It's Tough to Win on the Road

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Photo courtesy of @Brewers on Twitter

Brock Holt was designated for assignment on Saturday, Aug. 22 after logging three hits in 30 at bats so far this season.

Sometime late Sunday night the Brewers team plane landed in Milwaukee and players and coaches headed out to sleep in their own beds for the first time in nearly two weeks. It was the best news this team has received in several days.

The Brewers’ recent 10 game, 11 day road trip got off to a promising start as they took three of four from the Cubs in Chicago but took a turn for the worse when they lost two of three in Minnesota and bottomed out in Pittsburgh, where the Brewers were outplayed in nearly every aspect of the game by a Pirates team that entered the weekend with a 4-17 record. The Brewers were leading at the beginning of just two of the 36 innings in the last four games of the trip. Opposing pitchers have taken a no-hitter into the fourth inning or beyond in more than half of the Brewers’ last eleven contests.

The list of Brewers who struggled on the road trip is not brief. It’s worth noting, however, that it might be more than baseball that some of them are struggling with. For many Brewers this is the longest they’ve been away from their young families since the Arizona portion of spring training. On Sunday Kaycee Sogard, wife of Brewers infielder Eric, took to Twitter to share a list of family milestones he’s missed during the team’s week and a half on the road. The challenge of being separated from his family was cited as a reason why utilityman Brock Holt struggled to find his footing offensively before eventually being designated for assignment. Lorenzo Cain’s family also came up as part of the rationale for his decision to opt out of the 2020 season after just a handful of games. Sogard, Holt and Cain aren’t the first players to juggle playing baseball and raising a family, of course, but they are among the first to attempt to do so during a global pandemic.

Across baseball, statistics would suggest that the challenges of winning on the road have not changed significantly this season: Through Sunday’s games MLB teams had a .532 winning percentage at home in 2020 as compared to a .529 mark in 2019 and a .528 mark in 2018. Baseball road trips are certainly different than they’ve been in previous years due to a variety of factors ranging from the lack of fan interaction to the lack of night life options. The way this collection of changes manifests itself on the field will likely vary team-to-team and player-to-player.

If being away from home was part of the problem for this Brewers team, however, then there is some good news. This 11-day road trip was a third of the away schedule for their entire season. They only have two road trips and four cities left on their regular season itinerary: A five-game loop through Cleveland and Detroit on September 4-9 and an eight-game, seven-day trip to Cincinnati and St. Louis to close out the regular season on September 21-27. They have 34 games remaining on their calendar, and 21 of them are at home. It would be 22, but one of the games postponed due to the Cardinals’ COVID-19 outbreak in late July will be made up in St. Louis.

Meanwhile, the combination of this season’s expanded postseason structure and the gap between the haves and have-nots in the National League has also left the Brewers with room to climb back into contention. As of the end of play Sunday ten of the National League’s 15 teams were at .500 or worse. The Cardinals were the league’s fifth best team at 9-8 and eight teams, including the Brewers, were within two and a half games of them. So, if being back at Miller Park is what it takes to spark this Brewers team, they should have plenty of opportunity to put themselves back into the postseason chase.

To read more Brewers On Deck Circle columns by Kyle Lobner, click here.