The Brewers Can Still Get Back on Track, But Red Flags Are Growing Harder to Ignore

After consecutive shutout losses for the second time in two weeks, Pat Murphy called a closed-door postgame meeting with his team on Tuesday night in Cleveland.

It was the second such meeting Murphy initiated in as many road trips. The Brewers congregated under similar circumstances on April 24 in San Francisco, after losing three of four to the Giants. In between, they went 7-10, while continuing to play poor fundamental baseball. During that time, Murphy tried to send more messages with benchings, yanking Sal Frelick and Caleb Durbin for miscues in St. Louis and Tobias Myers after two wild innings in Chicago.

None of those efforts inspired improvement. The Brewers enter Friday at 21-23, putting them four games behind the division-leading Chicago Cubs and the third NL Wild Card spot. Records and standings are not worth fretting over in mid-May, though. What's alarming is how the Brewers have played: the levers Murphy is pulling repeatedly this early in the season in hopes of righting the ship, and the absence of progress.

"We're not playing with a ton of confidence," he said Tuesday night. "We got a bunch of guys just not at their best right now, but you go through that once in a while."

Even the best teams hit rough patches, and slow starts can seem worse than they truly are in a small sample. But the harsh reality is that the Brewers have too often looked non-competitive, and it's growing harder to believe this roster will find its footing.

In Murphy's first year as manager, the Brewers played clean, balanced baseball and quickly responded to adversity. This year's team has spent the season's first seven weeks chaotically running in place. Many of its 21 wins have resembled those of last year, inspiring hope that a bumpy start may be in the rear-view mirror—only for the same mistakes to return in more frustrating losses. The repeating cycle has left the Brewers unable to climb more than two games over .500.

Many losses have been blowouts, starting with two against the Yankees in New York on opening weekend. Milwaukee lost seven of its first 38 games by at least eight runs. Only 10 other teams since 1901 have sustained that many blowouts so early in a season. All of them finished below .500, and eight went on to lose at least 91 games that year.

Declaring the Brewers destined for a similar season would still be an overreaction. Thanks to several convincing wins, their expected record based on run differential is 22-22. However, while they haven't looked like an awful team, they haven't looked like a good one, either. They have repeatedly done things that good teams rarely do, even amid the ebbs that every club experiences in a 162-game season. Those red flags do not yet warrant full-blown panic, but they should raise prompt concern. They've already elicited unusual degrees of action.

The elite defense that carried last year's team has become inconsistent, despite Willy Adames (a negative-value defender at shortstop) being the only loss in the field. After finishing fourth in Defensive Runs Saved (+64) last season, this year's Brewers have fallen to 13th (+9) and are 24th in fielding percentage (.982). The athleticism and impressive plays are still present, but the mistakes are far too frequent.

The pitching has stabilized in recent weeks, and should continue trending in the right direction as more arms return from the injured list. The Brewers' greatest woes are at the plate, where their offense ranks 25th with an 87 wRC+.

"[The pitching is] not our issue right now," Murphy said. "We've got to get the heart of our order, for sure, producing."

Christian Yelich and William Contreras will heat up, even with the latter playing through a fractured finger. However, that improvement will be offset somewhat by looming regression for Sal Frelick and Jake Bauers. It's also becoming clear that the Brewers do not currently have an MLB-caliber starting third baseman in the organization. This lineup is not as bad talent-wise as the results say, but it's certainly not good.

The absence of power is most striking. After losing the perennial 30-homer output of Adames to free agency and doing nothing to replace it externally, Milwaukee ranks 23rd in long balls (37) and 27th in isolated power (.122). The worst fears surrounding the offense going into the season have come to fruition.

"There's a study done about the playoffs lately, and the teams that win and go to the World Series hit a bunch of homers," Murphy acknowledged. "That's what's been [the case]. But that's not always possible. You can't just find those guys laying around. And then you pay a lot of money for those guys that are consistent in that department."

"I think we're a team that maybe relies a little bit more on some different style of extra-base hits and running the bases aggressively and doing things like that to get it," Jackson Chourio said. "So even if we're not hitting home runs, that doesn't by any means say that we can't play our style of game."

"Most teams in the big leagues have two or three other guys that can [hit for power], and we've got some young people playing that we're not expecting to drive the baseball that way," Murphy said.

While there are other ways to score besides hitting the ball into the seats, home runs are the most efficient. They can also spark an offense and end a scoring drought with one swing, whereas stringing singles together requires the right sequencing and more production throughout the lineup.

The fact is that the Brewers won't go very far if they cannot drive the baseball. Last year's lineup was not filled with sluggers, either, but it finished 16th in homers (177) and 18th in ISO (.155). That was just enough power to complement the scrappier on-base hitters, allowing the offense to post an above-average 104 wRC+.

While there were no blowouts on a 2-4 road trip, the other familiar themes were present and glaring in Tampa and Cleveland: pitiful offense, sloppy glovework at the worst moments, and a manager who publicly expressed confidence in his team, but whose aggressive measures on and off the field signaled that something was wrong and that he needed to stop the bleeding.

Murphy and others throughout the clubhouse have cited a lack of confidence as one of the culprits behind the latest slide, a stark contrast from the "Undaunted" mantra they championed a year ago.

"I think there is some 'afraid to make a mistake' type thing, and that's not a way to go about this game or into any competition," Rhys Hoskins said. "You have to dive right in knowing you've prepared, so when it's time to compete, the talent can come out."

That was one of the points addressed in the latest team meeting. The following day, the offense erupted for nine runs to help the Brewers avoid a sweep.

"We had over 20 quality at-bats today," Murphy estimated afterward. "That's the type of team we have to be. It's not about talent. It's about that mindset. They decided today that they were going to have those ABs. And whether it's against great pitching, whether it's against back-end pitching, whatever, it doesn't matter. It's the commitment to understand how to get after it, and they're all capable. We look like a different team when we do that."

"Sometimes, you kind of need to take it on the chin a little bit," Hoskins said. "I think just talking about it last night as a group put us in a good position to go compete today."

There's still plenty of time for the Brewers to turn things around, and perhaps Tuesday night's meeting and the subsequent win were the start. However, positive trends have proven short-lived multiple times this year, and this group has not earned the benefit of the doubt that this time will be different.

Murphy and his club are far from out of this. A winning streak would have them right back in the middle of the playoff picture. Getting back on the right track is already an uphill battle, though, and each week without progress as the season continues only digs the Brewers into a deeper hole.