The Milwaukee Brewers’ decision to move Jhoulys Chacin ahead in the rotation paid dividends last Sunday as he worked six scoreless innings against the St. Louis Cardinals and helped his teammates pick up a rare day-game victory and stay afloat in the playoff chase. Chacin was awarded a win on Sunday, his 13th of the season, and now stands one shy of his career high of 14.
Wins are, without question, a terrible measure to use to assess a pitcher’s performance. Brewers franchise history offers many textbook examples of this fact. Take Ben Sheets, for example. In 2004, he had arguably the best season by a pitcher in franchise history, posting a 2.70 ERA and striking out 10 batters per nine innings in the height of the MLB’s offensive boom. He “won” 12 games that year. In 2009, Braden Looper led all MLB pitchers with 113 earned runs allowed and set a franchise record by giving up 39 home runs despite pitching fewer than 200 innings. He “won” 14 games that season and never pitched in the majors again.
Nonetheless, collecting his 14th and 15th wins would be a nice cherry on top of a remarkably solid Brewers debut season for Chacin, who has performed as well or better than anyone could have expected him to this year. He’s one of a few Brewers closing in on a milestone in the season’s final weeks. Here’s a look at some of the others:
Jesus Aguilar—30 home runs
Aguilar has already set career highs in nearly every offensive category this season, made his first All-Star appearance and participated in his first Home Run Derby. His next home run, however, will push him into even more elite company as he’ll move past 30 for the season.
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It’s hard to believe in the current offensive era, but no Brewer reached 30 home runs in 2013, 2014 or 2015. If or when Aguilar does it this season he’ll be the 22nd different player in franchise history to reach the mark and the sixth since 2016, joining Chris Carter, Ryan Braun, Domingo Santana, Eric Thames and Travis Shaw.
Ryan Braun—1,000 career runs
Braun’s bat was coming around a bit before a rib cage injury caused him to leave Wednesday’s game against the Cubs early. At that time, he was hitting .333 with a .385 on-base percentage and .617 slugging in his last 19 appearances and had scored 13 runs over that span.
If he can get back on that pace, he has a real shot to score the 19 more runs he needs to become just the third Brewer (joining Robin Yount and Paul Molitor) and the 15th active player with 1,000 runs scored in his career. Every active player with 1,000 runs has played in at least 100 more games than Braun, who made appearance 1,551 on Sunday.
Jeremy Jeffress—250 appearances as a Brewer
Jeffress worked two innings on Sunday and has now taken to the mound for Milwaukee 237 times: 10 in his first stint with the club in 2010, 148 in his second run with the team from 2014-’16 and 79 more since rejoining the club in 2017. He was an All Star for the first time in 2018.
Jeffress has followed an unlikely path to this milestone, but if he pitches in a Brewers uniform 13 more times, he’ll officially qualify to join the Brewers’ Wall of Honor when he eventually retires. By that point, he’ll rank 12th in franchise history in appearances on the mound.
Jeffress was selected #16 overall in the 2006 draft and will be the Brewers’ fifth first-round pick from an eight-year span from 1999-2006 to qualify, joining Ben Sheets (1999), Prince Fielder (2002), Rickie Weeks (2003) and Ryan Braun (2005).
