Photo courtesy Milwaukee Brewers
Welcome to the On Deck Circle, Brewers writer Kyle Lobner’s weekly look at the team’s week to come and beyond.
After taking two of three from the Nationals over the weekend, the Brewers stand at 34-41 on the season. That puts them on pace for a 73-89 final record, which would be five wins better than 2015 but still their second-lowest win total in the last 12 years.
As we approach the mathematical midpoint of the season (for the Brewers it’s on Sunday), there’s reason to start taking a slightly more serious look at some of the numbers this team is on pace to reach by the end of the year. These projections aren’t guaranteed, of course, but they do shine some light on what we’ve seen to date.
Chris Carter: 40 home runs
Carter hit his 19th home run of the season on Saturday (giving him 128 in his first 600 MLB games, tied for the 42nd most in MLB history), and furthering his quest to become just the sixth Brewer ever to reach 40 in a season and the first since Prince Fielder in 2009.
Hitting 40 home runs is no easy feat, however, as demonstrated by this statistic: If Carter hits at least one home run over the next two weeks, it’ll be the 20th time in franchise history a Brewer has had 20 by the All Star break. In 14 of those 20 previous occurrences the player failed to reach 40 for the season. In several of them (Rob Deer in 1987 and 1989 and Geoff Jenkins in 2003, for example), they didn’t even reach 30. In two other cases (Greg Vaughn in 1996 and Carlos Lee in 2006) the player was traded away during the season.
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Assuming Carter does stick around for a full season in Milwaukee, we might end up comparing his 2016 season to his 2014 campaign with the Astros. Carter batted .227 with a .308 on-base percentage and .491 slugging that year, which is remarkably similar to the .233/.308/.508 line he’s posting this season. Carter finished 2014 with 37 home runs, but he’s on pace to get about 70 more plate appearances this year than he did during that campaign.
Jonathan Villar: 250 times on base
Villar earned his way on base a pair of times on Sunday with a walk and a ninth inning, sun-aided triple, and leads the Brewers by having done so 119 times this season. That puts him on pace for 257 by season’s end, which would be the 23rd most in franchise history. It would also be the second-most ever by a shortstop, trailing only Robin Yount’s 265 during his 1982 AL MVP campaign.
Villar’s skills and lineup position put him in a good position to get on base very frequently. His combination of speed and patience at the plate (although he’s not necessarily patient on the bases) have served him well in the leadoff spot, and continuing to bat near the top of the order nets him a few extra opportunities to rack up counting stats: The average NL leadoff hitter is making slightly more than four plate appearances per game this season while the average #7 batter, for example, makes less than three and a half.
If anything, though, Villar’s numbers and pace shine a light on just how good Paul Molitor was during his 1991 campaign, when he set the Brewers’ franchise record by getting on base 299 times. Molitor led the American League with 216 hits that season, and 62 of them went for extra bases. Even in an excellent breakout year, Villar’s pace falls well short of that with a projected 175 hits and 52 extra base hits.
Jimmy Nelson: 200 innings
Nelson has not pitched well lately, failing to complete the sixth inning in each of his five starts in June and posting a 5.87 ERA over that time. Even with those struggles, though, he’s still on pace to be the first Brewers pitcher to record 200 innings with an ERA under 4 since Yovani Gallardo did it in 2012. It would only be the fifth time a Brewer accomplished that feat in the last eleven seasons.
Nelson’s star has dimmed a bit in the last month as a series of rough outings have made it tougher to make a case for him to be this staff’s ace, but if he can simply retain this season’s pace for three more months he’ll have as many 200 inning, sub-4 ERA seasons as Ben Sheets. There’s a lot of value in being a reliable innings-eater, and the Brewers have been looking for that for a long time.
