Brewers Still Seeking Middle Inning Consistency

×

Expand

Photo via Freddy Peralta - Instagram

Freddy Peralta

Freddy Peralta

The Brewers are coming off a week where they went 4-3 overall and took three out of four games from the Cardinals at home, so they’ve certainly experienced some recent success. Their games over that stretch, however, highlighted one of the things they’ll still need to figure out if they’re going to reach their potential this season.

The Brewers allowed 24 runs across those aforementioned seven games, a pretty solid total of just over three per game, but those runs were often clustered in similar spots in games: 

• They gave up four in the fifth inning of the middle game in Kansas City, erasing a 2-0 lead and causing them to need a rally in the ninth to win.
• They gave up two in the fifth inning and another in the sixth before rallying late to beat the Cardinals on Saturday.
• They gave up single runs in the fifth and sixth innings on Sunday as the Cardinals overcame an early 3-0 Brewers lead.

The fifth inning in particular has been a challenge for the Brewers all season. Even before giving up a run on Sunday Brewers pitchers had allowed a .721 on-base plus slugging against in that inning, 20 points higher than they’ve allowed for the season as a whole. The Brewers have now given up 25 runs each in the fifth inning and sixth this season, tied for the most of any inning.

In theory, it makes sense that teams would allow more runs in the middle innings than in most other situations: It’s the time in a game where teams are most likely to either be using a tiring starting pitcher or the relievers that aren’t quite reliable enough to regularly protect leads in the eighth and ninth. Across baseball run scoring peaks in the first inning, when every team sends their top batters to the plate, but it peaks again in the middle innings as those same hitters either see a starter for the third or fourth time or a middle reliever.

Fifth Inning

The Brewers pitchers who have worked most often in the fifth inning this season are, not surprisingly, their starting pitchers: Freddy Peralta, Colin Rea, Joe Ross, Bryse Wilson and Tobias Myers have combined to face 124 of the 178 opposing batters that have come to the plate during that frame this season. Wilson is the only one of those five pitchers who has fared better during the fifth than his overall numbers, even after the home run he allowed to Paul Goldschmidt on Sunday. 

In some of their successful recent seasons, however, the middle innings have been where the Brewers were able to use their depth to their advantage. As recently as last season Brewers’ pitchers posted a 2.50 ERA in the fifth, holding opposing batters to a .595 OPS. The starters who pitched well were able to carry that success into the middle frames (Corbin Burnes faced 126 fifth inning batters to lead all Brewers), but when pitchers struggled the Brewers quickly turned to their bullpen. 

During the Brewers’ recent successful years, the phrase “closer for the starter” has come up at times: If a starting pitcher is going to come out during an inning with runners on and the game on the line his team had better have someone in the bullpen who can throw strikes right away and limit the damage. The Brewers got one outing in that mold in the first game of the Cardinals series on Thursday when Tobias Myers allowed the first three batters he faced in the fifth to reach before giving way to Jared Koenig, who retired the next three batters to escape the jam.

Of course, the fact that Koenig was pitching in a key spot is a reminder of the depth the Brewers have been forced to tap into already this season. Before the season most fans might not even have heard of Koenig or Bryan Hudson, but both have logged high leverage innings as the Brewers have worked around the absence of Devin Williams and the struggles of Joel Payamps and Abner Uribe. Getting those pitchers healthy and/or back to form would go a long way towards solidifying the Brewer bullpen all the way down the ladder.

In the meantime, however, the Brewers are still looking for pitchers who can help in the bullpen and working around the fact that a longtime organizational strength has been missing in the early months of the season.