Matthew Trueblood

While he's certainly been the most consistently effective starter on the Brewers thus far, Corbin Burnes hasn't exactly been the ace to which fans have become accustomed this year. There's no easy, single explanation for his diminished capacity to dominate, but one factor therein is that hitters aren't letting him lure them into chasing pitches just beyond their reach as often. Image courtesy of © Mark Hoffman / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK No truly functional version of Corbin Burnes--with his raw stuff, the depth of his repertoire, and his control--should run a below-average strikeout rate. In 2021, he punched out over 35 percent of the batters he saw. That figure fell in 2022, but was still over 30 percent, which is elite territory for a starting pitcher. This year, though, he's only fanned 22.3 percent of opposing batters. That's downright pedestrian, especially in juxtaposition with his rising walk rate. The problem has been hard to pin down, even for those of us who look closely at things like pitch movement, usage, and mechanics, using statistics and video. However, there is one way of slicing and dicing what he's done this year that lays his true predicament bare, at least with regard to his approach and execution from pitch to pitch. At Baseball Savant, the site where the bulk of publicly-available Statcast data lives, one can search for pitch location using an incredibly detailed set of zones, which are broken down into four categories: Heart: Pitches right in the middle of the strike zone, which are almost certain to be strikes but run the greatest risk of being hit hard Shadow: Pitches that, if the batter doesn't swing, might or might not be called strikes; these are the edges of the zone, where the finest craftsmen pound the ball most often Chase: As the name implies, this type of pitch relies on the batter expanding their zone to be effective. The pitcher is trying to induce a swing, while giving the hitter as little chance as possible to make productive (or any) contact on that swing. Waste: Pitches so far from the zone that they should hardly ever earn a swing. These are misfires, or else, they're designed solely to make a hitter think about a different pitch and set up the next offering. This is a very helpful way of thinking about pitch location, although (as is inevitable when doing this kind of analysis) it does give pitchers a little bit too much credit. Like most things in life, pitch location contains a greater degree of error and randomness than we care to admit. Pitchers miss by so much, so often, that it's often untrue that a pitch that ended up in the Heart of the zone was actually intended as a challenge. Nonetheless, with a sufficient sample, both the frequency with which a pitcher finds a certain attack zone and the value they get therefrom can be compelling data points. For Burnes, that's certainly true, and it all boils down to what happens when he tries to get hitters to flail away at stuff out in the Chase zones. Here's how often hitters swung at each of his pitches when he threw them in the Chase zones, first in his extremely successful 2021-22 stretch, and then this year. Pitch Type 2021-22 Swing % 2023 Swing % Slider 41.2 35.5 Curveball 37.1 25.4 Changeup 31.4 29.4 Cutter 28.5 19.1 Sinker 22.6 11.1 Other than his changeup, hitters are seeing and laying off everything in those zones considerably more often. All year, there's been some talk about his cutter getting too big and hitters spotting it earlier, but this makes clear the extent of that issue. It's a problem that perpetuates and exacerbates itself, too, because every pitch in this area that a batter resists is a ball, leading to a more hitter-friendly count wherein they can afford to be more patient on the next pitch in a similar spot. Burnes is also spending more time in these zones this year, but the increase (about 3 percent of his total pitches) is not so large that I'm inclined to think his control has seriously declined. Instead, this feels very much like a case of hitters making an adjustment in their approach to a veteran starter, and of him and his new regular catcher struggling to make a quick counter-adjustment. That might be changing now. Burnes's last outing, against the Giants, saw him allow just one run in seven strong innings, and his eight strikeouts and 16 swinging strikes both tied his season-high marks from a start in Arizona in mid-April. On the other hand, though, it took him 21 more pitches to reach those marks this time, and nearly all of San Francisco's batted balls were in the air. As I've written before, there are some very subtle mechanical things going on with Burnes this year, but they don't seem to be the drivers of his difficulty. They might be affecting his location more than it seems, but my best guess at the moment is that he (along with William Contreras, Victor Caratini, and the coaching staff) is still trying to discover a new optimization point--a new balance between attacking hitters and staying away from the barrels of their bats. He might need to trust his stuff more early in counts, in order to earn the jumpiness and poor swing decisions that characterize hitters once there are two strikes on them. If this was just about one pitch, we could ask ourselves whether he's tipping it, or what might be wrong with his grip. Since all of his arsenal is affected, though, the smart money says that hitters are just outguessing Burnes right now. He's earning a stalemate in his game of chess with opponents. He needs to find a way to start pursuing checkmate again. View full article

Do we have any evidence that Adames wasn’t paying attention? Coolbaugh wasn’t inattentive. There are a large number of valid things for players and coaches to be watching while on or near the field. If the ball isn’t their primary focus at a particular moment, it tells us really nothing about their level of engagement with the game. And even if it were true that guys are sometimes exposed and distracted, I’d argue that they’re making themselves visible and available to fans and teammates. Let’s eschew being judgmental and just protect people as best we can.

The danger inherent to the game of baseball visited the Brewers Friday night. While it's hard to tell how long or how much Willy Adames's concussion will affect him, it's easy to see that some changes are in order. Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports We’re all incredibly lucky. When Brian Anderson hit a sharp foul ball in the second inning Friday night against the Giants, it found Willy Adames’s skull, but glanced off without causing major damage. Let’s not wait to get less lucky before making MLB diamonds a safer workplace. In July 2007, Tulsa Drillers first base coach Mike Coolbaugh was hit with a line-drive foul ball. It caught him in the neck, but with such force that it collapsed his vertebral artery and compromised blood flow to his brain. He died hours later. That incident is why, since 2008, on-field coaches in professional baseball have been required to wear helmets. Obviously, Coolbaugh’s injury was a freak accident. The ball hit an area that would not have been protected by a helmet. Still, that was a sufficient impetus to make a pretty significant change. Since then, we’ve seen further changes to the playing field and its safety rules, such that every affiliated pro team now has netting well down its foul lines, to protect fans from hard-hit foul balls. Those, too, came in the wake of terrifying incidents. By now, we need to be ready to acknowledge the realities here. Within a certain radius–100 feet is a good estimate from which to begin–of home plate, baseball is very dangerous, and anyone who wants to be that close needs to be properly protected. That’s not news. Catchers have worn protective equipment for well over 100 years. Umpires have, too. Batters have been required to wear helmets at the plate for about half that long. With every heart-stopping line drive back to the mound and every impossible-to-predict liner into a dugout, it’s becoming clear that we need to go farther. Pitchers should wear protective headwear. So should any player or coach who wants to have their head above the railings of the dugouts during play. There could just be hooks on which helmets hang for shared use, in any area designated as a risk. There are plenty of ways to do it. One way or another, though, it needs doing. There will be, for a while yet, resistance to this idea. We know how many pitchers, even those who have had their lives or careers threatened by comebackers, will chafe at a requirement that they wear something that might make it harder for them to execute their delivery. Players think of the dugouts as safe and sacred spaces, and won’t appreciate any new rule constraining their behavior there. Change comes slowly because no one likes it. When change comes too slowly, though, people get hurt. That’s true in all walks of life, but it’s easy to see in cases like this one. Baseball is a fun, edifying endeavor. It’s also a billion-dollar industry. In order to protect the image of it as the former, we sometimes ignore or downplay the latter. It’s still there, though, and an industry as big, moneyed, and carefully regulated as baseball has a responsibility to protect its employees from the risk of harm. On any given day, at a construction site, the chance of equipment or material falling and hitting someone in the head with significant force is quite small. Nonetheless, workers on those sites wear hard hats, because probability isn’t the issue. If and when an accident does happen, there’s a real chance that it could alter or destroy a life. Thus, the reasonable course of action is to take precautions. That’s what MLB needs to do now. View full article

In the modern game, every reliever throws 95 miles per hour, and has a slider. That's the standard-issue reliever kit. It used to describe Joel Payamps as well as anyone. Now? Not so much. Image courtesy of © MARK HOFFMAN/MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL / USA TODAY NETWORK In his appearance Tuesday night against the Astros, Joel Payamps threw the hardest recorded pitch of his career. It was on the first pitch of an at-bat against Jeremy Pena, in the sixth inning of a game the Brewers led, but narrowly so. It missed, for ball one, but eventually, Payamps got his man. None of the above should surprise us. For Payamps, both things are becoming de rigueur. Of the 50 hardest fastballs of his career, he's thrown 16 this month. Striking out Pena (right after doing the same to Jose Abreu, stranding runners on first and third after taking over in a 2-0 game) gave Payamps a 0.123 Win Probability Added for the day. In essence, his fireman work was worth over 12 percent of a win that day, on its own. That's a good number to amass in a single game, for a middle reliever, but he'd been worth almost exactly that much in the Crew's lone win during their visit to St. Louis, one week earlier. Then, on Wednesday, he had a 0.188 WPA for the game, after escaping an even worse jam (the trailing runner at second this time, again with just one out and a 2-0 sixth-inning lead). Those numbers don't even account for the fact that he was facing Pena and Abreu in the first game and Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker in the second, either. Payamps is becoming a mid-game relief ace non pareil, and much of it is thanks to the extra tick he's added to his fastball at an improbable age. Even more than it appears, though, he's becoming a flamethrower. In May, and especially when not working on a second consecutive day, he's throwing 96 miles per hour or harder most of the time. That's crucial for him. For the year, he has thrown 149 fastballs at under 96, and batters have whiffed on just 13 of them. Their OPS against those more tepid heaters is over .800. Payamps also has 43 fastballs over 96, though, and on those, he's gotten eight whiffs and allowed a meager .200 OPS. He's in the midst of a stretch in which he seems to have crossed a barrier and gone to a new level, with a fastball that can genuinely overpower opponents. Of course, there also remain some changes to the way he's attacking hitters--largely ones about which we've talked before. He's a four-pitch pitcher, but really, he mostly uses two offerings for opponents on each side of the plate. That he remains reasonably confident landing his slider for strikes against lefties is helpful, because Payamps's changeup is still pretty average. Still, finding the conviction to throw it more has helped maximize the return on investment he's seen from his improved fastball velocity. On top of all that, Payamps is also setting up closer to third base now, allowing him to disguise but still optimize the horizontal separation between his sinker and his slider to righties. That kind of deception also plays up when one finds a little extra gas, though. He doesn't need to usurp Peter Strzelecki, or even Matt Bush (if he returns from his injury looking like the best pitcher he can be). Payamps can keep coming in to get the team out of jams in the middle innings, and have the same degree of value. More speed already has proved to yield more whiffs for him, and if he's getting more whiffs, he's the perfect fireman for those situations. Already, he has demonstrated the ability to pound the zone, and that's only been more true this year, despite the slight change in approach angle. He's also limiting hard contact gorgeously. This is a glorious payoff for the early experimentation and trust-building Craig Counsell did with Payamps in April. Over the team's scorching first few weeks, he had to turn over some leads to hurlers who were not yet within his trust circle. Payamps was one of those who responded well to it, and he seems to have gained even greater confidence from working his way into Counsell's good graces. This is a big developmental win for Chris Hook and the rest of the Brewers' pitching team, too. If Payamps can stay healthy with this newfound velocity, they've manufactured precisely the bullpen depth this team was missing. View full article

The Oakland Athletics aren't quite across the finish line at which they can announce their rebirth as the Las Vegas Athletics, but apparently, Major League Baseball can smell that barn from here. Rob Manfred has hit the road for a spring tour of stadia, and he's in shakedown mode. The city of Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin should reject his intimidation and nonsense. Image courtesy of © MARK HOFFMAN/MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL / USA TODAY NETWORK Ballpark financing is a tricky business. For one thing, the slate is never blank. There are always relevant comparison points--other ballparks built and upgraded and repaired and renovated recently. There are nearly always preexisting agreements that narrow the spectrum of options when the subject of doing any of those things with a ballpark comes up. In this case, the comps are especially timely and cogent, and the preexisting agreements--ones that require a fairly high degree of upkeep by the specially-created Southeast Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District, for instance--loom especially large. That said, when Manfred swept into town this week talking about the urgency and import of the state allocating nearly half a billion dollars to the long-term improvement of Miller Park, it was pretty transparently toothless. Manfred, and the cartel he represents, has very little leverage over Wisconsin, other than in the sense that everyone has leverage over the hopelessly fractured and persistently chaotic state government apparatus in Madison. Whatever one thinks of the machinations Bud Selig performed to keep the Brewers from facing any threat of relocation or contraction during the darkest period of his miserable rule over the business side of the game, they created a platform for Milwaukee to prove itself as a long-term, viable, even vital market for MLB. The city, the state, and Attanasio have made good on that inheritance, and at this point, moving away from Milwaukee is unthinkable for the league. Manfred is hoping you won't notice that. He's hoping you'll look at the radically stupid, self-defeating decisions made by municipal bodies in Texas and Georgia, who have recently replaced perfectly good stadia built less than 30 years ago with expensive new ones, at huge costs to the communities they should have served more honestly. He's hoping you'll look at Oakland, once a market as strong as Milwaukee has become. He's hoping you'll refuse to call a lousy bluff, because he won't have a better moment (right on the heels of this Oakland fiasco, and with expansion coming soon) to try one for years. Fans, governments, and even Attanasio (in some ways, a client and a patron of Manfred) should tell the league and its chief representative to go sit on a cactus in Nevada somewhere. The Brewers aren't going anywhere. Miller Park does not need hundreds of millions of dollars in immediate improvements, and the residents of the city and state do need that money to go more productive and valuable places. This is the one last tricky thing about ballpark financing: having a team is usually worth it. When they have a legitimate alternative to staying home and playing in their present park, it's sometimes acceptable to help fund a new park, because having a professional baseball team in town is good. It's good for business. It's good for families. It's good for civic pride. The poor can't eat civic pride, though. Governments have a responsibility to keep their priorities straight, and that means paying as little to big corporations like MLB teams as possible, as late as possible, rather than eagerly signing up to give them what they ask for, right on time. Now is an easy and exciting time for Wisconsin to tell Manfred that he needs to take a number and get in line. There's nothing wrong with the Brewers' home park, and any threats that they might depart from it are calculated deception. View full article

Jesse Winker can't keep batting second. It just can't happen. It's time for the Brewers to try out a few of the hitters who have had much more success this year at that crucial spot in the lineup. Image courtesy of © Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports As sabermetrically-inclined baseball fans always hasten to remind us, batting order matters relatively little. Barring a truly antithetical lineup that gives as many at-bats as possible to the worst hitters on a given team, teams just can't gain or lose nearly as many runs based on how they line up as based on who is in that lineup to begin with. Jesse Winker being in the lineup at all, right now, is more damaging to the team than the fact that he bats second. Still, there's something to be said for eliminating dysfunction, even at a time when drastic steps aren't possible. The Brewers need Winker to get right. They can't afford, based on the health and performance of their other options at the moment, to simply cut him, or even to bench him against righties, because doing the latter would become a major hurdle to the kind of recovery of form they need. That doesn't mean that Winker has to hit in the most important spot in the lineup when he's in there, though. Craig Counsell needs to send a message to his team about the value and urgency of delivering results, and to give his lineup a chance to create more runs. The best way to do that, at the moment, is to slide Winker down to sixth or seventh in the lineup, and to give some auditions to players who are outhitting him. One candidate is Brian Anderson. With another homer on Saturday, Anderson continues his steady production. He had a prolonged power outage from the end of April through the beginning of this past week, but even then, he was putting together competitive at-bats. Based both on his track record and his approach, he should be able to produce the way a team needs their second hitter to produce, even against righties, at least in the short term. He's never going to be a superstar, but as he showed during the first 10 days of the season, he can get as hot as anyone, and he has the punch to convert rallies into runs quickly. Winker, now slugging .270 on the season, glaringly lacks that capacity. If Counsell wants to swap another lefty into that position, Brice Turang could be worth a look. Coming up through the minors, he was always a top-of-the-order hitter, with his gap power and speed making him a dynamic presence. Obviously, Turang has has his own struggles at the plate thus far, but he's been much better over the last two weeks. He's making adjustments as quickly as the Brewers could reasonably have hoped, and could create some havoc on the basepaths along with Christian Yelich. The most boring (but probably closest to optimal) choice would be to simply slide Willy Adames up to second in the order, make Rowdy Tellez the new No. 3 man, and hope that William Contreras can start elevating the ball enough to be a credible cleanup hitter. That's the least messy solution. Less conventional than any of these, but perhaps most intriguing at the moment, is one more possibility: Owen Miller. He's come to Milwaukee and made exactly the adjustments I anticipated at the start of the season. The Brewers have helped him turn a starter kit of Luis Urias-like skills into Luis Urias-like production, and then some. He's been shielded from righties to some extent, and thrusting him into an important lineup spot against them would be a big challenge to him, but he's earned that shot. One way or another, it's time for an offensive shakeup, and the Brewers' available moves are limited. Getting Winker out of the way so the more productive hitters in the heart of the order can generate more runs seems like a no-brainer, at this pivotal point. View full article

At the outset of spring training, Tyrone Taylor was penciled in as a regular in the Brewers outfield. After missing substantial time with an injury to his elbow, though, he watched a few players surpass him on the depth chart, and since his return, his numbers have been atrocious. Still, the Brewers need to be patient. Image courtesy of © Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports This is a deeply trying time on the baseball calendar, for fans and for teams. The sample represented by the season to date begins to feel robust, and even if it's ultimately insufficient to make good decisions, the sheer bulk of the season that has been played begins to enforce a sense of building urgency. From late May through early June, fans start pleading for big shakeups, and sometimes, teams even give it to them. It's around this time that managers are sometimes fired (see Joe Maddon and Joe Girardi, last year). It's around this time that clubs cut bait on bad investments of money or playing time. For the Brewers, Tyrone Taylor's poor offensive showing to date is bound to stir some of those conversations. Taylor, 29, is hitting a woeful .180/.208/.260, in 59 plate appearances. If there was any hope that he would be the spark the floundering lineup needed (especially against left-handed pitchers), most people around the team have probably already given up on that notion. The Brewers need to stick with him, though, rather than try bringing Blake Perkins back up or call upon Keston Hiura. As shockingly bad as the surface-level numbers are, Taylor isn't doing anything markedly worse than he did in 2022. His swing rates both within and outside the zone are essentially unchanged. He's attacking the first pitch a little over 41 percent of the time, which is probably too much to suit his overall profile, but that's a small quibble, especially for a player coming off an injury that cost him spring training. When he does swing, Taylor is making contact at a slightly higher rate than last year. When he does make contact, he's hitting fewer ground balls and fewer pop-ups, and he's pulling the ball at the same frequency as last year. His exit velocities are right in line with last season. He's been the victim, mostly, of some buzzard's luck on batted balls. That's an oversimplification, of course. Taylor didn't really have one 2022 season. He had two or three, subdivided by huge mechanical adjustments he made midstream, and that makes comparing his numbers this year to the full sample from last year a bit misleading. He does seem to have lost a valuable adjustment to his load from late 2022 somewhere on the rollercoaster he's ridden since, which is a problem. Still, Taylor is essential to this team right now. He's the most credible backup center fielder to Joey Wiemer in the entire organization. He's already shown off his strong arm and the defensive upside when he plays right. He steals bases and takes the extra base on hits and outs by his teammates, efficiently and aggressively. The Brewers have been baseball's least efficient and aggressive baserunning club this year, and Taylor is a salve for that. An inveterate tinkerer, Taylor will find some new tweak for his swing soon, and he might go on another hot streak akin to the sizzling September he had in 2022. He hit .299/.343/.597 from September 3 on last year. The Brewers need that version of Taylor, but at the moment, they just need to exercise some excruciating patience, because he's showing enough to merit some confidence that he'll eventually get untracked. View full article

Technically, the Brewers can afford to wait until early next week to replace Wade Miley in their starting rotation. They shouldn't do so. It's time to give a meaningful chance to a hurler who only got a token opportunity in the wake of the last major injury sustained by this staff. Image courtesy of © Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports Thanks to their off day on Thursday, the Brewers have the option to skip Wade Miley's vacated rotation spot this weekend. Adrian Houser, Eric Lauer, and Freddy Peralta can all start on normal rest, and Corbin Burnes would even be ready to go on Monday, after the team travels from Tampa Bay to Houston to continue a grueling road trip. Instead, though, what they should so is recall right-handed starter Janson Junk to make Sunday's start, sliding Peralta and Burnes back and giving Junk a chance to earn a permanent place in the starting corps. The numbers have gotten ugly for Junk with Triple-A Nashville this month, as he's running an ERA over 7.00 in three starts. In April, however, he had a sparkling 1.31 ERA in the minors, and he gutted out a respectable showing (although one that made plain what he still needs to work on) when called upon to make an emergency start in place of Brandon Woodruff with the parent club. More importantly, unlike Colin Rea (the other credentialed big-leaguer on the 40-man roster), he has two above-average big-league pitches, in his fastball and his sweeper. Unlike Robert Gasser (the other guy with some prospect sheen to him who has been with Nashville all season), he wouldn't require the team to make yet another messy 40-man roster move, and he's throwing strikes much more consistently than is Gasser. Alas, Junk does have some notable weaknesses, which is why it was Rea who got Woodruff's turns in the rotation before Houser made it back from his preseason malady. The erstwhile Angels northpaw doesn't throw his curve for strikes with any regularity, and his changeup comes out of just enough lower a release point to give it away a bit. As a result, left-handed batters can sit on his fastball and square it up too often, because his sweeper is not a pitch with much value against opposite-handed opponents. Yet, the pieces of a solid big-league starter are all present. That fastball isn't fast enough to overpower hitters when they know it's coming, sitting around 92 miles per hour, but it has plus vertical movement and he can command it at the top of the zone. He comes from an extreme angle, working at the third-base side of the pitching rubber. That makes his heater and sweeper especially deceptive, and it's the right place to allow him to find the zone with his big curveball. In his brief MLB trials to date, and even in Triple A this month, he's just not able to make that curve competitive on a consistent enough basis, That can change any time, though, and he really only needs to land the pitch a couple of times per game. The fastball and sweeper can carry him, if he can make lefties respect any other pitch even a little bit. Recently, he hasn't been able to get his changeup down. That's a problem, in general, but Junk has the kind of fastball and approach angle to survive with an elevated changeup, the same way Lucas Giolito did at his best. The problem has been that Junk hasn't been throwing the changeup for strikes at all. It's been above the zone, or missing to the arm side of the plate. It would make some sense to try realigning him. The Brewers could move him over toward the middle of the mound, giving the changeup more room to move laterally while still at least looking like a strike. That might make it harder for him to throw the curve for strikes, but he can survive without that pitch if he needs to. Whatever adjustments the team wants to make, though, they should have Junk take a turn in the big-league rotation this weekend, then work with him to see how he can stick there until the injured incumbents make their way back--or until the front office can find another starter on the trade market in July, if it comes to that. View full article

The Brewers' new catcher has been one of the best and most exciting players on an inconsistent and stultified offense. He's hit too many ground balls, though, and it's time for him to consider reversing a few of the tradeoffs he's made this season. Image courtesy of © Paul Halfacre-USA TODAY Sports In parts of three seasons with Atlanta, William Contreras showed impressive power, but had some significant weaknesses, too. Most notably, he struck out quite a bit. He fanned in 28.3 percent of his plate appearances from 2020-22, putting a ceiling on his offensive utility despite his good batted-ball data and above-average walk rate. He was still a very good hitter for a catcher, but sustainable stardom seemed to depend on making contact more often. There's great news on that front. This year, Contreras is whiffing dramatically less often than he has in the past. His contact rate on swings, especially within the zone, is up, but just as importantly, he's cut down the frequency with which he chases pitches outside the zone. That means taking more balls and giving pitchers fewer cheap strikes, and it's brought Contreras's strikeout rate all the way down to 18.0 percent. He's taken his greatest offensive shortcoming and turned it into a strength. He's now better than average by the same distance as that by which he was previously worse. Yet, overall, his production is down this year, relative to 2022. In fact, after an 0-5 showing in Wednesday night's loss, he's hitting just .246/.343/.377, good for a 102 wRC+. Given the improvements he's made as a receiver, anything like an average overall line is valuable, but the dynamism and danger Contreras seemed poised to add to the Milwaukee lineup has yet to materialize. The big-picture problem is precisely the one that was on display during his frustrating game Wednesday: he's hitting way too many ground balls. That was already the other flaw in his offensive profile, even in 2022, but it's gotten even worse in 2023. Contreras's average launch angle has sagged to a career-low mark of under 4 degrees, and 56 percent of his batted balls have been grounders. Even that understates the problem. Contreras isn't just hitting grounders; he's hitting the worst kind of them. Back in early 2020, at Baseball Prospectus, I wrote about the importance of launch angle even within the the context of ground balls. As one would intuit, there's a difference between pounding the ball straight into the dirt in front of home plate and hitting a slanting one-hopper, something almost akin to a line drive. A grounder with a launch angle anywhere north of -8 degrees has a legitimate chance to be a hit, if it's hit fairly hard. As one would also guess, this is even more true now than when I first investigated the question, thanks to the limitations on defensive positioning in place this year. Contreras doesn't avail himself of those odds, though. Of the 274 hitters who had hit at least 25 ground balls this year entering Wednesday, he had hit fewer of his grounders in the most valuable launch-angle bracket (north of -5 degrees) than 245. On Wednesday night, that only got worse, as his three grounders averaged -31 degrees off the bat. For the season, his average launch angle on grounders is -16.6 degrees, which sis similarly close to the basement of the league. Other Brewers rate even worse in this regard, but for more obvious reasons. Both Brice Turang and Joey Wiemer hit some of the lowest grounders (and the fewest high-trajectory, high-expected value ones) in the league. In each case, though, that's explainable. These are rookies, pressed into more regular service than the team would have anticipated before the season, thanks to the injuries to Luis Urias, Tyrone Taylor, and Garrett Mitchell. They're players with significant strikeout issues, meaning that it's worthwhile--even necessary--for them to make contact whenever possible, at whatever cost. They also have plus speed, meaning that some of those balls hammered right into the ground are more likely to turn into hits (or to allow them to reach on an error or fielder's choice) than they are for a player like Contreras, who runs like the catcher he is. One way or another, Contreras has to start elevating the ball more often, or he's not going to have the offensive upside he and the team envisioned. He needs to hit fewer grounders, and when he does hit grounders, they need to be more like line drives. He's generating sufficient exit velocity, but trading too much loft and damage potential for his newfound contact skills. The Brewers lineup needs more from him than he's provided, and this is where he can close the gap. View full article

The stereotype of the one-dimensional slugger never fit Rowdy Tellez that well. His body type demanded it, and his power reinforced it, but the real Tellez is a good hitter with the ability to make adjustments. He's proved that in 2023. Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports A more patient Rowdy Tellez is a more dangerous one. That's been true at least as long as he's been with the Brewers. When he's working to get his pitch, he can hit for tremendous power. He's taking that approach to a new extreme, though, and it's working beautifully. Of the 173 hitters who would qualify for the batting title if the season ended today, only Max Muncy has swung at a lower percentage of pitches within the strike zone than Tellez. That's radical patience. It's led to a career-high walk rate of 11.7 percent, and that, in turn, has led to a .328 on-base percentage--better than those he ran in either of the last two seasons, by some 20 points. Obviously, not swinging within the zone does come with some tradeoffs, and Tellez's strikeout rate has climbed to just under 25 percent. For him, though, that's been the perfect exchange to make. Muncy strikes out almost 29 percent of the time. Similar players, if they don't have good contact skills on which to fall back when they don't get their pitch early in the count, often run a strikeout rate north of 30 percent. That's a major problem, but Tellez makes contact on almost 87 percent of his swings within the zone. That's an above-average number, and it's up from previous years. It's all a result of waiting more studiously for his pitch. This hasn't led to an explosion in his contact quality. In fact, both the frequency and the intensity of Tellez's hard contact are down this year. Instead, he's just placing the ball better and squaring it up more. He's pulling more of his batted balls than ever. He's hitting fewer pop-ups and fewer ground balls, a rare twinned achievement, and getting it in the air with some carry more consistently. One thing that has helped, as you might expect, is that Tellez has seen fewer left-handed pitchers this year. In his first year and a half in Milwaukee, he faced righties in about 78 percent of his plate appearances. This season, that number is up to just under 82 percent. That makes it easier to be a more disciplined hitter, and to hit the ball hard, but the effect is very small. Much more saliently, Tellez just seems to have become more attuned with his own strengths and weaknesses as a hitter. Here's Tellez's swing rate by pitch location for 2022. And here's 2023. He's trying to do the same things: get something inside, something a bit elevated, something he can drive in the air. He's just being much more granular and intentional about it. He's being incrementally, but vitally, more selective, and it's given him a real chance to enjoy a 40-home run season, with better on-base skills, to boot. Again, Tellez has always defied his caricature. He makes contact better and can modulate his approach more than hitters who are superficially similar. This season still marks a major evolution for him, though, and it couldn't be a more welcome one for the offense-starved Brewers. View full article

The Brewers pitching staff boxed in the hapless Kansas City Royals Friday night, holding them to three hits (including a solo home run) in a 5-1 win. Somewhat surprisingly, the identity of this team is turning out to be its fabulous fielding. Image courtesy of © Isaiah J. Downing-USA TODAY Sports The Royals put 19 balls in play against the combination of Corbin Burnes, Joel Payamps, Peter Strzelecki, and Elvis Peguero. Only two of those turned into hits, That brought opponents' batting average on balls in play (BABIP) against the Brewers down to .270 for the season. Only the Rays and Tigers are yielding lower ones. With the great range of Willy Adames, Brice Turang, and Joey Wiemer up the middle, the Brewers are making it harder to find hits than almost anyone in baseball. The pitchers play a role in that, of course. Milwaukee's staff has been good at limiting hard contact over the last few years, and that continues thus far in 2023. Still, most of the credit has to go to the fielders themselves. According to Sports Info Solutions, the Brewers lead MLB with their 27 Defensive Runs Saved (DRS). Only the Astros and Cubs match them for DRS at the three up-the-middle positions, and if we add the catchers to that mix, not even those two teams can hang with them. It's terrific to have that kind of a security blanket for the manager and coaching staff. It's great that pitchers can throw with such conviction, knowing their fielders will have their back even if the batter makes solid contact. Team defense has been a separator for the truly great teams of the last decade or so, and the Brewers have that box checked. That fact does pressurize every decision the team makes about its below-average offense, however. About a week ago, I wrote that Turang needed to turn his offensive campaign around in order to guarantee his playing time and his place on the parent club. He's done just that, and every week that he survives at the plate makes him more entrenched at second base, where his glovework has been brilliant. However, that closes off one more position where the team might need to try to find some punch. With Turang and Wiemer in the lineup, the team can't afford to get so little production from bat-first veterans like Christian Yelich and Jesse Winker. Even Brian Anderson must come under some scrutiny. He's been an above-average hitter, according to OPS+, with a respectable line of .246/.324/.415. However, he's been part of the weak spot in the defensive phalanx at third base. His underlying offensive stats are also less impressive, suggesting that his slash line is likely to continue its sag. Because of the lack of early separation or clarity in the National League playoff mosh pit, the team doesn't have to act rashly. They can, and will, wait for Luis Urias to return from his hamstring injury, barring any setbacks. They can wait to see how the trade market develops, because right now, they're in first place in the NL Central. There's no reason to desperately lurch after offensive help before they have some certainty about how much of that help they really need, or at which positions. Owen Miller's (predictable) progress at the plate gives them another option about which they can continue to gather information for at least another month. Ultimately, if this team wants to win the World Series, it has to hit better than it has so far. Thanks to their sparkling defense, though, they don't have to hit that much better, and some of their biggest improvements could well come from within. If they get Urias back, or are able to prepare Sal Frelick or Jackson Chourio for meaningful big-league roles; if Tyler Black gets a bump to Nashville and continues to own the strike zone the way he has in Biloxi; or if Luke Voit, Yelich, Anderson, and Tyrone Taylor start hitting the way they can, then the Brewers will score plenty of runs. They have no plausible path to being an elite offense, but they have Corbin Burnes (who is rounding into form, at long last), Freddy Peralta, the possibility of a midseason return from Brandon Woodruff, and an airtight bullpen. All of that is supported by the best defense in baseball, which means that an elite offense would feel a bit like gilding the lily, anyway. View full article

The Brewers' offense has gone dormant during their recent streak of lousy play, and the designated hitter position has failed to buoy them. In fact, they're the fifth-worst team in MLB in getting production from that spot this season. How safe is Jesse Winker's playing time? And who could replace him? Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports Though fans particularly malign the lack of thump against left-handed pitchers, the Brewers also haven't been raking against righties of late, and Jesse Winker (their left-hitting, righty-mashing offseason import at DH) is right in the middle of those problems. Overall, the Crew is getting just a .216/.319/.313 batting line from their designated hitters, with Winker (who's hitting .214/.341/.257 in that role) getting about 60 percent of the playing time. A free agent at year's end, Winker is not someone in whom the team is especially invested. They got him in exchange for Kolten Wong, who has been terrible with the Mariners, and they also got Abraham Toro in that deal, so they don't even need to call that swap a wash if they cut bait with Winker. That's not to say that they're (yet) close to doing so, but it would be both actually and psychologically easy to do so based on what Winker cost and the lack of upside in giving him endless opportunities. The problem, of course, is the lack of good, obvious alternatives to Winker at that position. If the Brewers had a player raking on their bench, they would already have gone to them. Neither Owen Miller nor Mike Brosseau has had an inspiring start. Luke Voit's struggles have been well-documented. All three of those players are right-handed hitters, too, which makes it hard to justify replacing Winker with any of them. At Triple-A Nashville, the guy looking most like a viable DH in MLB is Keston Hiura, whose history and roster status both make entrusting him with that job unlikely. There is one hitter who has looked great this year, though, who is already on the roster, and who bats left-handed (at least against righties). The biggest hurdle to giving him time at DH is the position he plays otherwise. It's Victor Caratini, the team's backup catcher. He's hitting .300/.417/.450, with better numbers against righties than against lefties. In 48 plate appearances, he's drawn eight walks and struck out only seven times, and he hits the ball hard. The big weakness in his offensive game--that he hits far too many ground balls to consistently tap into his power--is comparatively untroubling. He's not likely to sustain an OPS over .850 all season, but those underlying skills are promising. Since the start of 2021, against righties, he's batted .226/.322/.358--hardly scintillating, but a step up from what the Brewers are currently getting. Caratini is, of course, primarily a catcher. Putting him and William Contreras in the lineup together poses inherent logistical risks, which is why Craig Counsell has done so only three times this season--all against left-handed starters. That might need to change at some point, as the team tries to get better production out of a position at which only offense matters. The arrival of Sal Frelick or Jackson Chourio would open up different options, like using Christian Yelich or Tyrone Taylor as the DH. The eventual return of Luis Urias could displace Brian Anderson on the infield and force him to find some of his time at DH. For various reasons, though, those things are still far off on the horizon. In the meantime, the team should give Caratini a shot at infusing some offense. View full article

The Brewers' lousy road trip only exacerbated building frustration, after a disappointing homestand. The team isn't clicking. Injuries are a concern. According to the numbers, though, this team that has perfected winning ugly is currently sitting pretty. Image courtesy of © Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports It's hard to maintain perspective, right now. By losing series to the Red Sox, Tigers, Rockies, and Giants in the last two and a half weeks, the Brewers have missed some invaluable opportunities to pile up wins and widen their margin for error. They're still above .500, at 19-15, but that means that they've lost 10 of 15 after their blazing start. The starting rotation, which seemed like the heartbeat of the team coming into the season, suddenly feels a bit suspect, with one ace down and another mysteriously scuffling. Yet, when we widen the lens and look at the big picture, things still look rosy. As the Brewers have tried not to spiral over the last week, their division rivals have all gone through the same miniature crisis. The only team who was projected to be a credible threat to Milwaukee before the season--the Cardinals--is an unmitigated disaster, now sitting at 11-24 and stultified by controversy and confusion. The upstarts who could push the Crew--the Cubs and Pirates--have each had a rough week and a half. As a result, according to FanGraphs, the Brewers still have a 56.5-percent chance to win the NL Central. Even that might undersell the strength of their position. The projected standings show them with 5.5 more wins at season's end than the closest contender, the Cubs. Some of the chances that they don't win it, according to these data, are just the residual faith projection systems have in the Cardinals, and in reality, the Cardinals are a disaster with no hope of turning things around this year. Baseball Prospectus's PECOTA system was always higher on the Brewers, anyway, and they now have Milwaukee at 75.4 percent to win the division, with nine more projected wins than the Cubs. In that model, the Cardinals are trending more quickly toward being a non-factor. Obviously, you're not obligated to believe these numbers. While the Cardinals' correct playoff odds at this point are zero, which no statistical system will understand or capture this early, and while the Pirates' brief flirtation with relevance seems to be fizzling, the Cubs could stay feisty. You're well within your rights to believe that the injuries and situational deficiencies bedeviling the Brewers will continue to prevent them from running away with the Central. This last stretch was a very real chance to scoop up easy wins, and the team missed it. Over the next two and a half weeks, they have to face the Dodgers, Rays, and Astros, and there's a series in St. Louis in there in which Milwaukee needs to ensure that the dead stay dead. Still, objectively, the Brewers are in great shape. They have the best defense in baseball, which is allowing them to scrape by without the production they expect from guys like Willy Adames and Jesse Winker. They haven't used Devin Williams especially often or aggressively in the early going, which should mean that he'll be fresh and dominant throughout the summer. William Contreras was the centerpiece of their offseason and the focal point of their spring, and he's delivering on that investment and that promise. Meanwhile, the team most equipped to beat the best version of the Brewers is imploding. Every day the Brewers stay afloat is another day closer to the potential returns of Brandon Woodruff and Luis Urias. It's also another day for the Pirates' ship to continue its slow sinking, and another day closer to the trade deadline, where the team could reinforce its pitching staff or its outfield, depending on which unit seems to need that help by then. There's no immediate or especially powerful threat to the Brewers' push toward a division title. They only need to avoid becoming a threat to themselves. View full article