Pitching wins championships. It’s one of baseball’s oldest adages, and there must be some truth to it. If it weren’t true, how else can you explain the 2010 World Series Champion San Francisco Giants? If pitching wins championships, the next logical step is to say that the Philadelphia Phillies are going to win this year’s World Series without breaking a sweat. Who’s going to challenge a rotation with Halladay, Lee, Hamels, and Oswalt?
I have a better question. Which National League team has allowed the fewest runs since the All-Star break? It’s not the Phillies. It’s the Milwaukee Brewers, who’ve allowed just 232 in their 70 games since the break. Two fewer than the Phillies’ 232 runs allowed over that same span. The Brewers are known for Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, and their high-octane offense, but that’s not how this club blew the doors off of the National League Central in August and September, they did it with pitching.
Last winter, Doug Melvin decided to roll the dice. With Prince Fielder facing free agency of 2011, Melvin had to decide whether he should put all his chips on the table and make a run at 2011, or if he should trade Fielder and try to rebuild around Braun and prospects for 2012 and beyond. Melvin emptied out his farm system to bring Zack Greinke and Shaun Marcum to Milwaukee, and the results have been exactly what he hoped for thus far.
Greinke entered the All-Star break with a 5.45 ERA. All of his peripherals looked good — he was keeping the ball in the park and on the ground, he was striking out a ton of hitters, he was barely walking anyone — but things just hadn’t clicked for him in Milwaukee for some reason. Since they break, they’ve clicked. In 15 starts, Greinke’s tossed 97 1/3 innings. He’s struck out 102, walked just 29, and allowed only eight home runs. Opponents hit .234/.292/.362 against Greinke after the break. His ERA in those 14 starts is 2.52, the Brewers are 12-3 in those games.
Greinke’s not the only one on fire since the break. Yovani Gallardo’s got 103 strikeouts and just 15 walks in 90 innings. His ERA is 3.20 in his 14 starts. Greinke and Gallardo will make four starts in any seven-game series for the Brewers, and Shaun Marcum wll make two more. Marcum’s tailed off some in the second half after an excellent first half, but he’s still a guy that’s more than capable of making a good start against anyone every time he takes the mound. Sleep on this pitching staff at your own risk.
Their bullpen has been excellent, too, especially since the addition of Francisco Rodriguez. In 30 appearances with the Brewers, K-Rod has reversed the downward trend of his career and put up some of his best numbers since his record-breaking last season with the Angels. John Axford has been every bit as good as Rodriguez in the closer’s role. LaTroy Hawkins and Takashi Saito have turned in excellent seasons at advanced ages.
Despite the bevy of good pitching the Brewers have gotten, they’re still the Brewers. Which is to say that they still finished fifth in the National League in runs scored and first in home runs. No team packs a 1-2 punch as powerful as Ryan Braun (.332/.397/.397, 33 home runs, 28 doubles, six triples) and Prince Fielder (.299/.415/.566, 38 home runs, 36 doubles, one triple). The Brewers don’t stop their, either. Rickie Weeks and Corey Hart combined to add another 46 homers to Braun and Fielder in the middle of the lineup and Nyjer Morgan’s had a career year setting the table for everyone involved with his .304 average and .357 OBP.
That’s important, because pitching might win championships, but you still have to score runs. As great as Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum were in the post-season last year, the Giants still needed Cody Ross’s improbable resurgence to put runs on the board where the Phillies weren’t scoring them. They still needed Edgar Renteria to defy age one last time in the World Series. The Brewers have the firepower to back up their pitching staff, plain and simple.
Sometimes, we spend a lot of time trying to break things down when the answer is plain. The Brewers can mash the ball. The Brewers can pitch. The Brewers have been as good as any team anywhere in the second half of this season. Don’t hand the National League pennant or the World Series to the Phillies yet, because there’s a very good team in Milwaukee that’s going to have a say before these playoffs are all said and done.
