Brewers Hitters Made Needed Adjustments in Repeat Matchup Against Bryce Elder

The Brewers enjoyed a much-needed blowout win on Tuesday night, opening their series against the Braves in Atlanta with a 10-0 showing behind big nights from Willy Adames and Colin Rea. It was Milwaukee’s first double-digit run output since Jun. 7, and seven of those runs scored against starter Bryce Elder, who subdued the Brewers a week earlier.

When Elder tossed 6 1/3 innings of one-run ball at American Family Field on Jul. 30, he did so by pounding the bottom of the strike zone, coaxing chases below the zone from Brewers hitters and inducing weak contact when they put the ball in play. They swung at 34% of pitches outside the zone and managed a hard-hit rate of just 35.3%.

It was a different story Tuesday night. Elder was not nearly as sharp as he was in his previous outing, and the Brewers made him pay with a pair of adjustments. Unlike last time, they chased fewer sliders below the zone and pounced on Elder’s sinker.

In Milwaukee, Brewers hitters chased nine of the 17 sliders Elder threw out of the zone. On Tuesday, they chased four of 14. It helped that Elder’s command of the pitch was worse – he spiked several in the dirt during the first inning – but the Brewers still deserve credit for laying off. They spit on a handful of sliders in locations they had chased days prior.

While the Brewers were more passive when they saw spin out of Elder’s hand, they jumped on fastballs. They swung at 58.1% of fastballs he threw in the zone on Tuesday, compared to 52% the week before. The approach was evident from the get-go, when Brice Turang singled on a sinker up the middle for a single on Elder’s first pitch of the evening.

The aggressive strategy against fastballs made sense. Opponents have hit .339 and slugged .504 against Elder’s sinker and four-seamer this year. The best way to beat him is by ambushing his worst pitches.

Perhaps the greatest example of the two adjustments in action was William Contreras’s first at-bat, which ended in a triple to open the scoring. Contreras took a pair of low sliders (the first of which was in the dirt) to get ahead in the count, took a mighty hack on a sinker that he fouled back, then drove a four-seamer off the right-field wall on the following pitch to score Turang. Adames joined the party next, blasting the first sinker he saw in the zone to dead center for his first of two home runs.

The game was a return to form for the Brewers, who enjoyed success at the plate for most of the first half by mixing scrappy, high-on-base profiles with power threats in the middle of the lineup. It started with a pair of changes in response to a quiet showing days earlier. This is the kind of flexibility, rapid learning, and ruthless, relentless attack they'll need to finish the season in style.