Milwaukee Brewers 2023 Positional Previews: Starting Pitchers, Part Two

Freddy Peralta and Eric Lauer can make you nervous in a hurry. They've been the breakout starters of the last two seasons in Milwaukee, stabilizing the rotation for long stretches behind Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff, whom we discussed at length yesterday. With Peralta's lingering health questions and the disastrous results of Lauer's spring starts, though, the understudies suddenly look much less like fair facsimiles of the leading men.

Freddy Peralta: Recovering Cannibal

We’re soon going to see just how far great extension on an average-plus fastball can take a pitcher, unless Peralta can regain what he lost in 2022 and add a bit of pitching maturity to the mix, to boot. That’s not a comment on his maturity as a person, but he’s well into his big-league career, and he still hasn’t progressed from a thrower into a pitcher. He has to blossom as a craftsman in the art of pitching in order to become a more consistent force in the rotation.

Peralta throws his four-seamer about 55 percent of the time to both righties and lefties. He throws his curve about 15 percent of the time to both, too. He uses his changeup twice as often as his slider against lefties, and his slider three times as much as his changeup against righties, but that’s the extent of the variation in his approach. Last year, almost completely regardless of count, he stuck to those ratios. He did try to steal strikes with the curve a bit more often on the first pitch, but that was the only wrinkle in his sequencing. It’s not enough. He has to set hitters up better in order to get more out of his stuff.

He also needs to get back to having a distinct and useful slider, or else none at all. Last year, his curveball cannibalized the slider, and it made a bit of a slush where his two good and distinct breaking balls had been. Health issues will always be the biggest question mark around Peralta, but even if he holds up well all season, he has to answer these questions about his repertoire and its utility, too.

Eric Lauer: Effectively Wild, and Vice Versa

At what point do we start to attach real concern to poor spring training numbers? That question has as many answers as you can find players about whom to ask it. For veterans like Lauer, you usually do well not to let much of anything you see in the Cactus League dramatically alter what you previously thought. Then again, though, it's not as though Lauer is a bulletproof ace, proven and unquestioned in his role. Nor are some of the struggles he's encountered this spring entirely new or unfounded in the profile he's sketched into the record books in bis previous seasons.

We also know, thanks to a study presented almost a decade ago by analyst Mike Rosenheck, that there is some signal (however drowning it might often be in noise) in spring training numbers--especially strikeouts and walks. Well, Lauer has faced 42 batters in three appearances this spring. He's walked six of them, fanned only five, and been lifted twice mid-inning, only to return the following frame to try to finish his work--all contributing to an ERA over 11.00. That last number probably needn't be taken seriously, but the others must be. He's been so ineffective that he's barely been able to work his way up toward the workload the team will need from him if he's going to be their fourth starter come early April. 

I wrote much about Lauer last month, focused especially on his odd splits and his migrations around the rubber, trying to find the optimal angles for his unique repertoire. He hasn't found them, and this spring has exposed some of the dangers that poses for him. He persists in trying to make his curveball work. Not only hasn't it done so, but he's spent the spring getting hit hard because he has hung that pitch (which hitters can spot right out of his hand) in the heart of the zone repeatedly. He's been more effective, when indeed he's been effective at all, by missing his spots and getting hitters uncomfortable. He's been missing the zone by two feet with his slider and cutter much of the time, but that's prevented opponents from locking in on his fastball when he throws it right down the middle.

Lauer has made one adjustment that figures to be for the better: he's setting up closer to the first-base side of the rubber. If he can start executing his firm breaking balls and gives up the ghost on the curve (except as a strike-stealing offering when hitters are looking for anything else), he can recover his form of the last two years. If not, the Brewers need to explore some complementary options.

Summary

ZiPS Projections