Tellez vs. the Red Sox? The stats are inexplicable

MILWAUKEE -- What is it about Rowdy Tellez against the Red Sox?

“If I knew,” said Boston manager Alex Cora, “we’d probably get him out.”

Tellez continued his career torment of the Red Sox by hitting his team-best seventh home run this season for the Brewers, a two-run shot that powered Milwaukee’s 5-4 win at American Family Field on Saturday.

Wade Miley pitched five more effective innings, Hoby Milner continued his transformation into a high-leverage reliever and rookie center fielder Joey Wiemer made the defensive play of the night with a leaping catch at the wall to put the Brewers back in the win column after Boston snapped Milwaukee’s four-game winning streak the night before. The Brewers are the only team in the Majors yet to lose back-to-back games this season.

On Saturday that was largely due to Tellez, who came up to the big leagues with the Blue Jays and over the course of his career has done more damage against the Red Sox than any other team. His 1.187 OPS against Boston is the highest for any player in history with at least 100 career plate appearances against that storied franchise.

With a solo homer off Nick Pivetta on Friday and a two-run shot in the third inning off Sox starter Garrett Whitlock on Saturday, Tellez is a lifetime .336 hitter (37-for-110) against Boston with 14 home runs and 29 RBIs, his top production against any club. He hasn’t hit more than eight home runs against any other team.

“I don’t know. They’re just the unfortunate team, I guess,” Tellez said. “Somebody’s always got to have one team to do better against than the others, and I guess the Sox are mine. I get asked that question a lot and I don’t have an answer for it.”

Tellez even added a run without an RBI in the fifth, when he grounded into a double play to make it a 5-2 game. That wound up being the decisive run.

“He’s just a good hitter,” Cora said. “I think he found his stroke the last few years. He's not the same hitter that I remember earlier.”

The data bears that out. According to Baseball Info Solutions, Tellez swung at between 37-39 percent of pitches outside the zone during his tenure with the Blue Jays, but he has been more selective since coming to Milwaukee in a 2021 trade. In ‘22, on the way to a career-high and team-leading 35 home runs, Tellez swung at only 31 percent of pitches outside the zone. This year, that figure was 25.4 percent entering Saturday.

He was also swinging less, period. A lot less. Tellez went from swinging at more than half the pitches he saw in 2020 to 48.5 percent in ‘21 to 43.3 percent in ‘22 to 33.8 percent in ‘23 entering Saturday’s game.

“He’s always low-maintenance, whether he’s in good stretches or bad stretches,” Brewers hitting coach Connor Dawson said. “It’s really minor tweaks here or there, quick adjustments. The big thing for him is that when he’s on, he’s swinging at good pitches. With any hitter it’s that way, but with him specifically.”

Take the third inning on Saturday night. Whitlock stayed low and away from Tellez throughout the at-bat, during which Tellez fouled off three fastballs on the way to a full count. The payoff pitch was just what Tellez expected: A changeup.

“That’s Rowdy at his best to me,” manager Craig Counsell said. “He gets to two strikes, he got beat on a couple fastballs for foul balls. Then he got an off-speed pitch in the zone and he was on it still. He took a nice easy swing and the ball goes a long way.”

“Coming into this season, that was kind of a back-burner thing: Let’s chase less,” Tellez said. “Let’s be more selective. I can put the ball out of the ballpark, and it’s hard to do that when you’re swinging at balls in the dirt and balls over your head.”

Tellez has hit safely in eight of the last nine games with five home runs, one reason the Brewers have won seven of those games to stay ahead of the upstart Pirates in the National League Central. Miley is another, with a 1.96 ERA through four starts thanks in part on Saturday to Wiemer, whose leaping grab of an Alex Verdugo drive ending the top of the fifth capped Miley’s five-inning outing.

“He’s a pretty freak athlete,” Miley said. “I had him in right my first couple of starts and he did a pretty good job out in center field. He’s one of the better outfielders in baseball, as young as he is.”