How Can the Brewers Jump On Nick Pivetta and Close Out Padres in Game 3?

[Jake McKibbin]

Image courtesy of Denis Poroy-Imagn Images

Nick Pivetta suffered a right elbow flexor strain that kept him out of San Diego's rotation for much of the year. Now, he's the arm the Padres are relying on to keep their season alive, as they face a Brewers lineup eager to learn from its struggles away from home during the 2025 playoffs and close out the series.

Pivetta pitched to a 2.87 ERA for the Padres in 2025, throwing 181 2/3 innings. He leaned heavily on a high release point and a cut-ride four-seam fastball, pairing it with some unusually high in-zone breaking-ball usage to work hitters north and south. His pitches tunnel well together, generating above-average chase rates and in-zone swing-and-miss.

That said, Pivetta is a fly-ball pitcher who allows plenty of hard contact. His pretty ERA in 2025 was underlied by an expected ERA of 3.96 and an expected FIP of 3.85. The surest way to induce weak contact is with horizontal movement. Pivetta's very vertical movement profile eschews that aim in favor of maximizing whiffs.

Petco Park does a good job of holding fly balls, which has helped Pivetta since he joined the Padres. He's been one of the easiest pitchers in baseball against whom to pull the ball in the air, a tendency that typically creates damage, but Pivetta has somehow paired the second-highest air-pull rate of his career (22.6%) with a career-low home-run-per-fly-ball rate of 4.3% (in a small sample) this season.

That makes this a fascinating stylistic matchup. The Brewers don't actively look to pull the ball in the air, and they hit more ground balls than any other team in baseball. Their ability to turn Pivetta's fly-ball tendencies into damage could be a central factor in this game. The challenge for Milwaukee, then, is knowing when (and how) to deviate from their usual approach fruitfully. The Brewers don't need to become a pull-heavy, fly-ball offense; they need to recognize the mistakes Pivetta gives them and punish those pitches when they arrive in their preferred hitting zones.

TJStats gives Pivetta's four-seam fastball a high Stuff+ grade. The pitch has generated more than 20 inches of induced vertical break on average this season, although his high release point makes that movement slightly less of an outlier than it might initially appear. He averages around 94 miles per hour with the pitch. The four-seamer is his primary offering to both sides of the platoon, but Pivetta attacks left- and right-handed hitters quite differently with the rest of his arsenal.

How Can The Left-Handed Hitters Do Damage?
It may be tempting to lean heavily into a left-handed lineup against Pivetta because of his ability to spin the ball. However, he's actually posted reverse platoon splits over the last two seasons, which probably has to do with the arm slot and the verticality of his arsenal.

His xFIP is higher against left-handed hitters over that span, though, and it's the left side of the platoon that has produced the highest pull rate against him, at 46%. When Brewers left-handers do pull the ball in the air, they typically do so with extreme force. How Brice Turang, Garrett Mitchell and Christian Yelich attack Pivetta could therefore be key to deciding this game.

Mitchell is of particular interest. Long renowned for his struggles against high four-seam fastballs but capable of doing considerable damage against in-zone breaking balls, he could find an opportunity against Pivetta's curveball. Pivetta has located roughly 50% of his curveballs inside the strike zone against left-handed hitters, about the same rate as his in-zone fastball usage. That allows him to play with chase both above and below the zone, but against a hitter like Mitchell, it also presents an opportunity to attack a pitch that catches too much of the zone.

The Brewers also have to be careful with a fastball that doesn't generate a ton of swing-and-miss, but does induce enough swings underneath it to consistently avoid the barrel. Pivetta uses that focus to disrupt the swing timing on his in-zone curveballs. He's found some fortune with both pitches again this year, with the expected results based on quality of contact suggesting that (while each is a good pitch) both have overperformed, and the Brewers would love to see a regression to the mean in Game 3.

How Can Right-Handed Hitters Attack Pivetta?
Right-handed hitters see a more varied diet of pitches. Pivetta prefers his sweeper to the curveball against same-handed batters, while his cutter provides another wrinkle designed to keep hitters off the barrel. The cutter isn't a pitch he locates as consistently as the four-seam fastball, however, and it's taken some damage as a result:

In fact, both the four-seamer and cutter have been susceptible to hard contact against right-handed hitters. Once again, though, he's managed to get some favorable results, relative to the quality of contact he's allowed.

A 57% hard-hit rate on the four-seamer is telling, as is its 15.7% barrel rate. The sweeper is therefore vital to Pivetta's success. It generates in-zone swing-and-miss and chase, while also doing an excellent job of keeping hitters away from the barrel.

The cutter acts as a bridge between the sweeper and four-seam fastball, and the relationship between the three pitches is clear in the Pitch Profiler chart below. The sweeper and cutter have strong ProMatch+ scores of 115 and 132, respectively, measuring how closely they imitate the shape of the fastball before breaking away.

So How Do They Dismantle the Padres' Game 3 Starter?
Ultimately, the Brewers don't need to reinvent their approach against Pivetta. They need to make him work in the strike zone, avoid giving away outs on his breaking stuff, and capitalize when his fastballs drift into hittable locations. Pivetta's ability to tunnel his pitches makes that easier said than done, but the underlying contact numbers suggest there are opportunities to exploit. The Brewers don't have to beat Pivetta at his game; they simply have to recognize which pitches they can damage and punish him when he gives them those opportunities.

For left-handed hitters, the opportunity is in the air. Pivetta's curveball can be squared up when he leaves it in the zone, and his four-seamer doesn't generate enough swing-and-miss to completely neutralize hitters. The Brewers' left-handed bats have the power to punish those mistakes, particularly if they can pull the ball in the air rather than allowing Pivetta to turn contact into harmless fly balls.

Right-handed hitters face a slightly different challenge. The sweeper is Pivetta's best weapon against them, so staying disciplined against it will be crucial. His fastballs, particularly the cutter, offer the greater opportunity for damage, but only if hitters can resist the temptation to chase the breaking ball and stay on pitches long enough to drive them.

View full article

[Michael Trzinski]

Great work, @Jake McKibbin

[MattK]

6 minutes ago, Michael Trzinski said:

Great work, @Jake McKibbin

No doubt, thanks Jake! 

 

Pitch Plinko ... who knew that was a thing.  :-)  Learning stuff everyday on this site. 

[Jake McKibbin]

3 minutes ago, MattK said:

No doubt, thanks Jake! 

 

Pitch Plinko ... who knew that was a thing.  :-)  Learning stuff everyday on this site. 

Haha glad you liked it Matt! Yep that's a new one for me to use in an article, but I think it's a really clear graphic showing pitch usage by count, I'll have to use it more often