The dog days of summer are officially upon us. While the official end of Spring is still three weeks away, the 90+ degree temperatures and the Brewers inexplicable series loss to one of the worst teams in baseball (which snapped a 6 series winning streak) has it feeling like summer in Milwaukee.
I wrote last week about how important it will be to the Brewers success to have new players in this lineup step up. We saw a bit of that play out this week. Jeremy Jeffress finally gave up a run on Wednesday vs the Cardinals, ending his franchise record tying scoreless appearance streak at 23. What followed was a thing of beauty – Christian Yelich homered to tie the ball game, then Orlando Arcia drove in the go ahead run later that inning to put the Brewers back on top for good. Josh Hader handled the next five outs, albeit shakily, and Corey Knebel threw a perfect 3-2 fastball to earn a one out save and close the game. It was the type of resilient “I’ve-got-your-back” baseball that I’ve longed for for years in Milwaukee, and yet have almost never seen. The bullpen cracked, the bats picked them up, Brewers win – a thing of beauty.
Then the Brewers did the most “Brewers” thing ever, and lost 2 of 3 to what many believe to be the worst team in baseball in the Chicago White Sox. To be fair, that’s how it goes in baseball. You can’t read too much into an interleague series in early June – sometimes teams just play bad for a couple of games… that’s the way it goes. The 2017 World Series Champion Houston Astros had a stretch of games in late July / early August where they went 4-12. The 2016 Cubs went 1-9 to kick off the month of July the year they went all the way. It happens to everyone, and the numbers would suggest that the Brewers are going to regress at least somewhat over the next four months; despite my unwavering belief that this is a playoff team, I don’t think they’re a 100-win team in their current state.
What concerns me most about this team is whether or not they’ll be able to lose games without losing their identity. Unfortunately for us Brewers fans, we’ve been burned before. I was so confident that the 2014 Brewers were going to win the division that I started taking payroll deductions into a separate account to save for playoff tickets. We all know how that ended. 2017 was brutal too – the Brewers lost a 5.5 game lead in the Central over the course of the week. Despite bouncing back and keeping it interesting until the last weekend of the season, it felt like the Brewers lost their identity when they lost the division lead.
If you believe this is a playoff team like I do, then you have to ask yourself this: what makes the 2018 Brewers any different? Many will (and I already have) point to the bullpen, but I’m also of the belief that the bullpen’s success isn’t sustainable. The Brewers are going to have to find ways to rack up wins other than being dominant in one run games. In my opinion, you have to look no further than the top of this lineup to see why this Brewers team is so different: Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich.
Let’s look first at Lorenzo Cain. I have to admit, Cain is still growing on me. He’s got a swagger to him that can easily be misinterpreted as a bad attitude when he’s not playing well. He’s vocal, he’s expressive, and he’s a guy that clearly doesn’t like losing. It’s hard for me to think of a comparable Brewer over the last five years. When the Brewers signed Cain, they weren’t just getting a career .289 hitter, they were getting a vocal veteran and a World Series Champion. With Cain, the Brewers may finally have a player that is simply too cocky to accept poor play in long stretches. He’s the type of player you feel like would walk up to anyone on the team that may have the “deer in headlights” look we’ve become accustomed to seeing from Brewers teams and just smack the fear right out of them. I like that – this team needs that.
The fact that Cain is batting ahead of Christian Yelich only adds to this team’s staying power. Cain wants to score, and Yelich is going to give him lots of opportunities to do that this year if he can continue to get on base. With Christian Yelich, the Brewers finally have their first five-tool player since Ryan Braun was popping gummies before big games. Yelich is a star, and the way he composes himself is the perfect compliment to Cain’s somewhat abrasive personality. Cain and Yelich are in a unique position where they’re newcomers to Milwaukee, and they get to set the offensive tone for most games. It’s the most talent the Brewers have had at the top of the lineup in quite some time, and it might be just enough to keep the Brewers from the dreaded three-four week slides that have ruined potential playoff seasons in 2014 and 2017.
It’s still very early, but we’re learning a lot about the Brewers. Trade talks are about to dominate the next two months of baseball coverage, and the Crew will undoubtedly be rumored to be in the mix for a number of different deals. Until those deals come to fruition at the end of July, however, the next two months are going to tell us a lot about this team’s staying power. If the Brewers start to slip and let the Cubs build a lead in the Central, it’s going to be like 2017 all over again – nothing is worse than scoreboard watching when you don’t control your own destiny. But if the Brewers continue to respond to losing with winning (the Brewers haven’t lost consecutive games since getting swept at Wrigley in late April), they could flip the script and keep the pressure on the Cubs, who are a much streakier team than in previous years. Only time will tell, but I’m optimistic, and I’m going to continue to enjoy the ride.