Matthew Trueblood

By mid-September, every MLB team is tired. The season is long and the schedule is ruthless. On Thursday, though, the Brewers served up a reminder of their signature strength: resisting that physical and mental fatigue better than everyone else. After that, it was just incumbent on the Brewers to hold the lead, and they're experts at that. Adrian Houser gave Craig Counsell five innings, something Perez hadn't quite been able to do for Skip Schumaker. Counsell had fresh arms in his pen, including Joel Payamps, who hadn't pitched in any of the previous three contests in the series. Meanwhile, the Brewers hewed out an insurance run, making things easier for Devin Williams at the end of the day. Throughout the game, there was just more energy on one side than on the other. The Marlins didn't lack talent or interest; they just couldn't keep up with Milwaukee's tenacity and attention to detail. Both Miami batters and pitchers would get ahead in the count, but then be unable to leverage their edge. Instead, the Brewers whittled it away, and then got the win that really matters. Marlins hitters who jumped ahead 2-0 would ground out yawningly on 2-2. Brewers hitters down 1-2 would work back to a full count, then single cleanly over the head of the infield. Games like Thursday are why the Brewers will win the NL Central, and why Counsell should be named the NL Manager of the Year after they do. In various ways, and in partnership with a front office that tries to give him as fresh and balanced a roster as possible, Counsell keeps his charges ready to play games like that one, even on a tough afternoon when the other team needs the win worse than the Brewers do and have the starting pitching advantage. The management of the relentless grind of the season is a skill, and while no team is immune to fatigue or to lapses, the Brewers are as consistent in their mastery of that challenge as any club in baseball. By stealing that win, they got materially closer to another proof of that tenet. View full article

Rather than welcome back their previously injured fifth starter to fill his old slot in the rotation Wednesday night, the Brewers will do so today. Doing so gives them a rare gift at this time of year: time. Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-USA TODAY Sports With 18 days left in the regular season, the Brewers still have 17 games to play. The MLB season is a grind, and the challenges Milwaukee will face are hardly unique, but they're one week into what will be 23 games in 24 days to finish the year. Adrian Houser's return to the starting rotation is perfectly timed to give a little relief to the whole pitching staff down the stretch, beginning by stretching out that rotation itself. In electing to withhold Houser until Thursday and give Colin Rea a (slightly disguised) start Wednesday, the team bought a fifth day of rest between starts for Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, and Freddy Peralta. Burnes and Woodruff had pitch counts near 110 in their dominant outings last turn, and Peralta just pitches better and more often on five days' rest, anyway. In fact, Peralta has had at least five days between starts 13 of the last 15 times he's gone. Burnes has gone on four days just twice in his last 16 starts. Only one of Woodruff's starts since coming off the injured list was on four days, After the Crew had such success with a six-man rotation in 2021, it's tempting to see that as an intentional tactic, but it's just as much a product of the vagaries of the schedule. They've enjoyed eight off days since the All-Star break, tied for the most in baseball. The Cubs, Guardians, and Mariners, by contrast, have had just five. The imbalance will begin to resolve itself Thursday, as a few other teams get an off day while the Brewers finish their four-game series with the Marlins, but that's how open their calendar has been for the last two months. As a result, they've rarely needed to use the tight, five-man, five-day rotation. Since they have a four-game lead with which to work and the depth to do it, we could see Craig Counsell and Chris Hook choose not to change that now. One option for the balance of the season is to stick with a six-man rotation the whole way. That would involve using Wade Miley, Burnes, and Woodruff this weekend against the Nationals, then Peralta, Rea, and Houser to start next week's four-game set in St. Louis, before starting the rotation again. It's unlikely they'll want to go all the way to the end of the season using all six. That would line up the big three to pitch the Cubs series at the end of the campaign, but that's far from ideal, because it would force them to use Miley as the Game 1 starter in the eventual Wild Card Series. Instead, they're most likely to want to drop Rea back out of the mix now, converting him to long relief. That would lead, eventually, to Peralta, Houser, and Miley starting the final three games of the regular season, which could make them fractionally more vulnerable to the Cubs winning that series. It's still unlikely the Cubs will catch them, though, and by doing things that way, the team would line up Burnes, Woodruff, and Peralta to start the three Wild Card Series on their customary five days' rest. In the meantime, they'd each make one more start on four days, but that shouldn't be a significant problem. A rotation this perfectly balanced for a playoff push--deep enough to finish off a division title, but loaded enough at the top to be lethal in a long postseason series--is a tremendous gift. The thin schedule the team enjoyed during the slog of the late summer is another. Now, they should be fresh and in excellent shape for the final fortnight, even if that stretch will be more relentless (in terms of having to be at the park every day) than usual. View full article

By now, several members of the Brewers bullpen have become feared throughout the league. They have two of the hardest throwers in baseball and the man with the single most devastating pitch. Quietly, though, a funky middle reliever is dominating just as much. Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports It's almost impossible to be intimidated by Hoby Milner. He's thin, bordering on gawky. He has one of those open, friendly faces that turn the most imposing glare into more of an accidental smolder. He throws 89 miles per hour. His name is Hoby, for God's sake. Of course, he also has a 1.98 ERA this season. He's been, by Win Probability Added, the 42nd-most valuable pitcher in the National League. Only Giants closer Camilo Doval has made more appearances on zero days' rest, and Milner has often come into dirty innings, with runners on base and the game in danger of getting out of hand, only to freeze it right where it is. He began to emerge as a secret weapon for Craig Counsell in 2022. This season, he's no secret, but he's an even more lethal weapon. Everything about Milner's steady improvement since joining the Brewers in 2021 bespeaks their brilliance at pitching development and instruction. Last summer, he moved beyond life as a left-handed specialist, thanks to changes he and the Brewers made in his pitch mix, his mechanics, and his approach. In baseball, though, you always have to be moving forward, or the league will catch up to you and you might as well be moving backward. Even after a season in which he finally put down roots with a team and earned a lasting spot, Milner had to keep improving. He's done so, in several impressive ways. First, consider his release point. In the pieces linked above from last August, we discussed the way he moved toward the first-base side of the rubber, making the horizontal angle of his pitches more extreme for opponents. He's only ventured farther this year. That horizontal extreme is possible, in part, because of his odd arm angle, and that's another way in which he's made himself even more of an outlier this season. Hitters have to pick up a ball coming at them from roughly the height of their navel, and from a yard wide of the edge of the rubber. This season, however, he's continued another, equally valuable and even more impressive trend: he's releasing the ball closer to home plate, by getting down the mound better and extending slightly further through release. The extra few inches of depth on that release point make it even more of a head-wrecker for the batter. The ball gets on them more quickly, and they have less time to make sense of what they're able to pick up out of his hand. As a result of this, even though he's lost half a tick of velocity on his fastballs this year, he's actually had a very slightly higher perceived velocity, according to Statcast. In the above paragraph, the most important letter is the 's' at the end of 'fastballs'. In the past, Milner has mostly been a one-fastball guy. When he got to the Brewers in 2021, he relied on a four-seamer. The Brewers, seeing the potential for a huge horizontal contrast in movements and location between his various pitches, had him swap it out for a sinker in 2022. That's sound pitching development theory. Teams sometimes get themselves and their players into trouble when they try to implement multiple changes at once. That can be necessary, at times, but it's very difficult. Milner was able to be a successful reliever for a season with the substitution of the four-seamer for a sinker. In 2023, though, he's come back having consolidated that improvement, and compounded its value by reintroducing the four-seamer. In so doing, he's throwing harder in another way, too, because his four-seamer works at the top of the strike zone, while everything else he throws dips down to the knees or below. That means that he can once again change hitters' eye levels. His four-seamer earns whiffs on about twice as high a share of swings as does his sinker, so by throwing the four-seamer more, he gets the same benefits he would get out of an extra mile per hour or two of velocity. Breaking it down by handedness, we can see that Milner really still leans on the sinker against lefties, but has added the four-seamer as that different look. It's righties against whom the four-seamer has come back as an especially potent weapon, though, as Milner uses it to set up his changeup and put hitters on the defensive. Thanks to these adjustments, Milner is getting even weaker and less dangerous contact than he induced last year. He's always been good at limiting exit velocity, and the switch to the sinker in 2022 turned him into a good earner of ground balls. With the four-seamer helping him utilize the whole strike zone, though, he's gotten more pop-ups and allowed fewer well-hit line drives this year, without losing the grounders. Of the 264 pitchers who have allowed at least 150 batted balls, Milner has the ninth-lowest expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA) against him. It's funny: Most of Milner's changes this year have been to his release characteristics and his fastballs, but he remains very much a junkballer. His essential, indispensable skills are the movement and command and unusual looks of his curve and changeup, which have changed little this year. Slightly altering the overall package, though--adding a pitch that targets a different part of the zone, and tweaking the probabilities the hitter has to weigh as they look for his staple offerings--has made a significant difference. Last year, Milner was good. This year, he's been great, and he's as big a part of the team's success as a relief unit as anyone but Devin Williams. No player better symbolizes the value of the Brewers' pitching support infrastructure than Milner. View full article

The Brewers front office nailed their position-player additions at the trade deadline, but August was stained by an injury (that led to a deep slump) for their highest-paid player and a brutal adjustment period for their young hitters. Their star shortstop has carried them through. Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports Since August 15th, Willy Adames is batting .273/.354/.580. In 23 games and 99 plate appearances, he's driven in 25 runs. With that gaudy slugging average and 13 extra-base hits in such a short span, it's tempting to think he's just run into a few lately, but the truth is more complex and more encouraging. Adames has nine walks to go with all that power, because he's dedicated himself to tightening up his strike zone. Adames is a naturally aggressive hitter. He does his best work when he's pulling the ball often, which means getting started soon enough to get the bat head out and attack pitches in front of home plate. Still, as you can see, there's a close relationship between his production and his ability to lay off pitches outside the zone. That's true of all hitters, but it tends to be especially true of free swingers with good power. They're the ones who get the most out of making pitchers come into the zone a bit, and out of not flailing away on unreachable sliders. There remain some red flags here. Adames actually is swinging quite a bit at breaking balls this month, and while he's connected on a pair of home runs when pitchers made mistakes with those offerings, he's also whiffing quite a bit. Sitting on and ambushing slower stuff hasn't yet translated into laying off them as much as would ideal. Still, Adames has gotten his timing and his confidence back, and he's not mishitting or whiffing when he gets his pitch anymore. The place where he's done a better job of not expanding the zone, instead, is on high fastballs. Here's a heat map of his swings on fastballs at 90 miles per hour or harder through August 15. The lower region of deep red is a good thing. Hitters should be aggressive on fastballs in that area, and it should be the place where they swing the most often at them. The upper region is a problem. Swinging at fastballs up there not only often results in a whiff, but leads to more pop-ups and lazy fly balls than hard, valuable contact. When Adames is going poorly, he chases the high fastball a lot. Since mid-August, he's going well, and he's not chasing the high fastball. That little bit of plate discipline is enough to make Adames deadly. Pair the clutch hits he can generate in this groove with the defense Brewers fans have come to expect from him, and he's a game-changer. The Crew are in excellent position to win the NL Central, and Adames has been the individual most responsible for keeping them there. Over the final three weeks, with Christian Yelich ailing, this will continue to be Adames's team. After a tumultuous summer in which his profound struggles seemed to throw the future relationship between player and team into question, the last month has ensured that he'll have a secure place in 2024. In the meantime, the team has a chance to end 2023 by making team history. They'll succeed or fail based on Adames's ability to sustain this gorgeously-timed hot streak. View full article

If it's not clear by now, the position of this website has been that Craig Counsell is not only integral to the Brewers' success over the last several year, but one of the best four or five managers in baseball over the last decade. We're about to find out whether all that is still true. Image courtesy of © Kim Klement Neitzel-USA TODAY Sports For a team leading its division by three games and trying to reach the postseason for the fifth time in six years, the Brewers have weird vibes right now. An almost silent drama is playing out with Brian Anderson, who has been so profoundly neglected by a team that seems to need precisely the things he does well that it's stirring conspiratorial questions in the fan base. The three stars who anchor the roster but are slated for free agency after 2024 are still here, but none are any less likely to depart after 2024 than they were six months ago. Most importantly, David Stearns seems increasingly certain to take over the New York Mets' baseball operations, and the rumors that he might bring Counsell along as the new skipper are starting to swirl. To the credit of everyone involved--but especially, perhaps, to the credit of Counsell, whose job it is to keep the clubhouse focused and equanimous--that potentially volatile brew has scarcely emitted even a bubble of real controversy all year. Now, though, they're adding as big a catalyst to the quiescent mix as is possible, putting Josh Donaldson squarely in the middle of a relatively young, relatively "aw shucks" collection of personalities. Donaldson is a potential catalyst to a lineup, and to a contender in general. He's also a potential catalyst for unignited conflict, as he's proved in more than one recent stop. Under normal circumstances, in something of a departure from many of my colleagues here, I would not have a problem with taking this risk. Acquiring a guy with Donaldson's professional pride and prickliness is considerably less risky at the end of August even than it would be at the end of July. By now, every team knows itself. Every team has a nucleus, and a leadership structure, and every newcomer has to submit to and assimilate into the fabric of the existing clubhouse culture. Donaldson is, necessarily, a mercenary, but it's not necessarily a bad idea to bring in a mercenary at this time of year--even one with a mixed reputation as a teammate. These, alas, aren't normal circumstances. With a certain acidity already lurking just below the surface with this team, Donaldson might be the glycerin that turns the mixture explosive in the wrong way--in an uncontrolled way. Andruw Monasterio has little standing, little currency with which to claim the position Donaldson is taking from him (Donaldson is starting, right away, at third base, where Monasterio has been the regular all summer), but he might have supporters in the clubhouse, especially given the youth movement that already could fairly feel slightly disenfranchised. (Joey Wiemer, as we know, has been shoved aside by other veteran acquisitions.) Donaldson might assert a degree of leadership that rubs guys like Christian Yelich and Willy Adames the wrong way. A lot of things might sour the chemistry, for a team that hasn't yet sewn up anything. Of course, there's also tremendous upside here. All year, the Crew has been short on power, and a healthy Donaldson delivers that in spades. If Counsell can hold together the threads of this group, they now have a better chance not only of locking up the NL Central, but of making a deep charge in the playoffs. The variance here is significant. It's an unexpected risk, from a traditionally risk-averse team and front office. That, itself, might betray the fact that they understand the unique position they're in. Counsell might very well manage elsewhere in 2024. Adames, Corbin Burnes, and/or Brandon Woodruff might play elsewhere. This is not the last ride for this team--not by a longshot. They have plenty of young and controlled talent, and should be right back in this general area next September. They might look very different, though, and that means that the certainty of that sustained competitiveness is awfully low at the moment, In light of that, everyone involved has decided to take a major risk. Whether or not it pays off could determine whether Counsell finally wins the Manager of the Year Award that has too long eluded him, and whether or not the team finally claims the pennant that has been similarly out of reach for 40 years. View full article

The Brewers were unable to complete a sweep of the Yankees in the Bronx this weekend. Even in Sunday's loss, though, they got tremendous pitching--and showed off their depth. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports Make that three times in the last four seasons that Victor Caratini has caught at least nine innings of no-hit ball. The Brewers' backup catcher is one of the unheralded heroes of this playoff-hopeful team, and continues to look like one of the better game-callers and handlers of pitchers in baseball. He shepherded three Brewers pitchers through 10-plus no-hit frames, before the Yankees were able to break through against medium-leverage hurlers pitching in high-leverage spots. Corbin Burnes deserves a huge share of the credit, of course, after he worked eight spotless innings and racked up seven strikeouts. It was vintage Burnes, in MLB's most visible venue and at a critical juncture for the team. His season hasn't been as consistent or dominant as his 2021 was, but he's finishing strong, and leading a rotation that looks dangerous in almost any prospective playoff series. Ever since turning the corner at the end of July, he's shown better command and location on his cutter, the linchpin of his attack. Burnes had a 4.10 ERA entering July, but has been a run better than that since. His strikeout rate was a pedestrian (by modern standards) 22.6 percent through June, but has been just shy of 28 percent since July 1. It's what aces do when playoff races heat up, and that's certainly what Burnes is. Caratini has been his constant partner, though, and deserves some praise for the work he's done in support of Burnes and the rest of the Milwaukee staff. Of the 57 catchers who have played that position most this year, only three have seen opposing hitters post a lower average exit velocity on batted balls. We tend not to think of catchers as drivers of limiting hard contact, but that's exactly what good receivers do. They call pitches and sequences that put hitters on the defensive, and they establish enough trust with their pitchers that when they set a target on the edge of the strike zone, the pitcher gets the ball there, unconcerned that a fringe strike will be called a ball or that the hitter will pounce on a mistake. It certainly helps that Caratini is Burnes's personal catcher, given that Burnes excels at inducing weak contact. Burnes's 179 innings this year barely represents 40 percent of the 432 innings Caratini has caught, though, so that falls far short of explaining the phenomenon entirely. Caratini is an exemplar of the backup backstop. He's intelligent, dedicated to the work that happens behind the scenes and away from the field, and just competent enough in all other aspects not to hurt the team. Caratini's .330 OBP ensures that there's no free out in the batting order on days when he spells William Contreras. He's a switch-hitter, so there's no glaring matchup deficiency about which to worry. As he showed Sunday, Caratini also has the durability a backup catcher needs, and which seems especially important to this team. With Contreras acting as the designated hitter on most of the days when he doesn't catch, Craig Counsell never wants to make a substitution behind the plate, lest he lose the DH. Sometimes, that means long days behind the plate for Caratini, but he bears up admirably under that strain. There, too, being a switch-hitter comes into play, because not needing to sub him out even in high-leverage plate appearances avoids that potential pitfall. On Sunday, 12 innings of brilliant pitching wasn't quite enough, and the Brewers lost a game that they sorely wanted to win, especially once Burnes had such a sterling day. Nonetheless, the contest was a reminder that this pitching staff--and both catchers who support it in their turns--can give the team a chance to win against any potential competition, throughout the balance of September and into October. View full article

As the Brewers head into a packed schedule and a frenzied finish to the regular season, Craig Counsell has made it clear who he hopes will be on his bench come October. Whether he'll get his wish is out of everyone's hands. Image courtesy of © Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports Of the Brewers' first 113 games this season, Joey Wiemer played in 108. Sometimes, it was as a pinch-hitter, and sometimes, it was as a defensive replacement, but Wiemer played more often than not until early August. His defense covered most of the value shortfall created by his uneven offensive performance, and Craig Counsell hid him at the bottom of the lineup, anyway. It was working, albeit imperfectly. The Brewers were a first-place team. Around the start of August, though, a confluence of things upended Wiemer's firm footing in the lineup. Firstly, he fell into yet another offensive slump, and he hasn't yet come out of it. Secondly, the team called up Sal Frelick, who joined the outfield picture and immediately demonstrated a comfort with center field that made the toolsy but raw Wiemer look a bit less dazzling. Thirdly, Matt Arnold acquired Carlos Santana and Mark Canha, creating a slow squeeze on playing time at designated hitter and in both right and center field. Since August 8, Wiemer has just 29 plate appearances, spread across 15 games. He's struck out nine times, walked three, and is batting .154/.241/.154. He's gotten few opportunities and made nothing of them. In his only attempt to steal a base, he was thrown out. Like Brian Anderson, he's rapidly becoming more of a technicality than an asset. Like Anderson, he's on the roster, but Counsell seems to have no use for him. A fourth shoe is preparing to drop on Wiemer, too, because both Blake Perkins and Garrett Mitchell are working their way back from injuries. Neither is in position to join the Brewers again imminently, and Mitchell is probably going to end up as nothing more than a pinch-runner at the tail end of the season. Still, the two make Wiemer marginally more redundant, and you can almost feel Counsell longing for the tactical weaponry that Mitchell could provide, or the steady defense and versatility Perkins gave him before straining his oblique last month. It's not controversial to say that both Perkins and Mitchell have crept past Wiemer in the esteem of Counsell, and perhaps of the front office, too. Because of the nature, scale, and timing of their injuries, though, neither is a sure thing to be available at any particular point. Thus, Wiemer keeps his roster spot for now, and has a pretty fair chance to retain one even through the end of the season. He could very well be on a playoff roster for the team, so they have to keep him ready. At this point, though, the coaching staff seems dedicated to the idea that he'll make that preparation outside the spotlight, the pressure, and the high stakes of the pennant race. The Brewers are lucky to have such good depth in the outfield, organizationally. That Mitchell could be sidelined for so long without the team hurting even worse than they did is a testament to their drafting and their player development. As tough as Wiemer's rookie year has been, he's shown flashes of several valuable skills, and if he can smooth the rough edges of his game both at bat and in the field, he can still fit in as the fourth outfielder even on what figures to be a loaded outfield roster. Alternatively, he might make fine trade bait this winter. In the short term, however, Wiemer can do little more for the 2023 Brewers, if only because Counsell believes as much. At this stage, if either Perkins or Mitchell can get healthy, Wiemer is the guy whom it makes most sense to send back to Nashville, there to await any openings created by injury over the final few weeks. If Counsell won't use him and he doesn't have the confidence or the well-roundedness to force the manager's hand, Wiemer has no business on this roster. Some teams have found shorter rotations of position players with whom to work, and can afford to treat one or two spots at the end of the bench as spare parts. The Brewers aren't built that way, and they need greater utility out of every spot than Wiemer provides in the one he occupies right now. It's just that, unless and until they get a bit healthier, the team has nowhere to send their mullet-rocking rookie, and no better alternative to him. View full article

After a disappointing series loss in Pittsburgh, a day off Thursday could have allowed the Brewers to shorten their starting rotation for their set against the Yankees this weekend. Instead, the team is opting not to mess with success. Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports Since the All-Star break, no pitching staff in MLB has allowed a lower expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA) than the Brewers, according to Statcast. Only the Dodgers have allowed a lower batting average on balls in play in the second half, and if one focuses solely on starting pitchers, not even Los Angeles is a rival for the Brewers. It's helpful to run out an excellent defense in support of your hurlers, but the Brewers are inducing weaker, less valuable contact than the rest of the league, in addition to running healthy strikeout and walk rates. Thus, even as another of the absent Adrian Houser's turns in the rotation comes up, Craig Counsell isn't looking to make a big change. Colin Rea has had an unexpectedly large role with the team this year, and his performance has been a bit uneven, but his flashes of success have been worth the occasional clunker of an outing. In this case, Counsell, Chris Hook, and the rest of the Brewers decision-makers are betting that giving the ball to Rea and allowing an extra day of rest for Wade Miley, Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, and Freddy Peralta is worth whatever value is lost by not using the off day Thursday to skip Rea and pitch each of the others on four days' rest next time through. It's a sound decision, and not only because (despite the creeping panic fans might feel after the team dropped two out of three to the lowly Pirates) the team has a 1.5-game advantage with which to work in the NL Central standings. It's also informed by the fact that this coalescence into an elite pitching unit has come precisely when the team finally got its key starters healthy again. Woodruff, of course, missed most of the first half, and Miley was out from mid-May through mid-June, then again for the entire second half of July. While neither has evoked any particular concern since returning, and each looks strong, it makes a world of sense to find them extra rest when the calendar permits it, rather than try to keep them on a tight five-day rotation down the stretch. If Rea (or the potential alternatives to him, like Julio Teheran and Robert Gasser) were a bit worse, the decision would be more difficult. There's a balancing act going on here, as Counsell tries to get his team to October in good enough shape to win postseason series, but also must think about how to ensure that they reach the postseason at all. Rea makes it somewhat easier, though, by being a perfectly credible stopgap starter in what has been a chaotic season for starting pitching on almost every contending club. In 20 starts, Rea has completed at least five innings 16 times. On Sept. 2, in his first start with the parent club in a month, he left after just 4 1/3 innings, but he did so having allowed just two runs and having struck out six. He consistently gives the Brewers a chance to win, even if the chances that he'll be the primary reason why they won seem minuscule. September has a habit of inviting baseball fans to employ a football mentality, which never ends well. In football, the Brewers' series loss to Pittsburgh would be cause for some species of significant change. As the phlegmatic Counsell has repeatedly shown, though, that kind of panic is counterproductive. By chewing up some innings and leaving open the possibility that the lineup will cobble together enough runs to win, Rea does the team a huge service. He gets them one day closer to the end of the season, without their having to burn out their more valuable starters or tax their relief corps with a bullpen game. A good bottom-of-the-order hitter knows they need to participate in some rallies even without much hope that they'll score. There's value in keeping the line moving. Rea does that for Milwaukee. Since the emergence of Trevor Megill as a legitimate weapon late in games, and with Abner Uribe gaining the experience requisite to him being treated as worthy of high-leverage situations come the postseason, their bullpen has become overpowering. With Woodruff and Miley back in the fold, the starting rotation is equally so. Though Rea has rarely been more than workmanlike in any appearance, the team has won 12 of the 20 games he's started. Under the careful watch of the team's pitching infrastructure, Rea has learned to use his sinker more often against fellow righthanders, at the expense of his four-seamer. That's a simple modern fix for any pitcher struggling to discern the best versions and usage of their fastballs, but it's an important one for Rea, Against lefties, it's a different verse of the same song. Rea has decreased the usage of his four-seamer, in favor of more cutters, but he's also mixing in the sinker in a way he hasn't done in years. Add these gentle but firm turns of seemingly subtle dials to the fact that Rea has cooked up a sweeping slider, and you have a pitcher who can give big-league hitters enough to think about to prevent them from doing much damage against him. These tweaks are sufficient to get him a few more whiffs and a bit weaker contact, and it's these kinds of adjustments that many pitchers on the staff have successfully made over the last two months. This is, on a smaller scale, how Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta became the NL Pitchers of the Month for July and August, respectively. This is how (first) Joel Payamps and (more recently) Megill have turned the corner in their careers, to help this staff become a juggernaut. If and when Houser does return, he could still displace Rea, but given the tight timeline and the crowded schedule of the final three weeks for the team, it might make more sense to let Rea take all his turns the rest of the way. Houser would be out of the projected postseason rotation, anyway, so he might as well reacquaint himself with the bullpen, and if truly needed, the team could switch momentarily to a six-man rotation over the final few turns. It's all about finding the highest use of each of these individuals, while keeping the extremely high level of functioning of the group since mid-July clearly in mind. By no means has Rea earned himself a playoff start, and with another day off left on Sept. 25, the Brewers could elect to skip him next time the chance comes. For now, though, they're sticking to a full rotation, because Rea is a useful (if highly unglamorous) piece of the game's premier run prevention crew. View full article

You could have forgiven the Brewers for getting a bit anxious early in their game Tuesday night in Pittsburgh. Instead, they showed the essential characteristic that has brought them this far, and it paid off. Image courtesy of © Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports After back-to-back losses in which they were held to two runs, the Brewers didn't even put a runner on base over the first three innings Tuesday night. Maybe, if the Pirates had made any noise against Brandon Woodruff during that stretch, it would have applied enough pressure to crack the Crew and draw them out of their optimal approach. Woodruff resolutely shut down the Pirates during those three frames, though, and in the fourth, we saw the Brewers' winning formula in action. Poor Andre Jackson ran out of ideas. Christian Yelich led off the fourth, and Jackson quickly got ahead of him. Yelich dug in and laid off some tough pitches, though, and when he then fouled off a good pitch with which Jackson almost had him put away, the game turned. Jackson's first 3-2 offering, the one numbered '7' above, was a good, fading changeup, running off the plate away. It was higher than he'd wanted it, but his change can work even when elevated slightly. Yelich had already frustrated him in the at-bat, though, and when the change didn't punch his ticket, Jackson tried to throw a perfect backdoor curveball instead. He misfired badly, and Yelich drew the walk. As everyone who follows the Brewers closely already knows, Yelich hasn't been going well at all recently. His swing has undergone some real and unwelcome changes, and it looks like he might be somewhat physically compromised right now. He's not going to reliably drive the ball all over the park, unless and until he's able to effect some adjustments. Because Yelich is a smart and competitive hitter, though, he can still affect the game in positive ways while he works through these struggles. That walk broke open the floodgates. Crucially, the formerly free-swinging William Contreras has taken his cues from Yelich this year, as well as from the team's hitting instructors and from Craig Counsell. His overall swing rate this season is a career-low 43.5 percent, and he's also traded some power for a higher contact rate when he does swing. At times, that's a dubious tradeoff, but it sets a higher floor for his production than he used to have. After Yelich forced Jackson out of cruise control, Contreras gave him an even more frustrating battle. Those taken pitches are exceptionally well-executed. Jackson did what he wanted to do against Contreras throughout that plate appearance. He just didn't get the result he expected. Contreras walked, and the inning got away from the young Pittsburgh righthander. He walked Carlos Santana without coming nearly as close to doing anything else, and Santana had the relatively easy job--but still one that sometimes takes a wily veteran. In that situation, a good hitter has only to make sure not to take the pitcher off the hook, or to unmake the jam into which they've forced themselves. Santana is the perfect man for that job, and when he drew his 1,205th career walk, Jackson was fully cornered. It really didn't matter that, after a mollifying mound visit, Jackson got back into the zone and drew a (run-scoring) double play grounder from Mark Canha. A new tone had been set. The next frame, Sal Frelick led off with yet another walk, and Andruw Monasterio was the next batter up. The approach held, and after Monasterio forced Jackson into another deep count, he got a mistake. He punished it righteously, skipping it off the wall in deepest left-center field, for the gamebreaking triple. It was patience that got the Brewers their first run, and patience that put them in position to access their power and generate the rest. Entering Tuesday night, Frelick, Monasterio, and Brice Turang were mired in a collective slump about as ugly as they come. In the previous three weeks, they'd combined for 163 plate appearances and exactly one extra-base hit, a double by Frelick last month. By the end of the game, they'd combined for three more, as Frelick would add a double and a triple of his own in the later innings. At this time of year, that kind of patience is hard to come by, even for teams who identify themselves by it. Only the Cubs have seen more pitches per plate appearance this year than have the Brewers, but even they have had a lapse in that discipline recently. The Diamondbacks, who rank as one of the most patient teams in baseball, made 14 of their 27 outs in a maddening 3-2 loss Tuesday night against Colorado in three pitches or fewer. The MLB season is an unforgiving grind, and it's hard to sustain the daily intensity required to execute a patient gameplan. Nor is that difficulty confined to the players. Counsell stuck with Yelich as his leadoff hitter throughout this long slump, and he'll stick with him longer, even if Tuesday night didn't signal any real emergence therefrom. That loyalty was made easier by Yelich's long track record and massive contract, of course, and there wasn't an obvious alternative. Yet, he also stuck with Frelick, Monasterio, and Turang, even as other guys (especially Brian Anderson) sat there on the bench, seemingly every bit as credible an option as these were. Counsell's firm determination to believe and invest in this group is as important and valuable an act of patience as any good take on a pitch along the fringe of the strike zone. There have been nights when the Brewers' resolve was less perfect, and there will be at least one or two more. If they keep up this exacting and resilient approach, though, they'll weather whatever storms remain just fine. They didn't win their series with the Phillies over the weekend solely because of Alec Bohm's costly error, or because of their well-timed homers. They did it by accepting their walks and outlasting the defending National League champions. Even as rumors about Counsell's future swirl, he and his team are using stronger cardiac tissue, as much as any other muscle, to win games and inch toward another NL Central crown. View full article

Acquired for practically nothing over the offseason and often hanging on at the last rung of the Brewers' bullpen ladder, Bryse Wilson has nonetheless emerged as an indispensable part of one of the best relief units in the league. Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-USA TODAY Sports In today's game, the true long reliever is an endangered species. Most teams prefer a suite of hurlers who can dominate over one inning, with a few who can be stretched out to pitch two when exigency demands it. They rotate and refresh that group often, by optioning struggling or weary arms to the minor leagues, and by crossing certain guys off the list of available relievers on a given day, even if it means entrusting a late lead to a lesser light. The Brewers are no exception to this trend. Even this year, they've been aggressive in their cycling of relievers. They don't have the right to option Bryse Wilson to the minors, though, and Wilson (an erstwhile starter) has not made a conversion into some kind of fire-breathing setup man with four extra miles per hour on his fastball. At times, his roster spot has felt a bit imperiled, because he's such a square peg and bullpens only seem to have round holes anymore. He's stuck, though, and as the season has progressed, it's become clear that Wilson has not only an unusual ability to soak up innings, but a few new tricks in his bag. After running a 5.46 ERA over the last two seasons with Atlanta and Pittsburgh, Wilson sports a sparkling 2.95 mark in 64 innings of relief for the Brewers this season. According to Win Probability Added (WPA), Wilson has been worth 1.2 wins this year. Five of his fellow Milwaukee hurlers (Devin Williams, Joel Payamps, Wade Miley, Hoby Milner, and Freddy Peralta) have contributed more, but they're five of just 87 hurlers (half of them starters with 90 or more innings pitched) in all of MLB who have done so. Craig Counsell has learned to trust Wilson in a unique role this year: long relief, but not mop-up work. Instead, he's a medium-leverage, heavy-workload relief ace. How has he done it? On the latest edition of the venerable Milwaukee's Tailgate Brewers podcast, hosts Ryan Topp and Paul Noonan started to deliver what seemed the obvious and reliable explanations for his improvement--especially, a higher ground-ball rate based on the development of his cutter. They stopped and moved on, though, when they realized that (in fact) Wilson has a much lower ground-ball rate this year than in the past. He's actually at 35 percent grounders this year, which Baseball Savant reports as 17th percentile in MLB. It's still true, though, that the cutter has been the crucial change for Wilson this year. I wrote about the possibility of that being the case during spring training, and confirmed it here early in the season. What tripped up Ryan and Paul was the fact that the cutter exists on a spectrum, and Wilson's is at the slider end. When the cutter acts as a pitcher's fastball, it does tend to induce a lot of ground balls. Horizontal movement is the engine that fuels ground balls, as the ball tends to slide just off the barrel of hopeful hitters' bats, and cutters have unusual horizontal movement, given their speed. Corbin Burnes is a good example. He gets ground balls with his cutter, not at an exceptional rate, but much more often than does Wilson. A pitcher who uses the cutter as his fastball (or one of them) also tends to work up in the zone with it fairly often, and while higher pitches broadly tend to get hit in the air more often, hard stuff with some wiggle (be it a cutter or a sinker with a good amount of armside run) is an exception to that rule. Burnes does that; so does Wade Miley. The cutter or sinker above the belt and in on the hands or out off the edge of the plate is a good pitch with which to break a bat and draw a lazy three-hop ball to the infield. Wilson, though, uses his cutter as a breaking ball. He has a sinker, and that's the pitch he goes to when he needs a ground ball--although even it doesn't get them at a typical rate. No, Wilson's toned down the usage of his four-seamer, and he's completely eliminated his slower slider. His curveball is still in the mix, but primarily, he uses his sinker for the heat and his cutter for its movement, especially in contrast with that sinker. Note the tighter shape of this scatterplot, relative to those of Burnes and Miley. That doesn't mean Wilson has better command of the pitch. It means he's trying to do something different than what Burnes and Miley are trying to do. They use the cutter as a fastball, and need to move it around the zone, even if that loosens their precision slightly. Wilson is using it as a breaking pitch, and his goal is the same every time, at least against righties. He's aiming down and away--ideally, looking like a strike, then breaking just off the edge, to get a bad swing. Against lefties, the conversation is a bit more complicated, because against them, Wilson does use the cutter more like a fastball. He tries to backdoor it on the outside corner, where hitters might mistake it for his sinker (which he uses roughly in parity with it against them). It's an early-count pitch for him against lefties, and he goes to the four-seamer and the curveball to try to put lefties away. This kind of cutter really isn't especially effective against opposite-handed batters, which is why Wilson's career-long struggles against lefties have largely continued this year. They're hitting .247/.337/.494 against him this year, which is why Counsell has been judicious about when to go to Wilson and why the team hasn't been very much tempted to restore him to his prior role as a starter, even as injuries have piled up in their rotation at times this year. Against righties, though, it's been a revelation. As Topp and Noonan noted, Wilson still isn't striking out very many batters, relative to the league average. He's at just 20.7 percent for the season, whereas the league's overall rate is around 23 percent and that for relievers exclusively is pushing 25 percent. He's taken a leap from his rates the last two years, at 14.3 and 15.5 percent, and we have to acknowledge the value of that big a move toward average, but he's still not punching out as many hitters as many other pen men can. He's not striking out a ton of batters. He's not getting ground balls. So, even acknowledging that he's made a wise change to his pitch mix, how has he been so good? It's all about execution. Look back up at that chart of his cutter locations. The band they form tells the story of a pitcher locating awfully well, in general. Everyone makes mistakes, but Wilson has made fewer of them this year, as he and the Crew have established some anchors of confidence for him. He's back over on the third-base side of the rubber, creating an angle that lets him throw the cutter and sinker with greater conviction. His delivery is cleaner, which (in combination with rarely being asked to throw more than 40 pitches in a single game) has given him an extra mile per hour on his heat. A sinker at 93 and a cutter at 89 will rarely combine to get a pitcher a lot of whiffs, and the way Wilson locates them, they're not going to lead to a 50-percent ground ball rate. Well-located and lively, though, they're earning the most underrated species of batted ball in all of pitching: the lazy fly ball. Opponents' average exit velocity on fly balls and line drives against Wilson this year is 91.8 miles per hour, down 1.3 from last year. Of the fly balls and liners he allows, only 63.9 percent have left the bat at 88 miles per hour or greater. In 2021, that number was 74.1 percent, and last year, it was 71.6. Lazy fly balls are hardly ever hits, and although the pitcher who specializes in them risks the occasional home run, it's a worthwhile tradeoff if they execute well enough. Wilson allowed home runs in 4.3 percent of plate appearances against him in 2021 and 2022. That figure is down to 3.1 percent this year--still only average, but average is a lot better than where he was. Meanwhile, opponents' BABIP the last two years was .302, but this year, it's .246. Success based on the lazy fly ball is tough to sustain, in the modern game. Hitters are so much stronger and more focused on hitting for power than they used to be that it's easy to get burned. When Wilson let go of his old pitch mix and switched to this one, though, he found a means of executing consistently enough to thrive this way. Now, he looks like a tremendously important piece of the Brewers' bullpen, even if it be a radically different one than those filled by Williams, Payamps, and the other high-leverage short guys. View full article

Leading the NL Central by four games when they began a three-game series at Wrigley Field Monday, the Brewers needed only to avoid a sweep to stay in control. They did that, and a little more, and now it's Craig Counsell's time to shine. Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports When the odds tilt in the Brewers' favor, Counsell is as aggressive as any manager in baseball about securing a victory. When things break against him, though, Counsell knows how to keep his powder dry and manage the grind of the long season. That, along with the assiduous roster construction the Milwaukee front office has always paired with him, is why the Brewers so consistently win more close games than they lose, and why they often seem to have more left in the final throes of a playoff race than do the teams they're battling. Still, no team can win every contest decided by a run or two, and anyone who tried too hard to do so would only damage themselves in the process. On Tuesday night and Wednesday afternoon, the Cubs took back-to-back one-run games over the visiting Brewers, as Counsell managed carefully. He wanted the series victory, especially after the team won Wade Miley's start Monday night and turned to its twin aces for the last two games of the set, but he wants another division flag more. You could see the wheels turning in the seventh frame on Tuesday, when Counsell elected to let Corbin Burnes face Ian Happ with two runners on base and two outs. The Cubs already led the game 1-0, and Counsell had both Andrew Chafin and Abner Uribe warm in the bullpen. Chafin would have turned the switch-hitting Happ around, to his weaker side. Uribe has the dominant stuff to come into a tough spot like that one and generate a strikeout. However, Uribe also had serious control problems in Sunday's win over the Padres, and Chafin has been disappointing since the Brewers acquired him at the beginning of this month. Even so, by the numbers, either guy would have been a better bet to get the team out of that situation than Burnes, whom Happ was seeing for the fourth time in the game and whose pitch count had climbed past 100. To maximize the chances of winning that game, Counsell could have gone to Chafin. To best preserve the arms of his whole staff, he could have gone to Uribe. Instead, he stuck with Burnes, which nicely illustrates the balance he's always seeking to strike. He gave the Brewers a chance to win the game, without chasing that win from behind via pitching decisions--a counterproductive trap into which many managers fall on a regular basis. The offense never got untracked on Tuesday or Wednesday, against the Cubs' best starters and highest-leverage bullpen arms. Counsell's ability to make something happen on that score was limited, as Carlos Santana missed Tuesday night's game with a sore ankle, and although they were largely successful on the bases and applied some pressure, they couldn't push runs across with the wind howling in off of Lake Michigan. However, because they played from behind much of the time and won comfortably on Monday night, Devin Williams didn't make an appearance in the series. After pitching seven times in the first 12 days of August, he'll finish the month having worked just four times over the final 19. A day off Thursday sets the Brewers up to charge into another big series, this time at home against the Wild Card-leading Phillies. When next they take the field, the team will have two new roster spots to play with, and their bullpen will be as fresh as it has been since Opening Day. For that reason, expect Counsell to flip a switch and get more proactive this weekend. With the injured Adrian Houser's roster spot coming up Saturday, either Colin Rea or lefty prospect Robert Gasser figures to get the start, and in either case, Counsell will be careful not to let the powerful Philadelphia lineup see the starter a third time. This is when the man who has only missed out on the NL Manager of the Year Award this long through the folly of the voters makes his money. Counsell has set his team up to hold serve against stiff competition this week, then rip through a softer stretch of the schedule, with the goal being to lock up the division crown and be a fresh, healthy bunch come the postseason. There have been better teams under Counsell's charge, but rarely have they entered the final month in better position than they're in right now. View full article

In a somewhat unexpected turn, a half-dozen solid contributors to the Los Angeles Angels became available on waivers Tuesday afternoon. Which should the Brewers claim, just in case? Image courtesy of © Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports Their gambit for helping Shohei Ohtani reach the playoffs having blown up as quickly and thoroughly as was humanly possible, the Angels have put almost everyone they acquired at the trade deadline on waivers, which will be executed Thursday. Pitchers Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez, Matt Moore, and Dominic Leone are now available to whichever team claims them and takes on their remaining salary for 2023, after which each will become a free agent. Ditto for outfielders Randal Grichuk and (old friend!) Hunter Renfroe. The waiver order is from worst to best, so everyone below the Brewers in the standings will get higher priority than they will, but this is a big and surprising opportunity for someone to infuse their would-be playoff squad with extra talent. First of all, let's get clear on a couple of things: The Brewers are unlikely to get any of the players we're about to discuss. They're very late in the waiver order, and there are still several contenders with worse records and a little bit of money to spend. Claiming a player doesn't displace a team from the waiver order, This is not like a fantasy baseball league. Every team is responsible for putting in only claims they're willing to actually execute, if they win, by taking on the player's salary and making room (if necessary) on their 40-man roster, but each club enjoys an unbounded right to claim players who pass through waivers before any of the teams with better records than them can do so. As conceptually fun as getting Renfroe back for (virtually) nothing for the final month might sound, there's no way the Brewers will claim either of the outfielders. Each will still cost the claiming team $1.5 million or more for the balance of the campaign, and more importantly, Milwaukee's position-player corps is already creaking with its depth in the things those guys do well. Grichuk is just Old Joey Wiemer. Renfroe is a hair better than either Tyrone Taylor or Mark Canha, probably, but not enough so to justify popping the bubble of inertia, let alone the extra financial investment. The unfun stuff out of the way, though, let's tackle the fun stuff. Which of these four pitchers (three relievers, one starter) would help the Brewers most? Is there any reason not to claim them all? Let's find out! 1. Matt Moore: A Second Chance at a Second Lefty Yes, even more than Giolito, Moore is the guy who stands out as an obvious, perfect fit for the Brewers bullpen. The Andrew Chafin acquisition has, to put it more mildly than anyone involved deserves, gone poorly. Chafin hasn't effectively taken any burden away from Hoby Milner, and even at his best, he's the kind of lefty who makes a manager very nervous when he has to face right-handed batters. Moore, though aging, is just two years into his career as a full-time reliever, and it's going gorgeously. With mid-90s heat, a fine slider, and a changeup that absolutely saps the power from right-handed hitters' bats, Moore is a more balanced, more dependable arm than Chafin. He could not only complement Milner, but partially supplant Elvis Peguero as the secondary setup man to Devin Williams. Moore is a high-leverage reliever who hasn't shrunk from late-game responsibilty, and his sheer stuff is good enough for that kind of role. He'll only cost his new team about $1.4 million the rest of the way. There's no good reason not to put in a claim, though someone will get to him before the Brewers do. 2. Lucas Giolito: An Adrian Houser Replacement So Good You'll Forget About Robert Gasser The timing on this one is too perfect to ignore. Houser hit the injured list Monday after suffering from an elbow effusion after Sunday's short start. That punctured the Brewers' rotation, which remained intact for only a few turns after the returns of Brandon Woodruff and Wade Miley. Giolito would more than stop that gap. His numbers, even in a season somewhat resurgent from a tough 2022, reflect significant inconsistency. He's had more trouble with walks and with hard contact this year than in the past. It's always thorny to work in a new starter with so little time left in the season, too. Yet, Giolito fits a style and profile of pitchers with which the Brewers seem likely to work well and quickly. Even if he's just an innings-eating mercenary, though, he's very likely to be a better one than Colin Rea--or even the celebrated Nashville southpaw, Robert Gasser. 3. Dominic Leone: The Brewers Can Fix This Quickly It's bound to catch some by surprise that I would rank Leone as more desirable than Lopez, but in the context of the Brewers' bullpen, it's a no-brainer. Leone will cost about $400,000 less than Lopez the rest of the way, but that's far from the point. Here's the point: Many aspects of Leone's ugly numbers can be chalked up to some lousy choices he's made with regard to pitch mix and usage. Those decisions are his own to make, and every pitcher varies from others in their openness about feedback, but the Brewers could make some immediate and productive suggestions as to how Leone could use his four-seamer, slider, and cutter better than he's been using them. They're fine pitches, when he can land them in the zone often enough and still minimize hard contact. The Brewers help relievers strike that balance as well as any team in baseball. 4. Reynaldo Lopez: Because Trevor Megill and Abner Uribe Might Still Go Up and Down It's far from true that Lopez's only redeeming quality is the heat on his fastball. He's honed a slider that misses plenty of bats, as he's begun to embrace the life of a relief pitcher. Still, it's hard to ignore how hard he throws, and it's easy to dream on adding him to a stable of hurlers in the bullpen who could make the Brewers the least comfortable pitching staff to face of any that reaches the playoffs this year, in either league. Last year, Lopez walks fewer than 5% of opposing hitters. That skill has disappeared on him this year, but the underlying problem is another fixable one. Lopez is essentially a two-pitch pitcher, but he's been trying to use his curveball and changeup to get outs against lefties this year. It's not working, especially because hitters just aren't expanding the zone on those pitches at all. The Brewers would be positioned to shield Lopez from the least unfriendly matchups and situations, but they would also have him stick to his fastball and slider. That, alone, would probably take care of his walks problem. Ever since the league eliminated the August waiver trade period, player movement at this time of year has taken on a shadier, somewhat unfair tenor. If the Cubs or Reds can add to their roster this way, the Brewers should (arguably) have more options for doing the same, even if they'd be unlikely to pursue them. When certain avenues of player acquisition are closed off completely, it seems like a mistake to give lesser teams such an advantage in adding those players who can change clubs. For now, though, that's the reality. The Brewers certainly have the deepest and healthiest pitching staff in the NL Central, right now, even with the Houser injury tossing a couple of things up in the air. Even if one of the teams lagging them is able to bolster their pitching staff with players the Brewers would also like to have, it's unlikely to make much difference. Still, if they get a chance, the Brewers should happily enfold any of these guys into their staff, with each slotting into a slightly different prospective role and offering slightly different new things. View full article

The Brewers' highest-paid player, biggest star, and clear leader needed just three pitches to set the tone for this week's huge series at Wrigley Field. His statement: the Brewers are still in a class to which the Cubs only aspire. Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports Cubs starter Jameson Taillon made his own bed. He tried to nibble a bit to start the game, which is a wise enough notion with Christian Yelich at the plate, but he missed with his first two pitches. That allowed Yelich to think comfortable, aggressive thoughts, and when Taillon finally found a corner of the zone on 2-0, a fastball down and in, Yelich drove it out of the park to left-center field. That location is notable, because it's hardly where Yelich usually finds his power. As Brewers fans well know, Yelich hits most of his extra-base hits to left and center fields, so it shouldn't surprise you to learn that most of his power comes on pitches from the middle of the plate away. When he does pull it with authority, it's often on a higher pitch. That's just the way his swing works, most of the time. Thus, he hadn't hit a home run on any pitch down and in since May 2022, when he launched this rocket against the Reds' Hunter Greene. d42e1286-26b7-4f22-8378-c43ff7def92e.mp4 A lot has changed for Yelich in the last 15 months. He's enjoying a terrific overall season. Until Monday night, though, he hadn't proved that he can cover that corner of the strike zone with power, in this new form. Now, that box on the checklist is also ticked. We're running out of ways in which Yelich is much diminished from his MVP self. To be clear, he certainly is still shy of that, but not by all that much. Early in the year, he was evincing a little bit of the pop that had gone missing from his profile over the previous two years, but he was still whiffing too much to make his new profile shine. Strikeouts were a huge problem for Yelich from 2020 through 2022, and that problem followed him into this spring. Now, he's solved it. To illustrate the transformation that has occurred, let's just chop his season to date in half. Through June 15, Yelich had 277 plate appearances. He batted .269/.361/.430, with 21 extra-base hits and a strikeout rate of 22.7 percent. Since June 16, though, Yelich is hitting .294/.379/.472, with 27 extra-base hits and a strikeout rate of just 18.8 percent in 282 trips to the plate. That's despite a bit of a strikeout binge during this latest Brewers winning streak. Yelich is covering the zone better, and making higher-quality contact. That's the combination of skills that first made him special, and that was elusive for him during his long period of struggle. He's done it by tweaking his approach to hit the ball on a line more often. He's not reverting to being a launch angle guy, as he briefly was a few years ago, but even a small effort to generate high-value contact against pitches all over the zone goes a long way. To understand the improvement in his quality of contact, look at the distribution of his batted balls by launch angle for each of the last two seasons. In 2022, he was still hitting a lot of true ground balls, with a sub-zero launch angle, and when he did hit mid-level line drives (in that range just above 10 degrees), he didn't hit them hard consistently. He's effected an aesthetically and competitively superior distribution this year. Even though his ground ball rate remains high, and despite relatively few fly balls, this is a whole different hitter. Ground-ball launch angle matters, and Yelich's is up this year. When he hits low line drives, he hits them hard, which gives him a much better chance of splitting a gap. Most of all, he hits it hard most often in the launch angle band that most often translates to extra-base hits, so his power surge is no accident. A small swing change can go a long way, especially when teams keep pitching you according to a scouting report you've rendered obsolete. That's what Yelich has done, and unless hurlers start being much more careful against him, he's going to continue cranking extra-base hits down the stretch. View full article