After a 2014 season in which the Brewers’ hot hitting carried them to the brink of the playoffs, they prayed that 2015 would bring more of the same. With Carlos Gomez and Aramis Ramirez regressing (and departing via trade), Jonathan Lucroy playing hurt and Jean Segura remaining terrible, those hopes didn’t come to pass. The season brought three real offensive bright spots: Adam Lind — who has since moved — continued his solid performance from the prior two years; Ryan Braun, who rebounded from a couple of injury-ridden campaigns; and Khris Davis, who took the proverbial next step as a sophomore.

As the two best projected hitters on the team for 2016, Braun and Davis will probably garner the most attention this offseason. In terms of their past numbers, we can see an interesting development. Both have undergone similar changes, with the same end product: incredible hitting to the opposite field.

Entering 2014, Braun had always done fairly well when poking the ball to right. From his rookie year in 2007 to his injury-marred 2013 effort, his .408 wOBA on such plays ranked 16th in baseball. But, as my colleague Jack Moore observed in July, he’s since taken that to a new level, with a .544 opposite-field wOBA. For 2015, he posted a .533 wOBA, trailing only Bryce Harper among hitters with 50 balls in play. A few spots behind him on that list? Davis, with a mark of .504. That represented a significant upgrade from the preceding year, when his .458 wOBA to right field came in at 16th — on par with Braun’s original place. In this regard, Milwaukee’s corner outfielders both went from great to unbelievable in the blink of an eye.

Oddly enough, however, they traveled different paths to arrive at this point. Davis became more patient on the outer portions of the plate:

Pitches in this area go to the opposite field the most often, since the batter can most easily drive them the other way. Given this — and given that the overall location against Davis shifted this year — it would seem that Davis abandoned aggression for selectivity on pitches away to his benefit. (This likely had a hand in Davis’s walk-rate spike as well.)

By contrast, Braun didn’t stray from his prior approach. As a matter of fact, his swing rate on outside pitches went up:

Moreover, pitchers didn’t avoid Braun any more than they used to. In his case, he simply did more with what they gave him. While it obviously diverged from Davis’s methods, we can’t argue with the results.

Both Braun and Davis became insanely good at cutting down on their swing and pushing the ball the other way. But each accomplished it uniquely, and to different extents as well: Davis’s opposite-field rate fell from 23.4 to 20.1 percent, while Braun pumped his up from 26.3 to 31.0 percent. For 2016 and beyond, the Brewers should have two similar hitters to anchor their lineup, even if they come at the game from opposite ends of the spectrum. It just goes to show that baseball isn’t a one-size-fits-all-game — everyone skins this cat in their own manner.

Let’s start with Blazek, who cut down anyone the opposition threw at him in 2015. He limited lefties to a .243 wOBA and righties to a .252 wOBA en route to a 2.43 ERA and 2.46 DRA over 55.2 innings. That even dominance may come as a surprise, given Blazek’s four main pitches:

According to research from Max Marchi, fastballs, sinkers, and sliders generally have very large platoon splits. In other words, they’ll fool same-handed batters but won’t fare well against opposite-handed ones. Relying on that trio for nearly three-quarters of his pitches would thus leave Blazek vulnerable to left-handed batters — unless he changed his pitch mix depending on the situation:

Marchi’s research also showed that curveballs — especially those with a lot of movement, like Blazek’s — will tend to put up a reverse platoon split, meaning they’ll succeed against hitters who swing the other way. Recognizing that, Blazek doubled his curveball rate against southpaws, which allowed him to remain effective against them.

We’ll now move to Jeffress. While he pitched fairly well for the Brewers this year — with a 2.65 ERA and 3.78 DRA in 68.0 innings — lefties gave him some trouble. They posted a .314 wOBA in 104 plate appearances against him, significantly higher than the .276 mark righties notched in their 181 trips to the dish. Nor did this start in 2015: Before this year, Jeffress had held right-handed batters to a .308 wOBA but had sacrificed a .341 wOBA to left-handed batters.

Unlike Blazek, Jeffress doesn’t own a slider; Jeffress’s three primary pitches — the four-seam fastball, the sinker, and the curveball — occupied a respective 23.7 percent, 53.7 percent, and 21.0 percent of his arsenal in 2015. Those two hard offerings lend themselves to a platoon split, and the manner in which Jeffress deployed them only made matters worse:

Jeffress threw his curveball a bit more often when facing left-handed hitters, but he didn’t spike its usage like Blazek did. Perhaps uncoincidentally, Jeffress didn’t experience the joy that comes from retiring all kinds of batters.

The curveball certainly seems to work against lefties, who whiffed 21.4 percent of the time they saw it this year. That ability makes sense: As a heavily-running curveball — its seven inches of horizontal movement ranked 12th out of 61 relievers — it should retain its efficacy versus southpaws. Jeffress possesses an offering that can neutralize the platoon splits of his four-seamer and sinker; he just has to follow in Blazek’s footsteps.

Jeffress doesn’t have a massive platoon split (he’s no Will Smith). Even if he continues to implement his pitches as he did in 2015, he likely will hold his own against any sort of opposing hitter. With that said, he probably won’t take his game to Blazek’s level without shifting his strategy. The road to becoming a top-notch relief pitcher runs through a lot of lefties, whom Jeffress can easily take down — so long as he learns from his teammate.