Fun With Pythagoras: In Streaks We Trust?

Throughout the Brewers' season, I have noticed that this club will absolutely scratch and claw its way through games with teams of suspect quality. Take their most recent losing streak to the Athletics, undoubtedly one of the worst symbolic series Brewers fans have experienced since the unspeakable collapse in late 2014. Their losses? 2-5, 1-2, 6-8. Not that bad, certainly worse in terms of symbolism than performance. A similar thing happened against the Cincinnati Reds, this time with a blend of close wins and close losses: 5-4, 10-8, 0-2. The same thing has happened in Minneapolis over the last two hopefully-forgettable days (5-7, 2-4). 

Nine of the last 15 Brewers games have been decided by a margin of two (or fewer) runs, and another two were decided by a margin of three.  And so it goes that a club with a 6-9 record in their last 15 games, a stretch which includes their second six-game (so far) losing streak of the season, also has a Runs Scored / Runs Allowed performance of 60 RS / 64 RA in those games. In terms of the ledger, where the wins truly count, this recent Brewers stretch is good for a 65-win pace, while their underlying performance is good for a 76-win pace; which is ... better? One could argue that the Brewers are getting a lot of mileage out of that 10-2 victory against the Orioles to impact their perception of competitiveness over the last 15 games, so I removed the two "blowout" games where margins of loss or victory were bigger than five runs. Even in this scenario, the Brewers' underlying performance (48 RS / 55 RA, 71 win pace) was better than their actual performance (5-8, good for a 62-win pace).

Of course, any way you look at win totals of 76 and 71, or 65 and 62, the recent results are not up to the standards that recent Brewers fans have come to hold for their team. And it's just not good baseball.

Throughout the season, I like to track a team's daily wins and losses and their Runs Scored / Runs Allowed within the league context to understand specific trends pertaining to their season. The basic hypothesis is that many teams exist within one roster throughout a season, and there are also wide margins of error on the expectations of even one roster of players. When you add up streaks and slumps, injuries, call-ups, trades, and other roster moves, many different iterations of each MLB club take the field over 162 games. I like to try to find those shifts.

Recently, as you are probably already aware, the Brewers are in the midst of a frustrating six-game losing streak. It is tied for their longest losing streak of the season, which I mentioned above, and it is their fifth losing streak. For purposes here, I define a streak as 3-or-more consecutive wins (or losses). 

The Brewers also have five winning streaks in 2023, so we are looking at a quite streaky team. In fact, nearly sixty percent of the club's 68 games thus far have occurred during a winning or losing streak. During their five winning and five losing streaks, the Brewers thus far have posted a 19-21 record, which is slightly worse than their overall 34-34 winning percentage. In terms of underlying performance, the club is 163 Runs Scored / 173 Runs Allowed, which is good for a 76-to-77 win pace and better than the club's overall run differential. 

By contrast, when the Brewers are not playing during a winning or losing streak, those "in-between" or transitional games feature a 15-13 record, which is better than their overall 34-34 mark. What is curious here, however, is that the club actually plays worse when they are not in the middle of a winning or losing streak: here, their scoreboard showed 111 RS / 126 RA, which is good for a 71-to-72 win pace, and notably worse than their overall run differential for 2023. 

What's going on here? In general, Milwaukee has had quite competitive losing streaks. During their 21 losses amid losing streaks, the club only posted 4 "blowout" (5+ run) losses. By contrast, of their 13 random "transitional" game losses (or losses that did not occur during a losing streak), the Brewers posted 6 "blowout" losses. 

Our beloved Milwaukee Brewers are running through a tough stretch, demonstrating many flaws that have made this a frustrating year. The offense can't score runs, the elite starting pitching factory has seemingly closed up shop and moved out of town, and the bullpen is suddenly stumbling as the starting pitching staff underperforms. But if your perception is that Milwaukee remains in a lot of close games, even if those games are frustrating, that intuition seems to be correct, and it leads me to wonder whether a few quick roster tweaks could yield fast and impactful results on the field. Acquiring another arm or two at the deadline (or earlier) and seeking out a deadline bat could go a long way to translate some of these close losses into wins. 

What is most interesting about these results is perhaps the perception of a club that fights. Despite their losing streaks, the club does not get blown out, which I take as a sign that they are bouncing back and strategically focusing on the right things to keep them close to winning. Right now, those wins are not occurring. Of course, all of the run differentials I posted above are subpar compared with the expectations of a winning club, so the club needs to improve even if they have demonstrated that they will not stop scratching and clawing. Now it's time for the Brewers front office to take their step forward in aiding these scrappy dudes by recognizing the roster's apparent shortcomings and spending some of Mark Attanasio's cash on midseason improvements.