Brew Approach

 

First of all, before I forget: lol mets.

Yeah, Wade Miley throwing six shutout innings while Max Scherzer implodes and both Brian Anderson and Garrett Mitchell have two-homer days is...the single most apt monkey's paw karma of everything the Mets tried to do to make themselves better this year. Oh it's so delicious. Oh man.

Alright. The Brewers. Right.

I think by this point, the Brewers have realized that they're not gonna be Christian Yelich's team anymore, that he's gonna just be an ensemble player since he's come down from his MVP seasons, and so the real stars of the show are gonna be the pitchers. And so far, these guys have been the stars, with Freddy Peralta annihilating the Mets the other day, Brandon Woodruff and Eric Lauer looking sharp, Devin Williams still being as dominant as ever in the ninth and unsung guys like Gus Varland and Matt Bush impressing immediately. The only real pitcher that hasn't been absolutely stellar so far has been, surprisingly, Corbin Burnes, the ace, but it's early and I reckon he'll find his stuff eventually.

And with Yelich doing his usual post-2019 thing and batting .200, that means the other elements of this lineup can be the hero at times, and one of the biggest ones going into the year has been Brian Anderson, the former oft-injured Marlins infielder. Anderson was stellar in 2018 and 2019, then he started getting hurt and the team no longer had a use for him. Anderson has also slowly morphed from a mostly-contact guy to more of a power hitter, and I think that scared the contact-friendly Marlins. In Milwaukee, which is pretty balanced between contact and power, Anderson fits a lot better, and so far he's hitting .533 with a league-leading 10 RBIs, 3 homers and 8 hits in 15 at-bats. This does come with the asterisk of 'yes, well it's the first week', but it's still numbers we haven't seen from this guy since before the pandemic.

There's also been great performances by both rookies, Brice Turang and Joey Wiemer, who've been great contact additions that have had excellent first weeks. At the same time, Jesse Winker is already looking like an improvement from his 2022 season, and has 5 RBIs already. I think after yesterday, Garrett Mitchell's one of the biggest 'what if he's this good all the time' pieces for this team, because while he was decent coming up last season, he's been given a lot more to do this year and he's already looking like he's up to the challenge.

I admittedly wrote off the Brewers going into this season, because I didn't see enough of this lineup working without the sure bets of previous years, but if all these contact guys keep working and if these rookies build on this as we go, this team could make the Wild Card race pretty interesting.

Especially if, uh, they have to go against the Mets in the playoffs. Who would want that, right?

Coming Tomorrow- I've been trying not to do too many obvious ones this early in the season...tomorrow that changes.