'Special to watch': Williams turning heads

Going into 2020, we had fair warning that Josh Hader could rattle off something akin to his 12 hitless appearances to open the season -- a record-setting run that ended abruptly in the Brewers’ 4-3 loss in Cleveland on Saturday night.

Devin Williams, on the other hand, has caught everybody off guard. Not just opposing hitters, who are a fruitless 4-for-57 with 35 strikeouts in 65 plate appearances against him, but Milwaukee bullpen coach Steve Karsay as well.

“The maturation period,” Karsay said Sunday, “has been something special to watch.”

Last year and at Spring Training, the big league staff got a look at Williams’ repertoire, which revolves around a spinning changeup that gets elite horizontal and vertical movement in its path to the plate. But it wasn’t until Summer Camp and the ensuing shortened season that Williams’ growth in terms of developing a routine between outings and an understanding of how best to attack opposing hitters became clear.

Now, the right-handed Williams, who struck out four in two perfect innings Saturday, is a force of nature. He entered the week with the lowest relief WHIP (0.59, minimum 13 innings pitched) and the highest FanGraphs-calculated WAR (0.9) in MLB. His ascension into setup duties in front of Hader is what made it palatable for the Brewers to part with David Phelps for a trio of prospects at the Trade Deadline.

“He’s striking out two per inning. Who does that?” Karsay said. “Josh Hader does it as well… [Williams] is keeping guys guessing on what he might use in certain situations. You don’t get many guys who throw 96, 97 [mph] and are able to command their changeup with that type of depth and movement at 82 to 85.”

Williams’ wrist pronation and long fingers allow him to get screwball-like spin on the changeup -- a pitch with so much depth and movement that Karsay said he couldn’t compare to any other he’s seen in his many years in professional baseball.

“He’s been throwing it since he was 10 years old,” Karsay said. “He told me he threw it in his neighborhood to make the kids look silly, to try to get them to miss the ball. It’s developed into something he’s doing today. He’s just doing it with grown men instead of 10-year-olds.”

Knebel progressing
Two and a half weeks after he was sent to the Brewers’ alternate site with a left hamstring strain, Corey Knebel, who had a 9.45 ERA in 6 2/3 innings, could be nearing a return to the big league roster.

The hope is that the time away has allowed him to do the mechanical maintenance he was denied due to the pandemic-altered baseball calendar.

“I don’t think COVID did him any favors,” Karsay said. “He didn’t have a natural ramp-up period during his rehabilitations. When guys are coming off Tommy John and leaving Spring Training, most guys, in a normal environment, go to the Minor Leagues, start with one inning and you get to control that a little more. You don’t see guys going from Tommy John and then to an environment where they’ve got to compete at a high level.”

Shortened season impacting approaches
While Christian Yelich has not had a Yelich-like season, hitting coach Andy Haines appreciates that the Brewers’ star hasn’t been guilty of trying to do too much in his at-bats (his chase rate, for example, has actually gone down from 2019).

But Haines sees that happening elsewhere in his lineup and in others. To him, it’s the most difficult aspect of the shortened season, in which players have a natural tendency to want to do a lot in a short period of time.

“Hitting is this borderline neurotic thing anyways; it’s just torture in a regular season,” Haines said. “With the 60-game season, you can see players trying to have a good season literally with every swing they take. Not only in our dugout. but I’ve seen it in others too, and with some really good players. We’re just trying to get our guys back to how they know how to play. You can’t make up lost time. You just need to play the game and do your thing, and the game will cooperate if you do it correctly.”