Photo via Twitter / Brewers
The Brewers will almost certainly have an opportunity to be active before MLB’s upcoming trade deadline, but it’s possible their biggest stretch run improvements will come from within.
The organization dug themselves out of a significant hole in the NL Central with their recent 30-10 stretch, which included an 11-game winning streak. Their 51-34 record and seven game lead on the field in their division is all the more remarkable considering several individual performances that have fallen well short of expectations.
This certainly wasn’t the first season in Milwaukee that Jackie Bradley Jr. intended to have. He was scuffling when the calendar turned to May, then endured a seven-week stretch where the wheels came all the way off: From May 1 through June 16 he batted just .110 with a .189 on-base percentage and .202 slugging across a span of 36 games. It’s been a slow comeback but Bradley’s bat is showing signs of life lately: He wrapped up the Pirates series on Sunday on a seven-game hitting streak, and had one of the day’s top defensive plays on Thursday.
The biggest challenge for Bradley could be the fact that he’d have to stay hot for a long time before his overall numbers (and the narrative around him) would begin to reflect it. Even taking his recent hitting streak into account he’s still dragging a .175 batting average because of his extended rough start. To get back to his career .234 mark he’d need to bat .375 over the span of his next 104 at-bats, a stretch that would extend across about 30 games. Because he started so poorly, Bradley could be a big part of the Brewers’ success for an extended period of time this summer while his numbers still suggest he’s having a disastrous season.
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Sunday was not a great day for Keston Hiura, who went 0-for-3 with a pair of strikeouts, but before that he was also having a noticeable bounce back: Before that setback he had reached base safely in each of his ten games since being recalled from the minors on June 23. When he was sent down in early June he was batting .130 with a .217 on-base and .222 slugging, but he hit .294/.419/.588 during the aforementioned streak. For the season his on-base plus slugging went up 142 points during that stretch.
Rebounded but Struggling
Like Bradley, however, Hiura’s numbers had fallen so far that his rebound still left him looking like a struggling player. He’s come a long way since he had a .439 OPS at the time of his most recent demotion, but his current .569 mark is still more than 100 points below the National League average and over 200 points below his MLB career numbers. Just like with Bradley, the negativity around Hiura will likely continue for a while even if his performance continues to improve.
Christian Yelich was out of the starting lineup on Sunday but also swung a hot bat during the Brewers’ recent run of success: He played in ten of the eleven games during their winning streak and batted .250 with a .426 on-base and .500 slugging, homering twice and drawing eleven walks in 47 plate appearances. He continues to have more walks than hits on the season, and on Saturday he went 1-for-2 with a double but drew three free passes and scored three times.
The most encouraging fact about Yelich is a similarity to prior years: In 2018 Yelich was batting .285 with a .359 on-base and .452 slugging in his first 79 games, good for an .811 OPS (his current mark is .809). From that point on he batted .372/.451/.762 with 25 home runs in his final 68 games, powering the Brewers to an NL Central crown, winning a batting title and cementing his status as the National League MVP. It’s not a given that Yelich will have another near-unprecedented hot streak, of course, but it has happened before.
As noted last week, the Brewers’ postseason math has shifted dramatically during their recent hot streak. On Saturday FanGraphs estimated their odds of making the playoffs at a season-high 90.5%, up from 70% a week earlier and 52.6% on June 18. There’s a real possibility that their recent run of success has shifted the organizational approach to this deadline and reduced their urgency to make additions. If they get everything they could from their internal candidates, however, they may not need to make many outside deals anyway.
