Postseason Preview: Power On Display as Brewers Face Braves in NLDS

Despite reaching the playoffs in dramatically different ways, the Brewers (95–67, NL Central champions) and Braves (88–73, NL East champions) look rather alike. Our power rankings give Atlanta the slight edge, but our projections land slightly on the side of Milwaukee. And while the Brewers may have the advantage in record, the Braves had a better run differential. To make matters even tighter, they split their season series, 3–3. Still, our staff predictions, where 26 of 28 folks chose the Brewers, would suggest that this is the most lopsided of the first-round matchups, but I don’t think that captures how close this series is on paper.

The Brewers won the NL Central with elite starting pitching that helped make up for their poor offense, which scored just enough runs to make those starts stand up. The Braves have a more well-rounded team that is strong on offense, pitching and defense, but is perhaps not elite anywhere.

Milwaukee coasted into the playoffs, with a 52–27 stretch in the heart of the season giving them a 99.9% chance to win the division on September 1. Going 14–15 in that final month may have made fans uneasy heading into October, but Craig Counsell was able to use his team’s large lead to go a bit easier on a pitching staff that will be asked to do the heaviest lifting going forward.

Of more concern for the Brewers is the injury to Devin Williams, who broke his hand while celebrating the division clinch and will miss the postseason. He was their best right-handed option out of the pen, and his loss will put added pressure on Brad Boxberger, Hunter Strickland and Jake Cousins, all of whom move up a rung on the ladder and none of whom are sure bets. Boxberger had a great season but pitched poorly in September, with 10 earned runs and three homers allowed in 8.2 innings. Strickland has been stellar since joining the Brewers in mid-June, but that came with a .198 BABIP. Cousins has the most electric stuff of the trio but is fresh off a biceps injury that kept him out of Milwaukee’s final week of games.

Unlike the Brewers, the Braves have been playing meaningful games all September, sweeping a big series against the Phillies at the end of the month and surviving just enough shaky outings from volatile closer Will Smith to clinch their fourth straight division crown. That latest title did not come easy. Atlanta lost its best player, Ronald Acuña Jr., to a torn ACL on July 10th, and went without one of their best pitchers all season when Mike Soroka suffered a setback in his recovery from an Achilles tear. Add some poor play to the mix, and the Braves had just a 10.4% chance to win the NL East on the day of the trade deadline. But thanks to a number of small moves made at the deadline, like bringing in Eddie Rosario, Adam Duvall, and Jorge Soler, the team took off.

Atlanta’s Surge

Beyond those new additions, the Braves got a dominant second half of pitching from their two aces, Game 1 starter Charlie Morton and Game 2 starter Max Fried. The latter has baseball’s lowest ERA since the All-Star Break, and even if his peripherals don’t exactly back up that level of performance, an elite ground-ball rate combined with a microscopic walk rate make it easier to thrive without getting tons of whiffs. The lefty throws a low-spin fastball that he tries to keep to the corners, along with a curveball and slider. The curve is a real dandy, featuring heavy vertical bite and with a mere .198 wOBA against this season.

Fried isn’t the only young arm who helped out; so did a pair of 23-year-olds in Ian Anderson (3.58 ERA, 4.12 FIP) and Huascar Ynoa (4.05, 3.93), both of whom we will likely see later in this series. The bullpen stepped up as well, with the late-inning trio of Luke Jackson, A.J. Minter and Tyler Matzek all posting ERAs under 2.50 post-deadline. All told, the Braves were a different team in the second half and closed the season on a 37–19 stretch with a +92 run differential.

Brewers’ Offensive Woes

The biggest question mark for the Brewers coming into the playoffs is their offense. By wRC+, they have the worst offense in the playoff field, and it’s not particularly close; that holds even when removing pitcher at-bats. Milwaukee has a high-strikeout (24.0%), high-walk (9.6%) offense, but the lineup lacks the power (18th in ISO) to make that combination really work.

At the forefront of the struggle is 2018 MVP Christian Yelich. You’ll see him all over the playoff marketing material, but he’s been a shell of his former self since the start of 2020. He’s mostly corrected the strikeout issues that dogged him last season, but it seems to have come at great cost to his power; his barrel rate this year was half of his 2019 figure, thanks in large part to a drop in exit velocity and a plunge in his launch angle. His career-long struggle to get the ball in the air came back this season, as he posted a 54.4% ground-ball rate, compared to 43.2% in 2019. That all led to an ISO of .125, Yelich’s worst mark since 2015. An ice-cold September — a 70 wRC+ and a ground-ball rate of 68% — doesn’t give much hope that a return to form is around the corner.

At the core of the Brewers’ midseason surge was the acquisition and ascension of Willy Adames, who posted a team-leading 135 wRC+ after coming over from the Rays. He hit for more power and whiffed less thanks in part to leaving Tampa and a stadium where he had trouble seeing the ball. Besides Adames, Avisaíl García, Luis Urías, and Kolten Wong helped keep the offense afloat as the only other regulars who posted a wRC+ above 110.

Milwaukee’s Key Three (Plus 1)

If you are wondering why so many folks here picked the Brewers over the Braves, look no further than these four pitchers: Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, Freddy Peralta, and Josh Hader. The first three helped the Brewers to the majors’ best starting pitcher FIP. The latter is arguably the best reliever in baseball and just finished up the best season of his career with a 1.23 ERA and 1.69 FIP.

Those four arms threw 39.6% of the Brewers innings through August, but that that number dropped to 32.9% in September an effort to keep them as fresh as possible. In a five-game series with two off-days, it’s possible that they will make up as much as 70% of the innings that the Brewers throw. That will put a lot of pressure on the three starters, who are all wrapping up their first full big league seasons as starting pitchers and well over their previous career high in innings.

Burnes, the star among stars, captured MLB’s ERA and FIP title and possibly the NL Cy Young Award, too. Woodruff is the unsung hero of the bunch. simply because he strikes out “only” 29.8% of hitters. He has one of the best four-seam/sinker combinations in baseball and is already building a reputation for October success, with a 1.46 FIP in 21 career postseason innings. And Peralta is simply a treat to watch with his frenetic windup and wipeout slider.

Hader, in contrast, had a relatively easy season compared to his typical workload, throwing 58.2 innings after a season of conservative usage by Counsell (he tossed over 90 innings, including the playoffs, in 2018). He was also used more like a traditional closer and didn’t get more than three outs once all season. With seemingly plenty left in the tank, I expect Hader’s workload to see a spike this series.

Atlanta’s Plate Discipline

The joy of this series is going to be watching those arms go up against one of the most dangerous offenses in baseball. The Braves finished third in the majors with 239 homers, behind only the Giants and Blue Jays. They combined that power with an ultra-aggressive approach, ranking second in Swing% at 49.3% and swinging at the first pitch more often than any other team. They weren’t blindly flailing, either, as they had the highest swing percentage on pitches in the zone but only the 12th-highest figure on balls outside it. The most prominent example of that was Ozzie Albies; his career-high 30 homers came with the highest Z-Swing% in baseball. For the Braves, that approach can come at a cost: They had the sixth-highest swinging-strike rate in baseball and ninth-highest strikeout rate.

Albies wasn’t alone in riding an attack-first mentality to success. Austin Riley experienced a big breakout this season on the back of improvements to his plate discipline and posted a 138 wRC+ with 11 homers and a .332 batting average in August and September. A .420 BABIP over that stretch, though, may have masked an erosion in some of the plate discipline skills that helped him succeed earlier in the year.

One other notable lineup decision is unlikely leadoff hitter Jorge Soler, who has made a career out of using an aggressive approach to hit for immense power but who took a big step forward with his plate discipline after joining Atlanta, putting up a career-best swinging-strike rate thanks to a sizable drop in his O-Swing%. It’s possible he took something out of his swing to accomplish this, as his exit velocity with the Braves was a career low, but a .255 ISO suggests there is still plenty of power to go around. If nothing else, it’s wild watching a hitter go from hack-happy to grinding out pitches like in this at-bat against Julio Urías:

The Braves’ ability to lay off the many swing-and-miss pitches that the Brewers have in their arsenal will go a long way in determining this series.

How Will The Brewers Use Their Lefties?

Beyond the previously mentioned Hader, Milwaukee goes into this series with two other lefties in relief: Aaron Ashby and Brent Suter. That gives Counsell a lot of options for how he can approach a lineup that doesn’t hit lefties very well (25th in baseball) and to neutralize Atlanta’s best left-handed hitter, Freddie Freeman. But in the rotation, Burnes, Woodruff and Peralta are all righties, which makes southpaw Eric Lauer an interesting possibility to start Game 4 if needed. I wrote about Lauer last month and figured he was pitching well enough to earn some important October innings. He’s certainly a change of pace from his strikeout-heavy compatriots, working instead as a fly-ball pitcher who fits perfectly with the Brewers’ elite outfield defense.

Curveball Night

If you like curveballs, you are in for a treat with Game 1, as Morton and Burnes have the two best in baseball on a per-pitch basis. You always expect to see a lot of curveballs out of Morton, given that he throws his more than any other pitcher in the majors, and the curve should be a big part of his gameplan in this series; the Brewers are 22nd in the majors in wOBA against that pitch.

When Morton goes away from the hook, he mostly relies on two types of fastballs, a four-seamer and sinker. His low arm slot gives him some heavy arm-side run on the heater and provides mirrored spin of his curveball. He’ll use the sinker more against righties, as it can get in on their hands to force a ground ball.

On the opposite end, Burnes threw his elite curve only 18% of the time, but that number rose as the season went on. It’s a fantastic pitch that he throws to righties (.109 wOBA allowed) and lefties (.123) with great success. But what makes him so difficult to hit is the fact that his curve isn’t even his best pitch:

Burnes also has the best slider in the game, and his cutter ranks second best. He can simply put spin on pitches like nobody else, and he’s been mostly un-hittable as a result. His worst outing of the year, though, came at the hands of the Braves, when he gave up five runs in four innings at the end of July. If there is one team that should have some confidence against Burnes, it might be the one he has to face.