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Reasons for Optimism!


Five things which will help get the Brewers right:

  1. Pitching re-enforcements: The Brewers wanted to see what would happen if they went with the young guns as starters. I believe the hope was that at least one would grab a starters spot and hold it throughout most of the season. Woodruff seems to have done that. That leaves a rotation of Chacin, Woodruff, Gonzalez, Anderson and Davies. If Nelson can return to form than the Brewers can pick the best four out of those five and add Nelson. This isn’t going to be the best staff in the world but moves have been made to make it average. Going forward the Brewers will have a rotation that is solid if not spectacular.

  2. Re-aligning and adding to the bullpen. Knebel being out Is a significant blow. And when you couple that with Jeffress not being himself; you end up with one arm which you can trust out in the pen in late innings. As the starting pitching gets ironed out the Brewers will have two additional pitchers with multiple pitches that can pitch multiple innings out of the pen. And the Brewers, if they are in the race will be adding relief pitching at the trade deadline. This will force some ineffective relief pitchers off the roster.

  3. Better pitch selection and placement. Grandal is hitting great; but I don’t think he is in tune with all of his pitchers yet. And there hasn’t been enough time to really sort out which pitchers may be best served by having Pina behind the plate. These things can get better given time. A new pitching coach means it may have taken more time to get this right early in the season.

  4. Tempering the all or nothing approach to offense. There was a concerted effort to increase launch angle for a number of hitters. Again, the Brewers have a new coach, this time the hitting coach, and he may have taken things a little too far. I believe there is a rebalancing of this approach as the season progresses leading to greater on base percentage and more opportunities to put pressure on the other teams.

  5. Playing time adjustments: This is already starting to take place with Thames getting more at bats at first base and Gamel getting a few more at bats in left field. These adjustments will lead to a deeper line-up every night.

Of course it is true that other teams are going through many of the same adjustments so the impact on winning percentage may not be as great as we may hope; but it should definitely improve the product we see on the field. In 2018, the Brewers won because a lot of things went right but they were adjusting things throughout the year. This year more things are going wrong early in the season; but they still have the opportunity to adjust and improve. And they have the depth they need to make these adjustments.