The October Blueprint: How Teams Will Attack the Brewers’ Best Hitters

[Jake McKibbin]

Image courtesy of Benny Sieu-Imagn Images

When the postseason begins, the Milwaukee Brewers’ lineup will face a different kind of challenge. Opposing pitching staffs will have the time and information to build specific game plans around the top of Milwaukee’s lineup, and four of their most dangerous hitters—Garrett Mitchell, Jackson Chourio, Brice Turang, and Jake Bauers—have each played important roles in an offense that has consistently found ways to create pressure, but October baseball is about exploiting every possible weakness. Let's delve into just how opposing teams might look to minimize the strength of the Brewers' most effective hitters.

1. Garrett Mitchell: Can you get him to chase?
If Garrett Mitchell is going to lead off against right-handed pitching, opposing starters have an obvious problem: how do you attack a hitter who rarely chases, without giving him a pitch he can drive? Mitchell has a patient approach at the plate, rarely chasing pitches outside the zone and forcing pitchers to beat him inside it. He'll swing and miss inside the strike zone, but the other side of the coin is just how consistently hard Mitchell is hitting the ball. 

After adapting his swing mid-season to create more damage against the high fastball (more info here), Mitchell evolved back into the version of himself that had to sell out less for one pitch and can do serious damage against breaking pitches and fastballs, alike. In September, he had a 98-MPH average exit velocity against right-handed pitchers, and his mark was 95 MPH against all fastballs in the same month. The one pitch I didn't mention is, perhaps, the one thing holding him back.

Thomas Nestico (TJstats) has the conditionally formatted breakdown for Mitchell (above) against right-handed pitching, and it shows off a few things. Teams typically don't like to pound the strike zone against Mitchell, thanks to the quality of contact he produces against almost every kind of pitch, but his low chase rate makes this a real cat-and-mouse scenario. Mitchell's hard-hit rates against nearly every pitch are exemplary, bar two: the changeup and the splitter. 

Having an offering that Mitchell struggles to damage is a real neutraliser. A 55% whiff rate against the changeup makes it an easy pitch to spam, even if only to get ahead in counts and set up a high fastball to put him away. Pitchers have been front-dooring the changeup a lot to Mitchell this season for just that reason, but the low chase rate does present a wrinkle. Off-speed pitches are typically located in-zone less than any other pitch in baseball, and are difficult to command. If they miss, Mitchell is unlikely to chase, and you're handing count leverage to a very dangerous hitter.

Mitchell can still hit lefties, especially those without a strong sinker, but there is a platoon advantage for southpaws against him. Having Jackson Chourio hitting behind Mitchell adds some nuance to the situation, punishing teams for strategically going to a southpaw, but it does neutralize Mitchell somewhat. He tends to watch sinkers coming back over the outer third of the plate and struggles to elevate when facing same handed-pitching.

2. Jackson Chourio: Can you get ahead without feeding him?
A locked-in Jackson Chourio is almost impossible to pitch to. He'll be aggressive inside the strike zone, can put the barrel to the ball in the shadow areas at the edges, and elevates everything. He's dangerous, but finding that "temperature," as Pat Murphy refers to it, has been an issue at times this year. Chourio has dipped in and out of the state of mind that sees him pulverize baseballs, but he does have a history of rising to the occasion in the biggest moments, with a career playoff OPS over 1.000 and his two-run home run against the Cubs in the ninth inning earlier this month.

The big question for the Brewers lineup's linchpin is: can you get Chourio into two-strike counts, without giving him something he can damage? The answer is, of course, 'maybe'. Early in the count, the outer third of the plate is open for business against Chourio, whose approach is focused on the inner third as he hunts a pitch to turn and burn on. His set-up at the plate is quite far away from the strike zone compared to most hitters, and because of how he opens up when he's trying to pull the ball, he doesn't always cover the outside corner well before he gets to two strikes.

The problem for the pitcher is that you cannot leak those pitches back over the heart of the plate. A pitcher with supreme command (like Yoshinobu Yamamoto or Zack Wheeler) could really take advantage of this, but if those pitches leak back at all, you can see the danger of leaving anything middle-middle to Chourio, If you can get count leverage against Chourio, then his strike-zone awareness becomes a bigger issue. In those spots, pitchers have nibbled heavily against him this year, with great success. If he can stay calm, Chourio can carry this Brewers offense. The challenge, then, isn't simply finding a location Chourio struggles to attack. It's getting to that location early in the count, without giving him something better to hit. It's no small thing to ask of a pitcher: have the right stuff in your arsenal, and don't you dare miss with it.

3. Brice Turang: Does the Lefty Blueprint Still Work?
@Jason Wang informed me on the Brewer Fanatic Sunday Live show that Brice Turang has the same Baseball Reference WAR in 2026 as Christian Yelich's 2018 season. That's incredible, but the better news is that the obvious postseason blueprint for Turang may no longer work. 

For most of 2026, the blueprint against Brice Turang was obvious: give him left-handed pitching. By September, that blueprint had begun to break down. On the year as a whole, Turang has a 76 WRC+ against left-handers, compared to a 149 WRC+ against right-handed pitching. Most of it stemmed from timing issues in how he drifted forward, cutting down his reaction time and leaving him consistently late on fastballs (again, for more details, see this excellent piece, by Jack Stern). Toward the end of August and into September, however, there are clear signs that throwing a left-hander at Turang is no longer an easy button:

His expected weighted on-base average had been .250 or below in three of the previous four months against southpaws. It skyrocketed to .425 in September, with Turang hitting balls harder (50% hard-hit rate) and whiffing less (just a 16.7% in-zone whiff rate in the final month). His September results look something like this against left-handers (note that TJStats doesn't exclude bunts from exit-velocity-based statistics, which skews those somewhat):

The one lingering weakness may be against the four-seam fastball. Turang does have a hole in his swing, thanks to the steep bat path he's adopted this year, on fastballs up and away. If a pitcher can pound him in that zone, there's not much he's able to do from a damage perspective, but he is patient enough to take those pitches out of the zone and work a count into something more favorable. In this form, Turang can be gotten out reliably only with near-perfect execution, just like Chourio.

4. Jake Bauers: Can you neutralize the power?
Jake Bauers's transformation in 2026 has created a fulcrum for this offense. His adjusted mentality in the box compared to prior years has created a calmness that's been invaluable, not just for himself, but for the Brewers clubhouse. That will be critical for an offense that dwindled in the 2025 postseason when the lights got bright, but his biggest contribution is in the consistent provision of power. 

Bauers looked on track for close to 30 home runs at points in the season, before shin splints derailed him in September, but with five days away from baseball and a more managed load across the last two weeks, the Brewers will be hoping to see their most important slugger back in top form by Saturday.

Bauers has produced without a significant platoon disadvantage this season, actually finishing with a higher OPS against left-handers than he did against right-handed pitchers, and an almost .900 OPS overall. He can swing and miss, and his 27% strikeout rate isn't to be ignored, but those strikeouts aren't coming from undue free swinging.

On the contrary, Bauers is quite passive inside the strike zone. In 2024 and 2025, Bauers swung at roughly 77% of pitches over the heart of the plate. In 2026, that number has dropped to 70%. That's a bit of a head-fake toward concern, as the damage Bauers has done on those pitches in 2026 has exponentially increased, but it can allow pitchers to get ahead early. Still, Bauers is comfortable in any count, and his xwOBA on contact is actually higher when behind in the count, compared to when he gets ahead.

If there's one thing Bauers doesn't seem to pick up well and adjust to, it's a 12-6 curveball. His chase rate against out-of-zone curveballs is good, but when he does swing, the results have been less than ideal. In 2026, he's recorded a batting average of .036 and a wOBA of .174, as well as a barrel rate of just 5.9%. For a hitter who elevates the ball with the authority like Bauers, that's worthy of attention.

The curveball therefore presents an unusual opportunity. Bauers isn't particularly prone to chasing it, so simply throwing it below the zone won't necessarily produce a swing. But when he does offer, the results have been dramatically worse than against most other pitches. For a pitcher willing to get into disadvantageous counts and still trust the curveball, that may be the clearest route to limiting Bauers's damage. Of course, again, you need a pitcher with a trustworthy curve to make it work.

Four Hitters, Four Different Problems
The most encouraging part of this exercise for Milwaukee is that there isn't a single blueprint for attacking the top of this lineup. Mitchell can be challenged with changeups and splitters, but only if pitchers can locate them well enough to avoid handing him another hitter's count. Chourio can be tested on the outer third early in counts, but the margin for error is tiny when a mistake over the plate can turn into immediate damage. Turang's historic vulnerability to left-handed pitching remains relevant, but his September results suggest that simply turning to a southpaw may no longer be enough. And Bauers may have a weakness against the curveball, but even there, pitchers have to get him to offer at a pitch he has shown a willingness to take.

That's ultimately what makes this Brewers lineup so interesting heading into October. Each hitter has an identifiable area where an opposing pitching staff can try to gain an advantage, but none of those weaknesses exists in isolation. Every potential solution comes with a corresponding risk. For Milwaukee, the postseason challenge is therefore not necessarily about finding a way to make these weaknesses disappear. It's about forcing opposing pitchers to pay for the times they try to exploit them. Few teams in baseball do that as well as the Brewers do.

October baseball tends to magnify small advantages. The Brewers' hitters have them, too. The question is whether opposing pitching staffs can consistently find the right pitch, in the right location, at the right time, and whether Milwaukee's hitters can make them pay when they don't. The answers to those questions will determine how far the Crew goes this fall.

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[MattK]

Love a data based article that is super positive! 

[Jake McKibbin]

Just now, MattK said:

Love a data based article that is super positive! 

I'll bet you weren't expecting it after seeing that title

[Samurai Bucky]

Great article, for sure!

It seems like there are two pitches that cause every Brewers hitter to struggle. 

The first is the changeup.  I don't have any data, but the chase rate against a good changeup pitcher is the kryptonite  for all of the Brewers hitters.

The second is a slider low and away.  A sweeper might be in the same realm.  Most times this seems to be a pitch outside of the zone.

No data, unfortunately.  Just an observation.