Milwaukee Brewers: 2019 Mid-season Report Card

With the completion of the All-Star game, the first “half” of the season is officially in the books. While the Milwaukee Brewers may not have performed quite to most fans’ expectations, they are still right in the mix for a playoff spot.

2018 was nothing short of a magical season for the Milwaukee Brewers. After falling just a game short of the playoffs in 2017, the Brewers exploded onto the scene last year behind star acquisitions Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain. It took 163 games, but the Crew ultimately pulled off a 96-win season, a National League Central title, and fell a game short of their second World Series appearance ever.

As a result, the 2019 season came with lofty expectations for the ball club. Yelich entered the season as the reigning NL Most Valuable Player. They brought back Mike Moustakas, a key contributor late in 2018, and signed catcher Yasmani Grandal to bolster one of the few supposed weaknesses left on offense. Though the NL Central was expected to be tougher than the previous year, most experts had the Brewers pegged for a win total in the high 80’s to low 90’s and finishing either first or second in the division.

Now at the All-Star break, the Brewers find themselves short of the pace needed to meet the goals set by the fans and experts. Yes, they are just a half game behind the Chicago Cubs for first place in the NL Central. They are also only a half game behind the Philadelphia Phillies for the second wild card spot and a game behind the Washington Nationals for the first spot.

Regardless, a rough finish to June and a slow start to July (5-8 over the 13 days leading into the All-Star break) leaves the Brewers with a 47-44 record going into a second half. That puts the team on pace for 83 wins, not exactly the win total that fans had in mind for 2019.

So with it being the All-Star break, it’s time to grade the performance of the team over the first half of the season. Has the offense gotten better than last year with new additions or plateaued? How has the pitching fared with the reliance on so many young arms? And how have the moves made by the manager and general manager contributed to the teams current position.

The Offense: B

Going into this year, the Brewers offensive plan was to shore up some of the perceived weaknesses in the lineup during the offseason while leaning on top contributors from 2018 to form one of the more dynamic offenses in the league. The results of that plan have been mixed.

Yelich has followed up his 2018 MVP season with a strong attempt to repeat. At the break, he leads the NL in home runs, on base percentage, slugging percentage, and OPS, and is among the top ten in nearly every other major offensive category. His tight race for MVP this year with the Dodgers’ Cody Bellinger has even turned into a national media campaign.

The Moustakas and Grandal signings have paid off big as well. “Moose” ranks sixth in the NL in homers, forming the league’s top dinger-slugging tandem with Yelich. Meanwhile, Grandal once again ranks as one of the top few offensive catchers in the game. Both rank among the top three in most offensive categories at their positions. It’s no surprise, then, that all three ended up being the Brewers’ offensive representatives at this year’s All-Star game.

Other players have broken out offensively as well. Orlando Arcia is having possibly his best year offensively as he is on pace to set several career highs statistically. And Keston Hiura was pretty much exactly what Brewers fans were hoping for once he finally received the call to the show, providing some big moments along the way.

Many of the players who were expected to continue propelling the offense, though, have underachieved. Lorenzo Cain hasn’t been hitting near his career averages, though a nagging thumb injury may be partially responsible for that. Travis Shaw has been so poor that he was finally was optioned to Triple-A to try to find his stroke again. And Jesus Aguilar has continued the downward trend that began after last year’s All-Star break, though there are recent signs that he may finally be emerging from that slump.

If the general plan was for an increase in offense, then that’s what the Brewers have gotten. In the simplest terms, the 2018 Brewers scored 4.63 runs per game, seventh in the NL and above the MLB average of 4.45. This year, the Brewers have increased that to 4.75 runs per game, but that ranks them ninth and below the MLB average, which has risen to 4.80.

However, there may be a light at the end of the tunnel. Prior to the 13-game funk that Milwaukee rode into the All-Star break, the team was sitting at a much more healthy 5.00 runs per game. Currently, that would elevate them to sixth in the NL and back above the MLB average.

So it depends on which version of the Brewer offense you think is real, the more potent one from the first 78 games, or the much less explosive one from the last 13. For argument’s sake, we’ll take the one with the larger sample size. Even combined, the plan to increase offensive output has largely done its job.

The Starters: C-

The Brewers took a gamble this year when it came to the rotation. After a year where four of the five players who had the most starts were over the age of 30, the team decided to begin this year with a much younger stable of starters. That plan mostly backfired.

There have been bright spots. Zach Davies, finally injury-free, emerged as the team’s surprise staff ace for a large portion of the year and was in the running for an All-Star bid before a rough stretch that derailed his campaign. At that point, Brandon Woodruff took the title and ran with it, recovering from a poor start to the year and parlaying his season-long improvement into his first career All-Star selection.

Chase Anderson, who started the year in the bullpen, was thrust into the rotation early to add some stability and has mostly met expectations. And in April, the team brought back Gio Gonzalez after he was released by the Yankees. He looked strong before left arm fatigue placed him on the Injured List in May, where he currently remains.

Outside of that, there has pretty much just been disappointment. Corbin Burnes, who had never started a major league game before this year, was removed from the rotation after just four starts and has bounced between the bullpen and Triple-A since. Freddy Peralta also made it four starts before an IL stint of his own, though he largely struggled as well. He has had spot starts since then but has mostly pitched out of the bullpen where he has actually been impressive.

The one starter who should have been carrying the rotation, Jhoulys Chacin, is having one of the worst seasons of his career. His 5.40 ERA would tie his career high, even having looked better in recent starts. Jimmy Nelson and Adrian Houser have also made a string of starts, but Nelson has been moved to the bullpen and though Houser remains in the rotation for now, his results have been uninspiring.

Because of all that turnover, the statistics don’t look great. Brewer starters have a 4.82 ERA so far in 2019, 12th in the NL. The .339 OBP, .274 batting average, and 1.43 WHIP given up is second-to-last in the league. To put it mildly, they’re letting a lot of runners on base.

Things may be looking up. Gonzalez just completed his first rehab start and will hopefully return to the rotation soon after the break. And with most of the poor performers out of the rotation, Milwaukee starters had a 3.60 ERA in the two weeks leading into the All-Star break, good for fifth best in the NL.

But the numbers don’t lie. Whether there is hope moving forward or not, if you look at the full span of games played so far in 2019, the rotation has mostly been disappointing.

GM/Manager: B-

2018’s success nearly resulted in a couple more awards for Milwaukee. Manager Craig Counsell finished second to Atlanta’s Brian Snitker for the NL Manager of the Year award. GM David Stearns came just as close, tying for second to Oakland’s Billy Beane for Executive of the Year.

Stearns proved that he was still willing to make big moves after the Yelich and Cain acquisitions of a year ago when he made the aforementioned signings of Moustakas and Grandal this year. Those moves have clearly paid off big in 2019.

Stearns also swung two trades that have current and future implications. Domingo Santana was moved to Seattle, where he can be a starter, for a package that included outfielder Ben Gamel who has been a huge contributor both as a starter and off the bench. He also was able to trade Keon Broxton to the Mets for three prospects that include Wahl who, though injured, should be a key bullpen piece in the future. Broxton, meanwhile, was let go by New York.

There have been questionable decisions this year as well of course. Chiefly among them were the decision not to acquire any veteran starting pitcher and instead roll with such a young group. And of course there was the delay in calling up Hiura when he was lighting up Triple-A and so many hitters were clearly struggling at the time.

Counsell, meanwhile, has had plenty of questions to deal with as manager this year. How do you best utilize Hader now that he is in a closing role? How do you balance the need to give Aguilar and Shaw at bats to get going with putting the team on the field that gives you the best chance to win? What happens if the young starters don’t work out as planned?

Not every decision has been perfect, but these are the facts. The Brewers are 47-44 at the All-Star break. They have a run differential of -17 and because of that, their Pythagorean W-L projects that their record should actually be 44-47. So Counsell has managed the team to be three wins better than the math thinks they should be.

It’s hard to say in retrospect if different offseason moves would have helped or hindered the Brewers. If the team signed some starters, they might not have Moustakas or Grandal and who knows what would have happened then. What we do know is that the Milwaukee Brewers are currently a half game out of a playoff spot. Part of that is because of the rest of the division, part of that is management.

The second half is starting soon, and the Milwaukee Brewers are in need of some good luck and some players to perform up to their expectations. Once you get into October, anything can happen.