In the bottom of the seventh inning of the Milwaukee Brewers’ 8-6 loss to the Minnesota Twins on Friday night, Aug. 7, at American Family Field, Luis Lara took a called third strike with the bases loaded and immediately turned and emphatically tapped his helmet toward the home plate umpire.
Problem: The pitch was almost fully in the strike zone.
Second problem: The Milwaukee Brewers were out of challenges anyway.
It was a moment that encapsulated the reality that, four months into the season, there still doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to how or when the Brewers challenge – especially on offense.
With only 37 successful offensive challenges, the Brewers have by far the fewest overturns at the plate in baseball while also running a success rate of just 43%.
And those issues reared their head Aug. 7 against the Minnesota Twins as much as they have in any single game this year.
The Brewers didn’t lose because of their ABS challenges. They lost because of a rare off-night from the pitching, led by Shane Drohan getting tagged for six runs.
But in a game that was close from the third inning on, with multiple chances to tie or take the lead just about every inning, the paper cuts added up, one after another, to help stymy rallies that could have potentially flourished.
Lara’s no-challenge in the sixth was emblematic of a scattered ABS strategy and implementation, but it ultimately didn’t matter. That wasn’t the case on many other occasions.
An unsuccessful challenge by Lara on a 1-0 pitch with one out and none on in the fourth was the exact type of pitch you don’t want to challenge: Low-leverage and borderline.
Brewers manager Pat Murphy calls those challenges “emotional” and that’s exactly what it was.
While you don’t want to ascribe too much blame to Lara for that miss – he’s a 21-year-old who fights for every pitch, as evidenced by a 10-pitch at-bat later on, and his team had two challenges left – it proved costly later on when Milwaukee ran out of challenges in the sixth when David Hamilton tried to flip a strikeout and failed on a pitch fully in the zone.
For the Brewers, having a low number of total challenges on offense is partly by design; catchers leaguewide have a 58.9% overturn rate whereas hitters are only at 48.1%. Pitchers are barred from challenging in the Brewers’ system.
“The ones that are in leverage, you still got to challenge that,” Murphy said. “It’s worth it. The umpires are that good. When it’s all over the place and you’ve challenged this many calls so far in the game, it becomes a little messy.”
But a relatively low volume of challenges does not preclude a team from making the most of its opportunities, and one might think the Brewers, by proxy of having the lowest chase rate in the league, would be ABS fiends. As their 43% success rate at the plate shows, though, that’s not the case.
Now, if a team had a low success rate on offense but was getting the most out of them situationally, that would be understandable. But that’s not the Brewers, either, who, as the Twins game showed, still aren’t particularly adept at having the necessary feel for the moment.
The biggest missed opportunity of the night came with Cooper Pratt batting and a man on first with no outs in the sixth. A 3-1 pitch missed high by a couple of inches. Pratt started walking to first base. He knew it was a ball. Yet when home plate umpire Brian Walsh called it a strike, Pratt didn’t challenge.
One pitch later, Pratt made an out; instead of first and second trailing by two, there was one out in the inning. Hamilton would burn the Brewers final challenge one batter later.
The inning prior, William Contreras didn’t challenge a fastball that missed by three inches with two on and one out. He later flew out.
With two on and two outs in the second, Hamilton didn’t challenge a first pitch well below the zone.
There were other opportunities, to be sure, but those ones rose to the occasion of the type of situation the Brewers want their hitters to challenge.
But, instead, because of two failed challenges – one of which never should have been challenged – Jake Bauers was left helpless leading off the ninth when a fastball inside was called a strike.
Bauers ultimately did himself no favors taking a called third strike down the middle, but he did draw three other balls later on against Twins closer Yoendrys Gomez. The at-bat may never have reached that point if he had a challenge at his behest.
An inconsistent zone from home plate umpire Brian Walsh played into both teams running out of challenges, but Murphy said after the game his team needs to stick to its plan and not let a scattered zone behind the plate affect them.
“Players lose confidence in what’s what, but you still have to be disciplined and stick to [only] if it’s an obvious challenge it,” Murphy said. “If it’s not obvious, don’t challenge it. Don’t get emotional about it.”
Milwaukee, no doubt, can be situationally better with its challenges. It needs to be. But can the Brewers get better at challenges?
There’s no great answer for that question at present. But if they don’t,
Players lose confidence in what’s what. You still have to be disciplined and stick to if it’s an obvious challenge it. If it’s not obvious, don’t challenge it. Don’t get emotional about it.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The Brewers offense hasn’t solved ABS challenges. It’s now August.
Reporting by Curt Hogg, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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By Curt Hogg, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
