There are 19 games left to save the Brewers’ season, to at least pull out a Wild Card berth. I’ve experimented with putting Yelich in center against lefties to find Ryan Braun some playing time, but the whole mix is awkward not enough defense with Bruan in, not enough offense with him out.Īt this point, that’s all water under the bridge. With the trade deadline in the rearview mirror, that leaves minor leaguers to man center, and Corey Ray and Tyrone Taylor have been about as expected there somewhere between terrible and unplayable. He could theoretically return in the second round of the playoffs, but that hardly seems realistic at the moment. Lorenzo Cain is out for the year after spraining his forearm making a catch. Brock Holt has finally turned back into a pumpkin he’s down to a 113 wRC+ for the year after running an ice-cold 60 during this losing streak. Yelich has been exactly replacement level since his return, carrying a 77 wRC+. Though the bullpen didn’t completely fall apart, aided in part by September call-ups, the offense didn’t do enough to carry the team through trouble. The Brewers aren’t built for starts that short. Even Brandon Woodruff and Adrian Houser each had clunkers, though they each also finished six innings once, which should be enough given the Brewer bullpen. Jeff Samardzija made four starts and finished five only once. Josh Lindblom made three starts and never completed four innings. Over that fateful 17-game stretch, they averaged only four innings per start. The immediate culprit is the starting pitching. What happened? Merely saying “baseball happened” feels insufficient for a 2-15 slide. 500 mark and four back in the race for the second Wild Card. The team is now only three games above the. That’s a 1-8 stretch to follow the previous 1-7 stretch, and that’s not the kind of performance you can escape from. The Reds took the last two games of that series, the Pirates beat us 3-1 in a four-gamer, and the Dodgers, already sitting on a preposterous 95 wins, have won three straight, with the last game happening today. Now the Wild Card race was a dead heat, and Yelich was settled in. The Pirates weren’t quite out of reach, and based on the fact that I called it a seven-game losing streak, clearly the team won the next day. A 3-4 stretch would have looked extremely different than 0-7. Two of the games were one-run affairs, while another featured a seven-run meltdown in the ninth inning to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Not every playoff contender has a seven-game losing streak, but the margins are slim. How does something like that happen? Reasonably easily, to be honest.
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