The Brewers Offense is Demonstrating Staying Power

Friday night was a Jekyll-and-Hyde act for the Brewers offense. After going a combined 2-for-16 with runners in scoring position through the first six innings, the bats exploded for eight runs over the final two innings to notch a comeback blowout win over the Chicago White Sox.

The final tally of 12 runs that evening paints a more formidable picture than the reality of the performance behind it. Milwaukee recorded 23 hits, the most by any team in a game this year, and 18 were singles.

Keeping the line moving to such an extreme extent is not a sustainable skill, and it takes a perfect storm to make it happen in a sample of any size. The White Sox are the worst team in baseball, and the Brewers benefitted from hitting against an awful bullpen and defense. Sprinkle in some good luck, and you get 12 runs on 23 hits.

Look at several of those hits. Christian Yelich doubled down the line on a check swing. Jake Bauers’ two hits were an infield single gloved in the hole at shortstop and a looping 79-mph liner that somehow got past Gavin Sheets at first base and rolled down the line for a double. Sal Frelick’s seventh-inning double was a looping liner trapped on a bounce by Tommy Pham, a below-average corner outfielder whom the White Sox have crammed into center field on a regular basis for the first time since 2018. 15 of the 23 hits were ground balls.

While the production from that game may have been the culmination of several factors working in the Brewers’ favor, their lineup looks increasingly like a legitimate strength.

The calendar flipped to June a few hours after the outburst, a time many baseball analysts use as a benchmark for taking many metrics more seriously. The Brewers have been baseball’s third-best offense by wRC+ (116) and are second to only the Philadelphia Phillies in runs scored (298).

“It’s still really early,” Yelich cautioned in response to those numbers.

It is, but the production is becoming harder to ignore or write off as an early-season fluke. A third of the season is not an insignificant sample. The club’s .314 xwOBA is above average and ranks in the top third of baseball. The nature of the scoring inspires confidence, too.

The signs of an improved offensive team surfaced in the season’s inaugural weeks. The flukier individual performances that were inflating the team’s numbers at that stage, such as those of Blake Perkins, Oliver Dunn, and Jackson Chourio, have since subsided, yet the offense has kept chugging along. Friday evening notwithstanding, its results on ground balls have settled into more realistic territory.

The diverse makeup of the lineup has been the key. Brewer Fanatic’s own Tim Muma recently explored how the Brewers excel on various fronts and can score in several ways. They have speedy contact hitters who frequently reach base by drawing walks or legging out infield hits. Upon reaching, they’ll take extra bases by stealing, stretching singles into doubles, and scoring on plays that would merely advance most runners to third base. They can slug thanks to the additions of Rhys Hoskins and Gary Sanchez and a resurgent Yelich.

The Brewers enter Sunday leading baseball in on-base percentage. They’re also eighth in home runs (66) and hard hit rate (40.4%) and third in stolen bases (77).

That well-rounded makeup is a driving force behind the Brewers' scoring success.

"We have a lot of guys that can run this year," Willy Adames said. "They got more comfortable stealing bases, getting in scoring position, and I think that's been the difference this year. Turang, Frelick, all the guys are stealing a lot of bases, and that puts us in a better spot to get RBIs and bring guys home."

“We can be dynamic at times," Yelich said. "Traffic, manufacturing runs, taking extra bases, stealing bases. We’ve got some guys that can hit for some power, too. There’s going to be tough stretches, though. It’s just how baseball works. The thing about that is when you score in multiple ways, you can shorten those tough stretches.”

The tough stretches have been abbreviated so far. Whenever the Brewers appeared to be entering a lull, they bounced back with an outburst.

After scoring a total of nine runs in four games in mid-April, they erupted with a 12-run outburst against the St. Louis Cardinals. They scored eight runs over their next four contests but then tallied seven in consecutive games. They scored fewer than four runs in consecutive games just once in May. After two of their three shutout losses this year, the Brewers responded with seven or more runs the next game.

The Brewers rarely seem to stop applying pressure. They bounce back quickly and regularly add to leads throughout games, providing breathing room for an ailing pitching staff.

Pat Murphy characterizes it as “relentless,” a trait he demands and has come to expect from his team. He has used the term frequently throughout the last four days, during which his club scored a combined 16 runs against the division-rival Chicago Cubs and feasted on the worst run-prevention unit in baseball.

“We stuck with it,” he said of the late turnaround on Friday. “We kept going. We kept putting ourselves in those positions. That’s relentless.”

"It doesn't always appear the same way when you face great stuff," he said the following night when the Brewers capitalized on mistakes by the White Sox for another comeback win. In that showing, they did their late scoring on a pair of ground-ball singles by Adames, the latter of which squirted past shortstop Zach Remillard for a walk-off.

The relentless approach was there, though. It’s that trait that gives this offense staying power. The Brewers will do everything they can to beat opponents at the plate in various ways. More often than not, they will.