Milwaukee Brewers: Pitching staff moving in right direction

It was a tough start to the season for the Milwaukee Brewers starting pitching rotation, but things are starting to trend in the right direction.

There really is no way to sugar coat it, but we saw some rough outings from the Milwaukee Brewers starting rotation over the month of April, and while it may still be early in the month of May, things are starting to turn around.

The Milwaukee Brewers made the decision to ride with their trio of young pitchers at the start of the season and realistically, we knew they would take their lumps early on, and boy did they ever.

Outside of one fantastic outing against Cincinnati, Freddy Peralta couldn’t make it past the fourth inning and continued to struggle mightily in the first where he would dig himself and the Brewers into a huge hole.

Corbin Burnes was struggling to locate his fastball and as a result, he was giving up a couple of home runs every time he took the mound. He was eventually sent to Triple-A and has now found a spot in the Milwaukee Brewers bullpen once again.

Even Brandon Woodruff and Jhoulys Chacin would struggle to find consistency, each having multiple outings where they couldn’t make it past the fifth inning. These struggles from the starting rotation were putting much of the burden on the offense to outscore their opponents and were also wearing on the bullpen as they entered a number of games fairly early on.

Many fans called for a change and wanted the Milwaukee Brewers to add free agent Dallas Keuchel to the starting rotation, but GM David Stearns stuck to his guns and the pitching rotation has been improving as of late.

As I mentioned above, it is still early in May but the starters have pitched much better. In the month of May, opponents have a .215 batting average and a .648 OPS compared to .254 and .773 respectively in April. As a whole, the rotation has lowered its ERA from 4.95 to 3.50 as well as its WHIP, which has dropped from 1.424 to 1.069.

Individually, we have seen manager Craig Counsell use an opener for Freddy Peralta to help combat his first inning blues and in his last outing, he took over in the third inning and threw five scoreless. While the opener may have played a role in Peralta’s success that night, we saw his curveball usage take a big jump. For a pitcher that isn’t going to overpower anyone, having a second or third pitch along with the fastball is a must.

Zach Davies has continued to be a reliable option who is pitching extremely well and the recently signed Gio Gonzalez is picking up right where he left off in Milwaukee. In 10.1 innings, Gio has allowed three earned runs, only one walk and has struck out nine.

Burnes has transitioned to the pen where he has started to locate his fastball much better. Over the last week, he has pitched in 3.1 innings and has allowed two earned with no home runs and three strikeouts. Despite his struggles as a starter, I expect he will be back in the rotation sooner rather than later. He just has too much potential to give up on.

Meanwhile, Woody has pitched 16 innings over his last three starts and has a 1.69 ERA, allowing just three earned runs and striking out 22. And over Chacin’s last 11 innings, he has a 1.64 ERA with only two earned runs and a WHIP of 0.909.

Even in the minors we have seen Jimmy Nelson make a start with Triple-A San Antonio and although on the stat sheet it wasn’t pretty, at this point it is all about him being back on the mound and he will be another option for this Milwaukee Brewers starting rotation come summer.

With the high expectations surrounding this team, there was a lot of panic going through the fan base in the month of April. However, the Milwaukee Brewers schedule was brutal and I know some do not want to acknowledge that as a reason for their issues, but it was a huge factor.

Although there were many ups and downs, Milwaukee entered the month of May with a record of 17-14, for reference, last year they began May at 17-13. Now they are riding their starting rotation to six straight wins with back-to-back series sweeps. And these weren’t blow out wins by any means, the pitching unit as a whole has allowed just two runs per game over the winning streak.

With Gio, Woody, Davies, and Chacin, the Milwaukee Brewers have four of their five rotation spots locked in, along with Peralta and Burnes trending in the right direction and Nelson getting closer to his return to the big leagues. It may have been a less than ideal start to the year, but the starting rotation looks very good right now.