Season’s Over [Therapy Thread]

[FidoMcCokefiend]

Looking at the season again, they absolutely dominated the Cubs and Pirates in every way, shape, and form. Against everyone else, it was a slightly above average team with very very good pitching that covered for an absolutely horrible offense. Replace pitching with Aaron Rodgers and horrible offense with horrible defense and special teams and it's basically the Packers of 2012 (one could argue many years) that easily wins the NFC North but then got waxed come the playoffs.

 

Run differential of +108 in 38 games vs Cubs/Pirates; +7 in other 124.

They averaged 6.2 runs a game vs Cubs/Pirates. 4.0 against everyone else.

[Fear The Chorizo]

Knowing CC, he would have used the tried and true formula of Williams in the 8th, Hader in the 9th.

 

Nothing that happened all season long tells me anything differently.

 

I mean, he has done things before and pitched Hader out of the 9th inning. Twice in the 2018 NLCS he pitched three innings. The first of which didn't include either the 8th or 9th. Postseason baseball is different. Counsell couldn't stop toying with making sure he used all three catchers. Not sure he does stuff like that in the regular season. Does Peralta get pulled dominating through 4 innings in the regular season? Does Woodruff pitch on two days rest in the middle of a game? None of that happened all season till then

 

In 2018 Hader was routinely used as a multi inning reliever before the 8th inning - regular and postseason - most of Hader's appearances that year were multi-inning, several covering 3 innings. That hasn't been the case since then, particularly this season. That year also had a bullpen with prime Knebel as its closer, two other quality veteran relievers with closer experience (Soria & Jeffress), and the current Brewers' #1-3 starters in it come postseason (Peralta, Woodruff, Burnes). This year's team leaned heavy on starting pitching quality and depth (6 starters most of the year to try and get deeper into games), and then finishing the last 2-3 innings off with a combination of the rest of the pen getting to the 8th + Williams/Hader for the last 6 outs. The 2018 squad was designed to get games to the bullpen by inning 4-5 in the postseason because they had crazy depth of arms that could cover multiple innings and no fear of running out of arms if things reached extras.

 

Yes postseason baseball is different and at times unorthodox - but IMO the decisions to pull Peralta after 4 shutout innings in a scoreless game 3 and bring Hader into the 8th with likely no option of him pitching the 9th in game 4 were impacted by not having Williams to lean on for key outs late in a tight game. Not saying Williams is the difference between winning and losing those games, but it definitely contributed to the bullpen being much more of a firedrill trying to cover a full 9 inning game than it would've been otherwise. I question both moves to pull starters out early in Games 3 and 4 by CC - I'd have much rather Lauer faced Arcia in the 4th inning in that spot instead of bringing in Strickland to face a lefty. CC had to know that Rosario was going to be hitting once Strickland was brought in. To me, that's pushing the game too soon into the bullpen for a pitching staff whose strength is its starting pitching. Ride or die with what brought you here, and that certainly didn't happen.

[BruisedCrew]

Not sure we ever got to see the ill effects of losing Devin Williams.

 

Game 1 - We won

Game 2 - Scored zero runs

Game 3 - Scored zero runs

Game 4 - Josh Hader blew it

 

So where did not having Williams really hurt us? I just don't really see a vastly different result in Game 4 having Williams.

 

I also don't get the young pitching really hurting us. Seemed like it did pretty darn well.

 

 

If we had Williams, pretty good chance he pitches the 8th instead of Hader.

 

Would Williams have fared better than Hader? We'll never know.

 

Not to mention wondering how many innings Gustave would have had to pitch before the Brewers scored another run.

 

There are a number of little things that we could second guess about, such as removing Peralta in Game 3, playing Yelich and batting him third in some games, playing Urias or Escobar, waiting until the lead was gone in Game 4 before bringing in Woodward, etc, etc.

 

But, all of that pales in comparison to the fact that they scored 6 runs in 4 games, and the reality that shuffling the order around or playing Taylor or Peterson probably wouldn’t have changed that.

 

Consider this frightening thought. If Tellez hadn’t been able to come back from his knee injury, the Brewers might have been swept in 3 games without scoring a run.

 

As disappointing as this series was, at least winning the first game made attending game 2 more exciting. But, after Adames’ catch on the foul pop in the first inning of Game 2, there was very little excitement in that game or for the rest of the series.

 

The quick and humiliating exit from the playoffs, coming on the heels of the uninspiring play that delayed the division clinching until the last game of the last homestand, will create a lasting final impression that places the 2021 team at the bottom of my list of favorite Brewers division winners. Those teams at least won a series that created excitement of their own and kept the anticipation going.

 

Getting knocked out of the playoffs is always disappointing, both because it ends the hope of winning the World Series and marks the end of an activity that has been a daily source of entertainment for over 6 months. For me, football and basketball do not fill that void if only because the games are less frequent.

 

I’m also finding that today I don’t have the same “wait until next year” attitude that I had in 1982, 2011, and 2018. The weaknesses of this team that were laid so bare in the final weeks of the season are going to be difficult to fix, even if the pitching can repeat this year’s performance, which is far from guaranteed.

[jonescm128]

Anyone blaming anything else but the offense in this series is just reaching for excuses

 

Wong: 1-15 (.067/.176/.067)

Adames: 5-17 (.294/.294/.353)

Yelich: 3-15 (.200/.294/.200)

Garcia: 2-15 (.133/.188/.133)

 

Their collective stat lines:

 

11-62, 3 BB, 30 Ks, 1 XBH for a slash line of .177/.239/.179

 

Absolutely no way you can win when your top 4 hitters are doing that.

[brewers888]

Anyone blaming anything else but the offense in this series is just reaching for excuses

 

Wong: 1-15 (.067/.176/.067)

Adames: 5-17 (.294/.294/.353)

Yelich: 3-15 (.200/.294/.200)

Garcia: 2-15 (.133/.188/.133)

 

Their collective stat lines:

 

11-62, 3 BB, 30 Ks, 1 XBH for a slash line of .177/.239/.179

 

Absolutely no way you can win when your top 4 hitters are doing that.

 

Our offense was not nearly good enough. Take a look at every other postseason teams lineup and you will see that the Brewers easily had the worst of them all.

[jonescm128]

Anyone blaming anything else but the offense in this series is just reaching for excuses

 

Wong: 1-15 (.067/.176/.067)

Adames: 5-17 (.294/.294/.353)

Yelich: 3-15 (.200/.294/.200)

Garcia: 2-15 (.133/.188/.133)

 

Their collective stat lines:

 

11-62, 3 BB, 30 Ks, 1 XBH for a slash line of .177/.239/.179

 

Absolutely no way you can win when your top 4 hitters are doing that.

 

Our offense was not nearly good enough. Take a look at every other postseason teams lineup and you will see that the Brewers easily had the worst of them all.

 

Exactly. This team had WS caliber pitching but it was always going to be if the offense could produce, and they could not. Over the course of a 162 game season you can hide some flaws when you have dominant pitching but in a playoff series where pitching is great, you need impact bats. Anyone trying to pin their exit on anything else is just being naïve.

[Fear The Chorizo]

Anyone blaming anything else but the offense in this series is just reaching for excuses

 

Wong: 1-15 (.067/.176/.067)

Adames: 5-17 (.294/.294/.353)

Yelich: 3-15 (.200/.294/.200)

Garcia: 2-15 (.133/.188/.133)

 

Their collective stat lines:

 

11-62, 3 BB, 30 Ks, 1 XBH for a slash line of .177/.239/.179

 

Absolutely no way you can win when your top 4 hitters are doing that.

 

Again, nobody is saying pitching is most to blame for losing the series....but the lack of depth in the pen was exposed across just 4 playoff games because it got leaned on too heavily, and that was a factor in two of the Brewers' 3 losses. Of course the offense is the primary issue, but the thinned pen without Williams and some of the in-game decisions by CC to put the game on the bullpen earlier than he needed to also have to be looked at.

 

The Braves did most of their offensive damage that led to runs being scored against the Brewers' bullpen and not their starting pitchers. The Brewers did nothing against the Braves' pen with the exception of Tellez's 2-run shot yesterday against Ynoa - a guy who was a starter in the regular season.

 

The Braves' team OPS was 0.697 for the series - the Brewers was 0.527 - main difference between the two teams was what the Braves got from their offensive bench in key spots (Pearls, Rosario yesterday) compared to the Brewers getting absolutely nothing despite tons of pinch hit opportunities. The damage done by those Brave bench at bats was against the Brewers' bullpen.

 

With the exception of Pearls hitting 2 bombs off the bench, the Braves regular lineup didn't fare much better than the Brewers - particularly against the Brewers' starters - in the series.

[Simba2020]

They definitely need to find offense somewhere, somehow. Not going to be easy by any stretch. Might have to make the painful decision to trade Woodruff or Hader but something has to be done. You can't count on Yelich or Hiura to simply rebound. Tried that this year and it went from bad to worse. It could happen but you have to take that as a bonus.

 

Outside of a dominating series against the Indians, you take away the Pirates, Cubs and Rockies, and the team hit .218 with an OBP under .300. You aren't going to face the Pirates and the Cubs in the playoffs so the offense is going to have to improve to have any chance to advance.

[BruisedCrew]

Looking at the season again, they absolutely dominated the Cubs and Pirates in every way, shape, and form. Against everyone else, it was a slightly above average team with very very good pitching that covered for an absolutely horrible offense. Replace pitching with Aaron Rodgers and horrible offense with horrible defense and special teams and it's basically the Packers of 2012 (one could argue many years) that easily wins the NFC North but then got waxed come the playoffs.

 

Run differential of +108 in 38 games vs Cubs/Pirates; +7 in other 124.

They averaged 6.2 runs a game vs Cubs/Pirates. 4.0 against everyone else.

 

You could throw the games against the Rockies, DBacks, and Nats into this too.

 

Pounding on bad teams and holding your own against good ones is a great way to win a division. The Brewers did a great job of that.

 

But, in the playoffs you have to be able to win against the best pitchers on the best teams. There were warning signs that the Brewers might have trouble with that. For one, they were not good at scoring early in games, and often relied on late rallies against weak bullpens to break open low scoring games. Those opportunities aren’t there in playoff games.

 

Another clue that the Brewers offense was a big step below that of the other playoff teams lies in the run differentials. As good as the Brewers pitching was, they were still just third in runs allowed per game, behind the Dodgers and Giants and just ahead of the Braves. In runs scored they were 6th, with the Dodgers, Giants and Braves 1,2,3. The net result was the Brewers run differential of +115 being significantly behind the Dodgers and Giants at +269 and +210 and even the Braves (who were coming on strong after the ASB) at +134.

 

The Brewers loss to the Braves was hardly inevitable, but it was foreseeable. The Brewers pitching (especially at full strength) may have been built for October, but the offense was not. With the benefit of hindsight the Brewers winning the World Series would have been a pretty big upset.

[AKCheesehead]

Anyone blaming anything else but the offense in this series is just reaching for excuses

 

Wong: 1-15 (.067/.176/.067)

Adames: 5-17 (.294/.294/.353)

Yelich: 3-15 (.200/.294/.200)

Garcia: 2-15 (.133/.188/.133)

 

Their collective stat lines:

 

11-62, 3 BB, 30 Ks, 1 XBH for a slash line of .177/.239/.179

 

Absolutely no way you can win when your top 4 hitters are doing that.

 

Our offense was not nearly good enough. Take a look at every other postseason teams lineup and you will see that the Brewers easily had the worst of them all.

 

I don't disagree with either of you on these points, but I'll just add: Atlanta obviously deserves credit too. They pitched really well for the whole series. Their defense made some terrific plays to rob the Brewers of some hits, a number of which were with RISP. There's no telling how much better one of the other teams would have done against Atlanta in that particular series the way they pitched and played the field.

[gypcasino]

[sarcasm]Looking forward to next year’s 40th anniversary festivities celebrating that time we went to the World Series.[/sarcasm]

[adambr2]

[sarcasm]Looking forward to next year’s 40th anniversary festivities celebrating that time we went to the World Series.[/sarcasm]

 

Are they really doing that? I hope not. It's time to let 1982 go.

[mtrebs]

[sarcasm]Looking forward to next year’s 40th anniversary festivities celebrating that time we went to the World Series.[/sarcasm]

 

Are they really doing that? I hope not. It's time to let 1982 go.

 

I would be very surprised if they didn’t have at least a weekend (or maybe a series against St. Louis) to celebrate this. They’ll continue to celebrate it until they meet or beat losing the World Series.

[TURBO]

[sarcasm]Looking forward to next year’s 40th anniversary festivities celebrating that time we went to the World Series.[/sarcasm]

 

Are they really doing that? I hope not. It's time to let 1982 go.

 

 

Of course they are, and there will probably be another 10 bobbleheads as well..

[mtrebs]

They lost this series in game 3 when Counsell took one of the top pitchers in baseball out after 4 shutout innings because he was so desperate to score a run or two in the middle innings. While it would have been nice, even a run or two there doesn't guarantee anything with their depleted bullpen. Even if Peralta allowed a run or two in the 5th and 6th and they lost game 3, saving arms in the pen would have accomplished something. With Lauer scheduled to go the next day, they needed Peralta to go at least 6 and have the bullpen fully functional for a possible elimination game. Ashby was simply not ready for the role Counsell put him in. Whether Suter could have done better is debatable but not having him AND Williams available was too much for the rest of the pen and for Counsell to play the short start strategy.

 

They got shut out in game 3. Cannot win without runs no matter how well the pitcher pitches, so really while Counsell decided to abandon his strength in that game (pitching) to try to get some runs, it really didn't matter in the outcome.. unless of course you think Peralta would've homered or something.

 

I’d imagine that the offense started pressing more when they were down 3-0 since they knew how hard runs were to come by. That likely could have resulted in worse at bats than if it were still 0-0 out they were only down by one run. Maybe they would have squared up and hit a HR. We’ll never know, but the game could have gone in a drastically different direction if they weren’t down by so many runs. This could have been accomplished by driving in the runs when Peralta was pulled or if Peralta stayed in and continued pitching well like he was.

[sixtolezcano16]

At least we have football and the Packers.

Yuck, the only reason to invest your time and energy in the Packers is if you like how you are feeling right now after the Brewers loss.

 

At least the Packers win championships once every 15 years or so. The Brewers? We’ll you know that story…52 years and counting

[sixtolezcano16]

I’d imagine that the offense started pressing more when they were down 3-0 since they knew how hard runs were to come by. That likely could have resulted in worse at bats than if it were still 0-0 out they were only down by one run. Maybe they would have squared up and hit a HR. We’ll never know, but the game could have gone in a drastically different direction if they weren’t down by so many runs. This could have been accomplished by driving in the runs when Peralta was pulled or if Peralta stayed in and continued pitching well like he was.

 

 

 

I call that wishful thinking. They have been in a disastrous hitting skid for over a month. They never had a chance to score more than 4 runs in a game. Yesterday was the outlier.

[sixtolezcano16]

[sarcasm]Looking forward to next year’s 40th anniversary festivities celebrating that time we went to the World Series.[/sarcasm]

 

Are they really doing that? I hope not. It's time to let 1982 go.

 

Why? It’s all we really have. The U.S. celebrates the 4th of July every year

[FVBrewerFan]

I'm just not that upset, it was clear going into October this team wasn't going to win a ring. And no, it's not because they took the foot off the gas after clinching. They were struggling before that. They were true contenders for a large stretch of the season, maybe even favorites at their best. They weren't that team in September and October.

[mtrebs]

I’d imagine that the offense started pressing more when they were down 3-0 since they knew how hard runs were to come by. That likely could have resulted in worse at bats than if it were still 0-0 out they were only down by one run. Maybe they would have squared up and hit a HR. We’ll never know' date=' but the game could have gone in a drastically different direction if they weren’t down by so many runs. This could have been accomplished by driving in the runs when Peralta was pulled or if Peralta stayed in and continued pitching well like he was.[/quote']

 

 

 

I call that wishful thinking. They have been in a disastrous hitting skid for over a month. They never had a chance to score more than 4 runs in a game. Yesterday was the outlier.

 

I must not have stated this as I intended to. I’m not saying the offense would have put up 4 or more runs in game 3. What I intended was that they may have not gotten shut out if it wasn’t such a large deficit (in regards to the Brewers struggling offense) that they were trying to overcome. And if they didn’t allow 3 runs, maybe it could have been more like a game 1 situation.

[AdvantageSchneider]

Isn't therapy supposed to make you feel better?

[Patrick425]

[sarcasm]Looking forward to next year’s 40th anniversary festivities celebrating that time we went to the World Series.[/sarcasm]

 

Are they really doing that? I hope not. It's time to let 1982 go.

 

Not saying the team has to do a celebration. But even if the Brewers win multiple World Series in the coming years, I'll never let 1982 go (or the 2-3 years leading up to that year). That was a great time in my life that I will always remember. That was also a really fun team!

[thebruce44]

I expected them to win this series because of Burnes and Woodruff and Hader. I expected each to pitch every game and really only Peralta to start another game this series. Pitching these 10th and 11th best pitchers on our team in key innings was just not even in my thought process.

 

You may have had unrealistic expectations.

 

I heard all season long about how we were a team built for the playoffs because of how we could basically pitch Woody and Burnes 4 out of the 5 games. I also expected Hader to be one of our most used bullpen pieces. I think I was also unrealistic, but somehow not unreasonable in my expectations.

 

I'm not sure where you heard that from, but it certainly wasn't from me. I don't post that frequently, but I've been talking about my concern for dead arm and the general innings jump for all of our young pitchers.

 

Burnes IP by Year:

Year Age IP

2016 21 35.2

2017 22 145.2

2018 23 116.2

2019 24 71.1

2020 25 59.2

2021 26 167

[yourout]

[sarcasm]Looking forward to next year’s 40th anniversary festivities celebrating that time we went to the World Series.[/sarcasm]

 

Are they really doing that? I hope not. It's time to let 1982 go.

 

Not saying the team has to do a celebration. But even if the Brewers win multiple World Series in the coming years, I'll never let 1982 go (or the 2-3 years leading up to that year). That was a great time in my life that I will always remember. That was also a really fun team!

 

Same here. I remember going to a September game and Gorman Thomas and Ben Oglivie going back to back and the place was rocking. Being 18 at the time also helps.

[Patrick425]

Same here. I remember going to a September game and Gorman Thomas and Ben Oglivie going back to back and the place was rocking. Being 18 at the time also helps.

 

Right. I was 16 at the time and that definitely factors into why I will never want to forget that late 70s/Early 80s Brewer era.