Best Play: Facing yet another elite Mets starter, the Brewers wasted no time. Aaron Hill, Scooter Gennett, and Keon Broxton each notched hits off Steven Matz, bringing around a run and putting two men on base for the bottom of the order. During Zach Davies’s at-bat, Broxton stole second; one pitch later, Davies laid down a perfect squeeze bunt that knocked in Gennett. Apparently, that wasn’t enough for Matz, who booted the throw to first and allowed Broxton to score as well.
Davies’s sacrifice, along with Matz’s error (+.101), gave the Brewers an 83.4 percent win probability, up from 73.4 percent after Broxton’s swipe. At the beginning of the game, Milwaukee was an underdog, with a 46.9 percent chance of beating New York. That changed in the second frame, though, when the club took a 3-0 lead it wouldn’t relinquish. From the third inning on, the Brewers maintained at least an 80 percent chance of victory.
Even for a pitcher, Davies has been an offensive zero in 2016. Despite collecting a single in his second trip to the dish on Sunday, his seasonal batting line festers at an even .100/.100/.100 — he has three hits, all one-baggers, in 30 at-bats. By contrast, major-league pitchers have posted a .136/.163/.177 triple-slash to this point. Nevertheless, Davies’s play on the mound, which we’ll dive into below, has more than made up for his utter ineptitude at the plate.
Worst Play: With the Brewers ahead 5-0, the Mets tried to chip away against the Milwaukee bullpen. Blaine Boyer allowed an inherited runner to score in the seventh, and Carlos Torres made things worse in the eighth. Curtis Granderson singled home a run with a sharp liner to right, and two batters later, Yoenis Cespedes smoked a full-count fastball into the left-center gap, cutting the deficit to 5-3.
Cespedes’s double (-.086) trimmed the Brewers’ chances of winning from 92.7 to 84.1 percent. The hit also chased Torres from the game, in favor of Will Smith. He’d allow another baserunner, but he prevented both from scoring, keeping the final margin at 5-3.
Torres is an odd case. On a rebuilding club, veterans have some value as mentors or filler players; as with the case of Aaron Hill, they can sometimes break out and become a trade chip as well. Torres fits none of these criteria, though. His ERA now sits at 3.73, with a mediocre DRA (4.13) and cFIP (103) to match. At age 33, he’s probably arrived at the end of the road, yet the Brewers continue to trot him out in close games. Unless David Stearns is trying to tank — which he’s denied — the continued reliance on Torres makes little sense.
Trend to Watch: For a team that needs starting pitching and needs it now, Davies has performed exceptionally well as of late. Sunday was his sixth consecutive solid start; over those half-dozen games, he’s pitched 38.1 innings and notched a 2.35 ERA, with a 25.5 percent strikeout rate and 4.3 percent walk rate. Nearly a year after coming to Milwaukee in exchange for Gerardo Parra, Davies seems to have made the leap.
As a major leaguer, Davies has made the sinker his primary pitch. While the offering dives and darts for grounders and the occasional whiff, its poor velocity ultimately undermines it. Thus, he’s deployed the sinker less often as of late: It’s made up 45.6 percent of his pitches over his last six games, compared to 60.0 percent before that. He’s started to reintroduce his four-seamer as well, hurling it 12.6 percent of the time after abandoning it entirely through the first five starts.
Still, the fastballs don’t set Davies apart. The pitch that brought him to the show was his changeup, a monstrous off-speed pitch that can work against same- and opposite-handed hitters. And Davies has improved the change recently too: Its strike rate has increased from 56.3 to 69.4 percent, and its whiff rate from 16.1 to 21.4 percent, during his six-game run. If Davies can continue to perfect the change — perhaps by learning some more from Chase Anderson — he’ll continue to prosper in the Brewers rotation.
Up Next: The Brew Crew heads on a nine-game West Coast road trip, beginning in San Francisco. Chase Anderson and Matt Cain get things started tonight at 9:15 CST. Matt Garza will make his return on Tuesday, when he’ll face off against Madison Bumgarner, and Jimmy Nelson will wrap up the series on Wednesday with a duel against Johnny Cueto. The Brewers have already demonstrated their ability to beat tough pitching, splitting their series with the Mets; we’ll have to see if they can sustain that versus the Giants.