Milwaukee Brewers Below .500 37 Games into Simulated Season

Through 37 games in Baseball Reference’s simulated season, the Milwaukee Brewers sit 5 games below .500 and 4th in the NL Central.

With no real baseball being played at the moment, here at Dairyland Express we have been following along with Baseball Reference’s simulated season using the Out of the Park (OOTP) computer software.

If you’re not familiar with OOTP, what it does is it allows anyone to manage their favorite baseball team through the ups and downs of a Major League season. Now, of course, to take any biases out of the equation, over at Baseball Reference they are letting the computer software make all of the off the field moves and decisions.

Within the simulation, each game for the Milwaukee Brewers is being played on the actual date that it was supposed to be taking place. This puts the Brewers 37 games into their 2020 season and as I’m sure you gleaned from the title, things have not been going well.

Overall, Milwaukee sits 16-21, in fourth place in the NL Central and 8.5 games behind the first-place St. Louis Cardinals. The only team in the division that they are ahead of are the Chicago Cubs. So I guess there is some good that is coming out of this.

In reality, this is a Milwaukee Brewers team that is coming off of two straight postseason appearances, something that has only been done one other time in franchise history. But despite the recent success, there was some uneasiness among the Brewers’ fan base after how the offseason unfolded.

The Brewers Opening Day payroll would have been about $25 million less than it was a year ago and they let several key contributors from previous seasons go or leave via free agency. And instead of replacing them with a big bat or someone to really give the starting rotation a boost, GM David Stearns elected to sign a number of low-cost, short-term contracts that come with some real question marks in terms of their on the field production.

Now back to the simulation where the Brewers are 37 games into the season and have clearly underperformed based on their record. The good news is that there is still plenty of time to get back on track, which we’ve seen them do before.

But for the time being, here is a quick look at what has unfolded through the first quarter of the season.

More issues at SS

The shortstop position in Milwaukee has belonged to Orlando Arcia the past few seasons, however, his play at the plate has largely been disappointing. As a result, the Brewers would bring in Luis Urias as a part of a trade this offseason, but so far neither has found any sort of success.

In 54 plate appearances, Arcia posts a .185 batting average with a .520 OPS. And somehow, Urias is even worse with a .164 average and .491 OPS.

Cain and Hiura off to slow starts

If Lorenzo Cain and Keston Hiura are going to struggle at the plate, then it’s difficult to envision the Milwaukee Brewers finding a ton of success. And unfortunately, that has been the case. Hiura is posting a measly average of .173 with a .567 OPS while Cain’s average sits at .204 with a .554 OPS.

Ryan Braun’s production has dipped

Brauny is coming off a very nice 2019 season but he has seen his production dip to start the 2020 simulation. He currently has a slash line of .245/.273/.377 with a .650 OPS. As is the case with Hiura and Cain, if Braun is struggling it’s going to be a lot tougher for the Brewers’ offense to find success.

How are the new guys doing?

The Milwaukee Brewers had quite a bit of roster turnover this past offseason which means plenty of new faces. Of this group, Jedd Gyorko leads the way with a .353 average and 1.252 OPS, however, he’s only had 17 plate appearances.

In terms of regular starters, Eric Sogard is faring the best with a .275 average and .804 OPS. Meanwhile, Omar Narvaez is batting .282, but his OPS sits at just .726. Then we have Justin Smoak with an OPS of .756, along with Avisail Garcia and Brock Holt who each have an OPS of .700 and .771, respectively.

Yeli being Yeli

I mean, did we expect anything less? In 153 plate appearances, Yelich has posted a slash line of .323/.392/.594 totaling a .986 OPS. He’s also added nine home runs and 24 RBIs.

Brett Anderson is injured and Brent Suter fills in

As has been the case more often than not, Brett Anderson is on the IL and has only pitched in 7.1 innings. Not to mention that they didn’t go well, to say the least. In his place is Brent Suter out of the bullpen, however, he has not found much success as a starter.

Rough start for Houser

The hope was that Houser would be able to build off of his 2019 season but that hasn’t been the case early on. So far he holds a 6.75 ERA, a WHIP of 1.552, and he’s allowed 29 earned runs in only 38.2 innings pitched.

Fastball Freddy is rolling along

This winter Freddy found quite a bit of success in the Dominican Winter League as he worked on his curveball and added a slider to his repertoire. Well, at least in this simulation, it is paying off at the big league level. In 35 innings he’s allowed just 13 earned runs while striking out 43 and has a 3.34 ERA.

Woody and Lindblom are hanging in there

In his 41.2 innings pitched, Woodruff has already totaled 51 strikeouts while allowing 23 earned runs. However, his WHIP sits fairly high at 1.536 and his ERA is at 4.97. Meanwhile, Lindblom is in a similar boat with a 4.95 ERA and a WHIP of 1.475.

The bullpen is holding their own

Corbin Burnes has bounced back, Josh Hader is collecting saves per usual, while Ray Black, David Phelps, and Alex Claudio have all been solid. With that said, they will need some more reliable contributions on the backend from J.P. Feyereisen, Steven Okert, and Devin Williams.

Other Notes

• As a team, the Milwaukee Brewers’ offense is averaging just 4.2 runs per game and they’ve scored two runs or less 11 different times.
• On the flip side, the pitching staff has given up 11 or more runs on five occasions and they’ve allowed six or more runs 16 times. That’s nearly half the games that the Brewers have played.