Milwaukee Brewers: What’s next for Chase Anderson?

The Milwaukee Brewers went on a tremendous run through the months of September and October to end the 2018 season and they primarily did that without the help of starting pitcher Chase Anderson. So this begs the question, what can we expect from Anderson heading into next year?

On Opening Day in 2018, the Milwaukee Brewers selected Chase Anderson to be their starter with the hopes that he would build on his strong 2017 campaign.

Unfortunately for Anderson the season did not play out that way for him, in fact he regressed. Now this isn’t to say that he was awful in 2018, he did have a number of good outings but it wasn’t what everyone was hoping for. And Anderson will be the first to admit that.

As the Milwaukee Brewers were making their September playoff push, they decided to skip Anderson’s spot in the rotation heading into a crucial series against the St. Louis Cardinals and from that point on, he wouldn’t pitch again the rest of the season. Anderson didn’t even make the Brewers playoff rosters in the NLDS or NLCS.

Anderson’s 2018 season

This past season consisted of many up and down starts for Anderson, that ultimately resulted in a lot of inconsistency. He struggled to string together multiple clean innings, let alone multiple solid starts.

A positive was that Anderson was able to stay healthy for the entire season but his numbers weren’t close to that of 2017. Anderson finished the season with a 3.93 ERA, a 1.190 WHIP and gave up the most home runs in the NL with 30. He is known as a pitcher that will give up the long ball but in 2018 he struggled to go even one start without giving up a home run.

Where Anderson struggled the most this season was in the first inning. He sported an ERA of 6.30 in the opening inning and often times made the Brewers play catch up that led to short outings for Anderson. Especially in the post season where scoring runs is at a premium, it’s difficult to give the start to a pitcher that will put the team down early.

Looking ahead to 2019

It is going to be an off-season where Anderson is going to have to make some changes and he has acknowledged this to reporters. Whether it’s his mechanics, mentally or both remains to be seen.

But we have to wonder if we will see the Anderson of 2017 again, where he pitched phenomenally. Anderson had a record of 12-4, an ERA of 2.74, a WHIP of 1.09 and gave up just 14 home runs.

However that may have been an outlier season for Anderson as 2018 was much closer to his career averages. Over his career, Anderson has an ERA of 3.89, a WHIP of 1.260 and opposing batters are averaging .251 against him. As they say, water always finds its level.

It is tough to know what we will see from Anderson in 2019, but the Milwaukee Brewers owe him $6 million for the upcoming season. He will have the same opportunities to make the starting rotation as everyone else will.

As far as starting pitching goes, the Milwaukee Brewers are in a great spot and will have a lot of competition for those starting roles. With the return of Jimmy Nelson, the emergence of Freddy Peralta, Brandon Woodruff, Corbin Burnes, and a potential free agent signing on top of the pitchers they already have, this is going to be a crowded position for the Brewers.

In this mix we do not know where Anderson will end up and it will be interesting to see what his role will be if he ends up outside of the starting five. But GM David Stearns and manager Craig Counsell have shown us, that a team can never have too many pitchers.