The Third 54 Report: How Peter Strzelecki Got the Brewers Out of Trouble in Unexpected Fashion

If it's true that MLB seasons are evenly divided into games that a team will inevitably win, those that a team will inevitably lose, and those that can be either won or lost, with the third bucket making the difference, then the Brewers are off to an even more promising start than their 7-2 record implies. Early in Sunday's game, Milwaukee built a narrow lead, but in the top of the seventh inning, that lead came under threat.

Peter Strzelecki had entered to face the top of the Cardinals lineup in the frame, and although he got two quick outs, he then got into a sudden and dangerous jam. A walk to Brendan Donovan and a single by Paul Goldschmidt brought Nolan Arenado to the plate with two on and two out, and since the score was just 3-1, Arenado represented the go-ahead run. In that situation, a seemingly safe victory can become a loss in the crack of a bat. 

Strzelecki missed wide with a first-pitch fastball, and then missed even worse with another heater--this time, right down the middle of the plate. Arenado was caught off-guard, though, and took the very hittable strike to level the count 1-1. If the moment hadn't already felt vital and the advantage fragile, that pitch made it feel very much so.

To salvage the situation, Strzelecki reached a bit deeper into his bag of tricks than is typical. A 1-1 count is often the one on which a plate appearance hinges. If you want to fool a hitter, you can't afford to wait and hope to make it happen with two strikes. That 1-1 pitch has to be the goods. Strzelecki threw Arenado a changeup.

Arenado swung and missed, and he missed badly. It's hard to blame him. Conventional wisdom, in the voice of every color commentator in baseball history, implores pitchers not to get beaten on their third-best pitch, and there's no question that Strzelecki's best pitches are his fastball and slider. He hardly ever throws that change to righties, in particular.

If you're Arenado, you have to sit on the fastball and keep the slider in the back of your head on 1-1. The changeup can't even be in your mind. That was what Strzelecki was counting on. As much as we (rightly) talk about pitchers using their best pitch more often and about the various adjustments to pitch mix hurlers can make in a macro sense, we should talk almost as much (but actually talk hardly at all) about getting lots of value from pitches that don't grade out as well or get used nearly as often. 

Frequencies don't matter as much as payoffs. If a pitcher puts in enough work on a pitch to have confidence in it at a moment like that one, they can throw it five percent of the time to a given handedness of batter (or even less, in theory) and still make it a difference-maker. Strzelecki got the whiff on Arenado because he was looking hard in or soft away, and got something soft inside. After that pitch (and one more outside fastball), Arenado was set up perfectly for the slider, and Strzelecki finally threw him one. He got the strikeout he deserved, and crisis was averted.

Matt Bush put three runners on base with nobody out in the Cardinals' next turn, but that didn't inspire the same degree of nail-biting, because in the meantime, the Brewers had tacked on three insurance runs. They ran the Cardinals out of town four games back in the division and with just 10 more head-to-head contests to make up the gap. The relentlessness of the lineup and the consistency of the bullpen have been deeply impressive so far, but if it weren't for Strzelecki's gambit on that pitch to Arenado, we might feel very differently this morning. 

As I wrote before the season began, the Brewers have a tough and crucial early schedule. They're only halfway through the 19-game gauntlet, but the returns to this point are downright dazzling. Every game that could reasonably have broken their way so far has done so, and not through sheer luck or an opponent folding, but because the team has forced the issue on the bases, or because of their resiliency when something does go wrong, or because of a reliever who was willing to go an unorthodox route when the stakes were high. If they keep this up, they'll be back in the playoffs this year.

Third Bucket Record: 3-0