With surprises both good and bad, the Brewers are on their way to October
By Jordan Shusterman
FOX Sports MLB Writer
It’s Aug. 19, and the Milwaukee Brewers are really stinkin’ good.
For a team that's been to the playoffs three straight years, that's not really a shock. And in some respects, the formula in Milwaukee looks fairly similar to that of the recent postseason Brewers teams.
In 2021, however, GM David Stearns and perennial NL Manager of the Year contender Craig Counsell have introduced some new ingredients to their recipe for winning baseball games.
As the Brewers sit with a comfy 9.5-game lead in the NL Central – the second-largest cushion among all division leaders, behind only that of the White Sox – it’s time we take a closer look at what got them here and how good we should feel about them heading down the stretch.
You probably know by now that Milwaukee has three excellent starters in Corbin Burnes (2.13 ERA), Brandon Woodruff (2.18 ERA) and Freddy Peralta (2.45 ERA). But this isn’t just a good rotation; this is a potentially historic group.
The most recent team to have three qualified starters with ERAs under 2.50 was the 1985 Dodgers with Orel Hershiser (2.03 ERA), Bob Welch (2.31) and Fernando Valenzuela (2.45). Only four other teams in the integration era did it before the ‘85 Dodgers, and two of those were in 1968, The Year Of The Pitcher.
Burnes, in particular, could be on the cusp of something really special. With Jacob deGrom possibly out for the season, Burnes might be the NL Cy Young favorite, depending on whether voters really value innings, in which case Walker Buehler and Zack Wheeler might have an edge.
In terms of pure dominance, though, it has been deGrom and Burnes in their own tier. Here’s really all you need to know:
Lowest FIP by a qualified starting pitcher since 1947:
- 1999 Pedro Martinez: 1.39
- 2021 Corbin Burnes: 1.59
- 1968 Bob Gibson: 1.77
FIP stands for Fielding Independent Pitching, and it measures a pitcher's effectiveness at preventing homers, walks and HBPs, and causing strikeouts. What it means is that Burnes is unbelievable. (deGrom has an other-worldly 1.24 FIP, but he's been out with a forearm injury since July 7 and hasn't thrown enough innings.)
Tuesday’s 2-0 shutout in St. Louis (started by Burnes) was Milwaukee’s 15th of the season, the most in MLB. As a whole, the Brewers' pitching staff ranks near the top in every category: second in ERA, third in WHIP, second in FIP, third in K%, second in BAA, second in HR/9 and second in fWAR. (If you’re wondering which team is ahead of them in all of those categories: It’s the Dodgers. Of course it’s the Dodgers.)
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Beyond that tremendous Milwaukee trio, Eric Lauer, Brett Anderson and Adrian Houser have all been above-average starters, albeit with far less sexy stuff. They’re still preventing runs, though, and believe it or not, it isn't every pitcher’s job to end up on @PitchingNinja.
As for the bullpen, I don’t need to tell you how good Josh Hader and Devin Williams are, but it’s the relievers behind them who make this such a quality unit. Veterans Brad Boxberger and Hunter Strickland have looked great. Brent Suter is as funky and delightful on the field as he is off of it — and that is to say, extremely funky and delightful.
Oh, and the Brewers have a 27-year-old rookie named Jake Cousins, whom they signed out of Independent ball in 2019. He has yet to allow an earned run THROUGH THE FIRST 18 INNINGS OF HIS BIG-LEAGUE CAREER! Sure!
But that’s what great teams do. They get above-average production from the most unlikely of sources. Did I mention that Rowdy Tellez has a .990 OPS with the Brewers?
OK, that’s a real fact that you should not overlook, but that’s also in only 95 plate appearances. And as much as I would love to watch Tellez hit in every spot in the lineup, the rules don’t allow that.
So who else is doing damage for this team? After a dreadful 2020, catcher Omar Narváez has bounced back in a huge way and made his first All-Star Game. Even more crucially, he has managed to transform from one of the worst pitch framers in baseball to one of the best. Kolten Wong has been exactly what the Brewers hoped for when they signed him as a free agent. He's flirting with a career-high BA and might win his third Gold Glove at second base.
The Brewers traded for another All-Star in infielder Eduardo Escobar at the deadline, and he has been excellent. Right fielder Avisaíl Garcia continues to be one of the most underrated players in baseball, and Jace Peterson and Tyrone Taylor have formed a surprisingly formidable bench unit.
The real star of the show, however, has been shortstop Willy Adames, who has thrust himself into the NL MVP conversation, despite playing the first two months of the season in the American League for Tampa Bay. When the Brewers traded for Adames back in May, they were four games back of the Cardinals and had roughly equal odds to make the postseason.
Since then, Milwaukee has gone 52-24 in games in which Adames has played, surging to one of the best records in baseball and becoming a near-lock to appear in October for the fourth season in a row.
Where did this come from? Remember how horrible Adames looked at the plate last October, when he hit .132 during the Rays’ run to the World Series? Adames always had extreme home-road splits with Tampa Bay, which reportedly had to do with his ability (or inability, rather) to literally see the ball at Tropicana Field due to the poor lighting compared to at other parks.
First of all: That’s hilarious and ridiculous. But hey, the numbers bear it out. Now freed from the dimly lit Trop and hitting in a much brighter (??) dome in Milwaukee, Adames is suddenly a legitimate force at the plate. Another home run Wednesday in St. Louis brought his Brewers line to (.300/.385/.558), to go with his traditionally stellar defense at shortstop.
He's a sudden superstar. Not to mention, he turns just 26 next month. And he’s one of the most charismatic and wonderful people in the game. And the Brewers will have him through the 2024 season.
Decent trade, I’d say!
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But hold on: Aren't I forgetting someone?
If you had been asleep for the past four months and woke up to see the Brewers running away with the NL Central, you would assume that Christian Yelich — the guy they signed to a nine-year, $215 million extension in March 2020 — had returned to his MVP form of 2018 and 2019.
Not quite.
Yelich, who has played in only 78 games this season due to a nagging back injury and a stint on the COVID IL, currently sports a mediocre .734 OPS. Last season, he was still hitting the ball hard as consistently as anyone in baseball, but some exceptionally poor BABIP luck depressed his overall numbers.
This season, the underlying batted ball data isn’t quite as promising, and the surface stats continue to underwhelm. Yelich is still being pitched like he’s the MVP — only Juan Soto has walked at a higher rate since the start of the 2020 season — but the power is nowhere to be found, with just six home runs on the season and the lowest SLG% of his career by far.
Perhaps the back injury has contributed significantly to this power outage, but whatever the reason, Yelich's presence in the lineup doesn’t carry the weight it did back in 2019.
That brings us to the things that have actually gone wrong for the Brew Crew. There was a lot of excitement coming into the season about pairing Jackie Bradley Jr. with Lorenzo Cain to create a dynamic center-field platoon with super-mega-elite defense and solid production at the plate. The defense has indeed been stellar, but the offense has fallen off a cliff. Cain’s bat has continued to decline, and JBJ entered play Thursday with a paltry .545 OPS, 193rd out of 193 hitters with at least 300 plate appearances in 2021.
Another severe disappointment — particularly for me, one of his biggest believers — has been the immense struggles of Keston Hiura. Milwaukee’s first-round pick in 2017, Hiura flew through the minors and burst onto the scene in 2019, with 44 extra-base hits in 84 games. I thought he was about to challenge for batting titles and start making regular trips to the All-Star Game.
Instead, he led MLB in strikeouts in 2020 and has spent 2021 either injured or bouncing back to Triple-A Nashville due to poor performance with the big-league club. He’s still just 25 years old, so I’m not giving up on Hiura just yet, but it’s difficult to imagine him contributing significantly this season.
Glass half-full: These guys have struggled, and the team is still in first place. Yay!
Glass half-empty: The Brewers better hope everything else keeps going well so they don’t have to rely on their struggling players turning things around by the end of the season.
Look, even the best teams in baseball have parts of their rosters go sideways unexpectedly. The Brewers are not a perfect baseball team, but I’m tremendously impressed by what they’ve built and will certainly not be surprised if they go on a Rays-esque run to the Fall Classic.
And this time around, I highly doubt Adames will hit .132.
Jordan Shusterman is half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball analyst for FOX Sports. He lives in D.C. but is a huge Seattle Mariners fan and loves watching the KBO, which means he doesn't get a lot of sleep. You can follow him on Twitter @j_shusterman_.