Photo via Bryse Wilson - Instagram
Bryse Wilson
Bryse Wilson
The 2024 Milwaukee Brewers have used more starting pitchers and leaned more heavily on their bullpen than any team in franchise history, although it’s possible the statistics are creating a misleading picture in both cases.
To be clear, it’s true that 17 different pitchers have been the first person to throw in a game for the Brewers this season. That’s seven more than did so last year and it’s four more than any other Brewers team has had since the franchise moved to Milwaukee in 1970 (the expansion Seattle Pilots also had 17 in 1969). Those previous seasons with 13, however, were largely before “the opener” became common practice.
Whether you call them the opener or the “initial out getter,” a phrase Craig Counsell coined, using a pitcher who typically works as a reliever in a brief outing to start the game is an increasingly frequent strategy. The Brewers have had 10 games this season where their “starter” worked two innings or less, often a lefty intended to get through a lefty-heavy top of an opposing lineup. Jared Koenig has been used this way five times, Rob Zastryzny three times and Hoby Milner once (the other short start belongs to Joe Ross, who left due to injury).
Misleading Count?
While those pitchers technically started those respective games, they didn’t fill the typical role of a starting pitcher and it’s somewhat misleading to count them as such, especially when someone else in the same game had a performance more in line with a typical “start.” In nine of those 10 games (again, all but the one Ross left due to injury) another pitcher followed the opener and logged four innings or more. Bryse Wilson pitched in six of those games, including an outing where he logged six innings in relief on June 25. Colin Rea pitched in all three of the others. In all cases they were on their scheduled day to throw and Wilson and Rea combined to pitch 45 2/3 innings in those contests, more than five innings per appearance. They didn’t start the game but they were “bulk guys,” and functionally that’s not all that different from being a starter.
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If Wilson and Rea were credited with the “start” on those days, it would bring the Brewers down to 14 starting pitchers on the season. That’s still the most in the Milwaukee era, a reflection of the challenges they’ve had to overcome due to injury, but it’s more of an apples-to-apples comparison of current baseball to previous eras.
The statistical challenge of labeling an opener as a starter also shows up in another place: Because Rea and Wilson’s outings technically came out of the bullpen, they impact the statistics for the Brewers’ relievers. Entering play Sunday, the Brewers had gotten 495 2/3 innings from “relievers” this season, the second most in all of baseball, but that includes the nine opener games mentioned above. If the 10 1/3 innings Koenig, Zastryzny and Milner pitched in those games were counted as bullpen innings and Rea and Wilson were considered starters, then the Brewers bullpen would only have thrown 460 1/3 innings, the eleventh most in baseball.
Because the opener isn’t a universally used strategy, this creates a statistical disparity in “bullpen use” between teams that use it and teams that don’t. Entering play Sunday, the only team that had more bullpen innings than the Brewers was the Giants. They also routinely use an opener, with lefty reliever Erik Miller taking the ball first in 10 games this season. Before Sunday’s games five teams (the Brewers, Dodgers, Rays, Giants and Tigers) had combined to have 62 starts of two innings or less this season. The other 25 teams in baseball combined for 87 of them.
Changing Trends?
It’s possible trends around the game could change and render this point moot. MLB could even attempt to put its thumb on the scale here: Last week a proposed rule change made the rounds requiring starting pitchers to remain in the game until they’ve either completed six innings, thrown 100 pitches, given up four or more earned runs or gotten injured.
Barring something like that, however, the opener strategy and its non-homogenous use across baseball have created an environment where some of our pitching stats no longer capture what they were intended to show, and others have become full-on deceptive. If this part of the game is here to stay, then we may need to adapt the way we determine a game’s most prominent pitcher.
