UP ALL NIGHT...

by South Side Rob

I woke up about 1:30am this morning with an upset stomach. Maybe it was something I ate earlier. Who cares. The point is, I couldn't fall back to sleep so I decided to go to one of my all-time favorite baseball sites, Baseball-Reference.com to look farther into the stats for the Brewers to have some questions answered. I can't say enough about this site which is free to browse. I don't know how these people get paid because they do an unbelievable job. If this site becomes a pay-per-view site in the future, I would understand why. It's truly amazing.

One thing I was curious about but I figured there was no way I could get the stats to back it up was how our pitching staff performs when Damian Miller is catching vs. when Johnny Estrada is catching. From watching games, it always seemed to me that when Miller caught, the pitchers were more effective. Well, never fear because Baseball-Reference.com actually has a split for how pitching staffs do when a certain player is doing the catching. It sparked me to write this column tonight and share some of my findings.

The pitching splits for the Brewer pitchers.  At the bottom of the page, you'll see a header named By Catcher. As you see, opponents are both hitting .265 regardless of who catches. Opponents get on base a little more when Damian Miller catches by looking at the on-base percentage (.349 to .319) and opponents slug a little more when Johnny Estrada catches by looking at the slugging-percentage (.426 to .404).

Looking farther at the pitching splits and going back and forth from the batting splits, I've concluded that our problem has been pitching more so than hitting. A few days ago, I said the opposite. The stats prove me wrong. Let's see. In April, we were 16-9 with a team ERA of 3.81 which makes sense. In May, we were 14-15 with a team ERA of 4.18. Somehow, May felt worse than that. In June, we were 17-9 with a team ERA of 4.02. In July, we were 11-16 with a team ERA of 4.63 by far, our worst month of pitching. So far in August, we are 4-7 with a team ERA of 6.91. YIKES! With only 11 games played in August, most of this bulge if from the massacre that took place in Colorado. However, when you think about the 5 and 6-run leads we have recently blown, those numbers might be more consistent than you would think. Just last Sunday, the staff gave up 6 earned to Houston. My point here is that July and August have been our worst pitching. You don't need the numbers to prove that but it helps when you put the numbers next to it.

Another set of pitching splits that I enjoy lookup up is the count (Balls and Strikes). For instance, Brewers opponents have a .347 average against our pitchers when putting the ball in play on the first pitch of an at-bat. That seems high but I can't tell if I compare it to other teams. Remember we used to hear our coaches scream to make that first pitch a strike? We have not hear that as much this season. Maybe the stat above is why. I did some research if you recall before this season started on how pitchers fared when pitching into hitter counts. This is where my research came from. This season, its a nightmare for the Brewers. Teams are hitting .323 when they hit with a count of 1 ball and 0 strikes. Teams are hitting .383 when the count is 2-0. When the count is 3-1, opponents are hitting .302 with an on base of .656 (Walks now come into play when looking at a split of 3 balls. Pitching-friendly counts, the Brewers have been good except for when the count is 0-1, opponents are hitting .343 against the Brewers. When the count is 0-2, they only hit .155. How about 1-2? Opponents hit just .183. On 2-2 counts, opponents only hit .192. The best thing I see is that opponents only hit .238 when the count is full. I would have thought this number would have been higher. Looking at the count splits, the numbers just jump off the page! When Brewer pitchers work themselves into hitter-type counts (1-0, 2-1, 3-1), they get pounded as they should. Thus, the importance of getting to two strikes against a major league hitter.

Another great pitching split is by inning. In the first inning this year, Brewer opponents are hitting .295 which makes sense because the 1st inning has been trouble for all of our starters this year. In the 2nd inning, opponents are only hitting .237. Our worst inning....the 6th inning. Opponents are hitting a monster .308 against us. After the 6th inning, the batting average goes back to into an acceptable number. The pitching has been very good in extra-inning games. Opponents are only hitting .227 against us in all extra innings.

Another great pitching split is by pitch count. The first split is skewed since most relievers would fall into this category along with the starters. I look at this more for the starters and I look in the are of pitch count between 76-100. This is the critical area. This is the area where the starter has shown some signs of wearing down and the numbers back that up. Between pitches 51-75, opponents are only hitting .218 against us. From pitches 76-100 however, opponents are hitting .342. If pitch counts go over 100, that number falls down to .293. For Jeff Suppan and Dave Bush, its usually the 6th inning which also checks out with that 6th inning being one of our worst to get through as talked about earlier. For Claudio Vargas, its probably the 5th inning since he throws so many more pitches per inning than the rest of our starters.

One more pitching split I like to mention is the one about how we pitch on so many days of rest. Fans may be curious when they watch the Brewers and they hear that this player is not available because we pitched the night before, etc. Well, many of our relievers have no choice but to pitch on 0 days rest. We've seen it with our setup guys and our closer Francisco Cordero. That's what they are paid to do. The numbers show that when they pitch on 0 days rest, their numbers are horrible.  Although opponenets don't seem to hit better (.245 on 0 days rest), our team ERA for players who pitch two consecutive days is 5.21. Get them all 1 day of rest and the number goes down to 3.92. Get them 2 days of rest and it goes down ever further 3.11. More than 2 days rest, the ERA starts to climb back up. Remember, this split is number of days not games. The schedule may play a small factor in these numbers if you think about it.

I do look at the franchise opponent splits but not really hard. We all know that when you play in Cincinnati, nobody is going to have good pitching numbers. The Reds and their opponents get killed there so I'd like to think that while Cincinnati is hitting as a team .308 against the Brewers, I'd like to think most of that damage was done in Cincinnati and not at Miller Park. Same for St. Louis. They are hitting .279 against us so far this season. Both teams have only managed to hit 4 home runs against the Brewers this year so that is encouraging when you think about the offense of those two teams.

Now, to the hitting splits. If I'm putting you to sleep, I apologize. In fact, if I receive 0 comments on this column, I won't be surprised. Numbers and stats are not for every fan especially when you dig as deep as Baseball-Reference can.

First off, we are hitting .263 as a team which is not bad. That number by itself looks ok but if you start breaking down when these hits are coming, it can change the look and feel of it. Let's see what I can uncover.

First off, lefties hit left-handed pitchers a little better than righties hit right-handed pitchers (.252 to .248). Keep in mind that Prince has pretty much been the only lefty that stays in the lineup against left-handed pitchers which is probably why those numbers are that way. Righties are hitting much better against left-handed pitchers than Lefties are hitting against right-handed pitchers (.286 to .268). This year I'd have to say is the most success we've had against left-handed pitchers as a team in quite a long time. I guess people like Ryan Braun who just feeds off left-handed pitchers helps quite a bit. As of this writing, Braun is hitting .462 (36 for 78) against left-handed pitchers. WOW.

The home/away batting splits are not as bad as the pitching splits are which explain our road troubles. At home, the Brewers hit .269. Away from home, they only drop to .258 which is not that bad. The first/second half of season split is a farther spread. In the first half of the season, the Brewers hit .267 and so far in the second half of the season, they are hitting just .252. By month we see that we are hitting better in August than we did in July (.268 to .247). In June which was a better month than April believe it or not, we hit .286 as a team. Earlier in this column, I said we were 16-9 in April and we were 17-9 in June. Our pitcher was better in April and our hitting was better in June.

Hitting by defensive position is interesting. We are not hitting over .300 at any one position but we are hitting well at every position except 2nd base which of course, we know about the struggles of Rickie Weeks but he wasn't alone. Tony Graffanino and Craig Counsell have contributed to us only hitting .231 from that position. At 3rd base, we are hitting .296 which is amazing when you think about how much Graffanino and Counsell struggled offensively while platooning at 3rd base the first two months. Thanks again Ryan Braun. I know their just goofing around but I've already heard the radio guys on WSSP already putting Braun into the Hall of Fame and calling him the next Albert Pujols. It's funny to hear but my hope is that he carves out his own legend instead of being compared to great players who came before him. At the bottom of the splits by defensive positions, there is a really cool split that says by defensive position and by offensive position. What they are doing here is considering the catcher, 2nd base, shortstop, and center field defensive positions and 1st base, 3rd base, left field, right field, designated hitter, and pinch hitters offensive positions. I love the defensive positions split. It's been my argument all year with Cubs fans. I believe the Brewers (Up the Middle) are so much better offensively than the Cubs. The numbers bear this out even with Weeks and Bill Hall having down years. We hit .260 average with a .326 on-base percentage, and a .456 slugging percentage while the Cubs are .251/.312/.371.

Hitting splits by Batting order. This is where I screamed never to put Rickie Weeks in the 8 hole. People remember my concerns when they announced that they were moving Weeks to 8th. Weeks has not been 8th all season so he is not soley responsible for the team only hitting .220 from the 8 hole. Hopefully, J.J. Hardy to bring those numbers up. He was excellent this weekend batting 8th. He went 6 for 13 with 2 doubles and 2 home runs which is fantastic when you think about early in games the pitcher is standing on deck. I hope they stay with this for awhile. Hardy now (Moreso than in 2005), has a much better idea of the strike zone and it shows. The guys who bat first are only hitting .260 but they have an on-base of .341 which is fine. Other than the 8th and of course the 9th position, the 5th position has been a killer for the Brewers this season. That's been mostly either Bill Hall or Johnny Estrada. We are only hitting .253 with a very low on-base of .296 from the 5th spot in the batting order. We have to find a solution there. Our on-base from our 1-4 and 6-8 are all over .300 on-base. I believe the 5 hole has killed many rallies this season and the numbers just jump off the page!

Splits based on the count show the aggressive nature of the Brewers. We hit much better early in the count rather than late. First pitch swinging, we're hitting .335. When the count is 1-0, we are hitting .323. When the count is 2-0, we are hitting .351. When the count is 0-1, we are hitting .346, and when the count is 1-1, we are hitting .361. You can almost forget about it when were down in the count two strikes. On 0-2, we're hitting just .140, on 1-2, we hit just .167, on 2-2, we're only hitting .209, and when the count is full, we just hit .225.

Splits when bases are occupied might be the most telling of when we really have struggled offensively. This goes back to a conversation I had with Aaron one of our Brewer Nation fans who contributes his comments quite a bit. We had a chat a few nights ago about numbers. Aaron loves baseball numbers. He reminds me of how I was at a younger age. We debated about Gabe Gross vs. Kevin Mench. He kept throwing total-type numbers at me to prove that we should dump Mench in favor of Gross. While I didn't agree with his theory, it doesn't make him wrong. It also doesn't make me right. It was a good discussion. The splits I'm about to get into are very telling. I believe a guy can be a .300 hitter in the majors and not be considered a very good offensive player. You can hit .300 when the majority of your hits come in non-critical situations. Lyle Overbay is a good example. He hit .300 or close to that but how did he do with runners in scoring position? That's were these splits come in. With the bases loaded, the Brewers hit .305 as a team. That's nice. With just a runner on 3rd, we hit .301. Obviously, we are getting the job done in those situations. How about when we have runners on 2nd and 3rd? The Brewers hit just .208 in those situations which has been killing us all year! With runners on 1st and 2nd we hit just .229. So you see, as a team, we hit .263 but until you see when the hits are coming, you cannot measure if its a good .263 or a poor .263.

I like looking at the Clutch splits but I believe a fairly consistent all the way though. They hit .258 when the game is tied. They hit .268 when they trail by either 1 or 2 runs, .269 when they trail by 3, .265 when the trail by 4, etc. With 2 outs and runners in scoring position, they hit only .227. The Cubs in the same situation are hitting .256. The Cardinals, just .219. What bothers me is that we are only hitting .252 when we trail by more than 4 runs. I don't think we quit when this happens but I've noticed that it appears they just don't concentrate well in these situations. This might be more about their youth than anything.

Batting splits by inning are fairly consistent but I like when they group the innings. In innings 1 thru 3, we hit .259. In innings 4 thru 6, we hit .281. In innings 7 thru 9, we hit just .246. Again, is this youth or are they just trying too hard in the later part of games? I don't know. In extra innings, we hit .283 so there is something to this.

I've probably put a lot of you off with all these numbers. Sorry about that. I want to share with you one more exciting page that baseball-reference has put together. Actually, its two pages. 1 for hitters and 1 for pitchers. It allows you to track the entire organization from the major league team all the way down to rookie ball! The batting organization depth for the Brewers. This is some really cool stuff. If you really want to see how we are stacked at a position, just go to these links. They tell what levels each player has played at this season and it gives you the total number they have accumulated at all the levels they have played at this season! The pitching organization depth for the Brewers. Want to find out our depth of left-handed pitchers? The pitching depth link is the place to go. Actually, you'll see how few left-handed pitchers our organization has. Plus, you can see how all of our closers our doing at every level.

The person or people at Baseball-Reference.com don't get nearly the credit they deserve for all their hard work. I'd love to be a part of what they do. To me, it beats anything I've ever seen even Baseball Prospectus which is more about forecasting based on trends from previous years. I don't want to knock anything baseball but I enjoy Baseball-Reference.com so much more than the Prospectus. To be fair, Baseball-Reference.com is what has already happened and Baseball Prospectus is what they think might happen in the future.

I hope you enjoyed this piece. I'm looking forward to the Brewer games this week. With just 7 weeks to go and a long road trip after this one-week homestand on the horizon, this is one of the most important weeks of the season. I want the Brewers to spank the Cardinals so that the National Media can stop calling them contenders when they currently sit 5 games under 500. The Brewers were about that last year at this time (Actually, I think we were 7 under). Last year, nobody called us a contender. In fact, they laughed when anyone even suggested it.