The Brewers Batters Who Best Match Up with Game 4 Padres Starter Walker Buehler

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Above all, prepare for an eyeroll's worth of allusions to 'Dad Strength' on Wednesday night's game broadcast. The Padres' star closer will be fresh off a (very brief) paternity leave. The Padres' starting pitcher will be fresh off paternity leave. Fans even informally call the Padres the 'dads' when this sort of confluence isn't happening. There will be signs in the stands; the TV cameras will find them. FOX's broadcast team will roll with it. See if you can get your feed to sync up with Brewers radio, and hope for the best. It's all we can do.

Ah, but maybe you're (almost) as concerned about how the Brewers can actually win Game 4 and end the series—not to mention their 12-game road losing streak in postseason games, stretching back to 2018—as about how to avoid or absorb the tidal wave of puns ahead. In that case, let's break it down a bit. That new dad toeing the rubber to begin the game for the Friars is Walker Buehler. It's vital that the Crew pounce on him and score some runs, rather than trying to scrape their way to runs against the San Diego bullpen again. Who will be most important in that effort? What should their lineup look like? Let's consider the key factors.

Firstly, if it's been a while since you paid close attention to Buehler, it's time to update your conception of him. The flamethrowing strikeout maven who was capable of overpowering hitters with a four-seam fastball and little else is long gone. On the other side of multiple years of injury trouble, Buehler is much less dominant—but he can still be quite effective. He's throwing the kitchen sink at you, but he's doing it with some feel and some smarts.

To righties, Buehler leans heaviest on his sinker, but just barely. He has all three fastball variants, now, and he sprinkles in a slider and a sweeper that move away from same-handed batters. The sinker, running in on them, sets up those swerving breakers best. To lefties, though, he favors the cutter and the four-seamer, with the more vertical curveball and a fading changeup as the complementary pieces.

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When he had a power arm, the bulldog-like Buehler sometimes struck out over 29% of opposing batters, but you can't do that with the velocity or the arsenal he has now. He fanned a below-average 20.1% of batters this year, with roughly an average walk rate. That's why he ended up with an uninspiring 4.63 ERA, and why he didn't start either game of the Wild Card Series or figure into the team's plans for the first part of this one, even before stepping away from the team for the birth of his child. He's gettable now.

In fact, go down the list of pitchers most similar to him in terms of stuff (according to Baseball Savant), and all you see are gettable guys. Javier Assad of the Cubs was his closest comp this year. There's hardly a stud among the collection of hurlers who broadly match what he does.

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There's an opportunity here. How can the Brewers best exploit it, though? Glad you asked.

Of the 13 position players on Milwaukee's NLDS roster, 12 saw at least 31 pitches this year against the 18 pitchers shown above, including Buehler. (Gary Sánchez is the exception.) Garrett Mitchell, Brice Turang and Jake Bauers each saw over 100 pitches against that set of arms. From those matchups, we can glean something meaningful about who hits Buehler (and, crucially, pitchers like Buehler) well. Here are the big takeaways from studying the data:

It Should Be Joey Ortiz Over David Hamilton

Most Brewers fans don't need telling twice on this front. Ortiz has become far more popular than his hot-corner platoon partner, with good reason. From June 1 on, Ortiz batted .331/.375/.506 against right-handed pitchers, compared to Hamilton's .267/.328/.382, meaning he was better than Hamilton even in the portion of the platoon that should have belonged to the latter. (It's worth noting, though, that Ortiz was protected from bad matchups pretty proactively during that time, and got fewer plate appearances against righties in that span than Hamilton did.) He's also the most reliable defender at third base.

Rather than complicating that picture, isolating matchups against this pitching cohort makes the decision far easier. Ortiz hit the ball on the ground a ton against the group, but he hit it hard, and he showed good plate discipline. Hamilton, by contrast, looked oddly overmatched in plate appearances against this type of righty, who shouldn't really overmatch left-handed batters. Ortiz was 2 runs better than average per 100 pitches seen against those 18 hurlers; Hamilton was 2.3 runs worse than average. This isn't a close call. Even if whoever starts only sees six or seven pitches against Buehler, Ortiz is worth about a third of an expected run over Hamilton in this matchup. That's a huge margin for such a small thing.

Luis Lara Should Start Over Sal Frelick

There's no easy platoon call to make between Luis Lara and Sal Frelick in right field, but the matchup favors Lara. The difference between them in showdowns with these 18 hurlers was 3.1 runs per 100 pitches, rather than the 4.3 that separates Ortiz and Hamilton, but that's still pretty telling. Frelick really struggled to get off his 'A' swing against that class of pitcher, especially as the season wore on. Lara went 0-for-2 against Buehler himself on August 11, but he seemed to see the ball well and worked ahead in counts. More broadly, he showed a knack for squaring up hurlers who pitch like Buehler does.

Defensively, this is close to a wash. It might all come down to whether Pat Murphy believes Lara can stay within himself and play poised, smart baseball in the cauldron of noise and intensity that is Petco Park. By the numbers, though, Lara deserves the nod.

Brice Turang Should Slide Back Up

There's no perfect answer in the top half of the lineup right now. Brice Turang isn't at his best, but neither is Jake Bauers. William Contreras, meanwhile, had the worst outputs against this class of pitchers of any Brewers batter this year. He's manipulable in exactly the ways that Buehler likes to manipulate righty batters. Milwaukee needs to get runs in fast sequences that might start at the bottom of the order—in addition to Ortiz and Lara, Cooper Pratt did well against these 18 pitchers—but will need to be cashed in at the very top.

Thankfully, Jackson Chourio's swing and approach are perfect for what Buehler tries to do. Chourio was worth 2.7 runs per 100 pitches seen against Buehler-like pitchers this season, though much of that damage came relatively early in the campaign. He should do damage in this game. Turang is the best lieutenant for him, though. He was about as good as Ortiz was against La Famiglia Buehler; Bauers has a brutal 34.9% whiff rate against them and needs to slide lower. Hopefully, a swift knockout punch from the top two in the order will spare Bauers the extra look at Buehler, anyway.

Mason Miller and Adrian Morejon are, reportedly, available at the back end of the San Diego bullpen Wednesday night. The Brewers have already beaten each in this series, of course, but it wouldn't do to bet on doing that again. They need to take an early lead, for the first time in the series. That makes the first few innings high-leverage ones, from an offensive standpoint. To ensure that they win the pivotal first three frames, they should make sure Ortiz and Lara are in the lineup and that Turang is back in the 2-hole.