Do Brewers Need to Give Their Great Defense Less to Do in 2025?

It's hard to put together a team defense much better than that of the 2024 Brewers. It wasn't Brice Turang's fault that the Mets hit several key singles through the right side of the infield last week, often from right-handed batters who reached out and poked the ball that way. A defense can't afford to align itself based on the possibility that a team might uncharacteristically shorten up and go the other way, on the ground. More often than not, that will get you burned, and besides, the Brewers already use shaded infield positioning less often than almost any other team in the league.

Most teams try to lift and pull the ball most of the time, but now and then, when a team has scouted an opposing pitcher well, they can simply decide to stroke the ball the opposite way. Many fans want to see players do it all the time, but it's impossible to do it consistently against top-level, modern competition. The thing is, you don't have to do it consistently to knock out a perfectly good team in MLB's current playoff format. You just have to do it for one game, or one especially hot inning. Pitchers can prevent hard contact in the air, much of the time, if they so choose. But they can't necessarily prevent soft, directed contact.

No, the only way to reliably prevent what the Mets did to the Brewers in rallies throughout the series is to stop them from hitting the ball at all. The Brewers were 16th in MLB in strikeout rate this year. The median strikeout rate in the postseason for the last nine seasons' pennant winners is 26%; Milwaukee pitchers only fanned 21.2% of Mets hitters in the Wild Card Series. There's no surefire solution to playoff variance; it's the unavoidable nature of postseason baseball. To give themselves the best possible chance to advance deeper into October next year, though, the team has to miss more bats.

The good news is, they already have that kind of potential. As much as any reorganization of their pitching staff to add talent, they just need to change their approach. Few teams in baseball throw fastballs more often than do the Brewers. That's fine; it helps them avoid issuing undue numbers of walks and can induce early, weak contact. However, hitters also make more contact on fastballs than on other pitch types. The team's tendency to lean hard on heaters allows their excellent defense to make plays, but in the process, it makes the whole team's run prevention dependent on that defense.

Next season, Brewers pitchers need to take more of the responsibility for keeping runs off the board for themselves. The coaching staff needs to dig in with William Contreras and whoever works as his complementary catcher, to get them throwing more breaking balls and offspeed stuff. There will inevitably be some turnover in terms of pitching personnel, too, and that's healthy and good. Pitching to contact was not just a team-wide strategy or the product of Contreras's tendencies; it was also a good way to make up for the torrent of injuries that hit the pitching staff. Next year, with more of their better arms healthy, they'll organically get more whiffs, and if they're aggressive in pitching acquisition, that effect might be magnified.

Still, though, even with the pitchers who remain in place, there need to be some changes. Taking some of the burden off the fielders and placing it on pitchers will broaden the team's base of run-prevention contributors and improve their chances of beating even great offensive teams. It might also help those defenders stay fresher. Behaving a little more like the rest of the league in terms of pitch mix should allow the Brewers to get their strikeout rate clear of the average, at minimal opportunity or financial cost. They don't need to leave their identity behind, but some tweaks are required, so that they're more ready to punch hitters out and make themselves rally-proof when they return to the postseason.