Brewers Video
Brewers ace Corbin Burnes broke out of his funk with eight dominant innings against the Diamondbacks this week. He struck out eight along the way, partially thanks to using his changeup more often than he ever had in an outing before. As much as anything, though, that outing was about generating weak contact and letting the Brewers play good defense behind him. Burnes got 16 swings and misses along the way, easily outstripping his total from the previous two starts combined, so he did dominate, but eight strikeouts in as many innings is not a huge total for the modern game.
Corbin Burnes
— Tyler Koerth (@TylerKoerth) April 12, 2023
8 scoreless innings
8 strikeouts
0 walks
3 hits allowed
65 strikes on 89 pitches
16 whiffs
pic.twitter.com/MeFGQ6vOVf
That’s a fair microcosm for the Brewers’ whole pitching staff, thus far. Only the Angels have allowed a lower Hard-Hit percentage than the Crew to start this season. Only the Mariners have allowed a lower Barrel percentage. Milwaukee has excelled on the mound, but they’ve done it by getting weak contact instead of by missing bats altogether. With the young, athletic defense the team can field behind its hurlers, there’s some reason to think they can keep doing so.
On the other hand, big-league hitters are dangerous, and it’s very unlikely that the Brewers have so thoroughly hacked the system as to alter that fact. Only 5.2 percent of opponents’ batted balls have been Barrels (batted balls whose exit velocity and launch angle give them an expected batting average of at least .500 and an expected slugging average of at least 1.500) according to Statcast. Last year, the lowest rate in the league was 6.2 percent. Over the sample of a long season, a difference of one percentage point in that stat is something like 40 hits, most of which will be extra-base hits about which the defense can do virtually nothing.
Tellingly, the three teams with lower strikeout rates than the Brewers’ so far are the Tigers, Athletics, and Nationals. Strikeout rate isn’t destiny, even in the modern game, but it’s not a good idea to put yourself in that company in 2023, regardless of the statistic in question. The Brewers are going to need to miss more bats in order to reach the postseason.
Again, it’s very early. The Crew has only played four series, and their four opponents (Cubs, 22nd; Cardinals, 25th; Mets, 26th; Diamondbacks, 28th) are all among the bottom nine in team strikeout rate by hitters. Then again, for each of those clubs, the Brewers are roughly a quarter of the sample, so it’s hard to tease out cause and effect.
Yesterday against Arizona, Janson Junk couldn’t sneak the ball past anyone, and neither could the relievers who took over for him. The Diamondbacks took 63 swings, and only whiffed twice: one on a Hoby Milner curveball, and one on a Gus Varland heater. The last time any team swung and missed fewer than three times in a game was 2015. That clearly says something about the Arizona batters, but it says something about the Brewers, too.
While Junk pitched in Arizona, Robert Gasser racked up seven strikeouts for Triple-A Nashville. He might need to get a shot at Brandon Woodruff’s vacated rotation spot the next time around, if the team is still struggling this badly with generating whiffs. Jake Cousins has struck out six of his first 10 batters faced for Nashville; maybe it’s time to end the Joel Payamps experiment and recall Cousins.
Obviously, strikeout rate can’t be the only criterion by which a team judges and selects its pitching staff. Cousins, who walks too many batters and sometimes finds opponents’ barrels with his nasty slider, is a perfect example of that. Still, an inability to get strikeouts in key spots will catch up to the team in the long run, so they need to be proactive about fixing the issue, even if that just means adjusting specific hurlers’ pitch mixing or sequencing. If they don’t, they won’t be able to sustain their early success preventing runs.
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now