Brewers Get Big Results from Recovered Pitchers

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Photo via MLB - brewers.com

Aaron Ashby

Aaron Ashby

Through two months much of the Milwaukee Brewers season could be divided into two parts: The one were all the pitchers were hurt and the one where all the pitchers came back.

The Brewers used a total of 21 pitchers to get through the month of April, including ten starters. They did this at least in part because the projected Opening Day rotation was almost immediately in shambles: Brandon Woodruff, DL Hall, Tobias Myers, Aaron Ashby and Aaron Civale all opened the season on the injured list and Nestor Cortes followed them not long thereafter.

Most teams that experience that volume of pitching injury, however, don’t experience what happened next for the Brewers: They’ve had so many pitchers return to action in a relatively brief span of time that it’s created a second roster crunch. Here are the pitchers the Brewers have activated and brought back to the majors over a span of 11 days:

• Aaron Civale, who had not pitched in the majors since the Opening Weekend series with the Yankees, rejoined the team on May 22 and has made two starts since. He allowed two runs across four innings against the Pirates in his return but was both better and more efficient in his second outing, holding Boston to one run across five innings on just 79 pitches on Tuesday.

• Aaron Ashby had made just 14 MLB appearances over the last two seasons before the Brewers activated him the next day on May 23. He has yet to allow a run across three innings of work since returning and has struck out four while walking just one.
• Three days later DL Hall joined the big-league bullpen for the first time this season and pitched a bullpen-saving gem, logging 2 1⁄3 innings in his season debut to get the Brewers out of a jam in the fifth inning and clear the sixth and seventh. Hall went long in relief again on Friday, facing just ten batters on his way to three hitless innings against the Red Sox.
• Jose Quintana stumbled out of the gate in his return on Sunday, walking four batters and allowing a pair of runs in the first two innings, but rallied from there to pitch three scoreless innings thereafter in a game the Brewers went on to win.

Collectively these four pitchers have a 2.31 ERA in their returns to the Brewers. While they all have success in common, however, their paths back were not the same. Hall pitched twice each at the Brewers’ Arizona complex and Nashville during rehab assignments. Ashby pitched down on the complex once before heading to Nashville for four appearances. Civale was with Nashville for just six days, making a pair of starts. Quintana’s stint in the minors was even shorter, as he pitched just one game for High-A Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Woodruff’s scheduled game with Nashville on Tuesday will be his ninth rehab start.

It’s possible that the biggest unreached breakthrough in sports might be injury prevention, as the ability to prevent pitchers from suffering injuries would be a complete game-changer for individual teams or the sport as a whole. Barring some massive discovery on that front, however, the next best thing a team might have would be effective systems for determining when pitchers are ready to come back from injury and be successful at the MLB level.

In his book The Shift, clinical psychologist and baseball writer Russell Carleton cites an occasionally used academic phrase that “the plural of anecdote is not data.” This is certainly a case where that’s true: Four cases, even if they are compelling, is not enough to arrive at a clear conclusion that the Brewers have developed some kind of special skill to know when pitchers are able to return to the mound or wrap up a rehab assignment. They have experienced some significant recent success on this front recently, however, and if it’s because they’re doing something right then that could be a major competitive advantage.