Milwaukee Brewers: Sluggish Start to the Year for the Offense
By Paul Bretl
For the most part, many believe that the 2020 MLB season should be taken with a grain of salt when it comes to evaluating performances. It was an incredibly unusual year, and 60 games is a relatively small sample size in baseball—or at least that’s what Milwaukee Brewers fans are hoping.
Last season the Brewers’ offense was one of the worst in all of baseball. By team batting average, the Crew ranked 26th. They would also rank 24th in OPS and 26th in total runs while ranking 25th in OPS+. Basically, just pick a key offensive category, and Milwaukee was likely near the bottom.
Jedd Gyorko was the only player with an OPS over .800, while he, Christian Yelich, and Ryan Braun were the only players with an OPS+ over 100–which is the league average.
Yelich would never get going, batting just .205 for the season. And the same could be said for Keston Hiura, who averaged .212 at the plate and led the league in strikeouts.
Meanwhile, Milwaukee’s offseason additions didn’t pan out either. Justin Smoak and Brock Holt were DFA’d, while Omar Narvaez logged a .562 OPS, and Avisail Garcia was at .659 for the season.
I could go on, but you get the idea. It wasn’t good—not even close.
This season the Milwaukee Brewers are largely banking on bounce-back performances from key players such as Yelich, Hiura, Narvaez, and Garcia to revitalize the offense. Plus, the return of Lorenzo Cain and the additions of Kolten Wong, who has a .356 OBP over the last five years, and Jackie Bradley Jr. will hopefully provide a boost as well.
However, through four games — and I can’t stress enough that it’s only been four games — the offense looks awfully similar to what we saw in 2020.
So far, the Brewers rank 27th in team average, 28th in OPS, 27th in runs, and 26th in hits. After a come-from-behind win on Opening Day where Milwaukee tallied six runs, they’ve scored a combined five runs over the last three games.
Narvaez and Travis Shaw are the only two players who have had regular success at the plate so far, while everyone else has an OPS below .507 and an OPS+ below 48—remember, the league average is 100. Not to mention that their situational hitting has been abysmal.
With all that said, and as frustrating as it has been early on, as I already mentioned, it’s only been four games. In the grand scheme of what is a 162 game baseball season, this is nothing more than a blip on the radar. As our friends at Reviewing the Brew pointed out, Milwaukee won the NL Central in 2011 after starting the season 0-4.
On the flip side, given how last season played out, I can understand the angst surrounding the Brewers’ offensive output up to this point. Is this how it’s going to be this season? Or is it just a slow start?
Ultimately we don’t know—the sample size is too small and will be for some time. Let’s just hope they snap out of it soon.