Milwaukee Brewers Bizarre Opening Day Starter Curse
By Kenny Jilek
The Milwaukee Brewers Opening Day starters have suffered a strange trend in each of the last four seasons. Since Kyle Lohse took the mound to start the 2015 season, Opening Day starters have been very underwhelming in performing their perceived ace role.
Curses are one of the great nuances of Major League Baseball. Everyone knows about the extremely infamous Red Sox Curse of the Bambino and the Chicago Cubs’ Curse of the Billy Goat. What the average fan doesn’t know about is the curse that has manifested itself in the Milwaukee Brewers organization for the past four years.
This is the Opening Day starter curse. A curse that has affected no less than four Brewer’s starters. Kyle Lohse got the ball rolling in 2015 and was followed by Wily Peralta, Junior Guerra, and, most recently, Chase Anderson.
So how bad is it? Well, at a glance, in four years it has produced two opening day injuries, three ERAs above 4.80, three bullpen relegations in either that season or the following season, and only one pitcher with a sub-4.00 ERA who was kicked out of the rotation and not included in the playoff roster.
Each year it leads to someone who was anywhere from second to fifth in the rotation stepping up to be the ace, only to fall from grace the next season. So let’s look at these four nightmare seasons for Brewers’ Opening Day starters and see what has been going wrong and just how differently this curse has acted four consecutive times