Even early, Milwaukee Brewers offensive struggles should be concern

Going back to the shortened 2020 season, the biggest concern for the Milwaukee Brewers has been their offense.

Coming into 2022, fans were hopeful that the team would get back on track offensively and early results on the season have not been promising. Even though the season has just begun, there are reasons why the early season struggles should be a concern to Brewers fans.

Milwaukee Brewers early offensive struggles in 2022 should be a concern

If you’re a fan of the Milwaukee Brewers, Andy Haines is probably a name that you know.

Haines was the Brewers hitting coach from 2019 through 2021. Haines certainly received his share of criticism for the offense’s struggles during his tenure, even enough to make #FireAndyHaines a trending topic amongst Brewers fans on social media. The team also agreed that Haines played a part in the team’s underwhelming performance, as they made the decision to part ways with him following 2021.

From how it appears so far in 2022, maybe the criticism of Haines wasn’t as much deserved as Brewers fans, or even the front-office, thought. In fact, the team’s offensive numbers have actually declined in 2022 without Haines.

So far, Milwaukee holds a team batting average of .213 (23rd in MLB), along with a team OBP of .298 (21st in MLB) and a team OPS of .626 (24th in MLB). Being ranked in the bottom 10 of the league in three of the major statistical hitting categories is certainly not where the Brewers had hoped to be with bringing in new faces to coach their batters.

To understand why the slow offensive start is so concerning, we’ll take a look at how the team fared in these three categories last season. In 2021, the Brewers held a team batting average of .233 (.20 better than in 2022), team OBP of .317 (.19 better than in 2022), and a team OPS of .713 (.87 better than in 2022).

The specific player that fans wanted to see an improvement from in 2022 was Christian Yelich. Instead, Yelich has been relatively disappointing.

It’s not as if Yelich has been all that bad this season, that’s not the point being made here. However, the same issues that have plagued him the last couple of seasons have returned. Yelich actually has a higher exit velocity on his swings than he did during his 2018 MVP season, currently at 92.9 percent compared to 92.6 percent in his MVP year.

Unfortunately, hitting the ball hard means nothing when you hit it right at the second baseman. Yelich’s ground ball percentage this season has been 60 percent, the highest that it has been since his rookie season. His launch angle is 0.9, which is egregious. During Yelich’s two best seasons with the Brewers in 2018 and 2019, his launch angle numbers were 5 and 11.4. Seeing it down all the way to 0.9 needs to be a major indicator to Yelich and the Brewers coaching staff that changes must be made in his swing.

Milwaukee as a team has been struggling to hit the ball since the start of the 2020 season. Maybe it is just a coincidence, but that also happens to be the same time when Yelich’s hitting woes began.

Could a shortened spring training be playing into this? Would a Yelich turnaround boost the entire team’s hitting performance? Sure, maybe those are factors and maybe one or both can be true. However, I don’t see how somebody would be able to look me in the eye at this point in time and tell me with a straight face that they have no concern about the way that the Brewers have started the season offensively.

Early indications show no signs of improvement in any phase of hitting for Milwaukee. Sure, there have been glimpses of a team that could be solid on offense, but it has been like that for the last three seasons. We can’t use that to give us hope forever.