All things considered, the Milwaukee Brewers’ start to the 2019 season has to be treated as a success. Despite an exceedingly tough schedule where they saw the likely postseason contending Cardinals, Cubs and Dodgers 17 times in their first 23 games, they opened 13-10, enduring some rough patches but largely earning consideration as one of the league’s elite teams.
The Brewers are off to a positive start at least in part due to a few positive trends and in spite of some troubling ones. It’s much too early in the season to make any definite judgments based on the statistics, but here are a few numbers to watch in the weeks ahead:
Christian Yelich is really elevating the ball now
When Yelich made the move from Miami to Milwaukee, he was often cited as a candidate for a swing change. He was a consistently productive hitter with the Marlins despite hitting the ball on the ground over 55% of the time. There was something of a consensus that moving to Miller Park would help Yelich generate more home runs, especially if he could find ways to put more loft under his balls in play.
Last fall, Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs noted that Yelich’s hot finish to the 2018 season coincided with a significant drop in his ground ball rate. Just 51.8% of Yelich’s balls in play in 2018 were hit on the ground, a career low. After he launched some more fly balls on Sunday Yelich’s ground ball rate was down to just 38% in 2019, and over 45% of his balls in play have been hit in the air. In a related note, over 40% of his fly balls have ended up as home runs. That last number probably isn’t sustainable, but the fly ball trend is still encouraging.
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Junior Guerra has added some velocity in a bullpen role
Junior Guerra has experienced some success out of the bullpen for a Brewers team in dire need of reliable relievers in the early weeks of the season, with announces noticing that he seems to be throwing harder in a role and environment where he’s able to “air it out” a bit. Those observations are backed up by the early data: FanGraphs has Guerra’s average fastball clocked at 94.9 mph in 2019, up from 93.3 mph in 2018 and 91.9 in 2017.
Guerra’s relief role has also allowed him to lean a little more heavily on his best pitch: He’s throwing his splitter about 24% of the time, up from 16% last season. It remains to be seen how Guerra will weather the change in workload from a regular spot in the starting rotation to more frequent, less predictable work out of the bullpen, but early indications suggest he’s throwing harder and not having to face hitters multiple times is allowing his arsenal to play up.
Brandon Woodruff’s velocity is up a tick, too
The early results have been somewhat mixed for Brandon Woodruff, who was roughed up in the early innings on Sunday and saw his ERA rise to 5.81 on the season. He’s already made more starts at the major league level in 2019 (five) than he did in all of 2018 (four), though, and early data suggest all of his pitches are coming in a little faster this April.
Woodruff’s gain in his fastball velocity has been modest, from 95.8 mph to 96.1. His secondary pitches have seen bigger increases, however: His changeup is up from 85.2 to 86.6, his slider is up from 87.4 to 89.5 and his curve has seen the biggest jump, going from 78.8 to 82. Through five starts, all three non-fastball pitches have run values ranging from average to below average.
Corbin Burnes isn’t throwing his slider as often
Corbin Burnes’ struggles in his first season as a major league starter have been well documented and led to a demotion to the minors over the weekend in an effort to get him back on track. As of Sunday, he led all MLB pitchers with 11 home runs allowed this season despite pitching just 17.2 innings. The narrative around him has been that he’s getting hurt by poorly placed fastballs.
In 2018, as an MLB reliever, Burnes leaned very heavily on his slider, throwing it for over 34% of all pitches. This season, as a starter, he’s toned it back, using it just 23.6% of the time and throwing his fastball significantly more often. That fastball, as it turns out, has ended up in the seats much too often.
There’s a big gap in pitching performances between the Brewers’ two catchers
Yasmani Grandal’s Brewers career is off to a nice start at the plate, as he’s hit five early home runs and posted an on-base plus slugging around 1.000 in the season’s first month. Anecdotally, data suggests his oft-praised pitch framing has netted Brewers pitchers more than a dozen called strikes they would typically not have received. Overall, however, Brewers pitchers have struggled with him behind the plate.
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After Sunday’s loss, Grandal had appeared in 20 games behind the plate and Brewers pitchers had a 5.70 ERA while working with him. On the flip side, 10 Brewers pitchers have combined to post a 2.23 mark while working with Manny Piña, and the Brewers are 5-0 when he starts at catcher. The biggest split belongs to Freddy Peralta, who has a 15.63 ERA and has allowed opposing batters to slug .758 in two outings working with Grandal, but has a 2.38 ERA over two starts when pitching to Piña.
As noted above, the sample size is small for all of these statistics, many of which could swing dramatically with one great or poor outing. Nonetheless, as we see numbers start to stabilize in the weeks and months ahead, it’ll be interesting to see which of these trends hold.
