Is the Offense really the problem?

[Robocaller]

In game threads there is much gnashing of teeth about how terrible our offense is.  However, compared to typical teams, this simply is not true.

2022: MKE Runs scored: 555. Median team's runs scored: 532.  So we're plus 23.

2021: MKE Runs scored: 738. Median team's runs scored: 726.  So we were plus 12 in the full season. Relative to the median team, we're better in 2022 than in 2021.

 

Let's look at the Pitching

.2022: MKE Runs allowed: 532. Median team's runs allowed: 528.5.  So we've allowed 3.5 MORE runs than the median team.

2021: MKE Runs allowed: 735. Median team's runs allowed: 623.  So we were allowing 112 FEWER runs than the median team in the full season.

 

So clearly, the thing that is making the brewers worse this year compared to last year is that our pitching/defense is mediocre instead of elite.

It's not unreasonable to think that our pitching could bounce back for the rest of the year. It needs to happen soon.

 

[phnxcrew]

I get the argument on paper, but it’s been pointed out by many posters that we pad our offensive stats against average to bad right handed pitching, particularly late in games.  The struggles early in the game and especially against lefties haven’t  been quite as bad as last year, but it’s still a large problem.  Unfortunately for everyone, our pitching and defense seem to suck the same as our hitting at the moment.  

[monty57]

54 minutes ago, phnxcrew said:

I get the argument on paper, but it’s been pointed out by many posters that we pad our offensive stats against average to bad right handed pitching, particularly late in games.  The struggles early in the game and especially against lefties haven’t  been quite as bad as last year, but it’s still a large problem.  Unfortunately for everyone, our pitching and defense seem to suck the same as our hitting at the moment.  

Every team plays both good and bad teams, so how are the Brewers different than other teams the "pad their offensive stats" against worse pitching? 

Our offense is hard to watch because we only seem to strike out or hit home runs, which isn't really fun to watch, but runs scored are runs scored.

[yourout]

This team is pretty average in All phases of the game right now.

Really not a single thing that they are exceptional at.

[Jim French Stepstool]

The issues with the offense are tied to inconsistency. But when you strike out to the extent that they do & rely on HRs as much as they do, you're pretty much asking to be inconsistent. Even so, the performance they received last year from people like Urias, Adames, even Narvaez just hasn't been there to any kind of a reliable extent. And now Yelich has given them some quality, but as a leadoff hitter, which screws up the whole dynamic even more.

People putting the onus on the pitching have a point. Everyone knows what Woodruff & Burnes are capable of, but look at the work Lauer, Houser & Peralta have done in "fleshing out" the rotation with consistent quality last year. That's disappeared this year due to health issues & just pitching poorly w/ the exception of Lauer. And when we needed reinforcements, Ashby has proven to be not ready for the step up in responsibility, nor has Small. Alexander is what he is.

The pitching is the one area that could carry them to a hot streak. The BP is IMO good enough to hold up its' end provided it isn't asked to cover half the innings every night.

[wibadgers23]

I certainly wouldn't pin it solely on the offense.  I think a big problem is the starting pitching is good, but not elite like it was last year so there's less margin for error when the offense tanks.  We've also dealt with a lot more injuries to the pitching staff than we did last year.  

[bigred]

On 8/25/2022 at 6:02 PM, Robocaller said:

In game threads there is much gnashing of teeth about how terrible our offense is.  However, compared to typical teams, this simply is not true.

2022: MKE Runs scored: 555. Median team's runs scored: 532.  So we're plus 23.

2021: MKE Runs scored: 738. Median team's runs scored: 726.  So we were plus 12 in the full season. Relative to the median team, we're better in 2022 than in 2021.

 

Let's look at the Pitching

.2022: MKE Runs allowed: 532. Median team's runs allowed: 528.5.  So we've allowed 3.5 MORE runs than the median team.

2021: MKE Runs allowed: 735. Median team's runs allowed: 623.  So we were allowing 112 FEWER runs than the median team in the full season.

 

So clearly, the thing that is making the brewers worse this year compared to last year is that our pitching/defense is mediocre instead of elite.

It's not unreasonable to think that our pitching could bounce back for the rest of the year. It needs to happen soon.

 

735 runs is less than 623? Ummmm....?

[rickh150]

9 hours ago, yourout said:

This team is pretty average in All phases of the game right now.

Really not a single thing that they are exceptional at.

A .little more than a 500 team. Yet, a dangerous playoff team with Burnes, Woodruff, and Peralta if we can sneak in. Get a spark from Frelick and Hiura… get hot at the right time and who knows.

[SomewhereInTime]

The biggest problem this year has been the starting pitching depth.  It is overlooked because they have three guys who have had good years in Burnes, Woodruff, and Laurer.  Unfortunately 300+ starting pitching innings have been pitched by Ashby, Peralta, Houser, Gonzalez, Small, Alexander with a combined ERA near 5.

On the flip side, the offense hasn't really had any black holes in the lineup this year.  No great hitters, but most nights it's a lineup of average hitters.  Over the long run, that's been more successful than the boom or bust rotation.

[Austin Tatious]

Don't slavishly be held hostage to stats.  The offense is full of average to mediocre players.  It's a dysfunctional lineup in the sense that there is almost no synergy and the sum doesn't work from their individual parts.  Stats are nice as confirmatory or a single data point.  But this isn't a video game.  Watch the games.  It's a dysfunctional lineup.

I think our system is alot of better than the national guys think.  We have some prospects who I think will be very solid starting players.  Of course, you have to see their initial struggles and adjustment period through.

The two issues is whether Mark A will spend fairly.  He bought the team for $200M.  The value is 5X.  The team sells tickets and charges exorbitant prices at the park for parking, concessions and merchandise.  The local TV contract s better and they have a piece of the national pie.  

The answer has never been wasting money on Brandon Looper, Jeff Suppan and Andy McCutcheon.  "Hey look, I spent money."  

The Brewers have to figure out how to deal with the timing of precocious young talent that will need time while having elite front line starting pitchers before they presumably leave.  The nice thing is they didn't panic and deal some of the young talent away.   The other thing is pretending that 3B and 1B don't exist when it comes to player acquisition and development is a failure.  They will keep right on doing it, chug chug chug.  You have some nice outfielders coming up.  Turang can be a very good player.  But 1B and 3B, not on their radar.

[Robocaller]

1 hour ago, Austin Tatious said:

Don't slavishly be held hostage to stats.  The offense is full of average to mediocre players.  It's a dysfunctional lineup in the sense that there is almost no synergy and the sum doesn't work from their individual parts.  Stats are nice as confirmatory or a single data point.  But this isn't a video game.  Watch the games.  It's a dysfunctional lineup.

It's how MLB is played circa 2022.

[Ghostbear]

Very short. It is NOT about the offense year to date. It's about the offense and mindset of the entire team since the Hader trade. The trade not only sent the wrong message, it disrupted the clubhouse culture and changed the winning formula from the 7th inning on. It also means Council has to change his approach to winning because what Stearns did was a brutal stab to the team's trust, therefore their mental edge. Council doesn't know how to manufacture runs, too many runners left on base. Too much demand to hit home runs. The bull pen is in disarray.  Williams reaction to his best friend being traded is guilt and he can't seem to get over it. Thus, no playoffs. A losing team that will have to make a magical turn around in September if they have a t chance at all. Stearns must learn winning is as much about culture, togetherness, and bonding, as it is players that are not pieces of chess to.be played with. 

[Robocaller]

5 hours ago, Ghostbear said:

Very short. It is NOT about the offense year to date. It's about the offense and mindset of the entire team since the Hader trade. The trade not only sent the wrong message, it disrupted the clubhouse culture and changed the winning formula from the 7th inning on. It also means Council has to change his approach to winning because what Stearns did was a brutal stab to the team's trust, therefore their mental edge. Council doesn't know how to manufacture runs, too many runners left on base. Too much demand to hit home runs. The bull pen is in disarray.  Williams reaction to his best friend being traded is guilt and he can't seem to get over it. Thus, no playoffs. A losing team that will have to make a magical turn around in September if they have a t chance at all. Stearns must learn winning is as much about culture, togetherness, and bonding, as it is players that are not pieces of chess to.be played with. 

If what  you say is true, they aren't behaving very professionally.  Time for them to grow up.

[wntrtxn21]

7 hours ago, Austin Tatious said:

Don't slavishly be held hostage to stats.  The offense is full of average to mediocre players.  It's a dysfunctional lineup in the sense that there is almost no synergy and the sum doesn't work from their individual parts.  Stats are nice as confirmatory or a single data point.  But this isn't a video game.  Watch the games.  It's a dysfunctional lineup.

I think our system is alot of better than the national guys think.  We have some prospects who I think will be very solid starting players.  Of course, you have to see their initial struggles and adjustment period through.

The two issues is whether Mark A will spend fairly.  He bought the team for $200M.  The value is 5X.  The team sells tickets and charges exorbitant prices at the park for parking, concessions and merchandise.  The local TV contract s better and they have a piece of the national pie.  

The answer has never been wasting money on Brandon Looper, Jeff Suppan and Andy McCutcheon.  "Hey look, I spent money."  

The Brewers have to figure out how to deal with the timing of precocious young talent that will need time while having elite front line starting pitchers before they presumably leave.  The nice thing is they didn't panic and deal some of the young talent away.   The other thing is pretending that 3B and 1B don't exist when it comes to player acquisition and development is a failure.  They will keep right on doing it, chug chug chug.  You have some nice outfielders coming up.  Turang can be a very good player.  But 1B and 3B, not on their radar.

!B has NOT been the problem. Tellez has done more than enough to be a keeper for next year. He's going to have around 30 HRs, 85-90 RBIs, and has an 802 OPS. His defense isn't bad. Yes they could do better, but 1B is way down the list of needs. 3B-CF-Bullpen-LF-DH-C-2B all are more problamatic. They are stuck with Yelich in LF. Hiura's performance of late may be the answer at DH. CF & 2B may come from internal candidates.  3B/C/Pen may have to come from trades.  As far as the other things, I have no idea what you mean by "spend fairly".  The Brewers are about average on costs at the stadium. Their TV contract is one of the smallest in all MLB and attendance is down 16%.  According to Statistica the Brewers have the 6th lowest team value in MLB. If you go by % of value, the Brewers are outspending the Dodgers, Cubs, Giants, Yankees, and Red Sox. 

[True Blue Brew Crew]

9 hours ago, SomewhereInTime said:

Unfortunately 300+ starting pitching innings have been pitched by Ashby, Peralta, Houser, Gonzalez, Small, Alexander with a combined ERA near 5.

Uhh, one of these things is not like the others  ?

[Outlander]

Brewers fans are truly spoiled if complaining about the Brewers trotting out Freddy Peralta to start.

[Nola Beery]

The clear plain obvious answer to the original question is YES!!!!  

Offensive success is based on RUNS SCORED. It's timing and placement above all else.  Success is not based on the speed of balls leaving the bat (especially when they are hit hard at the defense).  Nor is it based on stats that give credit for hits that do not lead to runs (whether runs scored or RBI), and HR's are always good, but they're not significant when they're a solo shots while we're trailing by 6.   Under any of these "contextual" factors, our offense FAILS.  And when you lose 2-1 while your pitcher looks great, where else can you put the blame?

     

[brewers888]

The team effectively waived the white flag on the season when they did nothing to meaningfully address the offense last offseason. Anyone that watches this team on a daily basis can see that the lineup is nothing short of terrible. The game last night ending with a pulled Hiura on the bench while his replacement hits into a game ending double play was a microcosm of the season.

The pitching certainly has not been good enough particularly this new look terrible bullpen and the defense has been a joke but thinking this offense has been anywhere near good enough is laughable.

[Austin Tatious]

11 hours ago, Robocaller said:

It's how MLB is played circa 2022.

No.  This is where fans don’t get it.  We are evaluating the team as a whole.  Being an average offense as a whole is very superficial to the point of useless.  The parts of the offense don’t fit together.  That’s why they struggle offensively.  Anyone could chart through the games and see how they struggle to put together runs.  That’s the important analysis.  Not average runs.  Hiding behind “this is how the game is played” is not helpful because fans are only given a very superficial view.  The Brewers’ know their offense isn’t good enough, because it isn’t.  Even if fans will yell that our offense is fine.  

[Austin Tatious]

I expect us to replace four guys in our lineup next year.  3B, CF, 2B and C.  Hiura can take over DH.  That’s quite simply not the sign of a good offense.

I like Stearns as much as anybody but one thing he does not get is 3B is every bit the unicorn as an up the middle talent.  You need somebody with good size, athleticism and an extra base hit profile.  It’s as hard as anything to find and we’ve put zero priority on it.  And if you want to draft an up the middle guy and then move him to 3B that’s normal but you have to draft a guy that profiles that way.  

Regarding CC,  you don’t like to bunt.  Fine.  But there are times that it can win you a game.  Think: situational baseball.  

Last night, watching Caratini try to bunt in a clutch situation was repulsive.  He had no idea how to do it.   A high schooler could be brought in to show him.  Fine, as a manager, you don’t like to bunt but it’s still part of the game and there are situations where every hitter needs to have the fundamentals to execute basic ball plays.  That’s how lose a game you shouldn’t.  

[NBBrewFan]

31 minutes ago, Austin Tatious said:

No.  This is where fans don’t get it.  We are evaluating the team as a whole.  Being an average offense as a whole is very superficial to the point of useless.  The parts of the offense don’t fit together.  That’s why they struggle offensively.  Anyone could chart through the games and see how they struggle to put together runs.  That’s the important analysis.  Not average runs.  Hiding behind “this is how the game is played” is not helpful because fans are only given a very superficial view.  The Brewers’ know their offense isn’t good enough, because it isn’t.  Even if fans will yell that our offense is fine.  

Google and Facebook are worth Bajillions of dollars partly because they have access to very granular data on the people that use their services.  No decent company/organization uses averages for anything these days because it tells you so little and is so easily available because there is NO value in the information. The only use is for PR because the general public is still 2-3 decades behind in understanding what's important.  As an example of the progression of data "needs" by companies is TV viewership.  In the ancient history of 1970/1980s TV viewership was the big thing.  Then they realized that who was spending the most money was more important for advertisers than having 10 people with no disposable income watching so the demographics began to rule the advertisers and now with streaming on trackable platforms they know so much about each viewers behavior because that information is where the true value lies. 

The other issue I have with averages is that it really is based on an assumption that the activity being measured has noise that is random so just averaging out the data gets rid of the noise.  Baseball isn't all random, there is signal that is being lost in the averaging. Sure the Brewers offense is just fine if you look at runs scored, but having Tellez and Renfroe as the 2 best hitters tells you a lot more about that offense than the average.  It tells me they need 2-3 additional better hitters because if your 2 best hitters are Tellez and Renfroe, your offense stinks.

[Hopper]

14 hours ago, rickh150 said:

A .little more than a 500 team. Yet, a dangerous playoff team with Burnes, Woodruff, and Peralta if we can sneak in. Get a spark from Frelick and Hiura… get hot at the right time and who knows.

I keep seeing this take, and it just plain saddens me.  This is what we pin our hopes on.

"get hot at the right time and who knows"

Just plain sad.

[Thurston Fluff]

57 minutes ago, Hopper said:

I keep seeing this take, and it just plain saddens me.  This is what we pin our hopes on.

"get hot at the right time and who knows"

Just plain sad.

That's what every team has to hope for. The Dodgers have one World Series for all their spending this past decade. That's the same numbers as the Royals. Why didn't they win more? Because they weren't hot at the right time and another team did.

[Samurai Bucky]

Offensively, the Brewers have shown they are a one-trick pony.  I refuse to watch last night's game, but after Tellez hits the dinger and you get guys on first and second, Counsell was hoping for the base hit.  Simple base hits are something that the Brewers have gotten in abundance this year.

Unless they start putting themselves in better positions to win games offensively, they are going to be mediocre apple-bite-takers.  You aren't going to hit a boat load of dingers every game... sorry.

[BruisedCrew]

On 8/26/2022 at 11:21 AM, monty57 said:

Every team plays both good and bad teams, so how are the Brewers different than other teams the "pad their offensive stats" against worse pitching? 

Our offense is hard to watch because we only seem to strike out or hit home runs, which isn't really fun to watch, but runs scored are runs scored.

I have some numbers to back this up, and at some point I will pull them together and present them. But the short version is:

Because the NL Central has 3 of the 5 worst teams in the NL in terms of both record and runs allowed, the Brewers have had significantly more games against these 5 generous teams than anyone else (including the Cardinals who have more of their games against these teams still on the schedule)  So, the Brewers have had more opportunities to face the league’s worst pitching staffs, and that pads their run totals relative to other playoff contenders.

On top of that, the last time I looked at this, which was just a few days ago, the Brewers were averaging about 2 runs per game more against that group of 5 worst teams than they were against everyone else. That difference is significantly greater than any of the other contenders except for the Mets, who just score more than the Brewers in general and have had better pitching too.

So, at least IMHO, the perception that the Brewers offense is worse relative to the rest of the league than indicated by the raw R/G numbers is valid. 
 

The fact that the pitching has not been elite just makes things worse. Last night’s game is a prime example. Last year, and even earlier this year, the Brewers might have won that game 1-0. Peralta goes 6, Boxberger, Williams, and Hader each pitch a shutout inning, and it’s a win. There have been a lot of games like that lost in the last few weeks because the offense isn’t putting up enough runs and the pitching is less reliable than last year.