The Weekly: Schrödinger's offense

There was this really interesting time in 20th century science where scientists and philosophers enjoyed significant overlap and dialogue, specifically in conversations surrounding quantum mechanics and our ever in-transit understanding of epistemology. (For my money, Michael Polanyi is my jam.) Erwin Schrödinger enjoyed dancing on the high wire between science and philosophy, and while the cat thought experiment is the pop cultural touchpoint, it's this off-hand quip later in his piece where the famous cat experiment was born that draws my attention:

There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.

We don't know which one it is unless we were there observing, and thus it is entirely possible that two things exist until one of those things is clearly observed. And yet, if we observe something directly, in spite of context, we may not know exactly what it is we are observing.

It's not as simple as 'The Milwaukee Brewers offense is butt.' To be sure, it has been frustrating to watch Brewers batters over the first three-ish weeks of the 2022 season, and we've seen some echoes of 2021 carry into the present. But condemning Brewer bats to a place devoid of sunshine might be unwarranted damnation.

The bad news: according to Baseball Savant after Saturday, the Brewers are league-worst in nearly every advanced offensive metric. Yet, they don't chase -- the Brewers are a full five percentage points below league average in chase rate, and when they do chase, they make contact at nearly a full percentage point above league average. 

They don't whiff, they're toward the middle of the pack in strikeouts according to Baseball-Reference. They don't hit a ton of balls on the ground or pop out much, they're currently behind league average per Statcast in both regards. These are good things! 

So, what's the deal? Their zone swing percentage lags, as does zone contact (though not by much.) They get barrels, but not solid contact (8, just over average; 5, well under average, respectively.) It has been well-documented that Andrew McCutchen goes after the first pitch, but it turns out that this is now a team-wide gambit now: nine of 13 Brewers who have seen the lineup card in 2022 are swinging at pitch 1 20% of the time (including Kolten Wong at 19.6.) Lorenzo Cain swings at first pitches more than Cutch, and by quite a bit.

The Brewers are also seeing a league-average number of middle-middle pitches (meatballs), yet they swing at nearly two full percent fewer of them. They both top and get under pitches well above league average. BABIP is almost 30 points below league mean.

Now, here's where the deal really gets bad: the longer Brewers hitters are in counts, the worse-off they are, which would explain the team-wide interest in swinging away at pitch one, though, with a slash of .304/.333/.348 on the first pitch overall, and swinging at it yields .202/.211/.248 and 4 XBH against 24 eventual strikeouts, perhaps enthusiasm for that approach should be tempered by a lot.

Slashes and sOPS+ (OPS against league average) by count:

1-1: .348/.348/.500 116
2-1: .286/.304/.381 51
3-1: .250/.696/.750 119

Even knowing a 3-1 pitch is going to be something almost certainly hittable, the result is 14 walks and two hits, one double and one home run, and only 23 PAs have gotten to that point per Baseball Reference. Couple that with Matt Pauley's note in Saturday's pregame program on WTMJ about the Brewers' inability to hit with runners in scoring position and two out and those gaudy OBP and SLG figures in that prime hitter's count are worthless.

The real ugliness: 

0-2: .143/.167/.200 113
1-2: .085/.142/.169 45
2-2: .133/.130/.200 60
Full: .143/.424/.304 95

When a Brewer hitter is ahead, it's not killing pitchers. When a pitcher gets deep into the count against the Brewers, they have the advantage, and they're beginning to realize it.

They're also realizing something else: Brewer batters know their zones well enough, but they don't appear to have any idea what's coming at them. They don't chase, but they're also not driving the ball or squaring it up. They're not even recognizing center-cut, eminently-driveable pitches. They've started trying to ambush first pitches, which only helps opposing pitchers by giving them more reason to throw fewer fastballs there (of the total pitches the Brewers have seen in 2022, between 29-30% have been four-seam fastballs.) 

This is no longer a matter just relegated to pitchers the Brewers have not seen before: it is now a problem with every pitcher they face, thus it can't just be chalked up to 'welp, it's a pitcher's game' or humidors or deadened balls or cold weather, especially when the Cardinals visited and were tagging pitches into Toyota Territory while the Brewers demonstrated warning track power.

The reality of the matter is that this data, this snapshot we have right now is blurry: we don't know what this Brewers offense is actually capable of because, by looking at the metrics, it's increasingly clear they're not adequately prepared to face major league pitching. This isn't a failure of players; it's a failure of management to adjust and counter-adjust; to know their opponent. In this case, the Brewers' total organizational sellout in years past to launching the ball apparently came at the cost of pitch recognition, only to have the organization seemingly not realize that one has to recognize the right pitch in the first place to decide whether or not to launch it. In an ironic twist, the empiricists went full science and data with their pitching, full philosopher with their hitting, while choosing solopsism with regard to their counterparts across the diamond.

There are reasons to think that, with even a little bit of appetite to gather better data on opposing pitchers, these numbers can start turning around. We're not seeing the Brewers strikeout at alarming rates as we did in 2019 and 2020. They're showing a willingness to take walks and spit on pitches. There's even evidence of situational hitting. There are still a lot of variables, both known and unknown and, frankly, a lot of season ahead of us. It is reasonable to suggest, though, that the Brewers will continue to struggle without a strategic recalibration from the front office in how to best put batters in a position to succeed. 

The evidence might be blurry, and it might be clouds. This offense may be dead. It might also be alive and we just don't know it yet.

Baseball Reference, Fangraphs, Baseball Savant and some quick and crude spreadsheet development were all indispensible toward the development of this piece. Also, thanks to Erwin Schrödinger, whose poor cat has been once more mixed or smeared by the writer.