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Mark Mathias

Mark Mathias

As the Brewers headed to the top of the seventh inning in their game against Washington on Saturday, their offense was about to come unstuck. The timing, however, was not great.

The Brewers scored three runs in that half inning on, among other things, Mark Mathias’ first home run of the season. Those runs didn’t turn out to be particularly notable, however, as they were already trailing 8-1 at the time. The Brewers came into that frame with a 1% chance to win the game and left with a 3% chance. The night before they had experienced something similar, scoring a pair of runs in the eighth to turn a 10-3 game into a 10-5 game. They came into that inning with a 0% chance to win and, even after scoring two runs, left with the same chances.

The runs scored in those situations still count the same in the season statistics, of course, but some are more impactful than others. Baseball Reference has a statistic to attempt to measure this: Leverage Index is designed to determine the impact a given event or plate appearance has on the outcome of the entire contest. A trip to the plate with runners on in a close game in the late innings would be considered a high leverage moment, as the outcome of that play may swing the entire contest. A ninth inning at bat in a blowout, meanwhile, would be labeled as low leverage because its outcome is unlikely to matter in the final score.

Baseball Reference sorts plate appearances into three groups: High, medium and low leverage. High leverage situations don’t happen in every game, and they don’t happen as often as the others. Through Sunday’s game the Brewers had 391 high leverage plate appearances, representing about 17% of their sample for the entire season. In those limited opportunities, however, they’ve been one of the best teams in baseball.

Across almost 400 opportunities in key situations the Brewers are batting .259 with a .346 on-base percentage and .436 slugging. Their .782 on-base plus slugging is the fourth best mark in all of baseball, and it’s nearly 80 points better than their overall mark of .704. Across the sport teams are outperforming their overall numbers in high leverage situations by about 3%. The Brewers are about 23% better in those situations.

Bats and Runs

This doesn’t mean, of course, that every Brewer has been good in these spots. Tyrone Taylor and Rowdy Tellez, for example, have been very good with games on the line: Taylor is batting .423 with a .467 on-base and slugging .731 in high leverage spots, driving in 17 runs in 26 at bats. Tellez is hitting .306/.390/.694 in the same categories and has driven in 19 runs in 36 key at bats. On the opposite side, Hunter Renfroe is batting just .148/.194/.148 in 31 high leverage plate appearances, as compared to .290/.325/.592 in low leverage opportunities.

All of these samples are small, but they do imply that some Brewers have been much better than others in “clutch” situations.

On the pitching side, meanwhile, the Brewers are demonstrating why batting in high leverage spots is extremely difficult. The three Brewers pitchers who have faced the most batters in important spots this season are Devin Williams (59), Aaron Ashby (55) and Josh Hader (48). Combined, that trio has allowed opposing batters to hit .211 with a .309 on-base and .289 slugging in those moments. That slugging percentage was much lower before Hader allowed a pair of home runs on Tuesday to snap a long scoreless streak.

They all count the same in the final statistics, but not all runs are created equal. One path to outperforming expectations is being above average offensively and defensively in situations where the game is on the line and, despite their recent struggles, the Brewers have the pieces necessary to follow that blueprint.