Article: The Brewers have a Problem, but it’s Not (Just) the Offense

[Caleb Miller]

We love the Milwaukee Brewers, so we should treat them the way you would in any relationship with someone you love. Support them through the good times and bad times, and try to understand the problems at hand. 

Brewers fans, it currently feels like one of the bad times.

The trade with Josh Hader didn’t go the way most of us would have hoped, and the Brewers have fallen behind to the Cardinals who have taken the lead in the NL Central. It seems that if they continue to play the way they have been, there is no hope to regain playoff potential. 

So the question has to be asked, what are the Brewers doing wrong? Where is the problem?  If you look on social media, a majority of fans would say, “This offense is a joke,” or, “The offense is too inconsistent! What was Stearns thinking?” Is the offense a joke, or is there more going on than meets the eye? 

I made a spreadsheet to look at the runs scored by the brewers, the runs allowed, and the difference in how many runs they win by, (meaning losses will be represented in negative numbers.) By graphing the data, we can determine the trends in run production and run prevention. Here are the results:

The straight blue line that is going through the middle of the graph is the trend line. Looking at the Brewer's trend line for the Run Difference(B-C), we see it is slightly decreasing. This statistic is justly representing the current increase in losses that we have been experiencing. 

The reason the team continues to have a winning record is that they have scored on average 4.52 runs per game while allowing on average allowing 4.25 runs per game. As long as the runs scored is greater than the runs allowed, the Brewers should have a winning percentage. The closer these two averages get, the closer they get to having a losing record. 



The Brewers trend line for runs scored is on a slight incline, but not by much. For the first third of the season, the Brewers scored five or more runs 46.3% of the time. During the second third of the season, the times the Brewers' scored five or more runs increased to 50%. So in total, the Brewers currently score 5 or more runs 46.5% of the time. 

People say this offense has been inconsistent, but based on their trends, it seems to be the opposite, or at least it was over the last 100 games. The only issue that the Milwaukee Brewers currently have is that for the first ten games of the final third of the 2022 season, the Brewers only scored five runs or more four times. Hopefully, this trend won’t continue, and it is likely it won’t due to how consistent the offense has been the majority of the season. 



Pitching, however, is a different story. The trend for runs allowed is on a steep incline. In the first third of the 2022 season, the Brewers allowed four runs or less 70.3% of the time. For the second third of the season, the Brewers allowed four runs or less in just 33.3% of their games. In the total amount of games played, this puts the Brewers' current probability of allowing less than or equal to 4 runs at 64.9%. 

This trend is not a very good sign, although, there is some hope. The final third of the season will be the real test to see if the pitching will improve. Although there have only been ten games to start the final third of the 2022 season, the Brewers allowed less than four runs in eight of the ten games. 

So, as it turns out, it was the defense and pitching that faded, while the offense continued to remain consistent. Why? The Milwaukee Brewers lost two starting pitchers and a couple of good defenders, which caused them to allow more runs during the second third of the season. The offense needed to pick up the slack, but it wasn’t enough to keep the team on a winning trajectory. 

Finally, during the final third of the season, the players who the team lost are back and finally warmed up enough to play good baseball. If this theory is correct, I expect them to continue to hit consistently at around the same rate as projected and begin to pitch at an all-star level. If the Brewers can manage to accomplish this, hope that they once again can become a world series contender.

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