Time for Brewers to stop treading water
Treading water.
That’s what the Milwaukee Brewers have been doing all season, but particularly since the all-star break. Entering their game Saturday night against Arizona, the Brewers are 19-18 since the start of the second half.
Simply put, that’s not good enough to be a playoff team. All you need do is take a look at the second-half records of the other teams in the National League playoff hunt, entering Saturday, to see how much ground the Brewers have ceded (in order of best record):
New York: 27-11
St. Louis: 25-14 Washington: 24-15
Chicago: 22-16 Philadelphia: 19-18
Even the San Francisco Giants, behind the Brewers in the up-for-grabs wildcard race, have performed much better since the break with a 22-17 record. This is how you stay in the hunt, by playing winning baseball. Not by treading water.
Comments coming from manager Craig Counsell and the players have had a common ring of late. “We’re still in this thing.” “We are within striking distance.” Stuff like that. In essence, trying to rationalize the team’s mediocre play.
Such proclamations ring false when you’ve played .500 baseball, more or less, for six weeks coming out of the all-star break, watching teams go by you in both the division and wild-card races. At the break, the Brewers were a half-game out in the NL Central and the same distance behind the second wild-card spot.
Entering Saturday, the third-place Brewers were 3 1/2 games out in the division and three games behind the second wild-card spot, with a whopping four teams ahead of them in that crowded competition. Treading water? Actually, the Brewers have been slipping below the surface.
The past week raised nothing but red flags in terms of the Brewers’ readiness to make a playoff push. Last weekend in Washington, they pulled off one of their most uplifting victories of the season, out-slugging the Nationals, 15-14, in a see-saw, 14-inning marathon.
Instead of using that remarkable game as a launching pad to make a push, the Brewers suffered a massive pratfall over the remainder of the trip. The next day, starter Chase Anderson showed up with nothing and Washington roared to a 13-0
lead after three innings, en route to a 16-8 rout. So much for momentum from the previous evening’s incredible ending.
The next night in St. Louis, the Brewers almost were no-hit, avoiding that indignity only by Yasmani Grandal’s eighth-inning double. That offensive noshow was followed Tuesday by one of the ugliest losses in recent memory, with a combined bullpen and defensive meltdown resulting in a 9-4 defeat.
Mother Nature gave the Brewers a break Wednesday night at Busch Stadium in the form of a rain-shortened, 71⁄2-inning, 5-3 victory over the Cardinals. Considering the drama that has come out of the bullpen in the late going in recent weeks, no telling what might have happened if six more outs had to be recorded to survive.
This is no way to run a playoff race. You have to win series to make it to October baseball. In 12 series since the break, the Brewers are 5-6-1. Not good enough.
The Brewers roared to the NL Central crown last season by going 20-7 in September, erasing the five-game lead the Cubs held entering Labor Day. That surge forced a tie atop the division and a Game No. 163 showdown at Wrigley Field, won by the Brewers.
But the Brewers actually began to make their move in late August. Beginning with a 2-1 victory in St. Louis on Aug. 19, they went 9-4 entering the launchingpad
series at home against the Cubs that began with a 4-3 walk-off victory on Labor Day.
The ’18 Brewers also had a luxury that this year’s club doesn’t possess: a wildcard safety net. During their late-season pursuit of the Cubs in the division, they sat in the top spot in the wild-card race, assuring at the very least a home game in that win-or-go-home crap shoot.
The obvious difference is that this Brewers’ team isn’t nearly as formidable as the ’18 club, which had a killer bullpen, a dependable rotation with a healthy ace, Jhoulys Chacín, and a more consistent offense that didn’t struggle as often to deliver big hits as this year’s lineup.
The Brewers have been trying to get this done with one of the least-effective pitching staffs in the league, which ain’t easy to do over 162 games. After a 6-1 victory Friday night over Arizona, their staff ranked 13th (4.71 ERA) in the NL, ahead of only Pittsburgh (5.05) and Colorado (5.50), last-place clubs that have been sinking like rocks since the all-star break.
It was a true gut-punch in July when Brandon Woodruff, the rotation’s best pitcher by far, was lost with an oblique strain. By the time he returns in mid-September, as expected, it could be too late. Chacín also went down with a latissimus dorsi strain but was having a miserable season (3-10, 5.79) in any event, and was designated for assignment Saturday.
An ominous cloud that has hung over the Brewers all season, portending bad things in the long run, has been run differential. Contending teams usually are in the plus column because, well, they score more runs than their opponents in becoming a contender.
The Brewers have a significantly negative run differential at minus-30, the result of two primary trends: 1. Their victories tend to be one- or two-run nail-biters, keeping pressure on the bullpen. 2. They often absorb lop-sided losses, such as the 16-8 whipping in Washington, the result of a substandard pitching staff.
Only one other contending NL club, Philadelphia, has a minus run differential (-22), and it has become wild card or bust for the Phillies. Washington is plus-100 and the Cubs plus-68, because their pitching staffs have done a good job of avoiding lop-sided defeats, particularly the starting rotations, which rank among the best in the league.
So, this is what the Brewers are up against. After the Arizona series, they play 12 consecutive games against the Cardinals, Astros and Cubs (two series), so the schedule is about to ramp up considerably.
If the Brewers are going to hang in the playoff hunt, it is time to stop treading water. It has become a sink-or-swim situation.