ST. LOUIS – It was what you want to see from the Milwaukee Brewers with Andrew Vaughn and Jackson Chourio back.
Clean baseball and the return of some timely slugging.
Both Vaugh and Chourio drove in runs with loud extra-base hits, vaulting the Brewers to a 6-2 win in the series finale at Busch Stadium on May 6.
Including a look at what Vaughn’s first-inning home run means moving forward, here are three takeaways from the game.
A step forward for Brandon Sproat, but …
The outing May 6 may have been the best microcosm yet of both ends of the spectrum for starter Brandon Sproat.
Over four scoreless innings, there was plenty of good to match the final line. He struck out five, generated 11 swings and misses and looked the sharpest he has yet with his cut fastball and changeup.
When he needed to make a pitch, he did. After a David Hamilton misplay at third base led to two on and two outs in the first inning, he befuddled Nolan Gorman with a changeup and then blew his doors off with 99.2 mph heat.
Three innings later, with two on again and one out, Sproat won a battle with José Fermín by executing a sinker on the inside edge for a double play.
“Definitely didn’t have my best stuff,” Sproat said. “But at the beginning of the game, [manager Pat Murphy] was like, hey, let’s go pitch by pitch. Fell behind in some counts. Felt like there were a lot of 2-0 counts. Just kept reminding myself, ‘This pitch here, this pitch. Focus on this pitch and nothing else.’ That’s how I was able to make pitches there in the fourth inning.”
Sproat’s 41% whiff rate was the highest he’s had in any game this year and more than double his last time out when he was overpowering hitters through three innings but then fell apart.
But Sproat also had two lapses against the Cardinals with his control, leading to three walks and, ultimately, his departure after just four innings and 74 pitches.
“I don’t know that I saw anything different,” Murphy said. “I know this was a big situation. He made some big pitches in some big times and he had way too many three-ball counts. Couldn’t put anybody away in terms of off-speed stuff. But he’s getting comfortable with his two-seamer which is a super effective pitch. He’s just not totally comfortable with it.”
To sum it up: There were more flashes from Sproat but he still has yet to put it all together. And that’s something the Brewers seem content living with, too.
There aren’t thoughts of sending Sproat to Class AAA Nashville, even through a roller coaster first month that has him carrying a 5.75 earned run average and 6.01 FIP (fielding indepedent pitching) – not exactly numbers that induce feelings of sunshine and rainbows.
“You saw it last game, [where] he’s dominant for three innings,” Murphy said. “Dominant. We knew this was happening. This is a young pitching staff. Very young. We’ve got one veteran starter in [Brandon Woodruff]. The rest of the starters are guys that are just trying to establish themselves as starters.”
It’s not a blind commitment to Sproat, Murphy made clear after the game, but as long as the Brewers continue to see strides from their 25-year-old right-hander, they will keep giving him opportunities to solve the puzzle at the big-league level.
“I think we’ve made good strides moving forward from the start of the year,” Sproat said. “We’ve stacked good days. Just continuing to stack days and continue working.”
What Andrew Vaughn’s first-inning homer means
Any three-run homer in the first inning is going to be encouraging. When it’s slugged by a player coming right off of hamate surgery, that’s even more true.
Vaughn’s blast to left-center to give the Brewers a 4-0 lead they wouldn’t relinquish doubled as a sigh of relief for those watching.
Often, hamate surgery results in a temporary loss of power for hitters due in large part to decreased grip strength in their hand after the bone is removed.
Vaughn stressed before his first game back May 4 after undergoing the procedure in late March that he felt his strength was back to normal, but words themselves don’t hit the ball over the fence. So when Vaughn unleashed on an inner-half fastball from St. Louis starter Andre Pallante and sent it 402 feet, it was a reassuring sign.
“That’s the biggest thing coming back from your surgery, is getting that strength back,” Vaughn said. “Just trusting that and going out there and just playing the game. … The rehab process was a few weeks to get it back. Big kudos to our training staff. They wanted to push. I wanted to push. It was good.”
Brewers can’t seem to find leverage spots for Aaron Ashby
Aaron Ashby continues to be a high-leverage reliever whose appearances, oddly enough, are not coming in high leverage.
Murphy is still using his left-hander often, as was expected going into the year, working him at a 106-inning pace over a 162-game season.
But many of his outings this season – and all of them recently – have come in lower-leverage spots, an odd quirk playing out both because the Brewers aren’t playing as many close games and he has occasionally been unavailable when there is a close game because of a heavy workload the night before.
Ashby is tied for the National League lead with six wins, but that isn’t even the stat that best embodies this unexpected usage trend for Ashby.
It’s this: Ashby, the Brewers’ best reliever, has no holds and no saves.
The Brewers have won his last three outings by a combined 14 runs. They’ve had one true save situation since April 18, a day Ashby was unavailable because he threw multiple innings up by four runs a day earlier. The last time Ashby pitched with a lead of fewer than four or a tie was April 16, when he earned the win with a scoreless eighth.
He’s pitched up 8-1, 4-0 and 5-0 twice, as well as down, 5-0.
Ashby’s usage also spells out something for the Brewers that typically does not happen: an unusually low number of close games.
Put it all together and Ashby’s average leverage index, which quantifies the importance of the game situation the player is in, is fifth in the bullpen, behind Grant Anderson and just barely ahead of DL Hall.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Brandon Sproat shows more signs of progress in Brewers’ win over Cardinals
Reporting by Curt Hogg, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
