticize the linked puff-piece, is spurious.

The Brewers pitching staff last season was more like, 20th in the major leagues... They just happened to pitch for one of the best defensive teams in the world.

Now as to your question if the Brewers can be better this season? I doubt they will perform meaningfully better or worse. For many of their best 2024 performers (Myers, Megill, Koenig, Hudson), it's hard not to project (slightly) worse performance. As for the 2024 underperformers, how much improvement can reasonably be projected? Not much, in my humble opinion.

With all of this said, they will probably be one of the best run-prevention teams in MLB. But I think that has more to do with their defense than their pitching staff.

[Frisbee Slider]

3 minutes ago, Playing Catch said:

But I think that has more to do with their defense than their pitching staff.

Fair. 

I trust there are stats for this but is every other pitching staff throwing in front of bad defenses?

The Brewers bullpen isn’t very good?

 

[jay87shot]

I don't put much stock into pre-season rankings because we always get pushed down based on market size and not having any big splashy off season moves.

Peralta being a 3.5 era passible #2 but high end #3, with some potential to be better up to a #1 starter.

Woody, Cortes, Civale, Quintana there will be at least 1 guy who has a really solid year around a low 3 or better era #2 starter, one at about 3.5 era #3, 1 of them sub 4 era, #4 starter, and 1 who struggles or gets hurt (hopefully not). Myers is the wild card, I doubt he gets much better than last year but he could be anything from a 2-5 starter in my book.  Lets just say we end up with 5 #3 caliber starters, that is for sure a top 10 staff with what will likely be a top 10, good chance at top 5 bullpen. Don't forget guys like Ashby and Misi who have some ace like stuff if things go well for later in the year.

[Frisbee Slider]

Looking closer at 2024 team stats, they sure are unfavorable to Brewer pitching. FIP and PRAA, etc.

Our BABIP allowed was #4 in baseball…which I assume is defense and luck.

Still, when we had Burnes, Woodruff and Peralta the Brewers were considered an elite  pitching team. Now we have Peralta, Woodruff (mostly) and a cast of other talented arms and we are now just the ‘defense’ team. That might be true, I suppose 🤷‍♂️

[umphrey]

It's fair. We lack high end talent but have decent depth. I think with run prevention we will be top 10 in ERA easily barring disaster. I thought last year's starting rotation was pretty awful honestly and it's a miracle what they accomplished. 

[Playing Catch]

21 hours ago, Frisbee Slider said:

Still, when we had Burnes, Woodruff and Peralta the Brewers were considered an elite  pitching team. Now we have Peralta, Woodruff (mostly) and a cast of other talented arms and we are now just the ‘defense’ team. That might be true, I suppose 🤷‍♂️

Burnes, Woodruff, Peralta, Hader, and Williams were all very good to elite in advanced pitching metrics and FIP stats.

Strikeouts are valuable to EVERY team. Soft contact is more valuable to elite defensive teams.

[Thurston Fluff]

21 hours ago, Frisbee Slider said:

Looking closer at 2024 team stats, they sure are unfavorable to Brewer pitching. FIP and PRAA, etc.

Our BABIP allowed was #4 in baseball…which I assume is defense and luck.

Still, when we had Burnes, Woodruff and Peralta the Brewers were considered an elite  pitching team. Now we have Peralta, Woodruff (mostly) and a cast of other talented arms and we are now just the ‘defense’ team. That might be true, I suppose 🤷‍♂️

Or the pitchers are good at getting weak contact. I think it's probably all of the above but we shouldn't just assume the pitchers didn't have anything to do with it. 

[Frisbee Slider]

Just now, Thurston Fluff said:

Or the pitchers are good at getting weak contact. I think it's probably all of the above but we shouldn't just assume the pitchers didn't have anything to do with it. 

Our hard hit rates and EV allowed by Milwaukee pitchers last year was pretty average from what I can tell.

[sveumrules]

Obviously I like me some stats, but maybe my favorite one is that over the last two years the Brewers are 16th in FIP based WAR (29.2) but 1st in runs allowed based WAR (46.6).

Those 17 extra wins align pretty closely with the +19 wins they’ve posted on the FanGraphs projections over the last two years.

So it’s probably fair to say our pitchers are around average, but our run prevention is top notch (and the so called experts still haven’t caught on yet).

[Outlander]

I actually like this rotation a lot in a long 162 season, it is solid. The bullpen is a strong suit as well

[Frisbee Slider]

What is our rotation now?

Peralta 

Cortes

Civale

E. Rodriguez?

Bullpen game?

I understand Quintana might not be ready until April.

[umphrey]

Quintana and Tyler Anderson IMO. Quintana is essentially the 5th starter anyway which gives him an extra couple days. Plus I think they would send him out there for 3 innings over any alternative. Tyler Anderson seems the most likely but could be a number of guys like C Rod. Think Logan Henderson is a no right now, just too green and they aren’t desperate enough. 

[Frisbee Slider]

*Tyler Alexander 

[Brian]

Vinny Rottino sure made it sound like Abner Uribe will be serving his suspension "sooner rather than later" especially after the Tobias Meyers injury.