Something's not 'right': Crew continues to struggle vs. lefties

DENVER -- The Brewers are having trouble against left-handed pitching. Again.

It’s a problem three seasons in the making, and it was on display again during a 7-1 loss to the Rockies on Wednesday at Coors Field, where southpaws Kyle Freeland and Brent Suter combined to hold Milwaukee scoreless on four singles over the first six innings. As a result, the Rockies have their first three-game winning streak all season.

And the Brewers have dropped three of their last four series.

“It’s obviously been a problem,” said Christian Yelich, the Brewers’ longest-tenured hitter. “Why it has, I’m not really sure. It’s one of those baseball mysteries, I guess. Sometimes things just don’t make sense. Clearly, we haven’t done as well against left-handed pitchers as we do right-handed pitchers.”

Third baseman Mike Brosseau’s throwing error leading off the fourth inning led to four unearned runs against Brewers starter Eric Lauer, three on Alan Trejo’s bases-clearing double off Lauer’s misplaced cutter. Mistakes like that hurt when there’s little room for error.

The Brewers are 5-4 this season in games started by opposing left-handers, but only one of those nine starting pitchers -- the Angels’ Reid Detmers on April 29 -- left the game with his team in a deficit. Overall, Milwaukee ranks last in the Majors with a .607 OPS against left-handed pitching. The Brewers are also next to last with a .333 slugging percentage, better only than the slumping Yankees (.320).

It’s not a new problem. Last year the Brewers went 86-76 overall but were 27-25 in games started by left-handers and ranked 23rd with a .674 OPS against lefties -- a fact that played a part in the Cardinals acquiring two left-handed starting pitchers, Jordan Montgomery and José Quintana, at the Trade Deadline. In 2021, the Brewers won 95 regular-season games, one off their franchise record, despite going a pedestrian 20-19 in games started by lefties and ranking 23rd in MLB with a .706 OPS against lefties overall.

It’s a conundrum for manager Craig Counsell, because on paper, the Brewers have enough dangerous right-handed hitters to send to the plate, including Willy Adames, William Contreras, Brian Anderson and platoon players Brosseau, Luke Voit and Owen Miller.

But for a handful of those players, there’s a problem of reverse splits.

Adames has an .527 OPS against left-handers this season compared to .810 against right-handers. Anderson is at .588 against lefties and .809 against righties and wasn’t in the lineup on Wednesday. For both Adames and Anderson, that continues their career trend of producing better against right-handers than left-handers. Ditto for Voit, who is 1-for-26 with 15 strikeouts against left-handers this season for an .076 OPS, compared to an .896 OPS against righties. Just like Keston Hiura, who filled the same role for the Brewers in recent seasons, Voit has historically hit righties better than lefties.

Brosseau has mashed against left-handers in his career, but not so far this year. He has a .502 OPS against lefties.

“We don’t have a good answer,” Counsell said. “It’s rare [to have reverse splits], so I wouldn’t say we have a good answer for it.”

So, why do the Brewers keep running out the same group of hitters against southpaws? Because they are trusting that the larger truths -- hitters tend to fare better against opposite-handed pitchers, and pitchers tend to have trouble with opposite-handed hitters -- will prevail in the end. Plus, it’s difficult to remake the roster in the first week of May.

“It’s the guys we are playing. That’s who we’ve got,” Counsell said.

Of particular concern is Voit, who made Milwaukee’s Opening Day roster specifically to play first base against left-handed pitching in spite of those reverse career splits.

“He’s played great defense, I think. He’s struggled against lefties,” Counsell conceded. “That’s something that we want him to do, that we need him to do: to get better.

“We’re at 30 plate appearances against left-handers for most of these guys, so it’s not a big number, but it’s certainly a place where we need to find offense.”

Yelich has a theory. Platooning has become so prevalent in MLB that he believes pitchers are better than ever at game-planning against opposite-handed hitters, because they know opposing lineups will be stacked with them.

“There’s obviously some days when you’re going to get got by somebody,” Yelich said. “But it’s kind of consistently turned into a problem, and it’s something we have to find a way to do better at, for sure. …

“Now, part of your job as a Major League player is to come up with a way to win. You have to win games against lefty pitchers. We’ve done it at times, but we haven’t been as consistent as we would have liked. In the past and through the first month of the season, it’s been a little bit of a problem. But hopefully, we can right the ship.”