WITHOUT W - It’s a great time to be a Milwaukee Brewers fan

ORDS

Well, it’s been an exciting few months for Milwaukee Brewers fans. We’ve been treated to the best stretch of Brewers baseball in the history of the franchise, their 44-16 record over the past 60 games is the top mark across any such stretch, and they now sit three games ahead of any other team in the entirety of the league (and four games ahead of the Cubs, which is even better).

And honestly, I don’t think anyone saw it coming.

I certainly did not, at the very least, and based on the responses from both pundits (who are generally down on the Brewers anyways, so no surprises there) and the fans, I think that is a fairly common sentiment. Just a few months ago, the Brewers were 25-28 near the end of May and looking pretty bad. The lineup was sluggish, the starting pitching rotation was injured, and the bullpen was still working through who actually would be good this year or not.

But as the calendar shifted into June, Milwaukee suddenly started to heat up, and they’ve been the best team in baseball since.

How did this turnaround happen? How did a team with a bottom-third payroll change their identity so quickly?

Well, one, they’ve been fairly healthy. Adding pitchers like Brandon Woodruff, DL Hall and Aaron Ashby back into the mix has helped the pitching staff stabilize and for the most part, the lineup hasn’t had too many big hits, other than Rhys Hoskins going down (which actually turned out to be kind of a good thing in a way). Recent injuries to Sal Frelick and Jackson Chourio may upset this, but the second thing that has fueled this turnaround may help the Crew weather the storm.

And that’s been some solid depth discovered in a lot of young players coming up to the team. The Brewers have had a ton of impressive rookie contributions from the likes of Isaac Collins, Caleb Durbin, Jacob Misiorowski, Logan Henderson, and Chad Patrick and then added the likes of Quinn Priester and Andrew Vaughn midseason, who have both been lights out for Milwaukee after struggling at their previous spots. Suddenly, the Brewers have depth at positions in the starting rotation and lineup that once felt like holes.

But even with some good health and surprising performances from players that weren’t really considered part of the starting core at the start of the season, one still wouldn’t have figured that the Brewers would have the best record at baseball at this point in the season. So what’s the deal?

I have a hypothesis that this season feels like a culmination of what the Brewers have been attempting to do for the last few years, something akin to the “Moneyball” era of the Oakland Athletics. And that is putting value in aspects of the game (defense, base-running, general athleticism) that are undervalued by the rest of the sport and going all in on it.

It’s a bold play. In a world in which analytics show that power in the batter’s box is the best way to counter the growing velocity on the mound, Milwaukee decided to go in the opposite direction, creating a roster built around speed and defense. Even when you look at their current farm system, it shows a lot of the same types of players; those who are solid defensively, have good to great speed, and tend to hit more for average than power. Because these players are perhaps not as valued by other teams, the Brewers have likely been able to snag more for themselves, allowing them to construct an entire roster built around this idea.

Which is really what you need to do if you are attempting this strategy. If there are weak links in the defense or hitters in the lineup, this strategy just doesn’t work, because you cannot generate enough hits to drive in runs consistently or can’t save enough runs defensively to make it worth what you are giving up in a lack of power. But if you go all in as the Brewers seemingly have, while the rest of the league goes the opposite direction, then you may be able to find a tiny niche for your team to play with a third of the payroll of the largest franchises in baseball.

Milwaukee’s roster is all about playing defense and putting pressure on the other team’s defense, and it’s working. They have the most infield hits in the league, are second in steals and are third in batting average and on-base percentage. They also lead the MLB in unearned runs scored, which while one could argue is merely luck based on bad defense by their opponents, but I would hazard it’s because a lot of these errors are forced by the Brewers, either by just putting the ball in play and making the defense make a play, or created by aggressive baserunning.

The fact that Milwaukee seems to have an incredible knack for developing pitchers, even those tossed aside by other teams, is also key to this equation. Lack of the long ball means that there may be games where runs just aren’t going to be coming in (see Milwaukee’s recent first game against Atlanta). But elite pitching can help overcome these potential droughts, leaving the Brewers needing to be less reliant on high octane bats.

We will have to see if this roster building strategy by the Brewers will continue to carry them through the final stretch of the season, but right now it feels as if it has some staying power. Then comes the question of whether such a roster can win come October, but I don’t want to count my metaphorical chickens before they’ve hatched, so we’ll leave that conversation for another day.

Either way, it’s a great time to be a Brewers fan right now, so if you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon yet, I’ve got a seat next to me right here.

A C ERTAIN POINT OF V IEW