How Hard Should Brewers Try to Lock Down Home-Field Advantage?

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Relentlessness is the Brewers' ethos, and relentless winning is their defining tendency. They haven't been able to help themselves, even since clinching their fourth straight NL Central title earlier this week. With a pair of wins over the Baltimore Orioles already this weekend, Milwaukee has not only all but knocked the O's from their AL Wild Card picture, but positioned themselves to sail comfortably to one of the byes through the first round of the postseason.

Right now, the Crew has the best record in baseball, with a two-game edge on the Dodgers for home-field advantage throughout the playoffs and another game over the Rays, the only real threat from the American League to seize the top overall seed in the sport. They lead the team from the suburbs northwest of Atlanta by six games, which is important. To be guaranteed a bye to the NL Division Series, the Brewers just have to avoid giving up six games in that particular race. They won't own the tiebreaker, in the extremely unlikely event that the teams end in a tie, so their magic number to clinch a bye is 2, but there's an awful lot of baseball left to drop that to zero. It could happen as soon as tonight.

Obviously, it'd be great—on multiple levels—to secure home-field advantage for every possible series. Firstly, for fans, home playoff games are a different and more wonderful thing than ones played on the road. The city buzzes in a different way. There are more team colors on the street. There's greater energy around the event. You're less likely to be saddled with an undesirable start time (specifically, a late-night West Coast one). Home playoff games are also worth huge money for Mark Attanasio, and although he could and should invest even more in the team, Attanasio has done a reasonably good job of using rising revenues to sustain his team's success.

On the field itself, being at home is a tangible advantage for this year's Brewers team—a huge one. They're 52-26 at Uecker Field this year, outstripping a still-impressive 45-32 on the road. The difference is, if anything, even more pronounced than those records make it appear, though. At home, Milwaukee has scored 430 runs (5.5 per game), compared to 271 allowed (3.5 per game). In away games, they've scored just 369 times (4.8) and allowed 329 opponent tallies (4.3). No team has scored more or allowed fewer at home this year. Four teams have scored more on the road, though, and eight have allowed fewer.

The difference between being 2.0 runs per game better than your competition and being 0.5 runs per game better is—well, this is one of those times when I don't have to do any fancy analysis or contextualizing. It's as big as it sounds. So, yes, beating out the Dodgers and Rays for the top overall spot would be terrific.

Let's add one more layer to that, too: Jacob Misiorowski and the mound. With his freakish explosion down the mound, Misiorowski lands at a point beyond the reach of almost every other pitcher in the league, and when the Brewers play anywhere but Milwaukee, there are often mound maintenance issues. Misiorowski's RA9 (runs allowed per nine innings; think ERA but with all runs, rather than just "earned" ones) is 2.11 at home and 2.58 on the road. He's struck out 41.4% of opposing batters at The Ueck. Elsewhere, that number is 34.6%. His walk rate is 5.6% at home; it's 7.7% on the road. Typically, we might dismiss these splits as fickle or fluky, but Misiorowski is an atypical pitcher.

Don't expect host teams against whom Misiorowski pitches in October to go terribly far out of their way to make sure the mound is perfectly suited to him before a start, either. Once the game begins, the pitcher has the right to ask for work to be done to get the mound right, but a pitcher who feels uncomfortable at first has to choose between looking a bit weak or finicky and pitching through that discomfort. This is a mind game Misiorowski has to be ready to win when he does pitch anywhere but at home this fall, but plainly, the best-case scenario for the Brewers is one in which he pitches as many home games as possible.

If Misiorowski starts Game 1 of the NLDS, his second start in that series would come only if it reaches Game 5. If it comes to that (and if he wins that game for the Crew), he won't be available until Game 3 of the NLCS, which will be a home game for the lower-seeded team. If the Brewers win the NLDS in four or fewer, however, Misiorowski could be ready to pitch Game 1 of the NLCS. That's a home game for the higher-seeded side. In either case, his second start in such a series would come in the opposite vanue.

The above makes clear how hard it is to predict and assess whether the Brewers should push hard for home-field advantage. If they do go to a Game 5 in the NLDS (as they did last year), it might almost be better if they met the Dodgers in the NLCS and Los Angeles had the home-field advantage. That would put Misiorowski on the mound in Milwaukee for Game 3.

That this team plays better at home is above dispute. The crowd at The Ueck is a creature to be feared, especially when there's blood in the water. The fans smell it as sharply as the team does. On balance, though, having the bye is a great enough advantage, and the plan for the Crew the rest of the way should be to take it easy.

In all likelihood, they'll coast right into home-field advantage, anyway. Pat Murphy has embedded winning so deeply in the habits and mindset of his team that they hardly ever lose a substantial number of games in a row. They also have (arguably) the deepest roster in baseball. They can and should rest some players over the coming days, not for long stretches, but for a day here and there. Brice Turang has rounded into form nicely since the knee injury through which he played unproductively for a while, but another day or two of rest over the final week would be good. Ditto for William Contreras, and for Jackson Chourio, and for just about everyone on the position-player side of the roster.

Murphy is already doing some of this. His lineup Saturday wasn't the one he'd have penned if the game were do-or-die. Nor were his pitching decisions what they otherwise would have been. He's helming the team smoothly toward the regular season's finish line. The real work begins again in 13 days. For now, though the Crew are a much better team at home, they needn't worry about which games they'll play there next month. They just need to keep everyone healthy and get them ready to play as many games as possible in the playoffs, regardless of venue.