Are the Brewers Working Toward a More Settled October Lineup—or Just Rehearsing Maximum Flexibility?

All year, only two Brewers players have established anything close to a fixed, everyday lineup position under Pat Murphy. Jackson Chourio (usually) bats second, and Joey Ortiz (usually) bats ninth. Even those aren't exactly set in stone. Chourio spent significant time batting leadoff (especially against left-handed opposing starters) early in the season, and has made at least 10 starts batting both third and fourth. Ortiz, for whom the team had higher offensive hopes before his calamitous start to the season, batted eighth 32 times and spent a few games each batting sixth and seventh. Mostly, though, those two have settled into defined offensive positions.

Beyond that, much has been in flux, for various reasons. Over the course of the season, Isaac Collins, Brice Turang and Sal Frelick have taken turns asserting themselves as the best or second-best hitter on the team. Rhys Hoskins had a clear role, batting lower in the batting order but punishing teams who let traffic pile up in front of him on the bases. After he got hurt, though, Andrew Vaughn stepped in and delivered such thunder—just when Christian Yelich's own pop seemed to falter—that it was impossible to keep Vaughn as low in the lineup as Hoskins had been. Yelich and William Contreras have each had stretches of brilliance at the plate, but each has been less consistent than past versions of themselves, as they navigate various background injury issues and the maintenance of their bodies under the demands of their jobs.

As a result, for a team scoring the third-most runs in the major leagues and waltzing toward home-field advantage throughout the postseason, the Crew have an unusually variable lineup. It changes frequently—and even more frequently, lately, than over the campaign as a whole. Here's a color-coded tracker of their daily lineups since September began, pulled from Baseball Reference.

Though Hoskins returned to the active roster earlier this month, he hasn't yet drawn a start. Jake Bauers has gotten hot enough not only to force his way into the lineup, but to spend multiple days in the heart of the order. Caleb Durbin has drifted all the way from fifth to eighth, and not purely based on platoon matchups. Turang has moved between first, third and fifth, while Sal Frelick has mixed in as the leadoff man but also slotted often into the middle third of the group. Even Yelich and Contreras are drifting among the spots in the center of the action.

A few concrete trends are developing—some with playoff implications, and some without. For instance, Danny Jansen has drawn a start every third game this month, like clockwork. That's a function of the team forcing William Contreras to rest a bit more; it's not something you'll see in October. In fact, Contreras will almost certainly catch every game the team plays during the postseason. That will leave more playing time open at designated hitter, which could be allotted to Yelich, Hoskins, or Vaughn. Isaac Collins's bat has slouched a bit (he's batting .200/.307/.320 since returning from paternity leave in mid-August), which is making more space in the top five of the order. It's almost certain that Chourio will bat second on a given night, with Frelick, Turang, Contreras and Yelich filling in around him to round out that top five. Only the order of them is changing regularly, and that might continue into the playoffs.

If Yelich is often the DH, though, the question of whether to play Collins in left (with Chourio in center) or Blake Perkins in center (with Chourio in left) remains a daily dilemma for Murphy. Ditto for the question of whether to start Bauers, Vaughn or Hoskins at first base. The tricky thing with those questions is that both Perkins and Collins are switch-hitters, and each is (or at least can be) a great defender, with the overall efficiency of the outfield alignment they create hinging on how you feel about Chourio's relative merits at each of the positions between which he swings based on the deployment of his teammates. Meanwhile, of course, both Vaughn and Hoskins are righty batters. It's hard, as a manager, to know when to slot in a particular player, when you have a rotation of options to whom you want to distribute some playing time but no clear and simple algorithm for that decision.

Platoons make this easy, and if Bauers continues raking, he has a chance to seize some playing time even in October. This is also why managers have traditionally defaulted to playing their backup catcher in day games after night games. Most catchers bat right-handed, so the easiest way to map playing time was to find another logical way to explain and plan the swapping-out of the starter. Murphy has allowed himself that luxury this month, perhaps because he has so many other, thornier choices to make when writing out each day's lineup card.

Knowing that top five (plus Ortiz, batting ninth) is essentially locked in, the main questions the team will try to establish firmer answers to over the final fortnight of the season are:

1. Who should play first base, and when?
2. Which of Perkins and Collins should play, and when?
3. Where should Durbin bat, relative to the players selected in answering the first two questions?

Although some nagging injuries, slumps and sagging bat speed have diminished the Milwaukee Speed Machine a bit, they're still a potent positional group, with more good players than spots in the starting nine. That's a nice problem to have, but for now, it remains a problem Murphy has to plan ways to solve. His lineup is a fluid thing, and right now, that's just fine. By Game 1 on the NLDS, though, he'll want to have clearer criteria with which to answer all his daily questions than he has right now. That's what makes September important, even for a team already locked in for October.