Lots of second guessing on pitching
CHICAGO – If baseball is the national pastime, second-guessing baseball decisions is the national pastime 1-A.
When things don't go as expected – or sometimes, even when they do – the second-guessers come out of the woodwork in droves. Hindsight, as they say, is always 20-20. No eye glasses required.
Suffice it to say many decisions the Milwaukee Brewers have made regarding their pitching, and in particular, the starting rotation, have backfired on them this season. Two even have rhyming names – Miley and Smyly.
To be fair, there was plenty of firstguessing when the Brewers opted not to re-sign free-agent lefty Wade Miley, who played a big role in the team advancing within a game of the World Series in 2018. Particularly puzzling to fans was the modest price Houston paid to acquire Miley – a $4.5 million base salary (his Milwaukee salary was $2.5 million last year).
Considering all the things that have gone wrong with the Brewers' rotation, would Miley's 9-4 record and 3.06 ERA with the Astros look good right now? We all know the answer to that.
Asked if he now regretted letting Miley get away, Brewers president of baseball operations David Stearns said, “We always look back on decisions, both good and the ones that don't work out, and try to assess how we did. As with the Drew Smyly situation, we try to make the best decisions we possibly can at the time that we make them, factoring in the information we have when making those decisions.”
Hard to say if that was a yes or a no. But maybe the $5 million or so it would have taken to keep Miley didn't fit the Brewers' budget, which already was headed for its highest level ever in the offseason. Stearns preferred allocating available funds for offense, signing free agents Yasmani Grandal and Mike Moustakas. Perhaps the Brewers weren't sure the 32-year-old Miley could repeat his success of a year ago. Only they know.
Allowing Smyly to escape hurts even more, considering what has happened since. After the struggling lefty was released by Texas, the Brewers signed him on July 1 and assigned him to Class AAA San Antonio. It was one of those no-risk deals where a team benefits if the pitcher gets his act together. But the understanding was that Smyly could ask for his release to seek a big-league offer with another club, which he obviously knew he'd get from Philadelphia.
The Brewers had to declare themselves after Smyly made three starts for the Missions, going 1-0 with a 4.97 ERA and solid 1.03 WHIP. The Brewers didn't think he was a fit on their staff at the time and allowed him to leave and sign with Philadelphia, for whom he has gone 1-0 with a 0.69 ERA (one run in 13 innings) in two starts.
No one said much when the Brewers allowed Smyly to walk. But, when Brandon Woodruff (strained oblique) and Jhoulys Chacín (strained lat) went on the injured list the next week, the questions began. It certainly didn't help the Brewers' cause when Smyly began his Phillies career with two great starts.
“Drew has done a great job for the Phillies,” Stearns said. “Obviously, he has made two very good starts. We made the best decision we could at the time we had to make it. We made that decision before any of our starting pitchers got hurt. We made that decision, frankly, at a time when the rotation had been pitching pretty well.
“Had we made that decision two days later, after Brandon Woodruff's injury, we probably would have made a slightly different decision.”
Of course, you could argue that Smyly was better than at least one of the 13 pitchers the Brewers carried at the time of that decision, and probably make a good case. But, water under the bridge at this point.
The rotation has been in flux since April, when Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta quickly pitched their way out of the mix. Peralta is now logging valuable innings out of the bullpen but Burnes, who could not keep the ball in the park, is back at San Antonio in what has become a lost season for him.
It was impossible to predict the dramatic decline at age 31 of Chacín, who went from the de facto ace of the staff in 2018 (15-8, 3.50) to the Brewers' least effective starter. At the time of his injury, he had not won a game since April 30 and the team was 6-13 in his 19 starts. With many teams, he already would have been removed from the rotation.
If was from that compromised position that the Brewers approached the trade deadline Wednesday in search of pitching help. As other teams looking for starting pitching discovered, the asking price for the best available arms was astronomical, forcing teams to pass or cut a wide swath through the top of their farm systems.
If you had to surrender a top-five prospect such as Mauricio Dubon to acquire Drew Pomeranz and Ray Black, you can imagine what the price was for the likes of Noah Syndergaard, Zach Wheeler, Matt Boyd and Robbie Ray, none of whom were traded? Only the Houston Astros felt compelled to surrender a cache of prospects in a go-for-it deal for Zack Greinke, and they were dealing from a position of strength.
The Brewers were left to do lesser deals, aiming for quantity over quality. Pittsburgh willingly traded Jordan Lyles because he hadn't won a game in two months (0-5, 10.00 in seven starts). Pomeranz struggled so badly as a starter (2-9, 6.10 in 17 games), the Giants moved him to the bullpen to try to salvage something from him.
It might turn out that the Woodruff injury doomed the Brewers to miss the playoffs this season. They were 16-4 in his starts, and you just don't replace that kind of productivity without a blockbuster acquisition. Entering the weekend series against the Cubs at Wrigley Field, the Brewers' rotation was Zach Davies, Gio Gonzalez, whose start was pushed back because of shoulder tightness, Adrian Houser, Lyles and Chase Anderson.
Stearns might have been more tempted to go big on the trade market if the Brewers had a decent lead in the NL Central and a more impressive record. As it is, they've struggled to stay above .500, remaining in the division and wild-card races primarily because other teams failed to catch fire, also.
With so much emphasis placed on young, controllable talent in this era, GMs are reluctant to part with top prospects for what might be a wild-card berth as best-case scenario. Yes, the Brewers are still in position to win the division but have mostly given Stearns mixed signals as to their postseason worthiness.
So, this is where the Brewers find themselves with less than two months to play. Still in the race but probably hanging by their fingernails from a pitching standpoint.
And in a rich environment for the second-guessers.