The Brewers have certainly been more successful at winning games this month, but “potent” isn’t a word I would have thought of because I would usually associate that with offense.
They have won 14 of their last 20 games, but they’ve done it in two blocks of games that have been as different as night and day.
In the first block of 11 games they won 7 while scoring 67 runs and giving up 56. It looked like the offense might be coming around but the pitching was showing some signs of leakage, especially in that stretch against the Pirates and Cubs.
In the last 9 games, starting with the 1-0 win over the Reds the day before the All Star break, they have scored just 29 runs, which is the worst in MLB. But, they have managed to win 7 of those games because they have surrendered just 19 runs against 3 generally prolific hitting teams.
It’s kind of a question of what gives first because that rate of run prevention is not sustainable. But, if they can make some improvements on offense while getting Woodruff and Miley back and close to expected effectiveness, the team could be formidable in August and September.