Milwaukee Brewers 2017 New Year’s Resolutions

Allowing runs in the 1st inning became a habit for the Milwaukee Brewers, often setting up the team to fail that day.

The Brewers’ pitching staff gave up at least one run in the first inning in 36 percent of its games in 2016. Milwaukee went 20-38 in those 58 contests – an abysmal .345 winning percentage.

Preventing those runs in the opening frame won’t solve all their problems, but it will go a long way in improving the daily outcomes of those games.

Thus, resolution number one is to prevent runs in inning number one where they had a 5.11 ERA and allowed an .879 OPS to opposing hitters.

Of course, it’s not that simple to just stop giving up 1st-inning runs because you want to. However, maybe the staff needs a new game plan against the those first few hitters.

Those early runs can often affect the team’s mentality, individual approaches at the plate, and how the flow of the game progresses.

Milwaukee’s hurlers allowed the highest average (.301), OBP (.371), slugging percentage (.508) and OPS (.879) to opposing batters in the 1st inning last year. Pure dominance by the top of the enemies’ order.

Surprisingly, the Brewers didn’t give up the most runs in this frame – they gave up the 3rd-most.

And Milwaukee actually gave up more runs in the 3rd inning (5.33 ERA) during the season. However, that is likely a product of the 1st-inning woes, allowing the top and middle of the order to hit again in the 3rd.

Those early runs can often affect the team’s mentality, individual approaches at the plate, and how the flow of the game progresses. It simply creates a greater challenge on many occasions.

Among the biggest reasons they struggled so much in the 1st was their collective strikeout-to-walk ratio (K/BB). The Brewers 1st-inning performance in this area was 29th out of 30 teams (1.64 K/BB).

The combination of failing to whiff batters while offering them free passes is a recipe for disaster. You may see these things come up again in this list.