Barnes leaves rough spring behind
Spring training is a time to work on things, and reliever Jacob Barnes used it to try to improve his curveball. And it wasn’t going well at all.
After getting mostly poor results in exhibition play the first three weeks, Barnes went back to his hard stuff and got squared away before the Milwaukee Brewers’ season began. Boy, did he get squared away.
With two key shutout innings in the Brewers’ scintillating 5-4 comeback victory Tuesday night over St. Louis, Barnes has been nearly perfect in his first three relief outings. In four innings, he has allowed one hit and one walk while striking out three hitters.
Opponents are 1 for 12 against Barnes, which works out to a .083 batting average. Compare that to the .424 mark against him in exhibition play and you begin to understand his turnaround.
“People want to know if everything is OK (when you’re struggling),” Barnes said. “I don’t really know the reason behind it. You try different things early on and maybe it takes away from the basics of what I do. I’m just glad the last few times it clicked to where everything feels normal again.”
Barnes referred to his last three spring outings, during which he allowed no runs. Not only did that stretch lower his exhibition ERA from 12.46 to 7.36, it gave him some peace of mind entering the season.
Barnes worked on an off-speed pitch as an alternative to keep hitters off his hard stuff as primarily a fastball/slider pitcher. The previous spring, he struggled badly while trying different pitch sequences before also getting his act together before breaking camp.
“That’s what spring training is for,” he said. “You always want to try to get better. We kind of learned from the previous spring training is if it’s still not clicking by that time, you go back to what you came into camp doing. Fortunately, it has worked both times.
“I’d rather it not be that way but I’m happy I got it (together) before the season begins. I think I was focusing too much on (throwing curveballs) early on instead of my bread and butter. You’ll see me use it more later. It’s never going to be a primary pitch but I learned last year that (hitters) try to cheat on velocity. My other pitches are hard.
“I threw it a couple of times last year and I got a lot of (hitters) freezing. None of them swung. So, if I can build into that, I can start flipping it up there and getting them to back off. It’s never going to be a pitch I use a ton.”
Barnes was part of a bullpen group that covered the last five innings against the Cardinals without allowing a run, setting the stage for the Brewers to erase a 4-0 deficit.
“Our bullpen did a great job,” manager Craig Counsell said. “We needed two innings from somebody and Barnes set up the rest of the guys. The bullpen as much as anything keeps you in games like that, as much as anything.”
Asked if he saw Barnes flipping the switch so dramatically at season’s start, Counsell smiled and said, “I’m not that good, no.”
“In spring training, we have to allow guys to get their feet under them,” Counsell added. “We’ve got to allow for that, with a guy who has proven it in the big leagues. (At the end of camp), he got some confidence working, more than anything stuff-wise, and he has carried it over.”
Lightning strikes twice: How unusual is it that the Brewers came from behind in the ninth inning to win twice in their first five games? Last season, they were 1-57 when trailing after eight innings and fell one victory shy of the postseason.
“It’s fun with baseball numbers,” Counsell said. “That’s what the game does; it’s why we love it. The game tricks us and fools us and surprises us. It gives us the unexpected all the time.
“We can always say, ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever seen that in a baseball game.’ You can say that every night. Five games in, I’ve said every night. I’ve got something for every game. That’s why we love this.”
Counsell said another lesson is that the game truly is not over until the final out, no matter the early deficit.
“We all need to be reminded of that,” he said. “We all know it’s the truth, and the guys play hard until the end. But we need a friendly reminder sometimes, and a game example when it happened.”
Hiura to DH: Second baseman Keston Hiura, the Brewers’ firstround draft pick in 2017 who excelled in exhibition play in big-league camp this spring, will mostly serve as the designated hitter in the early going with Class A Carolina because of elbow soreness.
Brewers farm director Tom Flanagan said Hiura began experiencing some discomfort making “specific throws” from second base and the decision was made to back off playing in the field for a while.
“He will DH to begin the season and we’ll give him some time off from throwing,” Flanagan said. “But he will gradually be worked back in at second base as we move forward.”
The elbow situation is worth monitoring because of Hiura’s background. He only served as DH in his final season at UC-Irvine but the Brewers loved his bat so much they took him in the first round of the draft. Hiura had a plasma-enriched platelet injection in the elbow after being diagnosed with a partial UCL tear, and the possibility existed of needing Tommy John reconstructive surgery.
An examination after Hiura was given a $4 million signing bonus indicated the tear had healed, and the Brewers slowly began working him back into playing second base. He was kept deep into camp by the Brewers, seeing considerable action in the field, and batted .419 (13 for 31) in 19 games with one home run, seven RBI and .438 on-base percentage.