Brewers are Passing on Pitches this Season

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Photo via Twitter / Brewers

The Brewers’ offense has been a frequent topic of conversation around the team lately, as their .636 on-base plus slugging in May (entering Sunday’s games) ranked 14th among 15 National League teams and was a big part of the reason they started 5-13 this month. One element of that performance, however, doesn’t come up often: plate discipline.

On any given pitch the Brewers are one of the least likely teams in baseball to swing the bat: Entering play Sunday they had swung at just 45.4% of the pitches thrown to their batters in 2021, which was tied for 23rd among MLB clubs. They’re several percentage points below the league leaders (three teams were over 49%), but also noticeably above the bottom of the list as three NL West clubs (the Giants, Padres and Dodgers) are all below 44%, with the Padres at 42.4%.

A quick glance at pitch data from the season shows the Brewers are seeing strikes at roughly the same rate as everyone else. Opposing pitchers have placed 42.6% of all pitches to Brewers batters in the strike zone, which ranks 15^th among MLB teams. The Brewers also see strikes on 59.4% of the first pitches of plate appearances, which again puts them in the middle third of the game in that category. All of that makes it all the more significant that the Brewers are passing on pitches more often than most of their rivals.

Bases Loaded Walk

Being less aggressive has, on several occasions this season, allowed the Brewers to take advantage of pitchers who are unable to avoid beating themselves. On Sunday in the first inning Travis Shaw drew a bases loaded walk, the Brewers’ 11th of the season. No other MLB team has done that more than seven times in 2021. In 2019, their last full season, the Brewers only walked with the bases loaded 14 times. They’re on pace to do it 39 times this season, which would more than double their franchise record.

A willingness to let pitches go by has also, at times at least, allowed the Brewers to get baserunners during stretches where their bats were otherwise quiet. They entered play Sunday batting .209 in May but with a .300 on base percentage. That 91-point gap between those two numbers was one of the NL’s largest, at least in part because the Brewers had drawn 74 walks and been hit by eleven pitches this month.

A downside to their patience, however, is that they often find themselves at a quick disadvantage. The Brewers are batting just .189 with a .245 on-base percentage and .298 slugging in plate appearances that start with an 0-1 count, and almost exactly half of their trips to the plate fall into that category. It’s happened to Jackie Bradley Jr. 80 times in his first 153 plate appearances this season. The Brewers are also among the MLB leaders in called strike percentage, a byproduct of being among the leaders in taking pitches.

Daviel Vogelbach doesn’t often get mentioned among the game’s most patient hitters, but he’s a major participant in this Brewers trend. Vogelbach has swung at just 32.8% of pitches thrown to him this season, the third-lowest rate in all of baseball among players who have been to the plate at least 100 times. Vogelbach has always been a selective hitter, but his swing rate this season is lower than the career low he set in 2020. As a result of his patience Vogelbach walks in about 13% of all of his plate appearances, but he also sees strikes called on more than a quarter of all pitches thrown to him.

Developing a reputation for patience can sometimes pay off in the long run, as once word gets around that the Brewers are willing to take lots of pitches opposing pitchers will be more likely to throw them strikes. There’s a fine line between patient and passive, however, and at times the Brewers’ reluctance to swing the bat will make them vulnerable to pitchers that can exploit that behavior.