Brewers: Constructing the Perfect Starting Rotation for 2021

SP2: RHP Corbin Burnes

For as good as Woodruff was in 2020, it’s Corbin Burnes who had arguably the best season out of any of the Brewers starters last season. And for as terribly as his 2019 season went, that makes his performance that much more incredible.

To say Burnes’ 2019 season was a nightmare could be the understatement of the century. After a very promising debut 2018 season, Burnes imploded the next year, putting together an 8.82 ERA in 32 games with a 1.837 WHIP and whopping 3.1 home runs per nine innings. He saw himself demoted as far as Double-A Biloxi at one point.

An offseason at the team’s pitching lab in Arizona worked wonders, though, and Burnes came back with a vengeance in 2020, to the point that he became a legitimate Cy Young contender.

Burnes helped the Brewers pick up their first win of the season in a 3 1/3-inning, one-earned run, six-strikeout start against the Cubs on July 25th. After moving back to the bullpen upon Brett Anderson‘s return from the IL for three games, Burnes was put back in the rotation and the rest was history.

Burnes wouldn’t give up more than three runs in a game the rest of the way. At one point, he struck out ten or more batters three times over a stretch of four games from late August to early September.

He even was in the conversation as a possible Cy Young Candidate before being removed early from his final start of the season, a game in which he attempted to pitch through an oblique injury. That injury, unfortunately, left him unable to play in the team’s Wild Card series against the Dodgers.

When all was said and done, Burnes finished the best season of his career with a 2.11 ERA, 1.022 WHIP, and 13.3 K/9. His K/9, as well as a 2.3 fWAR led all Brewer starters. And after home runs plagued him in 2019, he gave up just two homers all season in 2020.

Unfortunately, being pulled from that final start left him just an out short of qualifying for the statistical leaderboards. That wasn’t enough to stop him from receiving some NL Cy Young votes, though, as he ended up finishing sixth in voting for the award.

If the Brewers didn’t already have an established ace, last year’s performance would surely be enough to vault him into SP1 status. At worst, it gives the Brewers one of the best 1-2 punches heading into the 2021 season.

SP3: RHP Taijuan Walker

Based on Stearns’ offseason history, the Brewers are bound to add at least one starting pitcher to the rotation before pitchers and catchers report early next year. Should that happen again, there’s one pitcher who seems to keep popping up on fans’ wish lists.

Once a top 10 prospect in all of baseball according to MLB.com, Taijuan Walker is coming off a solid season in which he compiled a 2.70 ERA and 1.163 WHIP over 11 starts. Those outings came for two different ball clubs in 2020.

Walker was originally signed as a free agent by the Seattle Mariners for the 2020 season. That happened to be the same team who drafted him in the first round back in 2010 before trading him to the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2016.

He would put up a 4.00 ERA over five starts with the Mariners to start 2020 before being traded to the Toronto Blue Jays just before the trade deadline. He got even better from there, giving up just four earned runs in six starts with the Jays to end the year.

The fact that Walker was able to pitch an entire 2020 season was encouraging based on his recent history. Tommy John surgery two years ago wiped out nearly his entire 2018 and 2019 seasons.

Walker didn’t necessarily light up the major Statcast metrics in 2020, finishing in the lower half of the league in many of them. That said, he was at least average or better in limiting hard contact with his hard hit rate (32.9%) finishing in the 74th percentile, average exit velocity (88.4 mph) finishing in the 50th, and barrel rate (7.2%) finishing in the 48th.

Walker is still just just 28, which could be why FanGraphs still has him projected for a contract worth around $9MM in average annual value even though he barely pitched in two of the last three years.

Statcast concerns and injury history, though, could potentially bring the price down a bit if teams decide to go with a sure thing and Walker sits around on the market for a while. In this perfect world, that exactly what happens and Walker slots in as Milwaukee’s No. 3 starter.

SP4: RHP Josh Lindblom

The Brewers had previously seen success in signing players from overseas in recent years (see: Eric Thames, Jay Jackson) and were hoping for another success story in Josh Lindblom. Early returns haven’t quite shown the same results so far, however.

There were reasons to be optimistic that he could achieve the same success as the other two. He had won the KBO’s version of the Cy Young award twice and was coming off a KBO MVP win during the 2019 season.

But like many other players, success overseas didn’t translate to instant success in the states. At least not when you look at the numbers on the surface.

In 12 games (10 starts) in his first season back in the U.S., Lindblom put up a 5.16 ERA while allowing opposing batters to hit .244 against him. He gave up two runs or more in each of his first seven starts on the year.

That may not look great at first glance, but there are reasons to think Lindblom can turn it around. First off, his 3.87 FIP shows that he pitched better than his ERA would leave one to believe. A 1.279 WHIP shows that he wasn’t allowing an exceptionally high amount of batters to reach base either.

Lindblom showed that his very diverse pitch mix (Statcast showed him throwing six different ones in 2020) can give batters fits at times as his 10.3 K/9 rate showed. He also graded favorably in a number of other Statcast metrics, including hard hit rate (32.5%) and barrel rate (5.0%) which both ranked in the 76th percentile or better.

There was also a stretch at the end of the season that showed promise. At one point, Lindlom went 12 1/3 innings over four games where he gave up just six hits, an earned run, and zero walks with ten strikeouts, showing that he may have started adjusting back to MLB hitters.

Lindblom is in the second year of a three-year contract so he isn’t going anywhere any time soon. And since his career resurgence came after converting from reliever to starter, there’s no reason to believe that the Brewers would think of shifting him to the bullpen any time soon.

With a season of adjusting back to MLB hitting under his belt and more time working with Milwaukee pitching coaches, there’s reason to believe in a solid 2021 season for Lindblom. If that happens, it’s a great situation to be in with your team’s No. 4 starter.

SP5: RHP Freddy Peralta

This may not be the name you expected to see in the fifth starter spot. And in fact, it may not be the pitcher most likely to be chosen by Brewers manager Craig Counsell. But we’re talking perfect world here, and if that’s the case, Freddy Peralta wins out for the final rotation spot.

Peralta was first given the chance to be a full-time starter back in 2019 to start the season and the results weren’t pretty. He put together an 8.31 ERA over five starts to begin that season, only lasting past four innings in one of those starts. He would be moved primarily to the bullpen after that, putting up a 4.26 ERA the rest of the way.

Later, just before the 2020 season, the Brewers would end up signing Peralta to a 5-year contract extension with the long-term vision of eventually making him a full-time starter.

Though he did get one start to begin his 2020 season, where he gave up four runs over three innings, it was bullpen the rest of the way for Peralta. That suited him well as he had a 3.08 ERA as a reliever, holding batters to a .198 average with a ratio of 44 strikeouts to just 10 walks over 26 1/3 innings.

Peralta’s main competition for the final rotation spot would likely be Adrian Houser. The fellow right-hander had a rough 2020 in the Brewers rotation after an encouraging start, finishing the season with a 5.40 ERA, 1.51 WHIP, and 1.31 home runs per nine that were all worst among regular Milwaukee starters.

Counsell was pretty set on using Houser as a starter even going into the 2020 season, which could make Freddy’s work cut out for him, but wants to eventually see Peralta as a starter as well. Both have shown an affinity for pitching out of the bullpen (Houser had a 1.47 ERA in 30 2/3 innings as a reliever in 2019).

Peralta could help his case by continuing to add to his pitch repertoire. Primarily using just a fastball and curve to start made many think he profiled best as a reliever, but eyebrows were raised by rumors that he was working on a slider last offseason. However, he only ended up throwing it 4.8% of the time in 2020.

Getting more comfortable with that pitch would give him a much better chance to grab a spot in the rotation. In a perfect world, that is exactly what happens and “Fastball Freddy” goes back to mowing down opposing batters as the team’s fifth starter.

Plenty of offseason remains for the Brewers to round out their starting rotation. We’ll see if it ends up looking like the perfect rotation seen here.