Pat Murphy Has Miscast Brewers Reliever Elvis Peguero as a Fireman Against Righties

After some alarming early-season trends in his bullpen management, Pat Murphy has since done a fine job of monitoring workloads for his relievers, while putting them in situations to succeed. It's easy to nitpick bullpen decisions, but the fact that very few of his pitching decisions have persistently stood out over time is a good thing.

One repeated decision, though, continues to raise eyebrows in every occurrence. Murphy has frequently turned to sinkerballing righthander Elvis Peguero to extinguish fires against right-handed batters, and the matchups have rarely transpired as hoped.

The latest example came in the Brewers’ comeback 6-4 win over the Dodgers on Thursday. Summoned in a tie game to retire Enrique Hernández with runners on the corners and two outs in the sixth inning, Peguero allowed a first-pitch single to give Los Angeles the lead.

This was one of the unluckier outcomes after Murphy orchestrated the matchup. Hernández’s ground ball was an 82.9-mph roller that squeaked through the hole into right field. Peguero induced weak contact on the ground. The result just wasn’t there.

That doesn’t justify the process, though. Peguero’s profile as a pitcher and the season he is having indicate that he is one of the least likely Brewers relievers to succeed when asked to strand runners by retiring a right-handed batter.

Peguero has reverse splits, both this year and for his career. Lefties have managed just a .645 OPS against him, but righties have a .768 OPS. For his career, those respective figures are .666 and .767. Even last year, righties hit him better (.629) than lefties (.600).

Those reverse splits are not a fluke; Peguero’s hard gyro slider and heavy sinker are arguably most difficult to track from the left side. Sinker-slider guys are usually toughest on same-handed batters, but there are always exceptions. A career sample of 550 batters faced supports the phenomenon.

Furthermore, Peguero’s erratic control and command often render him prone to creating his own traffic. This season, he’s allowed as many hits as innings pitched (47) while walking 11.4% of batters faced, producing a 1.49 WHIP.

Despite those struggles to keep hitters off the bases, Peguero is often able to keep his own runners from scoring, as evidenced by his tidy 3.06 ERA. That’s due to his excellent 56.9% ground ball rate. Peguero has induced 10 double plays this year, the third-highest total among all relievers in baseball.

This makes Peguero a largely effective reliever, when given space to erase his own traffic. Murphy is doing him a disservice by designating him as one of his top options to pitch without that space. Peguero has inherited 24 runners this year, second to only Hoby Milner. He’s allowed 15 of them (62.5%) to score.

His lack of success in the exact situation he frequently inherits – runners on base with a right-hander up and the Brewers leading or tied – is even more eye-opening. Peguero has entered in such a spot 10 times. At least one inherited runner has scored eight times, and on five such occasions, he has departed with the Brewers tied or trailing after leading or trailing after being tied.

Before Thursday’s appearance against the Dodgers, the last time Murphy turned to Peguero as a righty-specialist fireman was against Atlanta on Jul. 31. After he immediately allowed a two-run single to Austin Riley to break the tie, Murphy defended him in his postgame comments as “the guy for this situation,” while fellow right-handers Joel Payamps and Nick Mears went unused in that spot.

Murphy has not had such a wealth of alternatives every time he has used Peguero as a fireman. However, making the same decision in a similar context a couple of weeks after that game indicates that his belief in Peguero’s fit for the role has not changed.

It has to. With Trevor Megill days away from returning from the injured list, the choice may soon be out of Murphy’s hands. Peguero is one of the few optionable relievers in the bullpen, and the Brewers could demote him to maintain as much pitching depth as possible.

One way or another, Peguero should not be the reliever of choice to put out fires against right-handed batters. He’s a solid middle reliever, but repeatedly using him in a role that plays into his weaknesses instead of his strengths is detrimental to both the player and the team.