Brewers' Offensive Struggles Raise Concerns Ahead of the Playoffs

The Brewers' offense hasn't been firing for a while now. But the most concerning part isn't simply that they're struggling to score. It's how their approach appears to change when the pressure ramps up, and that's oddly reminiscent of the 2025 NLCS. 

We could look at the eighth inning, where Chad Patrick couldn't find the strike zone, or why Aaron Ashby once again was slow covering the bag after showcasing his own wild arsenal. We could look at the 10th, where Luis Lara got a pitch timer violation, and Brice Turang hesitated while trying to steal third base. Instead, the 11th inning is perhaps the best place to analyze the Brewers' recent travails under pressure.

Picture the scene again. Trevor Megill just went multiple innings of work, closing out the ninth and shutting down the Manfred man in the tenth inning with the help of a wonderful catch from Garrett Mitchell. The Brewers have some momentum. To start the 11th, up steps Gary Sánchez against Adrian Morejón, one of the best relievers in baseball. Drilling a double down the left field line, Sánchez scores the runner from second, and the Brewers are now sitting with a runner on second, no outs, and a one-run lead. 

Sánchez took two triple-digit sinkers inside and off the plate, getting into a 2-0 count before getting something he wanted. He saw that Morejón was trying to bust him inside, so he waited for it to come back over the zone and got the bat head out early, ripping it into left field. Morejón was already showing some signs of his command deteriorating in his second inning of work, and a wild pitch got Gary Sanchez to third base with nobody out. 

Garrett Mitchell takes advantage, going up 3-0 in the count before working a six-pitch walk. Eventually, Mitchell would steal second base, but he showed patience and didn't over-extend himself. Then we come to David Hamilton. One of the criticisms we can have of this offense, particularly in the last two months, is how they lose their identity as hitters when they feel a big moment in the game. In this instance, scoring another run would have felt like a killer blow (and the Brewers would have approached the bottom of the inning differently with a two-run lead). Instead of waiting on the ball to come to him, Hamilton tried to snatch the glory.

Morejón had already demonstrated that he couldn't reliably command the fastball, Hamilton had just watched Mitchell take three balls and walk, and the Brewers had a runner on third with nobody out. Given that context, expanding the zone twice was particularly difficult to justify. Yet expand on two straight pitches Hamilton did:

Adrian Morejón follows the same script: two fastballs, too far inside and off the plate. Hamilton swings at both of them. Almost identical pitches, way in on Hamilton, and he was taking big cuts. Rather than patiently working the at-bat, working his counts, and trying to search for something he could drive, Hamilton tried to be the guy. Against a reliever like Morejón, that just won't work.

Even if either of those pitches had clipped the top of the strike zone, Hamilton should not be swinging at them early in the count. He has squared up just 13% of pitches in the "up and in" quadrant, and produces a 64% ground ball rate with an average exit velocity of 65 mph in that zone, even if it did land in the strike zone. That is not the pitch Hamilton should be swinging on with the infield in and Sanchez at third base. Instead of staying patient and trusting his approach, Hamilton fell behind 0-2 and struck out on a high slider that would have looked very juicy in a 2-0 count.

So up comes Joey Ortiz. He's seen Adrian Morejón throw seven of his eleven pitches outside the strike zone in this inning. Ortiz gets some leeway here as he should be looking for something up and away; that's a pitch he's done a good job of driving to the opposite field. That leeway, however, is wiped out by two things: one, he should be almost in auto-take mode on the first pitch. Two, he faced not a single pitch inside the strike zone in this entire at-bat.

Morejón had thrown multiple non-competitive fastballs, and the Brewers had an advantage if they simply forced him to demonstrate he could throw strikes. Again, you don't want to hamper a hitter by saying don't swing at anything, but Ortiz should have been sitting on one very specific pitch, and taking anything that didn't resemble that pitch. None of the first four pitches Morejón threw in this at-bat would have resembled a quality pitch to hit.

Morejón has the kind of elite raw stuff that makes chasing outside the zone particularly dangerous. You cannot chase a reliever of this caliber with impunity and expect to succeed. Either Hamilton or Ortiz walking would have put Morejón in an increasingly difficult position with the bases loaded, where his faltering command became even more dangerous. It would have forced an at-bat with Jackson Chourio, the one match-up the Brewers would have wanted to create. Instead, the Padres could intentionally walk Chourio and face Brice Turang against a top-tier left-hander, something Turang has struggled with all season.

The Brewers offense is built on a team ethos. Pass the baton. Build pressure. Sequence good at-bats together. They're doing it in parts, but then moving away from that process when the pressure builds up, and it's costing them. What could have been an inspiring eleventh inning win turned into a gut-wrenching loss.

Many will say the Brewers are fifth in runs scored this year, but it would be remiss not to mention how they've performed since the middle of June. Since June 10th, the Brewers have ranked 17th in runs scored. They've also had the joint best exit velocities in baseball during that time and an expected weighted on-base average that ranks fourth in that span. The Brewers' inability to convert opportunities is a major reason the offense has stopped producing at its earlier rate, and the deterioration has been particularly pronounced with runners in scoring position. I've showcased the splits before and after June 10th with runners in scoring position:

The Brewers are striking out more and walking less, and it's the main reason for their dip in results with runners in scoring position. Yes, there was some fortune in their early-season production, but the last two months have been poor from both a process and expected results viewpoint too.

Whatever the cause, the Brewers are showing signs that they're losing trust in the approach that got them here. It's exactly what we saw in the NLCS last year: a team forcing at-bats and suffering the results that come from that. The 2025 Brewers were built around an identifiable offensive philosophy: getting on base, avoiding strikeouts, making contact and creating pressure with a low chase rate and low strikeout rate. The NLCS exposed what happened when that philosophy disappeared against high-quality pitching, producing a historically awful .118 batting average in the series.

This team is very capable of scoring runs, far more than we've seen in the last two months. There should be some optimism that they've performed as well as they have despite the malfunctioning offense, but they're going to need to find the belief in their approach soon. October baseball will not bode well without it.

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