The Brewers' One Glaring Defensive Weakness: You Can Run on Them

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Visit Garrett Mitchell's Baseball Savant player card, and you'll see an impressive number next to Arm Strength. On competitive throws, Mitchell averages a velocity of nearly 94 miles per hour, according to Statcast. Outfielders can sometimes top 100 MPH when the circumstances are conducive, because they often get the luxury of a crow hop as they load up for the throw. On the other hand, they have to get off the throw under time pressure, so throws that hard are rare. Mitchell's average velocity on the throws Statcast uses for its measurements is in the 97th percentile, the way the system counts these things.

Yet, Mitchell doesn't actually deliver positive value with his arm. On the contrary, runners take more bases against him on hits and flyouts than against an average outfielder. Ditto for Sal Frelick, whose arm is much less trong on average but who flashes the ability to make exceptionally accurate, strong pegs. He throws well, but he doesn't control the running game on balls in play well. As a team, the Brewers have lost 3 runs via opponent extra bases taken, relative to an average club. Only the Reds and Rockies have been worse this season. It's a rare detail-oriented aspect of the game in which the Crew do not excel, and it's worth asking: why do Mitchell and Frelick (the two most consistent pieces of the team's outfield firmament so far) lose value with their arms, despite throwing relatively well?

The obvious answer, of course, is that some of Mitchell's throws look like this:

Quantifying arm accuracy isn't easy, but occasionally, a glaring mistake like that one makes obvious the disconnect between sheer arm strength and arm value. Whether Mitchell should have thrown to the plate at all is an interesting call. As the 3D reconstruction of the play available on the MLB Gameday page for the game shows, Mitchell fielded the ball almost exactly as Jacob Young hit third base.

When an outfielder with a strong arm is coming in on a ball with a head of steam and they field it just as the runner reaches third, a throw home is appropriate. The batter-runner, catcher Keibert Ruiz, is slow enough to make that throw relatively cost-free most of the time, and there's a real chance to get an out at the plate. On the other hand, Young has plus speed, so getting him was unlikely, even for the strong-armed Mitchell. The biggest problem, though, was how wide the throw went, leaving Young unthreatened as he scored and pulling William Contreras far up the line. It sailed, too, so that it couldn't even be cut off along the way. That was a lost opportunity to prevent one run, and it made another one slightly more likely. Ruiz didn't come around to score, as it turned out, but Mitchell hurt the Brewers' chances with that bad throw.

Inaccurate pegs are just part of the problem, though, and not the biggest part, by any means. Much more often, arm utility comes down to the subtler aspects of playing the ball: positioning, how quickly you get to the ball, and the footwork you use when you do.

Here's one example.

On a long drive by the Nationals' Jose Tena, Mitchell got too close to the wall and had it bounce over his head. There was never a chance of catching the ball, and by chasing it too ardently, Mitchell ended up out of position to play the carom off the fence. That meant both that it took longer for him to corral it and that he couldn't even get off a strong throw once he did so. The way he played it turned a double into a triple. 

Here's another play where what was possible—what Mitchell didn't prevent—isn't immediately obvious, and where the reasons why he was unable to prevent the extra base is hard to see at first.

Positioning was a huge piece of the equation here. Mitchell started the play 322 feet from home plate, which is about the average depth for a center fielder these days. Against Victor Scott II, though, you usually don't have to play that deep. Mitchell was there because, with two outs and an above-average runner aboard, the Brewers wanted to prevent a double, more than they wanted to thwart a single or stop Masyn Winn from taking third on one. In that sense, the fact that Winn did advance on this play is not a huge loss, and it's certainly not all on Mitchell. That's a team decision, made for strategic reasons.

However, Mitchell still could have done more to prevent Winn from reaching third. Look at the way he fields the ball.

Getting down on the ball well in that situation is critical. Letting it get past you turns a single into more and allows that run the team is hoping to forestall to score, needlessly. However, Mitchell got behind the ball, only to slow down and drop into a boxy infielder's crouch as he played what was a sharply hit ball. He might have read it as being hit more slowly than it really was. Had he read it right and taken a more aggressive tack with his charge, he could have been getting into a throwing position by the moment we see above, and there could have been more behind his throw to third. As you can see, Winn had just passed second base at this moment; there was a play to be made on him. Mitchell's failure to get into an aggressive throwing position early squandered the chance.

One more play in which we'll pick on Mitchell a bit, before moving on.

A portion of arm utility is simply knowing when to use it. Here, Mitchell conceded the run too easily. He doesn't charge the ball as aggressively as he could have, but even so, he gets to the ball just as Liam Hicks rounds third. Here, again, is the 3D rendering of the moment when Mitchell fields the ball. Hicks is a catcher by trade and a slow runner. With a player like him at this spot and a center fielder who can throw well holding the ball, it's worth a throw to the plate. Mitchell plays it safe—too much so.

Now, let's talk about Sal Frelick. He's not working with the same kind of hose Mitchell has. He needs to use his speed and his footwork to get off the strongest throws of which he's capable, and he has to be on the money. Generally speaking, he does so. So why does he still come in below average when it comes to actually preventing runners from taking the extra base?

Firstly, there's positioning. A bit too often, this year, the Brewers have had Frelick shaded toward the gap, only to see the ball go down the right-field line. The extra 20 feet Frelick has to run in such situations can often make the difference between a runner taking an extra 90 feet or not, and it's got little to do with Frelick himself. Depending on your mood, this can be construed as bad luck, poor implementation of the plan by the battery, or mistaken advance scouting by the coaches aligning the defense, but whatever the cause, the value leaks away.

Frelick has been caught playing a bit too deep at times, too. Here's one hit on which he could have stopped a runner from reaching third, if he'd been in a better starting position or taken a better initial route when it left the bat.

In fairness to Frelick, this is another case wherein the Brewers' top priorities are not to prevent the runner from going first to third. Still, because he was playing deep and initially gave ground on the ball, the trailing runner was able to do just that. Here's the moment at which Frelick fielded the ball, in 3D rendering.

You won't throw out even an average runner from this depth in right field to third base, if they're already up to speed and reaching second as you field the ball—not, at least, unless you have a Mitchell-caliber cannon. Frelick doesn't, so the play was over by the time he fielded the ball.

Had he gotten a better read, though, Frelick could have met the ball earlier and shallower, with a pretty good angle to throw and an extra step's worth of time to get it to third. Here's where he might have intercepted the ball, had he not initially thought Konnor Griffin's slicing drive would force him to defend the corner.

The animated version of Frelick here is the real one, and as you can see, he's about 15 feet from where the ball is, still running away from it a bit. That's only because he was playing so deep and took a banana route to the ball, though: first in, then over and back, bending into position. If his first step had been better or he'd been a step shallower in the first place, he could have had the ball at this point, changing the math of the play.

There are lots of little things like this happening when the opponent finds grass in the outfield against the Brewers this year. Frelick and Mitchell don't communicate well on gappers; they've repeatedly gotten too close together and been in each other's way as one tried to quickly get off a strong throw after fielding the ball. Frelick and Brandon Lockridge each took their turns getting too close to the wall and having the ball squirt past them, just as we watched Mitchell do above. Lockridge has been more aggressive and more accurate with charges and throws, but has a weak spot down the left-field line where he made multiple mistakes of creating an angle or throwing to a target that led to an opponent getting an extra base.

It's still early, and there have been an unusual number of disruptions to the team's plans for the outfield already. By the end of the season, Milwaukee's phalanx is likely to be restored, with coaches getting their players into better positions and communication improving. Still, Mitchell will have to be more aware and more accurate, and the team will have to be more on the ball down the stretch. Extra bases turn into extra runs, and the extra runs the Brewers don't allow are how they've been able to win three straight National League Central titles.

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[wiguy94]

@Matthew Trueblood could this be another instance of missing out on Berry? Wasn't he the OF coach in addition to being the 1B coach for the Brewers? The OF defense has been going the wrong way since he left.

2023 - 20 DRS, 18 FRV

2024 - 37 DRS, 20 FRV

2025 - 2 DRS, 13 FRV

2026 - 3 DRS, -1 FRV