BruisedCrew

I had the sound off because I was following the severe weather warnings What was the deal with the Royals fan Adames was high fiving on his way to the dugout.

On my TV the Cubs won.

Maybe the analytics say he’s great but I’ve never been impressed with Frelick’s defense. He seems to make some plays look more difficult than they have to be.

My question wasn’t really so much “Is this the real Brewers offense?” but “What is the real Brewers offense?”. A small difference. I would hope it will be better than the last 3 weeks because otherwise it will be a long season. When you say “about where it ranks overall now”, do you think they’ll end up around 7th in MLB with about 4.9 runs per game?

I didn't say the last 21 games were "the real Brewers offense". The question mark in the title and the text should have told you that I was posing the question and presenting facts and not drawing a conclusion. But, I don't think you two think that (1) Yelich is going to produce an OPS close to 1.100 for a full season, and (2) Yelich's absence accounts for even a significant part of a drop of almost 3 runs per game. As my second post highlights, the veterans in the lineup (except for Sanchez who didn't play much) started out with production that they weren't likely to maintain. And they all regressed in the last 3 weeks. Most of the younger players also started out relatively hot and have fallen back. They don't have enough of a track record to know what to expect from them, but that was one of the big question marks for the offense coming into the season

It is difficult to establish an expectation for the Brewers offense because so many of their lineup regulars have no established record as major league hitters. Of the 12 players who account for most of their plate appearances this year, 6 of them (Frelick, Turang, Chourio, Perkins, Ortiz, and Dunn) have very short MLB careers and Bauers has established a record of mediocrity in his years as a part time player. Looking at the 12 regulars individually shows how remarkable those first 13 games were, and how much things have fallen in the last 21 games. Here is a listing of the 12 players in order of their number of plate appearances. The numbers after their names are: Season OPS/OPS in first 13 games/OPS in last 21 games. Contreras .914/1.058/.822 Adames .791/.893/.722 Hoskins .749/.852/.688 Frelick .636/.758/.554 Turang .771/.939/.661 Chourio .619/.658/.586 Perkins .786/.878/.758 Ortiz . 812/.882/.768 Dunn .607/.744/.481 Bauers .618/.558/.671 Sanchez .781/.412/.950 Yelich 1.186/1.186/ X This has truly been a team wide hitting slump.

Everyone who follows the Brewers knows that their offense has been struggling to score runs for the last few weeks. A look at the MLB stats shows the Brewers 7th in runs scored per game at 4.91 runs per game and 4th in OPS+ at 114. That looks like a pretty solid offense. But, Brewers fans know that the positive part of those numbers comes mostly from their hot start to the season (especially the stretch in which they scored 7 runs or more per game while winning 5 of 6 games). I wanted to quantify how dramatically different the Brewers offense has been in the last 21 games (where they have gone 10-11) compared to the first 13 games (where they went 10-3). In those first 13 games, the Brewers averaged 6.7 runs per game and scored 3 or more runs in every game. In the last 21 games they have averaged 3.8 runs per game while scoring 3 or fewer runs in 13 of those games Given this run production, it is actually remarkable that they have won as many games as they have in this stretch. In their low scoring games they have been shut out twice, are 1-1 when scoring 1 run, 2-2 when scoring 2 runs, and 2-3 when scoring 3 runs. Baseball Reference no longer has the tables that show overall league records when scoring a specific number of runs. But, based on last year's percentages, this level of production would be expected to produce about 3 wins in these 13 games. I don't expect the Brewers to return to the level of the first 13 games for any extended period. But, if it doesn't pick up significantly it's going to be very difficult to maintain the near .500 pace of the last 3 weeks. If the pitching slips it will be "look out below".

Levering says the Brewers could use a break. How about having your veteran SS field ground balls and make the opposing pitcher throw strikes? They deserve the L tonight.

That play at first is too close to overturn too.

Four balls to Adames but the count is 2-2,

Unfortunately, the charts that used to be on Baseball Reference that made it easy to look up things like that are no longer there. I don’t know if anything like that is available anywhere else.

Can’t have meltdowns like that with a team that can’t score.

Bad luck for the Royals having a hard hit ball go right to the second baseman for an easy DP. 😀

That’s how you avoid hitting the ball at a fielder.

If all you did was listen to Levering you would think the Brewers are the unluckiest team in baseball in terms of hard hit balls turning into outs and bad calls from home plate umpires.

Looks like another game of hoping to hold the opponent down through seven innings and try to pull it out at the end.

Not sure who you put in that category, but given their performances against some of the bad, bad teams last year, maybe that’s a good thing. I specifically remember series against the Rockies and A’s

Nope, but his recent history, including nagging injuries, suggests that he isn’t going to sustain an OPS over 1.100 either. He’s played a lot of games the last two years but his OPS those two years have been .738 and .818 They had Bauers and Dunn hitting in the middle of the order even when Yelich was playing, and to me that’s a sign of a questionable offense.

Despite their stats to date I continue to be bearish on the Brewers offense. Since their hot streak last month they have had an alarming number of low run games (3 runs or less) and that’s not going to cut it with the pitching staff they have. It seems to me that the hot streak was fueled by some unsustainable performances and that is starting to show through.

Pitch count not ideal.

Should probably just come back to the game after 3:00 and see if the Cubs bullpen is in. Can’t expect anything from the Brewers offense before that.

Brewers have 0 runs on 5 hits this series against the Cubs starters. Need to be better today.

Someone did post that. I think they said that the Cubs opponents had a winning percentage of .450 and the Brewers opponents were at .550. I would caution that this early in the season that difference may not be that significant. A difference of .100 over 30 games is just 3 games. So you’re talking about a record of 16.5-13.5 vs 13.5-16.5. After the teams have played 120 games or more and you are looking at the difficulty of the remaining schedules, a difference like that would be much more significant. A difference of .100 would be a difference of 12 games Plus, some undeniably good teams are off to so so starts. Even though their records are about the same, I would still say that playing the Rangers is tougher than playing the Mets. Judging schedule difficulty based just on opponents won loss records also doesn’t factor in home games vs road games. Before this series the Cubs had played 19 away games (including a road trip to San Diego, Seattle, and Arizona) and 13 home games. They were 10-3 in those games, including 5-1 against the Dodgers and Astros. I think it would be wrong to attribute the Cubs record to an easy schedule. Like the Brewers, they have done well despite some significant adversity.

Winning in the major leagues with minor league pitchers is hard.

Throwing too many strikes isn’t a problem for Myers today. Bauers should be keeping his arm loose.