Is the Middle of the Order Killing the Brewers? PART TWO

After taking a look into Willy Adames’s contact profile in the early part of this season (and how it’s contributed to a middle of the order that can’t seem to generate runs), let’s have a look at the other black hole: Rowdy Tellez.

Tellez started the season off swinging at far fewer pitches than usual, being more patient at the plate, which led to an increase in strikeout rates and a struggle to access power once the league attacked him more in the zone. Coming into the year, it was expected he could be an .800+ OPS bat, given (as mentioned before) his dreadful, career-low BABIP in 2022 and how that affected his overall line.

This hasn’t been the case, however. Tellez has just a .390 OPS in the month of June so far, and he’s been struggling to access his power since the middle of May. He is striking out at a 25-percent clip, another high since the start of 2020, and his expected slugging numbers have dropped by over 100 points. So what’s going on?

He still has the ability to hit the ball hard, and he’s pulling the ball less than he used to while increasing the number of line drives. This all sounds good, but he has been less consistent in his quality of contact, with average exit velocities notably dropping to 88.4 mph this season, compared with 91.1 mph in 2022 and 92.2 mph in 2021.
 

He is still hitting fastballs quite well, although with a significantly higher launch angle (13 degrees last year up to 19 this season), but his biggest weakness so far has been breaking pitches. One of Tellez’s big damage areas was around his knees, either inside or over the heart of the plate. Particularly inside this season, he has really struggled to make quality contact, with his average exit velocity on pitches down and in dropping from 94 mph to 83 mph. He has an xBA of .140 and xSlg of .268 against breaking pitches this year, and that needs to improve for him to become that middle-of-the-order force he has the potential to be. He’s getting under these far too often, and it’s causing a lot of weak fly balls to the outfield.

On top of that, he’s whiffing more often at the breaking balls that drop below the zone–significantly more, in fact, going from a 34% whiff rate to a 53% whiff rate in 2023. He was quite adept at fouling off these pitches last season, but can’t seem to hang in the at-bat for long at all so far this year.

The other issue Tellez is having is that when he does hit the ball hard, he used to get prime launch angles, turning those hard-hit balls into big home runs. As of late, a lot of those have been line drives that have hit the outfield when he does make prime contact, resulting in a lower barrel rate (12.9% down to 9.3%) than we are used to seeing.

Interesting, too, is how he has struggled against the sinker, with a line of .135/.135 against it so far this year (against 190 pitches). He has a 50-percent hard-hit rate against it, but he’s pounding it into the ground–almost a guaranteed out with his complete lack of speed.

In short, the middle of the order needs to perform better for the Brewers to regularly put up runs, particularly with Christian Yelich performing as he has in recent months. He deserves to be driven in a lot more, and Counsell is already tweaking the lineup to try and help, moving Contreras behind Yelich on Tuesday night. You can’t rely on a hot streak from Wiemer or Anderson to be your only hopes of offense. The big names need to start playing better, and they need to do it now.