Playing Matchups is About More Than Handedness for Pat Murphy

The Brewers are no strangers to playing matchups. Stacking left-handed hitters against right-handed pitchers (and vice-versa) became a staple of Craig Counsell's lineups during his final years as manager. He used pinch-hitters at an above-average rate in every season but his last, often with the goal of gaining the platoon advantage.

There will still be mixing and matching at a couple different positions throughout the lineup in 2024. Brice Turang, Sal Frelick, and Garrett Mitchell are all platoon candidates.

At the same time, there could be fewer of those stacked lineups, particularly against right-handed pitching. Rhys Hoskins will be a mainstay in the heart of the order as a right-handed bat. Gary Sánchez and Jackson Chourio also figure to receive ample playing time.

Counsell’s successor knows the importance of putting his players and his team in a position to succeed. To Pat Murphy, that may not always entail playing the handedness game.

“The handedness oftentimes is a thing that gets pointed to, but there’s more to it,” he said. “There’s the times we don’t do it when there’s the opportunity to do it with the handedness.”

Murphy rattled off numerous situational factors that determine whether to pinch-hit, including the hitter on deck, the pitcher warming in the opposing bullpen, and how the options off the bench stack up against the incumbent hitter. Also tucked into the list was how the hitters in question handle certain kinds of pitchers.

If Murphy applies that last criterion to how he manages matchups, it would be a welcome change from how the Brewers have played matchups with hitters in the past.

It’s seemed, at times, that the Brewers operated under the premise that all hitters project better against opposite-handed pitchers. They were undeterred by the established reverse splits of Keston Hiura, Brian Anderson, and Luke Voit, attempting to use all three as reinforcements against left-handed pitching within the last two seasons. It failed in all three instances.

The Brewers have never confirmed this to be their thought process, but Counsell’s past comments about Hiura indicated that his reverse splits violated the organization’s expectations and left everyone stumped.

Murphy struck a much different tune when asked about it, responding without hesitation that he believes reverse splits are legitimate and explicable. The starting point for his reasoning is not handedness, but pitch shapes and locations.

Sometimes, Murphy explained, opposite-handed pitchers are more comfortable with attacking certain areas of the zone than same-handed pitchers. This can create a tougher at-bat for the hitter, despite their having the presumed handedness advantage.

“They have space,” he said. “It might not make sense in an article.”

It became clearer what Murphy was getting at once he gave the example of a right-on-left cutter. It’s easier for the pitcher to back-door the cutter because there’s no batter crowding that corner of the plate. He can miss arm-side without the repercussion of a hit-by-pitch, giving him increased confidence in throwing to that spot. Murphy also pointed to arm-side splitters in the same vein.

An inside cutter can produce a similar reverse split, Murphy said.

“Mariano Rivera, his splits were almost negative, I’m sure,” he posited. “I’ve never looked at it, but I would say right-handers would have a better shot because left-handers, when his cutter was doing what his cutter was doing, didn’t have much of a chance.”

Rivera, a right-handed cutter specialist, held right-handed hitters to a .588 OPS for his career. Lefties hit for an even worse .524 OPS.

Murphy said he wouldn’t characterize any of the potential timeshares in his lineup as straight platoons, instead emphasizing that a number of situational factors will determine who gets at-bats.

Returning to his space argument, Murphy also hinted at a preference for steering away from lineups stacked with batters of the same handedness, an approach he floated earlier in camp.

“I think it’s so understated what it means to the pitcher. For instance, a lefty. If you ask [Wade] Miley if he wants nine right-handed hitters, he’d say yes.

“Lefties mess up his spacing a little bit. You’re so used to facing nine [right-handers]. You can calibrate your back-door cutter and calibrate how your two-seamer is. Then you get a lefty in there, it does kind of startle him.”

The idea is that mixing lefties and righties can keep an opposing pitcher from settling in because the side of the plate to which he has more space constantly switches.

Does Murphy plan to startle opposing pitchers by running out lineups featuring hitters from both sides?

“I like that.”

It remains to be seen how much autonomy Murphy will have with regard to in-game decision-making. If the ball is truly in his court, the Brewers could be playing matchups in a different sense than they have over the past few seasons.