There has been a lot of grumbling about how "terrible", or "streaky", or even "unreliable" the Brewers' offense has been this season. Jonathan Judge at Disciples of Uecker did a great piece yesterday, and for the record, I agree with his conclusion.
So what is it then? The Brewers score a lot of runs (second in the NL, 8th in MLB), they have the second most wins in the National League, and have a very good chance of making the playoffs this year. But we all get that terrible feeling from time to time that the Brewers are going to have one of those nights and won't manage enough offense to win a game.
I chose to define "one of those games" as a game where the team scores three or less runs and gets 7 or less hits (I wanted to use total base-runners rather than hits, but I'm new to the play index at B-ref and was foiled). On average, teams in the NL have encountered this situation an average of 40 times already this season, with a total winning percentage of .196.
The Brewers have encountered this situation in 36 games this season, third fewest in the National League this season. So, this doesn't actually happen to the Brewers as much as it does to other teams. It has occurred 56 times to the Padres this season, which is not surprising. The Padres are terrible, but because of the park in which they play, they manage to have a better winning percentage (.213) in those games (meaning they also likely hold teams to fewer runs). The team with the best winning percentage in NL in this situation is the Marlins, who have won 15 of 47 games (.319 winning percentage) in this situation, who knew?
Now, as you can see by looking at the chart below, this is not an indicator of overall success, but what does show is that the Brewers are less successful at overcoming poor offensive production than league average. Do you think this just noise in the numbers? Thoughts?
Games where a teams scores 3 or less runs with 7 or less hits.
Team | Total | Wins | Loses | Winning Pct. |
Marlins | 47 | 15 | 32 | 0.319 |
Dodgers | 37 | 11 | 26 | 0.297 |
Pirates | 37 | 9 | 28 | 0.243 |
Cubs | 44 | 10 | 34 | 0.227 |
Padres | 56 | 12 | 44 | 0.214 |
Diamondbacks | 39 | 8 | 31 | 0.205 |
Braves | 36 | 7 | 29 | 0.194 |
Giants | 43 | 8 | 35 | 0.186 |
Mets | 34 | 6 | 28 | 0.176 |
Cardinals | 40 | 7 | 33 | 0.175 |
Nationals | 39 | 6 | 33 | 0.154 |
Rockies | 34 | 5 | 29 | 0.147 |
Reds | 43 | 6 | 37 | 0.140 |
Brewers | 36 | 5 | 31 | 0.139 |
Phillies | 41 | 4 | 37 | 0.098 |
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