Matt Albers on Saturday, May 4th, 2019 v the Mets at Miller Park in Milwaukee. The game lasted 18-innings, the longest in Miller Park history. Kirsten Schmitt/Brewers
The weekend’s series with the Giants was a tale of two fifth innings for the Brewers.
The story started on Saturday when Jimmy Nelson, who had experienced little trouble up to this point in the game, took the mound staked to a 5-1 lead in the bottom of the fifth and proceeded to walk the first three batters he faced, including opposing pitcher Madison Bumgarner. He was lifted from the game but all three walks eventually came around to score as the Giants drew a bases-loaded walk against Adrian Houser and drove in two more runs with a groundout and sacrifice fly. The Brewers’ 5-1 lead diminished to 5-4 in a game they would eventually lose 8-7.
The fifth inning was a challenge again on Sunday for Chase Anderson, who seemed to have found a rhythm in the third and fourth innings. He came into the frame with a 4-2 lead but again allowed the first three batters he faced to reach on a single, walk and bunt single. The difference this time was Matt Albers, who limited the damage by recording a strikeout, sac fly and foul out to preserve a 4-3 Brewers lead. By Win Percentage Added (WPA), Albers was the most valuable Brewers pitcher on Sunday: His magic act added more to the Brewers’ win probability than Josh Hader’s six-out save. The Brewers held on to win 5-3.
The fact that the Brewers needed their bullpen to address a jam during the fifth inning of back-to-back games against one of baseball’s worst offenses, however, illustrates both a strategic decision and the resulting challenge of a new normal for the organization. For two years now, Milwaukee has been one of the most reluctant organizations in baseball when it comes to letting starting pitchers work deep into games.
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In 2018, just 660 opposing batters faced a Brewers starting pitcher three times in a game. That was the third-lowest total in baseball and one of the teams behind the Brewers in this category, the Rays, regularly used an “opener” in place of a starter in their rotation. Just 554 opposing batters faced a Brewers starting pitcher than had already thrown between 75 and 100 pitches in a game last season. That was the fourth-lowest mark in baseball, and two of the teams ahead of the Brewers (the Rays and Athletics) were teams that routinely employed an opener.
Those trends have largely continued into 2019: As of Monday morning, the Brewers had allowed 277 opposing batters to face a pitcher three times in a game, third-lowest in baseball, and had allowed 270 batters to face a pitcher that had already thrown 76 or more pitches, tied for 10th-lowest. Nelson was removed after throwing just 72 pitches on Saturday, and Anderson was lifted with a pitch count of 83 on Sunday.
This reflects a growing trend across all of baseball. In 2015, MLB teams allowed a pitcher to face an opposing batter for the third time 30,704 times, which at the time was the lowest total since MLB expanded to 30 teams in 1998. That number has decreased each year since, falling to 24,939 in 2018. The Brewers may be among the leaders in this trend, but they’re certainly not alone in it.
The challenge, however, continues to be finding ways to reliably handle all the innings this leaves behind for the bullpen. Despite the fact that none of the three contests went to extra innings, the Brewers needed eleven relief outings to get through three games in San Francisco, and all of them were in high-leverage situations. Even with an off day on Thursday, Brewers relievers racked up 19 innings of work in a span of five days from Wednesday through Sunday, and nearly every pitch was thrown with the game hanging in the balance.
Not everyone is handling that workload well: Alex Claudio is on pace to set a Brewers franchise record with 86 appearances this season and his recent results suggest his effectiveness is diminishing under the strain. From May 16 through June 15, he appeared in 13 games and allowed opposing batters to hit .362 with a .400 on-base percentage and .660 slugging. Pitchers like Albers, Houser, Junior Guerra and Jeremy Jeffress have looked good recently while shouldering large portions of the load, but the Brewers will have their hands full trying to keep them healthy and effective while also needing to rely on them heavily.
For the second consecutive year, the Brewers bullpen has done a nice job picking up the slack for a starting rotation that rarely works deep into games but, as the relief outings and innings rack up in June, it’s only natural to wonder how long they can sustain this performance.
