The Brewers dispelled an ominous advanced metric in Game 1 of the NLDS

The Milwaukee Brewers enter Monday's late-night contest against the Chicago Cubs, with a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five National League Division Series. The lead is courtesy of an emphatic Game 1 win, in which the Brew Crew plated nine runs in the first two innings before coasting to a 9-3 victory.

Even more impressive than the Brewers scoring a cool nine runs in the first two innings was the fact that Milwaukee did so without the aid of a home run. Entering the postseason, the dominating rhetoric from Milwaukee's critics was that the team doesn't hit enough home runs to compete in the playoffs. However, despite being out-homered by the Cubs' three longballs in Game 1, the Brew Crew took home a six-run victory, quickly silencing the power advocates who doubted their postseason abilities.

However, the home run narrative wasn't the only one that the Brewers overcame in their first postseason contest of 2025. Prior to the game, Thomas Nestico, a brilliant baseball statistician who goes by the name TJStats on the social media platform X, released a startling graphic that proved to be an ominous sign for the Brewers.

As displayed in the X post below, Nestico's graphic documented the four teams in MLB who had the lowest barrel rate in 2025. A "barrel" is measured by using a combination of exit velocity and launch angle to determine whether or not a batter made contact using the optimal part of the bat. Barrel rate, therefore, is the amount of barrels divided by the amount of batted balls in play.

Brewers looking to disprove alarming 2025 postseason barrel rate trend

I probably don't need to tell you the other three teams on that list were all eliminated during the Wild Card Round of the 2025 MLB playoffs, but it's rather concerning that the Brewers are the last one left among that group.

It's actually a wonder that the four worst teams in barrel rate all made the playoffs, though each team, like the Brewers, got by with excellent pitching, especially out of the bullpen.

That formula has proven fallible already in these playoffs, and it's not of any comfort that the Guardians, Padres, and Reds combined to average three runs per game in the Wild Card Round of the postseason.

If there's any consolation here, it's that the Cubs aren't particularly well-equipped to exploit this weakness. Jameson Taillon is the only starting pitcher on the roster who graded out as above average in barrel% allowed, and even he only ranked in the 53rd percentile.

Barrel rate allowed by Cubs' starting pitchers in 2025:
Shota Imanaga: 11.6% (sixth percentile)
Colin Rea: 10.3% (18th percentile)
Cade Horton: 10.0% (21st percentile)
Matthew Boyd: 9.0% (39th percentile)
Jameson Taillon: 8.1% (53rd percentile)

A veritable list of barrel-dodgers they are not.

Of course, this all worked out in the Crew's favor in Game 1 of the series, as the team piled up nine runs in the first two innings while totaling a whopping nine batted balls over 100 mph. This group is more than capable of doing damage with the right game plan.

On top of that, the Brewers' lower barrel rate is far less concerning when you pair it with the fact that the team led the National League in on-base percentage during the regular season. In other words, if you aren't going to barrel up baseballs, you better have another strategy for scoring runs, and the Brewers, as evidenced by the nine that they scored on Saturday afternoon, have just that.

Still, this is a slightly concerning weakness for the Brewers, and it's not one that can be washed away with smart lineup decisions or playing the platoon advantage. The Crew hardly have an inept offense, but there have been periods this year where impact has been hard to come by.

Hopefully, Milwaukee will buck this trend and beat the Cubs on the way to their first NLCS appearance since 2018. If they can ease worries about their barrel-related weaknesses in the process, they might just emerge as World Series favorites.