Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images The sinker is there to work to the arm side of the pitcher who throws it. It's there to force a same-handed batter not to dive over the plate, so they can't reach your four-seamer on the far corner or your breaking ball. It's there to control that arm-side half of the plate; that's what it does. For Chad Patrick, though, it does something else. Patrick uses the sinker strangely. Of the 58 sinkers he's thrown so far this season, 30 of them were on the glove-side (that is, the first-base-side) third of the plate or farther that direction—in on lefties, and away from fellow righties. Most pitchers struggle mightily to command that pitch, so they don't bother throwing it. The sinker runs to the arm side. If you try to aim it toward the glove side but miss, you're likely to leave a meatball in the heart of the zone. Much of the time, the reward for getting it right there just isn't rich enough to justify the risks of that. Patrick, however, has pretty good command of the pitch, and has gotten good mileage from it. Here's how those 30 pitches have broken down: 12 called strikes 11 balls 1 swinging strike 2 foul balls 2 outs on balls in play 2 singles That doesn't add up to a lot of value in a vacuum, but let's discuss some nuances here. Firstly, using FanGraphs's new Pitch Pairing tool, we can take a look at the way Patrick attacks hitters and the interactions between his pitches. Here, for instance, is his profile against right-handed batters, with his signature pitch—the cutter—as the anchor pitch off which the others are considered to be working. When Patrick is executing well, his cutter forces hitters to sit on it, and his new slurve can be a bat-missing strike-to-ball offering. His four-seamer is nothing special, on its own, but if a hitter is sitting cutter, the four-seamer can induce pop-ups and weak contact, as long as he gets it high enough. Ah, but graphics like these assume the same "start line"—that's what the Brewers, at least, call the point they want a pitcher to target as they release a given pitch, letting it move from there to its real destination—for all pitches. By now, you know that Patrick isn't using the same start line for his sinker that he is for his cutter and the others. He starts that pitch off the outside edge by so much that if he threw the cutter the same way, it would end up in the left-handed batter's box. Instead, he's using the middle of the plate as his start line for the cutter and the slurve. For the sinker, he's starting outside. Tunneling pitches is only one way to generate deception. Sometimes, you want to get hitters looking for the tunneled set (in this case, the cutter-slurve-four-seam tunnel) of pitches, so you can freeze them with a pitch that would be non-competitive if it were part of that tunneled set. That doesn't always work, but when it does, it works gorgeously. Check out this sequence against Maikel García of the Royals, on April 4. This encounter came in the fifth inning. It was the third time García was seeing Patrick, so the hurler started him by landing a sluve in the zone for a called strike. That's conventional: catch a batter by surprise by showing them something unexpected at the front end of a third or fourth look within a game. He next went up to the top of the zone (above it, really) for a swinging strike on the cutter; he was way ahead of García. On his third pitch, though, he just got lucky. He tried to throw one of those strike-to-ball slurves, but got stuck in his own tunnel. The pitch broke off the line of the previous cutter, instead of one more typical of what Patrick throws to righties, and it ended up in the middle of the zone again. With two strikes, García wasn't going to be frozen and beaten so easily. It was still 0-2, but Patrick needed something new to show to a dangerous hitter who was right on him, now. Thus, the backdoor sinker. MDRYNk5fWGw0TUFRPT1fVUFSU1Z3SlNWUXNBWFZGV1Z3QUhDUVVGQUZnRFZ3SUFBMUZXQlFwVUNRWldVUUpW.mp4 Yes, technically, this pitch missed the zone. It didn't matter, though. Patrick had shaped it well and hit his spot. William Contreras framed the pitch well. Most importantly, García was fooled, badly. He was so unready to see that pitch, coming from that angle and landing where it did, that he was in no position to risk Kansas City's second challenge of the game on it. That's the ideal way for the backdoor sinker to work. It's a different thing if you first fall behind in the count. Here's a third-inning showdown with Chase Meidroth back on March 28. You can see what Patrick was thinking, here. He'd missed low with two of his first three offerings, but a front-door cutter had frozen Meidroth, so he was hoping that a hitter in an advantageous count would be sitting on another pitch on the inner half, on which he could turn and burn. Having thrown him the slurve on the previous pitch, he hoped he had Meidroth looking in that same tunnel, and that starting the sinker off the outside edge would freeze him and get Patrick back into the count at 2-2. Instead, Meidroth stayed on the ball and flicked it neatly into right field. TUFYMmRfWGw0TUFRPT1fVTFCWEFsUlhCMU1BV1FRQkJ3QUhDVkJVQUZoV1VnVUFVUVFCQkZBTUJBVlhVbEFB.mp4 With any pitch on which you're hoping for lots of called strikes, sequencing is paramount. Patrick wants righties to sit on the four-seamer and the cutter and the slurve, but he needs count leverage and/or perfect execution to win with the sinker just by violating those expectations. Because he throws the pitch so well to that side of the plate, though, Patrick's sinker is much better against lefties than most right-handed pitchers' sinkers are. Let's take a look at a couple more of those FanGraphs images. First, here's what his arsenal looks like when anchored to the four-seamer. You can see, pretty easily, how a lefty will experience the four-seamer, the cutter and the slurve as a tunnel and struggle to differentiate them. The key to the front-door sinker, then, is that it moves so differently than the rest of the arsenal that given the start line Patrick uses, it'll look to a batter like it's going to hit him, if the batter thinks it's either the cutter or the slurve. To a lefty, the pitch can tunnel a bit with the four-seamer, but it has to be set up in a different way. Here's a glance at the arsenal if we use the sinker as the anchor. So, let's look at one more way the pitch actually worked in a real matchup. In a showdown with the Nationals' Jorbit Vivas on Friday, Patrick started him with a more traditionally located two-seamer, hitting the outside edge of the zone for strike one. (It was initially called a ball, but Contreras got it back with a challenge via ABS.) Next, he dropped a fantastic slurve into the bottom, inner quadrant of the zone, getting ahead 0-2. The question was how to put Vivas away from there. Patrick guessed that Vivas would be looking for the cutter or the four-seamer, upstairs. He was right. Instead of giving Vivas that, though, he threw him a high, front-door sinker. As you can see above, it wasn't pinpoint location, but it worked, because Vivas hit the inside of the ball. He was trying to get his barrel around and through a four-seamer or cutter; the sinker ran off the side of the stick and produced an easy fly ball. NnlNcW9fWGw0TUFRPT1fQlZWUUFsQUdYd1VBREFaUUFnQUhBbFVEQUZnTkFsRUFVMUVEQ0FJSEFRQlVCd2Rl.mp4 Throwing the glove-side sinker takes some fearlessness and guile, as well as tactile command. Patrick has shown all of that this spring. This pitch is one more way in which he frustrates batters, despite his apparent lack of a swing-and-miss out pitch. He works in a three-pitch tunnel with the rest of his arsenal, but when it comes to the sinker, the tunnel isn't the point. Rather, Patrick is inviting batters to hone in on that tunnel—then working beyond it, forcing them to reconceptualize their approach and (if nothing else) be less locked in when he goes back to his tunneled set. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images A crisis continues to brew in the Milwaukee bullpen. The offense continues to produce, but is stretched thin now that three of its four or five most accomplished hitters are on the injured list. It's not easy to win games for the Brewers right now. In fact, it hasn't been this hard in quite some time. Pat Murphy's previous two Brewers teams never lost more than four games in a row. Tuesday night's heartbreaking double-collapse loss to the Blue Jays made six straight 'L's. When you're in a funk like that—when the bullpen seems exhausted and there are creeping questions about the depth pieces in the rotation and the injury bug won't stop biting—a great team turns to its playmakers. That term is more often used in football and basketball, but baseball has playmakers, too. Over the last few seasons, the Brewers have seen the differences those players can make. Sometimes, it's an incredible feat of sheer athleticism, but often, too, it's a coalescence of skill and great baseball IQ—being aware of space and situation and making the play another player or team might not even think of. This is the team that twice killed the would-be tying run at the plate to end games because of perfectly executed throws and tags. This is the team that seemed to seal up holes and make impossible plays. This is the team that turned a 405-foot fly ball into a ground-ball double play. That team is broken right now, and no play made that clearer than the final one of the top of the ninth inning Tuesday night. Here it is. Already, of course, the Blue Jays had scored one run in the eighth inning and two in the ninth, against Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill. Already, they led 5-4, after the Brewers seemed to have a relatively comfortable lead for most of the contest. It was a moment of frustration and resignation for many fans in attendance, and unfortunately, that same dark cloud fell over the players, too. You saw the clip, so you already understand the problem, but let's break it down for better diagnosis. Ernie Clement hit a sharp two-out single to left field. Kazuma Okamoto had been on second base when the play began, and he took off for third base, where he got the wave. That was a fine play on Toronto's part, given that they already had the lead. There were two outs in the inning; another success at the plate was unlikely. To make sending the runner a sensible decision there, you only have to think there's about a 25% chance that he's safe. Here's the problem—or, from the Brewers' perspective, the golden opportunity: Okamoto is slow. His average sprint speed so far this year, according to Statcast, is a woeful 25.4 feet per second. Maybe he's really a bit faster than that, and will show as much as the weather warms up, but so far, Okamoto has shown markedly below-average speed in his first season in the United States. That's what he showed on this play, too. Here's a frame just after Brandon Lockridge gets to the ball in left field. He's already secured it, and Okamoto isn't even at third base yet. A late stop sign would have posed an unnecessary risk, though. Why do something that might lead to a hamstring pull, at this point in the play? Okamoto continued home, and Lockridge cut loose a strong throw—albeit one a bit toward first base, as has been his wont. Initially, William Contreras does track the ball from a position where he can try to retire Okamoto once the throw comes home, but pretty quickly, he starts moving out into the dirt in front of home plate: Contreras might have been having a flashback to Sunday, when Lockridge threw a ball with similar verve (though from farther away) and missed well up the first-base line, allowing a trailing Nationals runner to take third base and losing any chance of an out on a medium-depth sacrifice fly. NXk5VjBfWGw0TUFRPT1fQjFOVEFGWUNCd2NBQ2xNRlZnQUhBd0JmQUZnRFZWZ0FWd1lIQWxZSEFGZFZCVkJX.mp4 Unlike the play Sunday, though, this one could have resulted in an easy out at the plate. Lockridge's throw was better; Contreras had a better angle on the throw and the incoming runner; and, again, Okamoto is very slow. Alas, Contreras had been out there right along with the Brewers pitchers who had stumbled through the final two frames of this game. He was frustrated, and he hasn't been through a week quite like this one in at least three years. In that moment, he was a little bit feral; he got outside himself and lost the command of the situation that usually makes him and his team so great. He turned his back on the runner—literally and figuratively—to field the throw, and turned his eyes toward second base, where Clement was trying to advance. Look at all this real estate, though. Contreras chose the wrong way to receive the throw for the best chance of tagging Okamoto out, but even if he'd done nothing differently up through the moment captured above, he could easily have wheeled and slapped down a tag in time. If that runner is Byron Buxton or Pete Crow-Armstrong, it's a tougher and riskier task, but Okamoto wasn't moving all that fast as he got close to the plate, either. Contreras had an ocean of time, but not the awareness of it that makes all our time work for us. He snared the ball, took a step to load up, transferred the ball to his throwing hand and let it fly to second—all before Okamoto touched home plate. Megill (and/or first baseman Jake Bauers) should have been yelling to Contreras to make the tag, instead of throwing toward Clement. Maybe they were, but it doesn't sound like it. He could have had better help. A catcher is meant to make this kind of decision themselves, though, and it's not a 50/50 call that gets answered as if without a preconception on every such play. The run coming home has clear precedence. Just as the Jays sending Okamoto home only required about a 1-in-4 chance to be the right call, Contreras should have tried to tag the runner even if he felt he had only a 1-in-4 chance to get him. In truth, he should have felt at least like he had the better side of a coin flip, even before the ball got to him. It wasn't even going to be a terribly close play. Contreras's poor read or mental lapse gave the Blue Jays a run. In the bottom of the inning, the Brewers rallied for the two tallies they needed to tie the game and force extras, against Toronto closer Jeff Hoffman. It was a terrific comeback, but who knows? The visitors might have managed that frame differently, with just a one-run edge. It might be that the extra run in the top half wasn't as decisive as it now appears. It didn't need to score, though. When things are going against you, in baseball, it's often beyond your control. The game is hard; the other guys have big houses, too. For two years, the Brewers have maintained primacy in the NL Central by being the team who doesn't let bad get worse. They don't let runs score or losses pile up when, through the blessings of the game, they do gain momentary control and can prevent it. That was the most unsettling thing about Tuesday night's loss. With a chance to get some momentum going for the bottom half of the inning and keep the defiicit manageable, Contreras made a boneheaded play. It was very un-Brewerslike. We're going on a week and a half of that, now. View full article

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images After departing the Brewers' loss to the Nationals Sunday in the fifth inning, Christian Yelich landed on the 10-day injured list Tuesday with a groin strain. For much of the last seven years, Yelich's career has been a question of health. He can help the team whenever he's on the field, but he missed 45 games with multiple injuries in 2021. In 2024, his season was cut short by a back injury that finally required surgery. He's only played 69 games in the outfield since the start of 2024, which is one way the team has shielded him from injury risk, but even as a designated hitter, he's spent considerable time on the shelf. That makes it worrisome any time something crops up for Yelich. He's not as available as you might wish even at the best of times, so every injury seems to threaten weeks of scrambling for offense, without the team's most consistent hitter. This time, however, the data says we can be a bit more optimistic than that. Over the last 10 seasons, Baseball Prospectus has logged 100 groin strains suffered by position players. Those players have returned, on average, in just under four weeks, and the median number of days missed is a not-so-bad 20. Of those 100 injuries, 71 saw the player return to play within four weeks, and only seven stretched beyond eight weeks. The Brewers indicated that the injury is significant, but not severe, which indicates that Yelich probably won't fall into that long-term injury bucket. Yelich's age and his track record are reasons not to expect him back within two weeks, but the fact that he's the team's DH works in his favor. Without the need to prepare for explosive lateral movements or sudden changes of speed and/or direction in the field, he should be able to get back into the mix relatively quickly. The Brewers need him back as soon as possible, since they're still without Jackson Chourio and Andrew Vaughn and have been inconsistent in run production so far this year. They won't want to rush him back, but Yelich's return-to-play timeline should be relatively short. In the meantime, the team called up Greg Jones, who will complement the existing outfield corps of Sal Frelick, Garrett Mitchell, Brandon Lockridge, Luis Matos and Blake Perkins. So far this season, none of those players (save Mitchell) has been as good as the team hoped, so some of the extra available playing time might accrue to Gary Sánchez, William Contreras and Jake Bauers. The team needs Yelich, but their depth is better than that of most teams would be if they were facing three early losses of the same magnitude as Yelich, Chourio and Vaughn. This should be a short-term absence, and though the waters are choppy for the Crew right now, a time at which they might be back to full strength isn't far away. View full article

Image courtesy of © Denny Medley-Imagn Images How brave are you? That's a question we all ought to ask ourselves now and then, because often, bravery is merely the equanimity that comes with premeditation, so the more we assess our inventory of fortitude, the more it grows. You might not be able to prepare yourself for the moment when you have a chance to save a baby from a burning building, but you can strengthen your resolve to do what's needed by reflecting on past moments in which that paralytic knot of fear and nausea built within you. Fear is an obstacle, but it's surmountable. You just can't let it sneak up on you. Of course, it's not quite that simple. There are times when the costs and the benefits of attempting something daring are almost in parity. There are other times when, if you slow down enough to let your rational brain talk your sympathetic nervous system out of its freakout, you won't be quick enough to respond to a fast-moving situation. We're always training and teaching ourselves to be braver. We're also always learning about the immensity and the limits of our own courage, through experiences we can't fully intellectualize until later. Sports are ways we can test and observe bravery—measure and celebrate and long for it. Most often, when it comes to baseball, we think about this in terms of the pitcher and the batter staring each other down with the game on the line, trying to outguess and outdo one another. Really, though, those aren't the best tests of bravery the sport offers, because the competitiveness and the cerebralness of each player takes over in those moments. Fear loves to pounce on us when our frontal lobes are relatively inactive, because the parts of our brains that are more instinctive and fast-moving are also more susceptible to the pressure of fear. A batter isn't afraid when they have a chance to come up with the winning hit; they're locked in and switched-on. A pitcher with a chance to slay a rally and start the happy handshake line is equally full of intensity and self-belief. It takes bravery to play the outfield, though, and while it's a trainable type of bravery, it's not an easy one to achieve. Some of us are wired to see every split-second moment as an opportunity; some of us are better at perceiving the threat and the danger behind that opportunity. Thus, while being a great outfielder has a lot to do with athleticism, it also requires a good balance between fearlessness and discretion. Brandon Lockridge has all the athleticism he needs to be a plus defender in the outfield. His speed is better than that of most of his teammates, even in a highly athletic group of outfielders. His body control isn't bad, either. He didn't quite make this catch in Kansas City, but he made a marvelous effort on it. Most outfielders don't even get a glove on this drive, but he could very well catch the next ball like it. QXc3ZEtfVjBZQUhRPT1fQjFKUUJsUlNVRmNBRDFSVVZRQUhBbElIQUFBSEJWQUFDMUZVVlZJRlVGWUdCd2RS.mp4 Unfortunately, so far, Lockridge hasn't been a great defender, overall. It's not because he couldn't finish that all-or-nothing play, though. It's because when the proposition is something other than all-or-nothing—when there's a potential cost to going all-out for a ball and not getting it—Lockridge doesn't quite have the instinctive bravery to match his talent. That sounds like an indictment of character, but as I've already suggested, what we're talking about here is a matter of acuity and/or subconscious reaction, not self-aware cowardice. The best way to illustrate the point might be to show you, rather than further explain it verbally. Here's a play from that same series, against the Royals, on which Lockridge was in left field instead of center. b0d3bERfWGw0TUFRPT1fVjFJQUFBY0ZVUU1BV1FBRkFBQUhCZ1VFQUZnQlZsQUFBRk5XQWxWWEFsWlRBUVVF.mp4 This doesn't look much more catchable than the ball Lockridge almost ran down in the gap, and indeed, it would have been a dazzling play. However, let's break it down into a few key moments. Here's the first frame after the TV feed stabilized in tracking the flight of the ball and the pursuing Lockridge. (in each of these images, I've highlighted the ball in red.) Unlike last year's unlikely outfield defense breakout (Isaac Collins), Lockridge doesn't rate well on Statcast's leaderboard for outfield jumps. He got a good read and a good start on this one, though. It's very well-struck, and hooking away from him, but Lockridge is fast and the ball is hit high. There's a chance, here. Here's the last moment at which catching the ball was possible. Lockridge has taken a good angle, and he's at full gallop. To have a chance to make this play—saving at least one run and ending the inning—he has to keep that flat angle toward the line, and he's likely to have to dive. Again, though: the ball is still up there. He's closing ground. Greatness is possible. This is Lockridge choosing not to attempt that greatness. He turns his hips slightly and lets his stride carry him backward, just a bit, toward the foul pole. He's decided he can't get to the ball, and he knows that the bounce will be big and disastrous if he tries and fails. By giving ground, he can get around the ball and cut it off on one long hop. In fact, he'll do just that. By the time the ball lands, he's in good position, and only one run will score on what could have been a two-run double. It's still a double, though. Lockridge's brain didn't let him believe he had any chance to catch this ball, though the truth is that he (briefly) did. That one's far from an obvious example, though. It's a long run on a long hit. The baserunner at first base, able to go with the crack of the bat because there were two outs, lurked in the back of his mind. Let's look at a play on which he more clearly had a chance. Off to Boston! YVl4djdfWGw0TUFRPT1fQlFWWlVBQldBQVVBQ3dBSFVRQUhDUUpSQUZnQlZGWUFDMU5RQWxkV0FBc0RCQVZR.mp4 This time, the ball isn't in the air nearly as long. Lockridge needs a good first read and a quick first step to have his best chance at catching it, and he doesn't really get that. Playing left field at Fenway Park is complicated, man. You feel as though you're covering a much longer lateral space, and the temptation to play deep enough to at least take going back on the ball out of the set of possibilities is powerful. Lockridge is starting pretty far from a sinking line drive, so he has to cover some ground. Fortunately, he has elite speed. That's Lockridge bearing down on the ball and accelerating—but it's also the last stride with which he'll do so. His mind is about to throw up a stop sign. He's going to hit the air brakes, because his center fielder is far away and Ceddanne Rafaela is fast; he doesn't want the ball skipping past him. The camera angle makes things a bit tricky, but hopefully, you can see the problem here. Lockridge thought the ball was sinking faster than it was; he pulled his parachute cord too soon. He's pulling up to play the ball in front of him, but by the time it lands, we'll see that another two of those high-speed strides could have brought him underneath it in time. Take any kind of fear into the outfield with you, and opportunities will be missed. It's possible to chase opportunities too aggressively, too, of course, and Lockridge has occasionally been guilty of that in the past. This spring, his mistakes in the grass have followed a pattern: he's ever-so-slightly too wary of giving up an extra base to make the most of his exceptional potential as a defender. One more example, and perhaps the most glaring one of the young campaign. WERaME5fWGw0TUFRPT1fQndoU1ZRQUFYMUVBWEZzR0JRQUhVbEpmQUFOVVV3QUFWQVFHVVFKWEFBSUFDUVJY.mp4 Unlike the sharp liner off the righty Rafaela's bat, this fly from CJ Abrams was floated toward Lockridge in left. With two outs and nobody on, there was every incentive to be aggressive, and the ball was in the air for a little while. Lockridge's jump wasn't perfect, but he had time. Admittedly, last year, Collins would have been two yards closer to this ball by the same point in its flight. Lockridge's not-so-great first step costs him something real. He has plenty of recovery speed, though, and about a second later, he's already in a winning position to get to the ball. One variable here (other than gumption and general derring-do) is the willingness of a player to run flat-out and sacrifice a bit of stability in their ball-tracking, during the middle part of the hit's flight. Lockridge is fast, and he was going hard after this ball at first, but he's not one for letting anything shake his lock on the ball as he chases it. If he were a bit freer with his movement, he could have gotten a half-step farther by this point, too, but he's working to read the ball. Sometimes, too, that desire to read it perfectly ends up making you default to the conservative approach if it's not fully clear you can get there. Here come the air brakes again. He had a lot more time to close on this ball, but Lockridge wants a manageable bounce, too. Pat Murphy talks often about great fielders' facility when the ball gets close to them—about how effortlessly Joey Ortiz redirects the ball, or how deftly Brice Turang can handle an inaccurate throw or tircky hop. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Lockridge isn't as comfortable in close quarters with the fast-moving ball. When he senses that a high or a hard bounce might be coming, he tries to create extra space in which to work with it. On the infield, that's one of several viable solutions to get an out at first base. In the outfield, it means letting balls fall in front of you sometimes, and turning possible outs into hits. Sometimes, Lockridge does go all the way and make the play. He's not without the ability to dive or to dare. It's just the exception, right now, rather than the rule. b0d3bERfWGw0TUFRPT1fVlZkUkIxZFNCMVFBWGdOUVhnQUhCUUZWQUZnQ0J3QUFCd0FHQlFzRUJsQURCUUpS.mp4 Again, this is partially trainable (and, in this case, fixable), but it's partially innate. It's one thing that separates infielders from outfielders; it's one thing that separates great outfielders from merely solid ones. Lockridge is trying not to make costly mistakes with his glove, but when they've been at their best over the last two years, the Brewers have been so bold and so good that they take should-be hits away from other teams, rather than letting any could-be outs turn into hits in the name of preventing the loss of a runner or two advancing. It might be that Lockridge will never quite be the defender his raw talent could allow him to be. He might make some highlight-reel catches on balls like that near-snag on the warning track at Kauffman Stadium, but never be the guy who can snatch away a single with a charging shoestring grab. On the other hand, he might be able to turn a corner quickly, thanks to what the Brewers believe is superb makeup and some time with the league's best coaching and development infrastructure. Consciously, Lockridge longs and dares to be great. Subconsciously, perhaps, that bravery eludes him on the occasional hooking liner. It eludes us all sometimes, doesn't it? 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I understand all of those feelings. I invite you to consider that, even though they're paid mostly by their MLB teams, players need not automatically allot all (or even most!) of their loyalty to those teams. I think the WBC is more important than the MLB season, just as the World Cup is more important than the Premier League. The PL is played every year and players get most of their money from their PL clubs, but those facts don't make the PL as joyous or as actually important as the Cup, It only makes them more financially important, and in the end, what are we here to watch: baseball, or moneymaking? Like many soccer fans, I'm sure you feel a stronger loyalty to your league team than to a country's baseball federation, which is totally fine. I guess I'd just say that you're right to say it's not going anywhere, so making peace with it is the wisest course of action. Also, my own bottom line for this piece: I think Zerpa will be COMPLETELY fine, and basically his full-strength self, very soon. Could be wrong but I don't even think his WBC participation is what's led to a wobbly start. I think it just happens.

Image courtesy of © Eric Canha-Imagn Images New Brewers infielder David Hamilton is a pest, once he's on base. He's dangerous there. He's already stolen four bases this year, an extension of a long track record of aggressiveness in that department. The last thing you should ever want to do is put Hamilton on base for free. He doesn't hit for much power, and he swings and misses a fair amount, so the thing to do is to just go right after him. Fortunately for the Brewers, pitchers aren't doing that this year. They used to do it; they did it all last season. But they've stopped. Here's a scatter plot of hitters by the percentage of pitches seen that were in the strike zone and the rate at which they swung in 2025. Here's the same chart for 2026. From 52% last year, the percentage of pitches that have been in the zone to Hamilton has plummeted to 44% so far in 2026. It's a huge difference, and although he's reduced his swing rate accordingly, he's not being meaningfully more patient in the zone or any better at not chasing. He's just had a lot more junk at which to not swing. As a result, in 36 plate appearances, he's walked a whopping nine times. His on-base percentage is .485. It's hard to figure out why the league isn't being more aggressive with Hamilton. He's actually reduced his bat speed this year, and he's letting the ball travel about 3 extra inches into the hitting zone. A deeper contact point makes him less likely to whiff, all else equal, and his slashing style and speed do make him feel a bit dangerous. Sixteen of his 36 plate appearances have come with runners on base, which somewhat reinforces the newish notion that protection—the influence of teammates on the way a given batter is pitched—comes from in front of you in the batting order, rather than behind you. On the other hand, Hamilton has already faced left-handed pitchers in 10 plate appearances. Last season, he only saw a southpaw 20 times, in 194 trips to the dish. If nothing else, you'd think a fellow lefty would be comfortable going right after Hamilton, both because he's unlikely to punish you with power left-on-left and because a speed demon is a bit less of a threat once on base when the pitcher on the mound is able to stare right at them during their set. Nonetheless, the numbers are right in front of us. The sample is tiny, but Hamilton is seeing a lot of pitches miss the zone, and he's not helping hurlers out. They'll have to show him, instead, that they can throw strikes, and once they do, he's likely to punish them a bit more, after all. The Brewers have a dynamic offensive weapon on their hands, in the person of their versatile and lightning-fast utility infielder. View full article

Ehh. I mean I see what you mean but it's a distinct blue-and-orange that has its own feel. And they're right that it hearkens a little to the American Assoc. Brewers and the Braves. I actually really like the shades of each that they picked; it feels right to me in that sense.

Yep. That's the world, ever since Fanatics took control of the league's merch shops. I haven't bought any team-branded stuff since 2011; I just will not pay what they demand these days.

Image courtesy of Milwaukee Brewers/MLB The Brewers will open a homestand this weekend against the Nationals by donning their second edition of City Connect uniforms for the first time. In preparation for that, the team rolled out the new look in an elaborate multi-platform social media announcement. The base color of the threads will be blue, though lighter than the team's standard navy and less bright than the blue that defined their glove-and-ball logo era. Although the comparison often feels trite, the choice of tone does genuinely evoke a lake or river. The accents (including nifty piping down the sleeves) are cream-colored, a well-measured nod to the Cream City. There will be a good amount of orange, too, bringing together a smart color scheme that doesn't bend so far from the tradition of the team, the city or the state as to feel jarring. It's new, but not alien. There's a new patch designed to look like a fishing bobber, but with baseball stitches. It's not prominently featured on the uniform, but it's nice. Even better is the redesigned Barrelman logo on the sleeve patch, which has the mascot superimposed on a many-colored outline of Wisconsin, pursuing a ground ball. The explanations and rollouts of these are always a bit overdone. Neither the league nor Nike does a very good job of making one forget that the point of having the new threads is to sell merchandise. On balance, though, this uniform does a lot of things right. It's almost really, really great. But. The team didn't just splash 'Wisco" across the front of the jersey, as became clear when the uniforms leaked last month. They leaned all the way into it. Their tagline for the unveiling is "If you're from Wisco, you know the way," and they're referring to the overall vibe as the "Wisco Way." There, of course, they have a problem, because no one is from Wisco. That diminutive reference is only used by people from elsewhere, and usually, it's not used flatteringly. At various points over the last quarter-century, people from the rest of the Midwest have tried on Wisco as a way to refer to the state (with its burdensome three-syllable name) and "Sconnies" as a demonym for people who live there, and some of that lingo has stuck, in Iowa and Minnesota and Illinois. But for Wisconsinites, it's simply not a thing. It will never be. It's always a downer when an advertising or marketing campaign hits a note this far from the proper key, but when it comes to the City Connect program, it cuts even deeper. Insofar as this program is anything real—any earnest effort to tie together team and community, be that by deepening the relationship between the team and a part of that community or by reaching out to a new segment of the community altogether—it has to be undertaken after serious research. It should be done by someone local. It should, in short, never come anywhere near calling the Brewers' home state "Wisco". Instead, these very pretty uniforms will largely remind us all of how commercial, transactional and hollow a relationship teams want with their fans. They're well-executed, but you can't connect (or Connect) to a community that doesn't exist. By letting a consultant with insufficient real intimacy with the city or state create such an out-of-touch theme for the uniform, Nike and the Brewers forfeited their chance to deepen their connection with fans. This organization does so many things well that they should easily survive the error, but it was an unforced one, and a disappointing one. View full article

Image courtesy of © Eric Canha-Imagn Images The way it happened was excruciating. Jacob Misiorowski was cruising, overpowering Red Sox batters and (if anything) outpitching fellow Cy Young Award candidate Garrett Crochet. When he lost control in the sixth inning, though, it was simply gone; he couldn't find his release point again. Normally, with the bases loaded but the game still scoreless when Misiorowski departed, Pat Murphy would have gone to one of his most trusted relievers, but plainly, the plan on Tuesday night was to give back a bit to the baseball gods. Murphy has used Aaron Ashby, Abner Uribe, Trevor Megill, Ángel Zerpa and Grant Anderson as heavily as anyone involved is comfortable with, this spring—if not more than that. He needed to let them each get a day off Tuesday night, so in a high-leverage spot that might normally have called for Ashby or Zerpa, Murphy went to DL Hall. Unfortunately, Hall let all three runners Misiorowski had bequeathed come home, which turned out to be decisive. Even in defeat, the Brewers offense was delightfully tenacious. They chased Crochet from the game in the very next half-inning, and patched together a two-run rally made up of two singles, a walk, a hit batsman and an RBI fielder's choice. They couldn't quite cash in their chance, though, and it turned out to be their last one. That raises the other reason (besides Murphy's desire to give his relievers some relief) why Boston had the upper hand on the Crew in this game: Crochet, and the lineup the visitors were forced to field against him. Murphy used the occasion (a top-flight lefty starter who's especially tough on lefties) to give both Brice Turang and Christian Yelich a rest. That part's fine. It was necessary, and didn't deprive the club of anyone who was likely to do much against Crochet. The real problem is that, with Jackson Chourio and Andrew Vaughn on the injured list, this team is not as dangerous against lefties as it would be at full strength. William Contreras is a legitimate star slugger, and can mash lefties when he's going well. With Chourio and Vaughn sidelined, though, Murphy wrote in Brandon Lockridge as his leadoff man Tuesday night, and placed Joey Ortiz fifth on the card. Those guys are fine complementary players, especially against lefties. They have athleticism and defensive value, as well as the platoon advantage on southpaws. Pressed into what were essentially the third- and fourth-most important roles in the offense, though, they were a bit stretched. The bottom third of the order included Sal Frelick, Blake Perkins and David Hamilton. Though Frelick is a full-time player, the three of them weren't in the lineup because Murphy thinks they're good matchups for the likes of Crochet. They weren't even there for their defense, per se. It was just the right night for Muprhy to give two regulars a night off, in addition to staying away from his highest-volume relievers. Winning that game was unlikely, and the way Murphy managed it didn't make it more likely. That wasn't his goal. 'Win Tonight' is a wonderful and massively successful paradigm. Murphy has made the Brewers the envy of every other team in the league with it. However, he's also learning to notice when the time is right to accept a loss. No team in baseball history has won more than 116 games in a regular season. Trying to be the first team to reach 120 is not only impractical; it's self-defeating. More even than in the NBA, in baseball, one has to occasionally accept a loss, to make wins on other days more likely. The Brewers are 8-3. They're off to a sizzling start. They just can't afford—especially now, while two of their best hitters are down and some of their pitchers are still getting up to speed—to try so relentlessly to win every game that they risk hurting their chances to keep winning over the long haul. View full article

Image courtesy of © Paul Rutherford-Imagn Images Christian Yelich turned 34 years old in December. He's in his mid-30s now. This is a man who was an old enough boy to spike his hair or dye his tips during the peak of *NSync's popularity. When that Taco Bell commercial featuring Sum 41's "In Too Deep" comes on, he might start mouthing or shouting the lyrics, or not, but something stirs within him. When he dubbed Pat Murphy 'Patches O'Houlihan' upon Murphy's promotion to manager in 2024, it wasn't something a coach mentioned or a reference he first experienced via scrolling through YouTube shorts. That came from his soul. He saw Dodgeball in a movie theater, which is a building where you used to go and see movies on a huge screen, in the dark. Such a person can't be up in the (35-inch contact point) club, with the kids. A '90s kid can't be swinging with catching the ball way out front in mind. It's unseemly, like a divorced dad hitting on a coed at a college bar. That unseemliness just manifests differently: instead of cringeworthy conversation and striking out, it's—ok, actually, some things about it are the same. Every player loses bat speed as they age. Yelich is not an exception. Although the sample is limited, his bat speed is down so far this year, from 73.4 miles per hour in 2025 to 72.3 MPH. It's a minor miracle that his bat speed stayed as strong as it did last year, as he returned from the back surgery that ended his 2024 campaign, but some of that was the buoying effect of having addressed the problem that compelled him to have that surgery in the first place. He's losing bat speed, and that's not a crisis. It is, however, part of what drives most hitters to decline. Some of that decline is self-induced, though. How much a hitter's production is affected by their diminishing ability to flick the stick depends on how one reacts to it. If you change nothing, you'll simply get worse. If you try to compensate for it by starting earlier, you can run into the ball just as often, but when you miss, you'll miss by more. You'll make poorer decisions and pay higher costs for them than in the past. This really isn't so different from a 30-something refusing to age gracefully out in the rest of the world, right? The other option is to make easygoing concessions to age, and the limitations that come with it. It's a voluntary way to pay many of the same costs, but in addition to preserving your dignity, you maintain more control of the process. Which strategy for adapting to the ravages of time best suits a player depends in large measure on what kind of player they were at their peak, but all else equal, the best way to adjust as you age is to accept that the ball will get deeper on you. If you let your contact point drift farther into the hitting zone and closer to your body (but get the bat up to speed nearly as well, in the process), you can sustain a balanced attack with less bat speed than you had before. That's what Yelich is doing. Here are the breakdowns of his intercept point (whether or not contact was made) relative to the center of his body on fastballs, for 2024, 2025 and 2026, in three ranges. Contact Point Range Season Under 20" 20-25" Over 25" 2024 39.4 27.9 32.7 2025 51 25.2 23.9 2026 55.8 30.2 14 The trend is clear, and sensible. Yelich is ok with his gradual shift into dadcore; he's switched from cheap beer and designer cocktails to a tasty but sensible IPA without complaint. He's letting the fastball travel more, and lo, he's raking. He's actually swinging more so far this year, and whiffing about as often as he did last year. He's also hitting the ball hard as much as he did last year, though, and his OPS is over 1.000 through 10 games. Though he hit a mammoth home run in the first series—early, in a good way, on a splitter—this version of Yelich is unlikely to hit nearly as many as the 29 home runs he cracked in 2025. That's ok. He's adjusting to (so far) less bat speed, and doing it gracefully. He's not going out and getting the ball the way he did in the past; he's becoming a radical let-it-travel guy. It's the right move. Let other 34-year-olds embarrass themselves. This one is comfortable in his skin, and in his batting stance. View full article

Haha. I feel you, Harold, but *everything* makes you miss Wes Clarke, no? 😜

I like that Jack reported this out this way; it really illustrates why Murphy has loved Lockridge since the moment he came through the door. I agree with you; he's the type you hope will be around for a few years.

Good point. Unaccountably, I sort of bin Zerpa with the righties in the pen. He's not a reverse-splits guy; there's no reason to do so. I just do. Haha. Thanks for catching it.

Image courtesy of © William Purnell-Imagn Images For now, the Brewers and Jared Koenig will wait and see how his elbow responds to a prolonged rest. Koenig was shelved by a sprained elbow Monday afternoon, and yes, the damaged tissue is his ulnar collateral ligament. There's always a chance that a sprained UCL will lead to Tommy John surgery, or some variant thereof that still ends a player's season. It's good news that that's not the immediate plan, and perhaps the team and the player were proactive enough to catch a sprain early. According to Pat Murphy (as relayed by MLB.com Brewers beat reporter Adam McCalvy), there's even a chance Koenig will be back by early May, That seems a bit hopeful, but he wouldn't be the first hurler to come back on such a timeline, if the damage is minor. It's important to understand a distinction here, though: this is a diagnosed sprain (which indicates some degree of tearing) in the UCL itself. Pitchers often get diagnosed, first, with strains in the forearm or the biceps muscles, or in the tendons that connect bones to those muscles. Those can be precursors to torn UCLs, but it's not uncommon for the ligament to survive if the muscle or tendon gives way first, especially because the tissues can heal simultaneously as a pitcher rests. This is different. Koenig has a tear in the ligament itself, and ligaments heal more slowly than muscles, because their blood supplies aren't as robust. If there were a major tear in that ligament, we'd already be hearing that Koenig was seeking a second opinion or being scheduled for surgery. Instead, the team will try to let him have time to heal. He could undergo a platelet-rich plasma injection. There are non-surgical interventions for minor ligament damage, and they can (if nothing else) slow down wear to reduce the risk of a full-blown tear. However, Koenig's velocity was notably down this spring. He lost a bit of weight over the winter, and didn't look as strong in camp. There are many reasons to worry that Koenig will give the Brewers little for the balance of this season, even if he's spared from the scalpel for now. Luckily, the Brewers have arguably the deepest pitching staff in baseball. They called up Shane Drohan to take the place of Koenig as the second lefty in the bullpen, which is as tidy an expression of their privilege as one could hope for. Koenig himself would be the best lefty in several bullpens throughout the league. With Aaron Ashby as the high-leverage, high-volume southpaw of the team's relief corps, though, that was never anywhere near being true of the 2026 Crew. Drohan is also a better pitcher than most teams would have to call upon in case of this type of loss, and he'll give them length in the pen for as long as needed. It's a bad break for Koenig, who has earned Murphy's trust and teammates' respect and is an important part of the team. Hopefully, he'll avoid surgery and be back on the mound soon. In the interim, though, Drohan's nasty stuff and cerebral, thoughtful approach to his job make a fine replacement for him. The Brewers will weather the loss, even as they ardently hope for the best for their erstwhile setup man. View full article

Image courtesy of © Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images The finger issue that lingered for part of 2024 and all of 2025 got most of the headlines, but in truth, William Contreras dealt with multiple nagging injuries last year. They didn't stop him from being a productive hitter, and hard work on his accuracy when throwing to second ensured that he improved at controlling the opposing running game. He remains a solid framer, though he hasn't quite bloomed into the major difference-maker it looked like he might be when the team's cadre of catching coaches first got hold of him in 2023. Nothing was operating quite at full steam, though, because when you're hurt, you're unavoidably incomplete. You end up being slightly selfish, even when that's the last thing you're disposed to be, as a person or player. You can't spend as much time or attention in service to your teammates, because your body demands some of your attention, and maintaining and treating those injuries demands a great deal of your time. Contreras is the antithesis of a selfish player, but he was unable to lead and augment his teammates last year the way he wanted to. This spring, with a cleaner bill of health to begin the campaign, he's a different player—one as dynamic and multi-faceted as he was in 2023 and 2024, but made wiser by the adversity he overcame in 2025. He's altered his batting stance. In the past, he was the rare hitter who could be said to be stepping in the bucket, without losing value to that habit. He started in a fairly neutral stance, used a high leg kick, and strode wide-open, looking to pull the ball. It often looked like this. d2VXb0FfV0ZRVkV3dEdEUT09X1V3bFNVVk1HQlFRQUFGRUhWUUFIQ1FkU0FBQldBbE1BVTF3QUJRUUdWUUFEVTFjQw==.mp4 This year, he's starting with a more closed stance, and his feet are farther apart. He's gone, if you will, halfway from the way he used to set up and get moving toward the ball to the way teammate and fellow Venezuela native Jackson Chourio does so: a wider base, a deeper bend (in Contreras's case, crouching has become part of his load), and a more direct stride. Even when he's swinging with exactly the same intent, it looks more like this. SzRCVmVfWGw0TUFRPT1fVlZKVUJ3QUNBQUlBRGdZTFZ3QUhBQUFBQUFCWEJsVUFVRk1BQVZkVVYxVmRVVkZU.mp4 However, Contreras is also getting back to doing something he used to do more often, perhaps prompted by the time he spent last month with the man for whom he wears No. 24 and who did it singularly well, Miguel Cabrera. Sometimes, even in advantage counts, Contreras simply anticipates the pitch that's coming, cuts down his swing, and hits the ball cleanly to a spot he knows offers a guaranteed hit. Those moments look like this. TkFObmJfWGw0TUFRPT1fVUFOUVVWRURBZ0VBQUZzS1VnQUhWVkFBQUZsV1cxZ0FCZ01IVWxFRFYxWUJBbEVE.mp4 That full-fledged change of timing signature and swing path to generate a key hit (even at the cost of any chance to generate power) is one example of Contreras being an excellent team player. He's also showing the attention to detail and the acute awareness of the moment required to secure wins behind the plate. He's been excellent as a framer so far this year, and not just as a framer—as a challenger, too. Tuesday's win offered a terrific example. Contreras challenged a 3-2 pitch to Junior Caminero by Brandon Woodruff in the first inning, even though there was already one out and no one base. With so much game left and a relatively non-dangerous situation at hand within the inning, by the models, he needed to feel very confident to make that challenge. Contreras hasn't been especially aggressive with those challenges this year, so it was surprising to see him try it. But that challenge was about more than the leverage index of the pitch. It was also very much about Woodruff, who had given up a home run already and didn't have his best stuff yet. The catcher rolled the dice for his pitcher, knowing it would be a huge pick-me-up for him, as well as feeling that he was in the right. He was, and a walk became a strikeout before our eyes. Later in that game, Contreras showed a similarly excellent nous for the system and its implications for the personalities he manages from 60 feet away. The Rays had the tying run at the plate, despite being down 5-2, and Abner Uribe was struggling to finish what initially looked like it would be an easy inning. The vibes were getting unfortunately tense; Contreras needed a way to lock his pitcher back in. There's already been much talk this spring about his favorite way to do so with some pitchers, by firing the ball back to them with extra authority after a pitch. With Uribe, though, that isn't always the right way to deliver the message, and indeed, the message needs to be a bit different. On a borderline 0-0 pitch, a ball was called to Richie Palacios, but Contreras challenged again. He was successful again, putting his hurler in the driver's seat for a crucial at-bat. Uribe got out of the inning unscathed. NHlLWnhfWGw0TUFRPT1fRGdKWVVnSlhYd1lBREZJRkJ3QUhCUUVDQUFBRFdsVUFCMTBFQVFZRkFGQURWbEFE.mp4 Contreras is leaning more heavily into catching with his right knee down, and his stance has been modified a bit behind the plate, as well as in the batter's box. He's making lots of small but important changes, as he tries to be the well-rounded star and centerpiece of this team again. That's who he was in 2024, and it's who he wants to be in 2026. It's not easy, but because he's healthier this year, it's at least possible—so he's attacking the task with tenacity. View full article