Brewers: How A Postponed Weekend Series Impacts The Crew

The Brewers weekend series against the Cardinals is basically not going to happen. How does this impact the team?

Once the St. Louis Cardinals started to get some positive Covid-19 test results back the night before they were supposed to begin a three game series against the Brewers, it became quite apparent that the games would not be played.

Friday’s game was postponed, with the game on Saturday and a doubleheader on Sunday scheduled. When they announced that, most people figured they would end up not playing any of them.

Sure enough, Saturday morning, several more Cardinals tested positive and Saturday’s game was also postponed. Sunday’s doubleheader is still technically going to happen, but it’s only a matter of hours until that is postponed as well.

Three games against a division rival are just not happening, and there’s only so much time remaining in the schedule for both teams to make up these games.

The question of how these games will be made up aside is an important to figure out, but MLB is kind of flying by the seat of their pants right now and they’ll make it up as they go along. The real question for the Brewers right now is, how will not playing this weekend impact them?

Impact On The Pitching Staff

After playing six games in six days to start the season, and going 3-3 in those games, the Brewers were looking forward to coming back home to Miller Park and playing. They haven’t played a game since Thursday and likely won’t play again until Monday.

A starting rotation takes regular turns and pitchers come up every five days. That whole rotation gets thrown for a loop now that they’re missing the whole weekend. Brett Anderson was scheduled to start the home opener on Friday and now he’s getting pushed to Monday. Corbin Burnes, Freddy Peralta, and Adrian Houser are all getting several extra days of rest before their next outing.

Should Brandon Woodruff start on Tuesday because that would be his regularly scheduled day to pitch and at least the Brewers can keep their ace on a steady schedule?

Pitchers are routine-oriented athletes. They succeed by sticking to a routine and starting pitchers have a maintenance routine that covers starting every five days. By stretching it out to eight days or nine days, the routine loses some of its effectiveness.

These guys have to pitch every so often to stay sharp. If they don’t, then bad things tend to happen, either with poor performance or with injury.

The pitching staff is going to be negatively impacted by this weekend layoff. The only person this might help is Josh Lindblom, who left his first start with back tightness and a few extra days of rest could be good for him. Other than that, there’s pretty much only downsides to this.

Impact On The Offense

Likewise, this kind of layoff for the offense is not going to be helpful for the Brewers. To make matters worse, leadoff hitter Lorenzo Cain has now opted out of the season and he was one of the few hitters who got off to a solid start this year.

For guys like Christian Yelich who need as many at-bats as possible and to see more live pitching in order to get into an offensive groove, losing this weekend hurts. There would’ve been at least 12 at-bats for Yelich against the Cardinals this weekend that now he loses, and if he needed just 10-12 more at-bats to get back into an offensive groove, he’s now a few more days behind.

The offense needs some fine tuning, as we all could see during the Cubs and Pirates series’, and now they’ve lost three opportunities to get in that fine tuning. It takes hitters several at-bats to get into a decent groove at the plate normally, and losing these opportunities early in the season is difficult to deal with.

Bottom line, this weekend isn’t good for anyone. It’s not good for the offense, it’s not good for the pitching staff, it’s not good for the Cardinals, it’s not good for the Brewers, and it certainly isn’t good for baseball. MLB needs to get a hold on these outbreaks, otherwise the entire season could get shut down again.

The Brewers need to get playing as soon as possible against a different opponent. They shouldn’t play the Cardinals at all this weekend, but come Monday, they’re going to be antsy to get back on the field.