The problems the Brewers have had scoring runs off relief pitchers on this road trip got me to thinking. The team has scored one run in 26 2/3 relief innings on the road trip, good for a 0.34 ERA. That's a pretty ugly number, to be sure. Here are more ugly numbers: the team has hit only .146/.191/.202 in 96 PA off relievers on this trip. A silver lining, perhaps, is that they've only got a .191 BABIP in that stretch so the hits haven't really been falling in. Given the team's recent tradition of struggling on the road, I wondered how badly they hit relievers on the road all season. Before this last road trip started, the team was hitting .225/.314/.353 in 536 PA (.270 BABIP) against relief pitchers away from Miller Park. Opposing relievers had an ERA of 3.46 (RA of 4.10) against the Brewers. Combining this abysmal road trip with those numbers gives a cumulative line of .212/.296/.329 (.257 BABIP) in 632 PA. Relievers in their home park have an ERA of 2.91 and RA of 3.44 against the Crew. That means, when on the road, relief pitchers turn the Crew into Gary Bennett.

As Jeff has noted, however, the average hitter in the 2008 NL isn't very good against relievers in general. In keeping with the comparison to an ex-Brewer's career numbers, the average hitter against relievers this year is Alex Sanchez. So then, of course, I wondered how the Brewers at home and on the road stacked up against the rest of the National League. I put together two tables sorted by OPS that should help the comparisons.

First, the story of NL teams on the road.

Yuck. That's not fun to look at. Hopefully more hits fall in soon and that BABIP gets closer to the league average. On the brighter side, the Brewers are doing better at home.

It sucks that the team hasn't been able to plate more runs against relievers at home with their good hitting. It's a testament to their winning ways in Miller Park that they've had the second-fewest relief innings pitched against them there (fewer ninth innings). Once again, hopefully that BABIP gets up to league average levels.

Of course, now that tonight's game has seen relievers and Rickie Weeks has given the Crew the lead all of this is out of date anyway. :)