Brewers: 3 Slumping Players Who Need To Step Up Heading Into Crucial Pirates Series

3. Rowdy Tellez

It's quite clear that Rowdy Tellez has found himself in a funk of late. Back in May, Tellez was on a solid tear at the plate, but he hasn't homered in a couple of weeks and that's the main part of his game.

Over his last 15 games, Tellez is hitting just .167/.182/.204 with no homers, just one walk and 16 Ks in 54 at-bats.

Adames and Tellez were supposed to provide a powerful punch in the middle of the order for the Brewers and lately neither of them have been able to do that. Even when Tellez is getting hits, he's not doing much extra-base damage as shown by his .204 slugging percentage over the last two weeks.

On the season, Tellez's numbers don't look too bad with a .231/.305/.433 slash line to go with 12 homers and a .738 OPS. But he had an .830 OPS as of June 1st, marking a practically 100 point drop in OPS in just two weeks.

Home runs have typically come in bunches for Tellez and the Brewers are going to need him to find one of those bunches soon to blast himself and the team out of this slump.

This series against the Pirates can either launch the Brewers back into the top of the NL Central standings, or make the deficit they have to chase grow even larger. With the balanced schedule, there are fewer games against division opponents like the Pirates, which will make it more difficult to chase them down in the standings if they fall further behind.