The Brewers Can Optimize Aaron Civale by Emphasizing Pitchability

The Brewers traded for a starter for a second time in two weeks when they acquired Aaron Civale from the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday. The right-hander's debut with his new club was a mixed bag — he tied a season-high with eight strikeouts but allowed three home runs in five innings — but the hope is that he can be a stable source of effective innings for an injury-ravaged rotation.

Civale showed that form with the Cleveland Guardians, for whom he posted a 3.77 ERA (113 ERA+) in parts of the first five seasons of his career. He reached new heights last year, pitching to a 2.34 mark in 13 starts before a midseason trade to the Rays.

Things immediately went south in Tampa Bay. Civale limped to a 5.36 ERA in 10 starts after the trade, but that was mainly due to tough batted-ball luck. His strikeout rate jumped by nine percentage points, and he had a 3.63 FIP during that stretch. That mixed bag of a second half gave way to legitimate struggles in 2024. In 17 starts, opponents have tagged Civale for a 5.07 ERA with a 4.69 FIP.

The 29-year-old’s underwhelming performance was the product of a mismatch between the player and the organization. The Rays are known for optimizing pitchers, but their attempts to optimize Civale handicapped how well his diverse arsenal can keep big-league hitters off-balance. The trade relocates him to a pitching development crew that is better at maximizing pitchers with his makeup.

Civale can do a little bit of everything with the baseball. He can make his fastballs ride through the zone, run to the arm side, or cut to the glove side. He can make his breaking stuff sweep across the zone or drop below it. There is virtually no overlap in the behavior of each pitch in his arsenal.

This six-pitch mix screams pitchability. Civale should be able to keep hitters from locking in on a single pitch type and have multiple avenues to retire opponents of varying profiles from both sides of the plate. Colin Rea, Bryse Wilson, and Robert Gasser have utilized such an approach in Milwaukee’s rotation this year. Civale’s superior breaking stuff should give him a leg up on Rea and Wilson.

Instead, he has evolved into two specialized pitchers based on the handedness of his opponent, and the Rays exacerbated that development. This year, they’ve had Civale attacking right-handers primarily with his two-seamer, newly developed sweeper, and cutter. Left-handers have seen mostly cutters and curveballs.

The two approaches have not been fruitful this year, particularly the latter. Lefties have posted an .853 OPS against Civale after he limited them to a .667 mark a year ago.

The solution isn’t adding, subtracting, or transforming a pitch or retooling Civale’s mechanics. Instead, it’s a simpler and more cliché-sounding fix. The Brewers need not suggest an overhaul to Civale’s arsenal, and they likely won’t. What he needs is a more spread-out game plan. He has the ability to mix speeds and locations but is not taking advantage of it.

It would be characteristic of the Brewers to diversify Civale’s approach against lefties with more two-seamers and sweepers. Rea and Wilson deploy their sinkers 23% of the time against lefties as their second-most-used pitch in such matchups. The former has nearly doubled his sweeper usage rate against lefties (7.2% to 13.6%) with positive results.

Civale's first outing hinted that the Brewers have already encouraged this change. 34.1% of his pitches to lefties were two-seamers, by far his highest usage rate in such matchups in a start this year. He recorded a pair of strikeouts to lefties with the pitch, including one of Shohei Ohtani on an elevated two-seamer above the zone.

There’s less need for tinkering pitch selection to righties, but Civale could settle for a more balanced mix of curveballs and sweepers. The Rays curtailed his curveball usage to righties in favor of the sweeper, but the curveball provides an even greater degree of separation from the cutter. It would force righties to cover more depth beyond the primarily lateral movement of the two-seamer, sweeper, and cutter.

Changing speeds and shapes is just one aspect of pitchability. The other is moving the ball around the zone, which may be the most crucial tweak in unlocking Civale’s effectiveness. 

Civale has settled into predictable location patterns. That’s especially true for his cutter, which has been tagged for a .476 slugging percentage and .372 wOBA. He throws most of his cutters to the arm side to lefties and to the glove side to righties.

Civale would benefit from using his cutter to both sides of the plate regardless of platoon matchup. It’s a similar story for his two-seamer. Notice how Rea and Wilson emphasize both sides of the plate with their sinkers to right-handed batters, a spread that Civale’s current approach lacks.

There’s nothing wrong with Civale’s arsenal. The issue is that his current game plan does utilize his natural ability to create a wide array of looks that should be challenging for hitters to cover. By helping him understand and maximize the interaction within his well-rounded repertoire, the Brewers run-prevention staff can turn him back into a capable mid-rotation arm.