Game 2's Most Unassuming Brewers Run Might Have Been the Most Telling

How could one call the 2018 Brewers offense fatally flawed? The best example would be the top of the seventh inning in Game 4 of that series with the Dodgers. The Brewers were up two games to one, and it was tied 1-1. Manny Pina led off with a double and got to third on a one-out fly ball to center, but was stranded when Lorenzo Cain grounded out to second.

The 2018 Brewers had some fast players, but most of the position players were one-dimensional in terms of their offensive production, primarily getting it from power. Many of them had good OBP skills, but when they were on the basepaths, the ability to play “small ball” when necessary wasn’t there.

The 2024 Brewers offense is a much more versatile team. Yes, there are power threats like Willy Adames, Rhys Hoskins, Jackson Chourio, Garrett Mitchell, Gary Sánchez, Jake Bauers, and William Contreras, but the team also has several players who can play “small ball” very well. Brice Turang, Sal Frelick, Blake Perkins, and Joey Ortiz come to mind.

But between these two skill sets, there is overlap. Ortiz and Perkins have some sneaky power, while Adames, Chourio, Mitchell, and Bauers are also threats on the basepaths. Christian Yelich, when healthy, was another two-way threat for both power and speed.

In fact, here’s a piece of trivia for you: The 2024 Brewers have outscored the 2018 team – with the current year’s Crew plating 777 runs, compared to 754 for the 2018 team. With the DH in place, this Brewers team has 15 sacrifice hits – compared to six by non-pitchers from the 2018 team.

But how would this multi-dimensional offense make a difference? Let’s take a look at that crucial top of the seventh inning in Game 4 of the 2018 NLCS.

In that frame, the Brewers had their seventh, eighth, and ninth hitters in the lineup due to hit. For the 2024 Brewers, the players most often in those holes are Frelick, Ortiz, and Perkins. Assuming Frelick hits a leadoff double (he hits one double every 21.6 at-bats, compared to one every 23.5 for Pina), we can now see how it shakes out differently.

Frelick’s speed (18 stolen bases in 21 attempts) means that he could very likely steal third base. Dodgers catchers did have a rough time of it defensively during that NLCS, and the 2024 Brewers team is build to capitalize on those difficulties. Even without a Frelick steal, though, he could tag up and move to third on a fly ball (which Orlando Arcia hit in the top of the seventh in Game 4, but on which Pina remained at second).

A fly ball to left with a runner on third is probably a sac fly with Frelick’s speed, and Ortiz is a much more capable hitter than the 2018 version of Orlando Arcia.

Now, with a runner on third and one out in the worst-case scenario, the Brewers are in a very good spot, whether it was Curtis Granderson, the historical ninth hitter (who hit a fly ball to center that allowed Pina to tag up to third) or Blake Perkins. Perkins, though, brings multiple ways to hurt an opposing team at the plate. He tied with Joey Ortiz and Rhys Hoskins with six sacrifice flies on the season, but he also has been a capable bunter.

The fact is, the Brewers likely push Frelick in to score on in that frame, following which the bullpen’s late-inning guys would shut down the Dodgers in the last three innings. The Brewers would have come out of Game 4 of the 2018 NLCS with a commanding three games to one advantage. Even if they lose Game 5, they win Game 6 and go to the World Series.

We don't even have to play fanciful what-if games, though. As a whole, and as a team, the Brewers were below-average in advancing the runner from second to third with no outs, and in bringing them home from third with less than two outs. The subset of the team we already mentioned, though, is a different story. In Wednesday night's Game 2, Turang doubled against Sean Manaea to lead off the bottom of the fifth, with the Crew down 3-1. Chourio moved him over, and Perkins broke that tie for the team lead in sac flies (if only unofficially) and brought Turang home. It was easy to overlook that at the time, or even to feel crestfallen. A leadoff double only begat one run, when the team trailed by two.

That small-ball run was big, though. As their own bullpen mowed down the Mets, the Brewers kept getting chances in which every batter who stepped to the plate was already the tying run. Shrinking and chipping away at deficits is a hallmark of great teams, giving them opportunities to erase those deficits altogether at the end of the game. Wednesday night was a perfect illustration of it. They succeeded where the 2018 team failed once, already. 

In other words, the 2024 Brewers have maintained some of the strengths of the 2018 team in having big-time sluggers, but this team has also added the ability to reliably manufacture runs in certain stretches of the batting order, which gives it a capability the 2018 team didn’t have when it needed it the most. Thursday night, we'll find out whether they get to keep marching toward the marker left behind by the last Brewers team to go deep into October.