Matthew Trueblood

Keller's a great name. I like that a lot. Obviously, there'd be some hesitation on one side or the other about an intradivisional trade, but it goes up near the top of the list for me.

Over the last two days, the prognosis on Brandon Woodruff's shoulder has gotten markedly worse--or at least, we've become more aware of how serious the issue is. It's time to talk about how the team can survive a prolonged absence on the part of its co-ace. Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports At first, Brandon Woodruff hitting the injured list with shoulder inflammation seemed like just a passing cloud on a sunny day. Amid the Brewers' hot start and with both the player and team talking about the possibility that he would return at the end of a minimum-length stay on the sidelines, it felt more like a nuisance than a genuine threat. Suddenly, that cloud has taken on all the lugubriousness of a coal-black storm stack. Woodruff is dealing with a subscapular strain that could easily cost him the next two months. Bryse Wilson shouldn't be ignored, either. His four outings to open this season have covered nine total innings, and three of the four have involved multiple frames. In those three, he's thrown 49, 34, and 50 pitches, and he's using a sufficiently varied repertoire to make it easy to imagine him stretching back out to a starter's workload. It might mean a shorter start or two as he builds up from 50 pitches to full readiness for 80 or 90, but it's a change that could be made on the fly at this stage. Revert to the Six-Man Rotation Recall that, in 2021, the Brewers thrived with a six-man starting rotation, largely as an adaptation to the weirdness of playing a full season on the heels of the shortened pandemic year of 2020. They went back to the five-man plan in 2022, but it's not too late to flex back out to the longer loop this month. With Woodruff down, it becomes more important to preserve the health of Corbin Burnes, Freddy Peralta, Eric Lauer, and Wade Miley. The latter three of that quartet arguably stood to benefit from a six-man staff anyway, and Burnes alone provides only half the incentive to stick to five that Burnes and Woodruff offered when both were healthy. With those four and any two of the arms listed above, the team could run a perfectly respectable six-man circuit, and they'd still have good bullpen depth. If Wilson and/or Houser were slated to start, it would mean more arms (like Jake Cousins, Tyson Miller, Cam Robinson, Elvis Peguero, and the newly acquired Bennett Sousa) in the bullpen. Obviously, relying on any or all of those guys is not ideal, but nor is the fact of Woodruff's injury. Having a strong six starters and seven relief slots, with the ability to rotate pitchers through at least three of them pretty liberally, could be the best approach. Surplus and Need, Supply and Demand: Let's Make a Deal Of course, the juiciest conversation this situation opens up is one about the possibility of trading for an ace to replace the (temporarily) fallen one. This is where the Brewers' broader depth becomes a major asset to Matt Arnold. It's too early to hope to see immediate action, but if the prognosis on Woodruff still looks poor in a month (and if the team continues to play well in the meantime), there are plenty of interesting deals that the team might entertain. Could this be the year the Rockies finally realize they're bad, and trade Germán Márquez? Will the Giants, Red Sox, White Sox, or even Phillies listen to offers on their veteran arms if their rough starts don't smooth out? One way or another, the Marlins figure to be open to a trade for one of their young, controllable, high-upside starters by mid-summer, even if it be only as their best avenue to improving their lousy offense. The catch with any of those, of course, is that if the Brewers want to add a starter who moves the needle in what figures to be a push for the NL Central title and beyond, they're going to have to be willing to give up one of their young outfielders. It's almost impossible to imagine a pitcher good enough to tempt Arnold into surrendering Jackson Chourio, but Joey Wiemer, Garrett Mitchell, and Sal Frelick all have to be considered candidates, if the right deal materializes and the rest of the team's outfielders are playing as expected. Remember, the current outfield picture will only get more crowded as the season progresses, as long as Tyrone Taylor recovers as expected from his elbow injury. This much creativity and intrigue is usually reserved for conversations about a team around and after Memorial Day. Woodruff going down and the team starting so well have conspired to give us some fascinating things to ponder before Earth Day. For now, though, the best thing for which to hope is that Woodruff will recover quickly and be at full strength for the stretch drive--regardless of the size or the specific makeup of the rotation he would then re-join. View full article

Great teams blow people out, but not even great teams blow people out every day. The Brewers are making a habit of doing the other thing great teams do: win games you have no business winning. Image courtesy of © Orlando Ramirez-USA TODAY Sports When the Brewers called upon their Nashville rotation to make a second consecutive start for the parent club on Thursday, it felt like the chances of winning that game were dim. This early in the season, it's unusual to play so many games without more time off, and giving an extra day between outings to the veterans in the team's rotation does fit with modern norms. Still, it was discouraging, because the team was going on the road against one of the acknowledged powerhouses of the National League, in the San Diego Padres. The change to the rotation actually makes the two sides more even throughout the series, as San Diego sent fourth starter Nick Martinez to the mound for the opener, but it felt certain that using journeyman Colin Rea would put the Crew at a disadvantage. Instead, Rea positively shoved. That was the first way the game tipped toward the Brewers. Rowdy Tellez's first-inning homer and Mike Brosseau's fifth-inning shot gave the team a two-run cushion into the late innings, thanks to Rea's yeomanlike preservation work. He developed a new sweeping slider this winter, and it appears to be a huge development for him, even if it turns him into more an adequate fill-in starter than a true mid-rotation stud. That's incredibly heads-up baseball. In that situation, it's almost always worth trying to cut down the lead runner. Adames had a couple of hiccups in his field awareness and internal clock calibration during the first week of the season, but he's now locked in again, and his aggressive style won the Brewers that game. It's not an overwhelmingly difficult play, physically, but it requires visualizing and preparing for the possibility of that play beforehand--without failing to be ready for all the other things a shortstop might need to do, if the ball is hit differently. The Brewers are, right now, a special team, playing an exceptional and impressive caliber of baseball. There's lurking fragility in places, but for now, they're humming along, and stealing this first game of a very tough series against a team with whom they might be directly competing for a playoff berth was another sign of their readiness for the long campaign ahead. Third Bucket Record: 4-0 View full article

I think I agree with most of that. I certainly haven’t been a Cousins backer before now and am not morphing into one purely because he might give them more whiffs. my biggest worries are about Lauer and the middle relievers, but it’s not that hard to imagine a scenario where this problem plagues them for a good chunk of the season. Anyway, it’s interesting to follow, given the overall good vibes from the pitching staff.

Twelve games into a long season, it’s too early to draw any sweeping conclusions about the strengths and weaknesses of a team. So far, though, the Brewers have the fourth-lowest strikeout rate in MLB. Can they be a playoff team without missing bats? Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports Brewers ace Corbin Burnes broke out of his funk with eight dominant innings against the Diamondbacks this week. He struck out eight along the way, partially thanks to using his changeup more often than he ever had in an outing before. As much as anything, though, that outing was about generating weak contact and letting the Brewers play good defense behind him. Burnes got 16 swings and misses along the way, easily outstripping his total from the previous two starts combined, so he did dominate, but eight strikeouts in as many innings is not a huge total for the modern game. That’s a fair microcosm for the Brewers’ whole pitching staff, thus far. Only the Angels have allowed a lower Hard-Hit percentage than the Crew to start this season. Only the Mariners have allowed a lower Barrel percentage. Milwaukee has excelled on the mound, but they’ve done it by getting weak contact instead of by missing bats altogether. With the young, athletic defense the team can field behind its hurlers, there’s some reason to think they can keep doing so. On the other hand, big-league hitters are dangerous, and it’s very unlikely that the Brewers have so thoroughly hacked the system as to alter that fact. Only 5.2 percent of opponents’ batted balls have been Barrels (batted balls whose exit velocity and launch angle give them an expected batting average of at least .500 and an expected slugging average of at least 1.500) according to Statcast. Last year, the lowest rate in the league was 6.2 percent. Over the sample of a long season, a difference of one percentage point in that stat is something like 40 hits, most of which will be extra-base hits about which the defense can do virtually nothing. Tellingly, the three teams with lower strikeout rates than the Brewers’ so far are the Tigers, Athletics, and Nationals. Strikeout rate isn’t destiny, even in the modern game, but it’s not a good idea to put yourself in that company in 2023, regardless of the statistic in question. The Brewers are going to need to miss more bats in order to reach the postseason. Again, it’s very early. The Crew has only played four series, and their four opponents (Cubs, 22nd; Cardinals, 25th; Mets, 26th; Diamondbacks, 28th) are all among the bottom nine in team strikeout rate by hitters. Then again, for each of those clubs, the Brewers are roughly a quarter of the sample, so it’s hard to tease out cause and effect. Yesterday against Arizona, Janson Junk couldn’t sneak the ball past anyone, and neither could the relievers who took over for him. The Diamondbacks took 63 swings, and only whiffed twice: one on a Hoby Milner curveball, and one on a Gus Varland heater. The last time any team swung and missed fewer than three times in a game was 2015. That clearly says something about the Arizona batters, but it says something about the Brewers, too. While Junk pitched in Arizona, Robert Gasser racked up seven strikeouts for Triple-A Nashville. He might need to get a shot at Brandon Woodruff’s vacated rotation spot the next time around, if the team is still struggling this badly with generating whiffs. Jake Cousins has struck out six of his first 10 batters faced for Nashville; maybe it’s time to end the Joel Payamps experiment and recall Cousins. Obviously, strikeout rate can’t be the only criterion by which a team judges and selects its pitching staff. Cousins, who walks too many batters and sometimes finds opponents’ barrels with his nasty slider, is a perfect example of that. Still, an inability to get strikeouts in key spots will catch up to the team in the long run, so they need to be proactive about fixing the issue, even if that just means adjusting specific hurlers’ pitch mixing or sequencing. If they don’t, they won’t be able to sustain their early success preventing runs. View full article

Amid a thrilling and encouraging start to the season, the Brewers have experienced their first serious adversity. Brandon Woodruff was placed on the 15-day injured list with shoulder inflammation, creating a flurry of questions about the rotation going forward. For now, at least, the answer to one of those questions is: Janson Junk. Image courtesy of © Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports While Brandon Woodruff nurses shoulder inflammation that he insists is minor, it will be Janson Junk who comes up from Triple-A Nashville to take a couple of crucial starts. In a bit of serendipity, he was lined up for this anyway based on when he pitched in Nashville, but it also seems likely that he was first in line for a promotion like this. The Brewers got Junk as the headliner of a package of pitchers when they traded Hunter Renfroe to the Angels in the fall. The right-hander was a 22nd-round pick by the Yankees in 2017 out of Seattle University, and he made a fistful of big-league appearances with the Angels over the course of the last two seasons. In those looks, he showed a fastball with average velocity, but above-average carry; a naturally sweepy slider; a middling curveball; and a couple versions of a changeup, neither of which showed much refinement. The Brewers haven’t overhauled Junk’s mechanics or helped him totally reinvent himself. They have made a few adjustments, though, and his results in two appearances for Nashville so far (10 innings, one run, five hits, three walks, seven strikeouts) speak to the promise those tweaks hold. For one thing, Junk has added some vertical movement to that slider. The trend throughout baseball this year, of course, is toward the “sweeper,” a version of the slider that emphasizes lateral movement, but Junk already had that dimension. Getting more depth on the pitch should increase the rate at which he gets whiffs on it, if he can locate it appropriately. Funnily enough, though, Junk got a bunch of non-contact strikes--some in the form of whiffs, and others on called strikes--even when hitting the top of the zone with the slider during his stint in Nashville. Because his fastball has so much explosive, rising action up there, hitters were fooled even when he put a slider up in that same area. That's unlikely to be a recipe for success in the majors, but it bears watching. Beyond that, it seems (though the pitch-classification data now available to the public via Baseball Savant for Triple-A games is quite messy in the early going) that Junk has, ahem, junked his traditional changeup, and is now throwing solely a splitter as his offspeed pitch. He's getting a bit more depth on that, too, though again, we're battling some uncertainty based on obvious errors in pitch typing. He's also busted out a sinker with significant arm-side run, which would pair nicely with the slider against righties if he can get both pitches working on the same plane consistently. His curveball has good spin mirroring with the four-seamer, and might continue to be a weapon against lefties, although between the changed shape of his slider and the development of the splitter, the curve is becoming a bit redundant in his evolving repertoire. That Junk has seven games and roughly 25 innings of MLB experience already has to be of some comfort to the Brewers, too. He's not going to freak out upon taking the mound. Still, he's filling big shoes, at a pivotal time on the schedule. As Í detailed before the season began, the Brewers start this season with 19 crucial games, and so far, they've only played 11 of them. Junk will start the rubber game against a Diamondbacks team that looks poised to compete (perhaps directly with the Brewers) for a Wild Card berth, then (in all likelihood) in the opener of the team's series in Seattle next Monday, before making his Miller Park Brewers debut against the Red Sox the following Sunday. Those are three tough lineups and tough opponents, and the stakes are high. Meanwhile, Woodruff's status is of enormous concern, no matter what Junk is able to deliver. Without him, the Brewers are far more dependent upon not only Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta (which would be fine), but Eric Lauer and Wade Miley. They've dipped into their farm depth for starting help sooner than they would have liked. This injury, which is ostensibly unrelated to the Reynaud's Disease that sidetracked Woodruff for part of 2022, also muddies the water for his long-term outlook. It has to be harder today for the Brewers to talk themselves into a long-term commitment to the most promising extension candidate of their Big Three, even if this does turn out to be a minimum stay on the injured list. There's no good news, except to whatever extent one accepts that they really are just being abundantly cautious and now downplaying the fact that their co-ace has a barking shoulder--well, that, plus the fact that Junk is representative of an organization stocked with better high-level pitching depth than most clubs, and that the team might therefore weather a couple of short absences (or a sustained one) better than their rivals. View full article

The Brewers finished a thrilling first homestand with a 6-1 win on Easter Sunday. While superficially easy, though, that win was hard-earned, and depended on a key reliever springing a trap at a quietly pivotal moment. Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports If it's true that MLB seasons are evenly divided into games that a team will inevitably win, those that a team will inevitably lose, and those that can be either won or lost, with the third bucket making the difference, then the Brewers are off to an even more promising start than their 7-2 record implies. Early in Sunday's game, Milwaukee built a narrow lead, but in the top of the seventh inning, that lead came under threat. Peter Strzelecki had entered to face the top of the Cardinals lineup in the frame, and although he got two quick outs, he then got into a sudden and dangerous jam. A walk to Brendan Donovan and a single by Paul Goldschmidt brought Nolan Arenado to the plate with two on and two out, and since the score was just 3-1, Arenado represented the go-ahead run. In that situation, a seemingly safe victory can become a loss in the crack of a bat. Strzelecki missed wide with a first-pitch fastball, and then missed even worse with another heater--this time, right down the middle of the plate. Arenado was caught off-guard, though, and took the very hittable strike to level the count 1-1. If the moment hadn't already felt vital and the advantage fragile, that pitch made it feel very much so. To salvage the situation, Strzelecki reached a bit deeper into his bag of tricks than is typical. A 1-1 count is often the one on which a plate appearance hinges. If you want to fool a hitter, you can't afford to wait and hope to make it happen with two strikes. That 1-1 pitch has to be the goods. Strzelecki threw Arenado a changeup. Arenado swung and missed, and he missed badly. It's hard to blame him. Conventional wisdom, in the voice of every color commentator in baseball history, implores pitchers not to get beaten on their third-best pitch, and there's no question that Strzelecki's best pitches are his fastball and slider. He hardly ever throws that change to righties, in particular. If you're Arenado, you have to sit on the fastball and keep the slider in the back of your head on 1-1. The changeup can't even be in your mind. That was what Strzelecki was counting on. As much as we (rightly) talk about pitchers using their best pitch more often and about the various adjustments to pitch mix hurlers can make in a macro sense, we should talk almost as much (but actually talk hardly at all) about getting lots of value from pitches that don't grade out as well or get used nearly as often. Frequencies don't matter as much as payoffs. If a pitcher puts in enough work on a pitch to have confidence in it at a moment like that one, they can throw it five percent of the time to a given handedness of batter (or even less, in theory) and still make it a difference-maker. Strzelecki got the whiff on Arenado because he was looking hard in or soft away, and got something soft inside. After that pitch (and one more outside fastball), Arenado was set up perfectly for the slider, and Strzelecki finally threw him one. He got the strikeout he deserved, and crisis was averted. Matt Bush put three runners on base with nobody out in the Cardinals' next turn, but that didn't inspire the same degree of nail-biting, because in the meantime, the Brewers had tacked on three insurance runs. They ran the Cardinals out of town four games back in the division and with just 10 more head-to-head contests to make up the gap. The relentlessness of the lineup and the consistency of the bullpen have been deeply impressive so far, but if it weren't for Strzelecki's gambit on that pitch to Arenado, we might feel very differently this morning. As I wrote before the season began, the Brewers have a tough and crucial early schedule. They're only halfway through the 19-game gauntlet, but the returns to this point are downright dazzling. Every game that could reasonably have broken their way so far has done so, and not through sheer luck or an opponent folding, but because the team has forced the issue on the bases, or because of their resiliency when something does go wrong, or because of a reliever who was willing to go an unorthodox route when the stakes were high. If they keep this up, they'll be back in the playoffs this year. Third Bucket Record: 3-0 View full article

Last year, only the Yankees and Braves hit more home runs than did the Brewers. Already this season, despite playing half their six games in frigid conditions at Wrigley Field, Milwaukee is ninth in MLB in slugging. How do the Brewers do it? Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports It's been a brief tenure for Connor Dawson and Ozzie Timmons as the Milwaukee Brewers' hitting coaches, and it's too early to say that they'll be immune to the prevailing trend in MLB, which is toward very high turnover in that role. However, those two have done an excellent job of implementing and teaching the core principles to which the organization has cleaved for several seasons. They're finding power in unexpected places and generating more of it from the expected ones by doing some simple stuff well. A decade or two ago, it was common for teams to have instructional identities. Certain teams ardently taught a particular kind of pitch, or even pitching mechanics, and they didn't brook any dissent from players who didn't fit into their molds. One of the very welcome changes to player development over the last several years has been the end of that style of coaching. Players are now invited and encouraged to be themselves, and plans for their improvement are shaped around what both the player and the organization do well. Any organizational predilections have become guidelines, rather than rules. The Brewers' hitting instruction is a terrific example. They don't make everyone do things the same way. They do drill hard on good swing decisions, though, and especially on swing decisions that favor a hitter's power. Even before Dawson and Timmons arrived, but especially since the start of 2022, it's possible to watch a Brewers game and see how their hitters dismiss certain areas of the strike zone when the count, situation, or opponent dictates it, giving them a greater chance of taking a called strike but also a greater chance of hammering a mistake pitch if a pitcher throws one. Tightening players' zones and reducing chases has been a strength for Milwaukee going back at least half a decade. That can make the team a great landing place for players with good bat-to-ball skills, including some power, but with confused or underdeveloped approaches. The number and caliber of players who have come through Milwaukee recently and seen their power output and overall value rise are impressive, and they're a huge part of why this team has had a great run of contention. Milwaukee is also very good at a tidbit of mechanical instruction that helps hitters generate more power, though, and that deserves a little bit longer a look. Be it Willy Adames, Luis Urías, Mike Brosseau, or Owen Miller, guys tend to make a specific change when they come to Milwaukee: they get more upright in the batter's box. The clearest way to see this, though, is by looking at one of the team's internal projects, Tyrone Taylor. Here's a video of a hit Taylor collected in May 2021: c0e1278d-814d-47d5-8709-202a46331f9c.mp4 And here's one from the middle of last season: 43c24544-d3f5-4f0c-b325-47a672aa8c5f.mp4 Note the change in his setup. In the video from 2022, Taylor has his back much more straight at the plate. He's almost leaning backward. That sets him up to a couple of things differently than he did in the past. As he lifts his leg to begin his stride, he's almost forced to lean forward, which engages his core muscles and starts a sequence of movements that can generate a steeper bat path without losing bat speed. It's subtle, but that first forward movement and clenching of the big muscles throughout the torso can be key to creating power. As it happens, this setup change didn't work for Taylor in the long run, and he found his September success last year after changing things up. That's a story for another time, but it's a good reminder that Dawson and TImmons aren't being dogmatic. They're just trying things they know will work for most hitters, on most hitters. Seeing the way Taylor leans back above, you probably flash on Urías's distinctive lean in the box. It's born of the same cues. Miller has started to do a smaller version of the same thing already this year. That tilt in one plane of movement is one thing the staff is teaching well, and it's contributing to the power the team is generating. The other thing is harder to see from the predominant modern camera angles, but equally important: the Brewers are keeping their upper half back well as they gain ground on the pitcher with their legs, creating the torque and the lift that power requires. Take another look at Joey Wiemer's first hit in the majors: eda3c0e6-95e6-49d8-b1cd-17f3793f6dab.mp4 Wiemer takes a big stride. He closes the gap between himself and the pitcher and creates a lot of energy flowing into the path of the pitch. With his upper half, though, he stays back a moment, letting his hips bear much of the weight transfer and leaning slightly back to steepen the angle of his bat path, without dropping his back shoulder or hands and creating a swoop or slowdown in his swing. Interestingly, William Contreras has a new mechanical quirk this spring. Just before truly starting his swing, he lifts and steps away from home plate with his back foot, going from a neutral to a closed stance even as the pitcher is making his delivery. That's partially just about seeing the ball well, while still creating the torque and lift with which a closed stance can help, but it's also about rhythm. As Dawson and Timmons try to fix Contreras's launch-angle problem, they're having him try this as a way to both move his contact point further in front of his center of gravity and get his swing started sooner. Nolan Arenado famously taps his back foot as a way of starting the rocking motion that is a powerful swing. He comes forward, goes back, and then explodes forward again, and the back-foot tap lessens the risk that he gets "stuck" on his back side and is too slow in making that weight transfer. There's a little bit of that thought in Contreras's new move, too. The Brewers aren't likely to finish third in MLB in home runs again. They've already proved, though, that they can get more power from many players than other teams might, simply by offering unorthodox moves and concepts to players who need new ways to visualize the essentials of a power approach and swing. So far, it's working. View full article

Wednesday afternoon’s game against the Mets was the second of this year that could have gone either way for the Milwaukee Brewers. It was a test of their resiliency and depth, and they passed it. Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports Going into the game, you wouldn’t have been inclined to call it a Bucket Three game. Corbin Burnes was going for the Crew, against fifth starter David Peterson of the Mets. That seems like such a mismatch that it should be an easy win for Milwaukee. As we know, though, that isn’t how baseball really works. Fifth Brewers starter Wade Miley got the win over future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer on Tuesday night. Moreover, the Mets’ lineup can be lethal. Still, when Joey Wiemer cracked his go-ahead three-run home run in the bottom of the second, it felt like a killing blow. Burnes was staked to a healthy lead, and a comeback from the Mets on getaway day seemed unlikely. The unlikely occurred, immediately. A Pete Alonso home run in the third tied it, and another in the fifth gave the Mets a 6-4 lead, sending Burnes to the showers with a season ERA of 9.64. That’s when this became a third-bucket game. When your ace is staked to an early lead, then gives it back and is chased after 13 outs, it’s a bitter and avoidable loss, if you lose. If you win, though, it’s especially sweet, and a chance to generate momentum by increasing the collective confidence of the club. Remember the premise of this series: Every team will win 54 games, and every team will lose 54. It’s what you do with the other 54 that matters. Winning games like this one, which falls squirrely into the third 54 and has extra emotion attached to it, can start to forge a truly special team. It made a huge difference that the team wasted no time in effecting its comeback. Christian Yelich’s leadoff walk is easy to overlook, because Peterson missed his spots badly on three of the pitches that led thereto, but Yelich was also patient on the two he threw just off the outside corner, even after one of them was called a strike. That walk pushed Peterson out of the game, and there was a subtle shift back toward the Brewers. Coming into a dirty inning, Drew Smith did a good job using the pitch clock to hold Yelich at bay as a would-be base thief, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. Sticking strictly to high fastballs, he did get William Contreras to fly out by slightly getting under the ball, but he hit it hard. So did Luke Voit, and his was on a line enough that Yelich scooted around to third. Brian Anderson didn’t make himself the hero this time, but his patience did help the team out a bit. He saw six pitches and worked a full count, giving Jesse Winker a long look at Smith from the on-deck circle. Winker fell behind 1-2, though, as Smith floated in a first-pitch changeup and got a foul ball from Winker on an outside fastball. On the fourth pitch, another changeup that ran off the plate away, Voit stole second, trying to draw a throw and get Yelich home with the fifth run. The Mets didn’t throw through, electing to worry about Winker instead. That seemed a strange choice. If Omar Narvaez had thrown through, Voit would have been out. Sure, Yelich might have scored first, but New York would have held the lead, and they’d have been just 12 outs from a win. That’s still a long journey, but as long as you have the lead, that’s the path the game is on. Instead, trying to keep the lead at two runs, Narvaez cost New York dearly. He failed to account for the possibility of what happened four pitches later: a double. Winker fought off a slider in the zone from Smith, having watched him use the same pitch to lock up Anderson for the previous strikeout. He laid off one more high fastball, and fouled off one that was too close to take, and then he got another changeup, left up over the plate, and crushed it into the gap in right-center field. If Voit is still on first base when Winker hits that ball, he might not score. It was a 3-2 count, so he would have been off with the pitch, giving him a chance, but Starling Marte also has a terrific arm, and he reached the ball quickly. Once Voit elected to try for the steal of a run, the Mets should have thrown through to take the out, and let the question of whether Yelich could get home before Francisco Lindor ran down Voit resolve itself as it might. That was the pivotal sequence of the game. The team aspect of it, the immediate response to adversity, and the fact that Milwaukee’s bullpen is better than New York’s made the game feel eminently winnable as soon as Voit crossed home. Indeed, the team’s top four relievers combined to get 14 outs and allowed just one baserunner, and then Garrett Mitchell stepped up in the bottom of the ninth and added to both his own legend and the good feelings around the whole young core of which he’s a part. The Brewers have had a near-magical start to 2023. This is their second notable comeback win, and they’re making Miller Park a very exciting atmosphere. Presumably, the park will be packed this weekend as they face the Cardinals, and another series win would put the team into the driver’s seat for the division title, even if the drive ahead remains unfathomably long. For now, they can savor a crucial and wonderful win. Third-Bucket Record: 2-0 View full article

It’s far too early to draw conclusions about its sustainability or significance, but Brian Anderson has had a strong start to what he hopes is a second act of his career. The Brewers’ new third baseman and right fielder is finally healthy, and a spring training full of experiments has yielded a swing and approach with which he can be more dangerous. Image courtesy of © MARK HOFFMAN/MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL / USA TODAY NETWORK Last season, a bulging disc in his back kept Brian Anderson from being what he’s still capable of being. In 2021, it was a shoulder injury that shelved Anderson, and that flared up again at the end of the year. In 2020, his raw numbers looked good, but he was fighting for every hit, and his skills were slipping, all after a broken hand derailed his 2019. Understandably, the Marlins grew impatient after three rough campaigns, and no trade market developed for him ahead of the non-tender deadline. Still, he knew what he could do. Injuries aren’t excuses for poor performance, of course. They can be real reasons for that kind of struggle, or not, but in either event, no one is giving out dispensations for players who bravely played through something and weren’t able to perform at their best during that span. Every year, dozens of players play through something that might have forced another player to the injured list, and sometimes, they perform as well as ever. More often, they’re diminished by their malady, but they prefer playing at less than their best to the unease and mental battle of not being out there at all. This is a production business. Anderson can’t expect anyone to believe that just because he’s now healthy, he’s going to hit well all season. Still, being healthy after a significant or lingering injury can feel extraordinarily freeing for a player. It’s not just an opportunity to execute one’s best swing or throwing mechanics, or to prove that what looked like an occasional lack of hustle in a previous year was really sensible management of a real problem. It’s also a license to experiment. When a player is hurt and trying to survive that way at the MLB level, it’s everything they can do to do their usual thing. Everything shrinks. One takes fewer chances with adjustments to their bat path or their timing. It’s harder to conceive of, let alone perform, modifications that might be necessary. This spring, Anderson tweaked his stance, his pre-swing setup, and his stride pattern multiple times, working with Brewers instructors to fine-tune what went without that kind of delicate calibration last year. He also tried out three or four different bat changes, including different shapes and sizes of knob, in search of what felt best. He was doing the kind of work that hitters long to do each spring, but that some don’t feel able to do even then, and that gets even harder to do as nicks and scrapes add up over the grind of the season. Whether this can last is unknowable. We can only say with confidence that it's been made possible by the freedom Anderson has felt and the adaptability he has shown since arriving in Maryvale in February, but those things make a pretty good start on being a productive big-league hitter. View full article

Every game counts the same in the standings, but not all games could honestly have gone either way. In Saturday’s taut pitchers’ duel, the Brewers got a win in one that certainly fell into that category. Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports Baseball people say that every team will win 54 games each year, and every team will lose 54. It’s what a club does with its other 54 games that matters. That’s not just fortune-cookie wisdom; it’s actionable. We can, with a bit of time and perspective, try to put a finger on the games that fall into that third bucket of 54 contests. If a game doesn’t go in that bucket–if its outcome was almost predetermined, based on something like relative travel schedules or pitching matchups or the untameable breaks of the game–then it’s not worth losing any sleep over it, in either direction. If a game does belong to that third bucket, though, then it’s a truly important result, even if each one still only shifts the team’s fortunes over the course of the season by about two percent. In those cases, it makes sense to take more careful stock of what happened, and to allow the game to linger with us a bit longer. The Brewers’ loss on Opening Day was a second-bucket game. That one was ticketed to become a loss from the get-go. It was a festive Wrigley Field. The Cubs made three early, tough defensive plays to scupper Milwaukee’s offensive plans, and took advantage of two Brewers mistakes in the bottom of the third. Ron Kulpa’s strike zone was consistent, but its bulge low and away to right-handed batters favored Marcus Stroman’s style more than Corbin Burnes’s. That game goes in Bucket Two. Saturday, though, was different. By the sixth inning, it was clear that that game belonged to the third bucket, and not only because of the scoreless tie. The game ebbed and flowed. Milwaukee put two runners on base in the first inning, but Justin Steele utterly thwarted them thereafter. Dansby Swanson cracked a leadoff double in the bottom of the fourth inning, but Brandon Woodruff stopped that rally in its tracks. When Ian Happ finally put a crack in the eggshell holding the game in stasis, it was a major blow, but it didn’t have the air of finality. The endgame plan Craig Counsell and the staff executed after that was brilliant. Whereas Woodruff was very fastball-forward, the bullpen–Peter Strzelecki, Matt Bush, and Devin Williams–favored their offspeed stuff. At the plate, Counsell waited to see how David Ross would deploy his bullpen, and he seized the advantage the Cubs allowed him by way of not having a lefty in their bullpen, pinch-hitting both Garrett Mitchell and Jesse Winker at opportune moments. Sure, the rest is a bit about luck. Winker’s single could as easily have found the glove of Nico Hoerner at second base as it made its way to the outfield grass. William Contreras’s game-winning hit probably should have been a harmless flyout. When Devin Williams took a line drive off his biceps, it could have hit his elbow instead. Even once that calamity was averted, the ninth inning could have gotten away from the Crew. Cody Bellinger was due to bat with two runners on base and nobody out, and he hit the ball hard, but it found a glove and turned into a double play. That, though, is how these Bucket Three games work. A team earns its good luck by keeping close games close, and by making aggressive strategic choices like pinch-hitting or starting a runner. Those types of games are also the ones where superior talent or depth can just win out through a kind of miniature attrition. Sometimes, a game is a third-bucket game for one team, but not for the other. On Saturday, though, the Brewers and Cubs both ended up in a third-bucket battle, not least because the game was between them–two divisional rivals, now limited to 13 encounters over the long season. The Brewers survived it. In some sense, now, the Brewers are 1-0, not 1-1, because their loss was one of those that just happens, but their win was the kind of game that can easily become a loss. It was a good, needed win, and now the Brewers can try to take the series Sunday. View full article

The best bait catches the biggest fish.

This is half-right, but the more important half, so thank you! It’s actually MLB Pipeline, ESPN, and BA, and that’s important, because Wiemer did make Pipeline’s list. But whereas I thought he was ON ESPN’s list, I see now that he was merely on their honorable mention or just-missed list. (It’s VERY aggravating that two of these lists are behind paywalls, given that they have a tangible effect on the game now. But whatever.) I’ll update the piece. Thanks again!

In a bittersweet development for Brewers fans, Joey Wiemer will join the parent club and make his debut this weekend at Wrigley Field. That’s the sweet part; the bitterness lies in the reason for that promotion. Luis Urías is headed to the injured list with a hamstring injury, suffered in the ninth inning Thursday. Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports There are more important players to the 2023 Brewers than Luis Urías, but not many of them. The young infielder showed really good all-around skills over the last two seasons, and grabbed an international spotlight with his big moments in the World Baseball Classic last month. He entered this season with a chance to take another step forward and become something close to a star-caliber infielder. His versatility, moving back and forth between second and third base and providing sound defense at each, will be missed, even if the team can nominally replace it with the likes of Mike Brosseau, Owen Miller, and Brian Anderson. We can hope, for now, that the team is just being very careful with this injury, the severity of which was not clear when Urías first came up lame trying to beat out a ground ball Thursday afternoon. Although the Brewers will play indoors or in good weather for a long stretch after this weekend, it’s not the time of year to risk further injury. Besides, they have excellent depth, as calling up Joey Wiemer reminds us. That makes it easier to make a call like this one. Still, it’s a bummer. Wiemer’s arrival, though, is a lot of fun. Presumably, Wiemer will become the everyday right fielder while Urías is sidelined, with Anderson manning third base. Against lefties, though, he could just as easily be in center, with Anderson in right and Brosseau at third. In fact, with Miller, Anderson, Brosseau, Wiemer, and Luke Voit, Craig Counsell now has the ability to hide any or all of his left-handed batters from southpaws if he sees fit. Either way, Wiemer makes the team better than Abraham Toro would have, because Toro’s skill set is redundant on a team that already has all that infield versatility. The outfield defense should be better, which could come into play right away Saturday. It’s going to be under 40 degrees at Wrigley Field come game time, with the wind howling in from the north. Wiemer will have a stern first test, then, but he has the tools to be a very good right fielder. At the plate, Wiemer is very different from Urías, and the sense of extra length and competence Urías lent to the lineup is gone for as long as he is. In a certain way, though, Wiemer might make the Brewers more dangerous. His power could cut even the gale in Chicago on a cold day. His speed makes him a threat whenever he reaches base. In two pro seasons, he has 61 steals in 69 attempts. His idiosyncratic setup and swing make a lot of people doubt that he’ll hit in the majors. Last season, he had a strikeout rate of 30 percent with Double-A Biloxi, which is usually a sign of major trouble ahead. In a fairly substantial sample after being promoted to Triple-A Nashville, though, he cut that all the way down to 20 percent. Given Wiemer’s tools, that’s the difference between being a second-division starter and being an All-Star. It’s quite a contrast from Urías’s reliability, but Wiemer’s talent is tantalizing, and we’re getting an early opportunity to find out how it will translate to the toughest competition on Earth. Editor's Note: A previous version of this piece indicated that the Brewers missed out on being eligible to gain an extra draft pick through the new Collective Bargaining Agreement's incentives to stem service-time manipulation, because they didn't carry Wiemer on the Opening Day roster. As was pointed out in the comments, Wiemer only made one of the three top prospect lists used for that incentive program, and would have needed to make two, so the Brewers could never have gotten that pick, anyway. We apologize for the confusion, and we urge MLB and the MLBPA to make the relevant lists available outside of subscription paywalls so that public analysis doesn't depend on those particular subscriptions in the future. View full article