Brewers: One Big Takeaway From The Crew’s Slow Start To 2022

The 2022 season has not gotten off to the start that the Brewers or their fans were looking for. Through the first four games the Brewers are 1-3 and have been shut out twice.

Poor situational hitting and a surprisingly struggling pitching staff so far have contributed to the slow start. The two teams the Brewers have played, the Cubs and Orioles, are not projected to be good teams this year. Meanwhile, the Brewers are favorites to win the NL Central.

Here’s the one big thing Brewers fans can take away from the Crew’s slow start to the regular season.

One big takeaway from Brewers poor start to season: Nothing

There is nothing we can take away from the start to the season yet.

If you’re here looking for some big doom and gloom proposition about how the Brewers didn’t do enough to improve the team during the offseason or how some coach needs to lose his job or some other overreaction, consider this a call back to reality.

We are four games into a 162 game season. We’re coming off a very abbreviated spring training. Everyone else had a short spring training as well, I get that, but it affects everyone differently. It’s early.

Hunter Renfroe‘s response to if they’re concerned about the slow start sums everything up succinctly.

It’s game four.

Give it time. Now is not the time to panic. Now is not the time to draw conclusions about the potential and ability of the Brewers offense, rotation, or team as a whole. We can’t draw conclusions about players who have individually struggled. This goes for good or bad results. The first four games of the season do not determine how the entire season will go.

The offense has struggled in this extremely small sample size, yes. They’re also in their first season with new hitting coaches that are still trying to build relationships with a whole group of players. Players and coaches have only been able to talk to each other for a month. Even the best hitting coaches in the world need more time than that to effect change.

The starting rotation, which is the anchor of this team, has been uncharacteristically wild this first time through. Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, and Freddy Peralta each walked the first batter they faced this season. Adrian Houser didn’t give up a walk until the third batter he faced. Are we to believe that that group is all of a sudden bad during their physical prime years? No.

A short spring training meant fewer reps, fewer “up-downs” as they call it, for the starting rotation. That makes it more difficult to have the rust of the offseason shaken off by the time Opening Day rolls around.

So, there is nothing we can take away from these first four games of the year. The Brewers aren’t in mid-season form yet. They call it mid-season form for a reason. We’re only just at the beginning.

The Brewers have an extremely talented team. It may be frustrating to watch them struggle to start the season, but step back from the ledge and refrain from drawing any major conclusions about this season when it’s only just getting started.