Milwaukee Brewers: Travis Shaw finding his swing in AAA

After struggling mightily all season long, the Milwaukee Brewers sent Travis Shaw to AAA where he has begun to find his swing.

The Milwaukee Brewers have been running hot and cold at the plate all season long and a big contributor to that inconsistency is the unexpected loss in production from Travis Shaw.

Through his first two seasons in Milwaukee, Shaw had been a reliable option at the plate totaling 63 home runs, 187 RBIs and an OPS of .844 over that span. Heading into this season, I can’t imagine anyone would have expected what we have seen from him so far.

Over his 57 games at the big league level in 2019, Shaw has a slash line of .164/.278/.290, totaling an abysmal OPS of .568, with just six home runs and 13 RBIs.

The big issue for Shaw has been the number of strikeouts, but not from swinging at poor pitches as you’d expect.

According to Fangraphs, compared to last season Shaw is actually swinging at fewer pitches out of the zone and his walk rate is down but it is very similar to what we saw in 2018. Even when he has made contact, his hard hit rate is quite close to last year’s number and his groundball rate is down nearly five percent as well.

Yet, his strikeout rate is still up almost 14 percent from a year ago and an alarming reason why is because he is simply just swinging right through pitches. Shaw’s swing and miss rate on pitches in the strike zone has dropped from 87.9 percent down to 74.8 percent.

He just wasn’t seeing the ball well at all and his confidence under the mounting pressure was deteriorating. As a result, at the end of June Shaw was optioned to Triple-A San Antonio, where the hope is that Shaw will find his swing and confidence again with less noise around him. So far it would appear that he’s found both.

Through 40 plate appearances since arriving in San Antonio, Shaw has posted a slash line of .323/.475/.710 resulting in an OPS of 1.185 with four home runs, ten RBIs and eight strikeouts.

However, it has been over his most recent 18 plate appearances that Shaw has really begun to heat up with a .462 batting average, an OPS of 1.534, along with two long-balls, seven RBIs, and only two strikeouts.

Given how long and ugly his extended slump at the big league level was, I would expect the Milwaukee Brewers to keep Shaw in Triple-A a little longer to make sure he has worked through those issues at the plate.

But based on what we have seen in his first few weeks in San Antonio, we should be cautiously optimistic at this point and we will hopefully have the Travis Shaw of old back in Milwaukee sooner rather than later.

As mentioned above, his 63 home runs and 187 RBIs over two seasons is a lot of offense to lose and if the Milwaukee Brewers are going to maximize their potential and make another run at the NL Central crown, they’ll need Shaw back in the lineup and playing like we all know that he can.