Since 2018, Brewers faced 6 Starting Pitchers making MLB Debuts, Winning 4 of Those Games

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Photo: Minda Haas Kuhlmann - Wikimedia Commons

Matt Swarmer

Matt Swarmer

As the Brewers and Cubs prepared for a Memorial Day day-night doubleheader last week, fans who follow the Brewers’ minor league affiliates had cause to be excited: The day’s first game was scheduled to feature Brewers top pitching prospect Ethan Small, a former first round pick making his MLB debut. Superstitious Brewers fans, however, had a cause for concern: The Cubs were starting right-handed pitcher Matt Swarmer, who was also pitching in his first MLB game.

There’s a long-held belief among Brewers fans, often cited as fact, that the Brewers struggle to hit pitchers they’re seeing for the first time. The theory is backed up by some anecdotal evidence, like a pair of games in May and June of 2019 when Twins rookie Devin Smeltzer and Padres rookie Logan Allen combined to hold the Brewers scoreless across a combined 13 innings of work. This trend threatened to continue into 2022 as Swarmer limited the Brewers to just two runs across his first five innings of work, outlasting Small in the contest.

The Brewers eventually got to Swarmer for two more runs in the sixth inning of that contest and held on to win 7-6. And, in fact, the final score was evidence of a trend that runs counter to the commonly held belief: Since the start of the 2018 season the Brewers have faced six starting pitchers making their MLB debuts, and they’ve won four of those games. The Smeltzer and Allen outings cited above are the lone exceptions across the last three full and two partial MLB seasons.

From a psychological perspective it makes sense that Brewers fans would be more inclined to remember the occasions where an opposing pitcher did well in his MLB debut. Seeing a pitcher most fans have never heard of come out and have a dominant outing generates the kind of frustration that leads to a lasting impression. Fans who watched the Brewers struggle to hit Logan Allen across seven innings, for example, almost certainly had a more memorable experience than the fans who watched them hang eleven hits and six runs on another Padres rookie, Brett Kennedy, in August of 2018.

Finding Context

To put the Brewers’ results in context: Since the start of the 2018 season 187 pitchers have made their major league debut as a starter (with Jason Alexander becoming the latest when he did so for the Brewers on Wednesday). Collectively, that group pitched 827 2/3 innings, about 4 1/3 per start, and had a 4.82 ERA in those outings. The six starters who faced the Brewers over that timeframe pitched 29 2/3 innings, which is just slightly under five per outing, and had a 3.64 ERA. The pitchers who faced the Brewers performed better than average, to be sure, but that ERA difference amounts to about four runs across six games.

Furthermore, there’s a sample size issue in the data. Even looking back across five MLB seasons there are only six Brewers games included in this sample. Since the start of the 2018 season opposing pitchers have worked more than 5320 innings against the Brewers, and pitchers making their MLB debut accounted for less than 30 of those. The six debuting pitchers combined to face just 122 batters across their six outings, many of which are no longer in the Brewers’ organization. Just three of the eleven Brewers who faced Logan Allen in his 2019 debut, for example, are still with the team. One of them is pitcher Brandon Woodruff.

As the 2022 season continues the Brewers will almost certainly see more new pitchers: Their schedule is heavily laden with weak opponents who will likely try out a lot of young arms down the stretch. This is not, however, the bad thing that many have come to believe it is.