With the Brewers coasting at the top of the National League Central, it’s interesting to look at the situational stats that have led them to this point. One of the most notable stats is their record versus right handed starters.
Record vs. Right Handed Starters
The Brewers lead the majors in wins against right handed starters with 52, five more than any other team. Part of that is due to the fact that they’ve the third most right handed starters, behind NL Central rivals the Reds and Cardinals. However, when broken down into win percentage they still have the fourth best win percentage against right handed starters in the majors.
Giants- .653
Rays- .635
Red Sox- .621
Brewers- .619
Astros- .619
The Giants are the only National League team with a better win percentage against righties, but have 12 less games against right handed starters than the Brewers. That is in large part due to the lack of left handed starters in the National League Central.
Lack of Lefties
Starts made by lefties in the NL:
West- 168
East- 151
Central- 89
This raises the question of whether the Brewers are good against righties or are just beating up on the NL Central. The Brewers are 52-32 against right handed starters and 30-17 against the NL Central.
As it turns out, the Brewers have only played three games against a divisional opponent with a left handed starter. That’s pretty incredible considering we just entered August. Funny enough, the Brewers lost all three. Normally if you get to August and you have zero wins against divisional rival lefties that’d be a massive red flag, but three games is way too small of a sample size to worry about.
However, in those three games the Brewers only scored one run in the 20.1 innings covered by the starters. Two of those games ended with the Brewers being shut out.
NL Central Dominance or Righty Dominance?
That means all 30 of their divisional wins came against a right handed starter. So their record against righties outside of the division at 22-18. While that doesn’t quite jump off the page the way 52-32 does, it’s still good for a .550 win percentage. Over the course of a 162 game season that would lead to 89 wins.
Offense or Coincidence?
The offensive numbers against righties don’t exactly make it obvious why they have such a good record against them. They have a slashline of .225/.313/.385 against righties. That .698 OPS is 17th in the league, 20 points below league average. Their .619 winning percentage against righties would have you assume they’re world beaters against righties, not below average against them.
That would have you assume they’re success against right handed starters coincides with their success overall. It’s due to their own pitching. It hasn’t mattered that their offense is below average against righties, lefties, or anybody. As long as they keep pitching, their record will be impressive.
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