Let me explain. In that game, Madison Bumgarner took the hill for San Francisco. While he eventually earned the win, the outing had its share of bumps, chiefly in the second inning. Scooter Gennett led off the frame thusly:

Any hitter would take pride in a home run off an ace like Bumgarner. But as CBS Sports’ Matt Snyder wrote, this one was even more impressive (emphasis mine):

Heading into the game, here was Gennett’s career line against lefties in 119 plate appearances: .124/.147/.150 with zero home runs. Yes, his first career homer against a lefty came against Bumgarner, who entered Monday having held opposing lefties to a line of .211/.249/.311 in his career. It was the 17th homer a lefty had ever hit off Bumgarner, but it was also the most unlikely.

Because I’ve really taken a liking to Gennett, and because Brewers fandom overall has put a chip on my shoulder, this exaggerated statement really rubbed me the wrong way. Instead of getting mad online, though — and instead of realizing that Snyder had a point — I decided to redirect my anger in a more productive manner. I set out to look for other instances of truly unlikely home runs.

The journey began, as so many do, with the Play Index. I looked for two corresponding sets of players:

• left-handed Brewers hitters with a career OPS of less than .500 against lefties (minimum 100 PAs)
• right-handed Brewers hitters with a career OPS of less than .500 against righties (minimum 100 PAs)

Same-handed matchups tend to favor pitchers, as the aforementioned splits for Gennett and Bumgarner illustrate. These searches isolated the batters who really  struggled in these regards. From there, I looked at the hitters with at least one career homer off a same-handed pitcher, then used the HR Log tool to trace the pitchers whom they’d touched up. Of these hurlers, I kept the ones who had a sub-.650 lifetime OPS to opponents who batted from the same side.

The result? This listicle. During their tenures in Milwaukee, all of these batters struggled to hit same-handed pitching (like Gennett). During their major-league careers, all of these pitchers cut down same-handed hitting (like Bumgarner. At some point, however, their destinies crossed; the result was, to say the least, unlikely.

Ray Oyler vs. Luis Tiant

Oyler career* vs. RHP: .154/.256/.236
Tiant career vs. RHB: .228/.283/.360

*These numbers, and the ones for the subsequent hitters, are for their careers with the Brewers. 

Technically, Oyler didn’t play for the Brewers, but for the Pilots. He accumulated 291 awful plate appearances in 1969, which was the only year the team resided in Seattle and the second-to-last year of his career. During that season, he hit awfully overall — with a .165/.260/.267 triple-slash — and against right-handed pitching. Tiant, on the other hand, generally held down righties (and lefties) over the course of a solid, underrated career.

None of that mattered on June 3, 1969. Tiant, pitching for the Indians, cruised through the first four innings, allowing two walks and no hits. In the fifth frame, he retired the first two men to come to the plate, but Oyler had other plans. He deposited a pitch into the Sick’s Stadium seats, which provided the lone score in a 3-1 Brewers loss. Not bad, for the 68th-worst baseball player of all time (ooh, so close).

Bill Parsons vs. Jim Palmer

Parsons career vs. RHP: .173/.217/.224
Palmer career vs. RHB: .225/.285/.353

Although Parsons was a pitcher, he played for the Brewers in 1971 and 1972, before the American League instituted the designated hitter. That meant he had to fight his way through a few plate appearances a start, and like most pitchers with a bat, he had no hope. Palmer’s batting doesn’t concern us; we just need to know that he excelled at the pitching part of his job, and he has the spot in Cooperstown to prove it.

With that said, Palmer didn’t exactly show off his talent on June 15, 1971. When the Brewers took on the Orioles, Palmer gave up five runs in 5.2 innings. The second of those came in the fourth frame, when Parsons led off with a solo shot — the only long ball he ever hit. In a 6-5 Milwaukee victory, that one run made all the difference. Although Parsons would be out of baseball by 1976, he’d always have that proud, unbelievable moment to look back on.

John Vukovich vs. Nolan Ryan

Vukovich career vs. RHP: .130/.174/.191
Ryan career vs. RHB: .204/.301/.304

I’ve ordered these chronologically, but if I sequenced them by degree of likeliness, this would go first. Vukovich was god awful — he had a lifetime batting line, overall, of .161/.203/.222 — and Ryan was one of the best pitchers ever. As they say, though, you can’t predict baseball. Every so often, even the best screw up, and even the worst luck out.

That’s pretty much the only way to account for what happened on June 5, 1974. The Brewers faced off against the Angels, and in the bottom of the fifth inning, Ryan caught a little too much of the plate. Vukovich cracked a two-run shot, one of just six in his career, to give the Brew Crew a 4-2 lead. Eduardo Rodriguez would eventually give it back, and the team ended up losing 6-5, but that doesn’t negate Vukovich’s incredible accomplishment.

Logan Schafer vs. Tony Cingrani

Schafer career vs. LHP: .172/.231/.263
Cingrani career vs. LHB: .209/.299/.340

For the last example, we actually have physical evidence:

This remains the only home run Schafer’s ever hit off a southpaw — and one of a mere five as a whole. Cingrani’s moved to the bullpen as something of a LOOGY, which seems to suit him, given his success against left-handers. Still, in 2013 he seemed to have a bright future as a starter in Cincinnati’s up-and-coming rotation.

Perhaps the events of July 9, 2013 portended his future. Cingrani dueled Wily Peralta, and through the first four innings, neither team had scored. That changed in the fifth, when Schafer followed up a walk to Martin Maldonaldo with that monster tater to center. While Milwaukee didn’t add any more runs after those two, it didn’t need to — it still walked away with the 2-0 win. Sure, Schafer doesn’t have a job right now, but he can at least reminisce on happier times, when he knocked an unlikely homer.

Oyler, Parsons, Vukovich, and Schafer had (or have had) unexceptional runs, at best. Gennett probably has more skill than any of them, which explains why the Brewers continue to start him. If he can prove that his homer off Bumgarner was no fluke — and he seems to think he’ll perform better against lefties — he won’t have to look back on one play, no matter how unlikely, as the highlight of his career.

I dove into the archives in an attempt to answer the question of how something so absurdly and plainly wrong could be allowed to happen. Rumblings that the Brewers fanbase was growing dissatisfied with the ball-in-glove logo began with a 1989 story in the Milwaukee Journal by Lawrence Sussman, in which he quoted a bunch of Glendale barflies, many of whom couldn’t find the interlocking m and b, and one who called it “a puzzle.” Sussman quotes a cardiologist who preferred the aggressively racist screaming Milwaukee Braves mascot from the 1950s. “That was a good looking Indian,” added the cardiologist.

Sussman’s article offered the conclusion that the ball-in-glove logo was too unprofessional, too childish, not manly enough, and not intimidating enough. The Milwaukee Sentinel’s Bud Lea disagreed in a later column, saying it “may be the most distinctive sports logo of ‘em all,” but the seed was nonetheless planted. For the club’s 25th anniversary in 1994, the ball-in-glove logo was ditched for the interlocking M-and-B logo that lasted until the turn of the millennium and the current Miller-brand inspired look took over.

The 1994 look is austere and cold compared to the cartoonish look of the ball-in-glove logo. The colors are dark and drab, particularly in contrast to the brightness of the Brewers’ previous look. The few people who liked it — just 65 of 301 to call into the Milwaukee Sentinel‘s PressLine gave a positive review — praised its “classiness,” preferring its simplicity to the unorthodox look of the ball-in-glove. But there is a thin line between classy and boring, and most judged the Brewers’ new look to be on the wrong side of that line.

“A total of 236 people who phoned in to say they didn’t like the new logo gave a variety of reasons,” Meg Jones of the Sentinel wrote. “It looks like gang symbols, is similar to other teams’ logos, and is difficult to decipher.” The best comment came from Mary Wallace of Fox Point, who told the Sentinel, “I don’t like the new Brewers logo, nor do I like the new Bucks logo. I think you guys must have something going with the Crayola company and the color purple.” Even outfielder Darryl Hamilton joined in with the criticism. “I think the color selection is nice, but I don’t like the idea of changing the logo. I think we have one of the best logos. It’s original. I think changing it is drastic.”

The only way a logo that faced such backlash from day one could have survived is with an unprecedented run of winning from the Brewers. Of course, Milwaukee saw nothing of the sort in the mere six years the redesign lasted. The Brewers finished 424-481 (.468) in that span, never once finishing with a winning record but never losing more than 90 games either. It was a perfectly dull and mediocre stretch, fitting for the look they trotted onto the field.

On February 5th, 1994, the Milwaukee Sentinel published a letter from eight-year old Laura Grube, another Fox Point resident unhappy with the club’s new look. Laura wrote:

“I think the new Milwaukee Brewers’ logo looks too plain. It is also hard to read. It looks too old-fashioned. What’s wrong with the old logo? The old logo was clever. Who in the world made up the new logo?

I guess I’m hard to please, but even my dog agrees. She doesn’t like the new logo either.”

See that, Brewers? Ditching the ball-in-glove made little girls and dogs sad. Way to go, idiots.

This pickoff — which brought the Diamondbacks’ win probability back down to 52.6 percent, an eight-percentage-point drop — was one of a mere six pickoffs on the year for the Brewers. This club hasn’t accrued many of those recently, ranking at or below the Major League average for nine straight seasons. But before that time, there lived a man who transcended the norm, whose ability to catch runners leaning took the league by storm.

Christopher Frank Capuano pitched rather terribly in 2015, with a 7.97 ERA and 6.50 DRA across 40.2 innings for the New York Yankees. That fact, coupled with the fact that he turned 37 in August, makes me think he’ll hang up his cleats at some point in the next few months. When he does so, someone at BP Milwaukee will write a career retrospective to memorialize him, as they should. For now, though, I want to focus on one esoteric element of his performance.

Coming to the Brewers in the 2003 offseason (along with a cast of thousands), Capuano joined the starting rotation at the beginning of 2004. He’d remain there through 2007, piling up 678.2 innings of 4.38-ERA ball. Tommy John surgery and the subsequent recovery kept him off the mound in 2008 and 2009, but he posted a 3.95 ERA in 66.0 frames during the 2010 season before signing with the Mets. All told, he worked his way to a 4.34 ERA over 744.2 innings with Milwaukee — solid considering his run environment, but not especially noteworthy.

With that said, he truly excelled at one thing: Pickoffs. In the 2004-07 stint, he caught an astounding 26 baserunners, by far the most in the National League. He averaged 7.7 pickoffs on a per-200 inning basis, which also led the league (among pitchers with at least 500 innings):

In both areas, his at-one-point-teammate Doug Davis came in second — but Davis was no match for Cappy. (On that note, I’ll also mention that Capuano has more pickoffs than any other pitcher in Brewers history, despite placing 19th in innings.)

How did that affect Capuano’s game? Well, he allowed just 10 stolen bases in those four seasons, along with 13 failed attempts — nine of which came on Capuano’s throws. In other words, potential basestealers went 11-for-15 against him when we take out his contributions. Throwing primarily to catchers without arms (and to an aging Damian Miller), Capuano had to survive on his own. And as we’ve seen, he didn’t just survive, he thrived.

The extent of his excellence becomes more clear when we look at defensive metrics. According to DRS, Capuano’s ability to keep opponents from moving ahead saved the Brewers 13 runs from 2004 to 2007. That may not seem like much, but over that same span, Baseball-Reference puts Capuano’s pitching itself at 14 runs above average. This means that by holding runners on base — by possessing such a deadly pickoff move — Capuano essentially doubled his value.

This also had ripple effects elsewhere. With runners scared to take off against him, Capuano prevented them from coming around to score. His 73.0 percent strand rate from 2004 to 2007 topped the Major League average of 71.1 percent, while ranking a solid 34th out of 89 NL qualifiers. Despite mediocre walk rates and not enough strikeouts, Capuano managed to do pretty well for himself, because he didn’t allow the competition to make things worse.

In terms of pickoffs, Capuano’s most successful single campaign was 2005, when he snared a dozen runners over 219.0 innings. No pitcher has reached that mark since; its last occurrence before then came in 1992, when Terry Mulholland accumulated 15 pickoffs. In more advanced terms, that translated to six stolen base runs saved, a figure that only three other pitchers have topped since 2003:

When you’re in the company of Cueto and Shields, you’ve done something right. Perhaps aided by that tenacity, Capuano pitched to a career-best (with Milwaukee) 3.99 ERA in 2005.

That would ultimately prove to be his zenith. Umpires dinged Capuano for four balks that year, which took a toll on his pickoff attempts:

Major League rules 8.01 and 8.05 apply to legal pitch deliveries and balks. The section that has been giving Capuano and Davis trouble is 8.05(c), which rules it a balk when, “the pitcher, while touching his plate, fails to step directly toward a base before throwing to that base.”

In practice, that means a pitcher must limit his stride within the 45-degree angle between first base and home plate.

…

According to Capuano, it’s beginning to have an effect. He has begun limiting his number of pickoff moves.

“You have to constantly try to change things up and use it more sparingly,” Capuano said. “It cuts down on your pickoffs, but it doesn’t affect your ability to keep runners close. You have to really make sure that you’re not cutting it close to the [45-degree] line. Moving that runner up on a balk is exactly what you’re trying not to do.”

In 2006, Capuano’s pickoffs fell to six, then to two in 2007. From there, he went to surgery, which harmed his throws. He told the New York Times in 2011 that the elbow injuries had forced him to change his delivery from the stretch. On the field, that meant that he only picked off nine runners between 2010 and 2015 — a third of what he had accomplished from 2004 to 2007, and in slightly more innings (694.0). Father Time claims us all, and Capuano, devilishly talented though he may have been, couldn’t escape that fate.

But enough of the doom and gloom. Let’s get to the best part: video! Sadly, no footage of Capuano’s Milwaukee pickoffs appears to exist; however, we can still watch him bust a move from later in his career. Here, he catches Starlin Castro in 2011 with the Mets:

Here, as a Dodger in 2012, he spies Garrett Richards leaning out too far:

Here, in a rare burst of competence for the Bronx Bombers, he hoses George Springer:

And, as one final treat, he’ll gun down Hayato Sakamoto in the Japan All-Star Series:

In all of these clips, we see the same characteristics — Capuano always has one eye on the runner, and when he sees him trailing the bag by enough (or taking off), he breaks from his delivery and rifles it to the first baseman. It’s that sort of move that assassinated so many runners while he pitched for the Brewers; although he never fulfilled his full potential, this area of his game made him one of the most captivating players to watch.

Since Capuano left the team five years ago, no one has really filled his shoes. Chris Narveson and Randy Wolf picked off a fair amount of runners, but their poor performance overall abbreviated their tenure in Milwaukee. Yovani Gallardo also stood out somewhat in this regard, and he likely will continue to do so for whichever team signs him in the coming months. That isn’t to say that the Brewers have no hope for the future. Jungmann notched seven pickoffs over his 632.2-inning minor-league career; more impressively, Josh Hader has racked up 12 in just 363.1 frames on the farm. If they can blossom into capable Major League starters, they could terrorize runners like Capuano once did.

After a brief respite in 1973 and 1974, the Brewers once again crossed the 90-loss threshold from 1975 through 1977. Immeditely following these three years are arguably the best stretch in Brewers history. The team finished above .500 for the next six season and made the franchise’s lone World Series appearance. Today, we’ll examine the path to contention for the 1975-1977 Brewers.

1975

Team W-L: 68-94

Pythagorean W %: .427

After two seasons below the 90 loss threshold under manager Del Crandall, the Brewers backslid in 1975, costing Crandall his job with one game left in the season. Though the record was poor, the position players of future contending teams began to take shape. Robin Yount played his first full season and took a step forward at the plate, raising his TAv from .239 to .252 and his walk rate from 3.3 percent to 5.4 percent.

After going up and down in 1973 and 1974, Gorman Thomas got 2.5 months of consistent at bats during the summer. He flashed power (.192 ISO) and patience (11.1 percent walk rate). Unfortunately, his other skills failed to show up. He struck out in 30 percent of his plate appearances and he didn’t provide any value on the defensive side.

Sixto Lezcano also made his full season debut in 1975, though like Yount and Thomas, he wasn’t ready to be a productive member of a lineup, producing 0.1 WARP, with all the value coming from his bat. He would prove to be closer to being a productive player than Yount and Thomas, though.

The lineup, though weak, at least had some promising players. The pitching staff was a tire fire. The top five starters all had below average ERAs. However flawed that metric may be, that’s not a good indicator for any staff. The total staff finished last in the American League in runs allowed and strikeouts, and 11th of out 12 teams in hits and walks. At least they only allowed the eighth-most home runs in the league!

Lesson: The most important lesson was identifying future productive talent and letting them play through their growing pains. The advantage of losing seasons with low expectations is allowing promising players to get big-league reps. While every player’s development path is different, there is something to be said for allowing young players to grow in a lower pressure big league environment.

The other lesson? The team can’t compete if the pitching doesn’t give it a chance.

1976

Team W-L: 66-95

Pythagorean W %: .437

To check in on the young hitters, Robin Yount’s age 20 season was one to forget. He posted career lows in TAv (.230), extra base hit percentage (3.5 percent) and ISO (.049), as he stopped driving the ball. He gained back some defensive value, but still was worth less than replacement value.

Gorman Thomas saw his at bats stay the same, even though his games played went down. While his batting average was superifically ugly .198 at a time when that mattered, he raised his TAv to .253, maintained his walks, and cut his strikeouts. The missing ingredient was his power, as his ISO was the lowest he post until after he left Milwaukee.

Sixto Lezcano made his offensive leap, posting a 20.2 VORP and 2.8 WARP. His rate stats generally stayed the same, but he posted a career high .347 BABIP, as more singles fell in. Though this season was fueled by luck, he kept his gains and those singles turned into power starting in 1977.

I ignored Darrell Porter in 1975, even though he had a strong season. Unfortunately, his value cratered in 1976, and the Brewers traded him in the off season. He had a career low BABIP (.232), home run percentage (1.1 percent), extra-base-hit rate (4.5 percent) as well as dips in his walk rate (17.4 percent to 11.4 percent) and TAv (.291 to .242).

The pitching saw some improvement, as it was no longer the worst staff in the American League, with three pitchers throwing 200+ innings to stabilize the staff. Bill Travers had a career year, setting high marks for IP (240) and DRA (3.90). He’d continue to provide replacement level production the next few years. Jim Slaton also had a career year for IP (292.7) and DRA (3.72), but only had one more season in Milwaukee. Lastly, Jim Colborn ended his Milwaukee career with 225.7 solid innings with a 3.83 DRA

Lesson: Aside from patience and trying to develop a pitching staff, trades were the big story from 1976. Development paths can be uneven, but trading Porter, a young All-Star catcher off one terrible season, proved to be a mistake. There was the dual evaluation failures of thinking Charlie Moore could replace Porter’s production, as well as not receiving enough value in return. The caveat here is Porter’s substance abuse issues and what the team knew about them. However, even if they were determined that Porter was on a downward slope and addiction would prevent a bounceback, this was poor treatment of a valuable asset. Teams that are as bad as Milwaukee was at this point cannot make these types of evaluation mistakes.

There was another trade in December 1976 which helped set Milwaukee up for success. The Brewers traded George Scott back to Boston for Cecil Cooper. Cooper spent the last 11 seasons of his career in Milwaukee, making five All-Star teams and providing above average offense at first base, while Scott’s career was finished at the end of 1979. Cooper’s bat would help propel a potent offense to the top of the American League.

1977

Team W-L: 67-95

Pythagorean W %: .418

Before the 1978 breakout, the team had one more year of growing pains. Catcher of the future Charlie Moore was handed the starting spot and produced a .234 tAV with replacement level defense. The next year he was in a timeshare with Buck Martinez.

Gorman Thomas was sent to the minors, as his terrible batting averages finally caught up with him. The 1977 starting centerfielder, Von Joshua, gave back 21.1 runs in the field according to FRAA and was not on the team in 1978.

Jim Wolhford, acquired in the Porter trade, was the left field starter. While he was competent defensively, he produced -12.3 VORP as his OBP dropped and he wasn’t ready for a full time role.

To round out the hitting disappointments, there’s the curious case of Dan Thomas. Thomas was considered a top prospect, and had performed decently well in a 1976 cup of coffee, with a .312 TAv. But after a religious conversion during the offseason, likely prompted by some mental health issues, Thomas declared that he would no longer play on the Sabbath, taking him potentially out of two games a week. He was demoted to the minors in May. He, and others, believed it was because of his refusal to play. He was ultimately released that year. To read more on Thomas, see here.

Lessons: Not everything is going to click at once, so it’s imperative for a team to realize mistakes and fix them. Moore was the catcher of the future, until he struggled and Buck Martinez was acquired. Instead of doubling down on Wohlford to prove that the Porter trade was not a mistake as he thrived in Kansas City, Larry Hisle was signed as a free agent. Gorman Thomas was demoted for a full season, then took the starting centerfield job from Von Joshua after he proved unable to handle the role.

Combine those moves with further development of Yount and Lezcano, Cecil Cooper mashing, and cobbling together just enough pitching, and there was a 23 game improvement. The playoffs were a few years away, but this was a fun and competitive team, which what fans should hope for.

Ned Yost could have thrown up his hands many times in the initial years of his first major league managerial job. Worse yet, he could have deviated from the plan General Manager Doug Melvin devised. That plan wasn’t about bringing back the glory years for the Brewers-after all, this is a franchise with two postseason appearances in 38 seasons since being born as the Seattle Pilots in 1969 in baseball’s second round of expansion-but to simply make Milwaukee competitive.

“A lot of times people would ask why I didn’t bench J.J. Hardy or pinch-hit for him in a tough situation,” Yost said. “They would ask why I didn’t take Rickie Weeks out for defensive purposes in the late innings when we had a lead. If I had made those moves, perhaps we would have won a game or two more in the last couple of years. That wasn’t what we were looking for. We were taking the long-term view of things, and that was to make this franchise competitive again. To do that, it meant playing the young guys and letting them learn.”

That meant that Yost, who grew quite accustomed to winning after a 12-year run as a coach on Bobby Cox‘s staff in Atlanta, had to suffer through a lot of losing. Yost took over a club that went 56-106 in 2002, and would lose 94 games in each of his first two seasons. The Brewers made a 13-game improvement to 81-81 in 2005, their first non-losing season since 1992, but fell back to 75-87 last year during an injury-riddled season.

“I get asked a lot if losing all those games was tough, and it honestly wasn’t,” Yost said. “It’s not that I like to lose but I knew there was going to be a payoff down the road. I was convinced we were going to have a good ballclub. Knowing that day would come is what kept my spirits up and everyone else’s.”

That day has arrived this season, as the Brewers have the best record in the National League at 53-40 and lead the Central by 4 games over the hard-charging Chicago Cubs. Buoyed by a 25-12 start, the Brewers have been able to withstand challenge so far by going 28-28 in their 56 games since, though their division lead has been whittled from a season-high 8 games on June 23, and is even more tenuous now that staff ace Ben Sheets will miss at least one month with a finger injury suffered last Saturday.

Left fielder Geoff Jenkins has suffered longer than any Brewers’ player. A homegrown product of Milwaukee’s farm system, he made his major league debut in 1998, and played all the way through the dark period. He had the chance to escape when he became a free agent following the 2004 season, but he decided to stay, signing a three-year, $23 million contract.

“The biggest reason I signed back was because I was excited about the future,” Jenkins said. “We had lost for so many years here and I really wanted to be in Milwaukee when the Brewers finally won. I saw the young guys we had on the major league club and coming up through the farm system, and I was also convinced Doug Melvin and Ned Yost were the guys who were going to get this turned around. I’m glad I stayed, that’s for sure. It’s been tremendous to see all the excitement in Milwaukee. The fans have waited a long time for this, and they are so jacked up. I can only imagine it’s only going to get crazier as we get later into the season.”

Read the remaining article for FREE at Baseball Prospectus.

With everybody tied for first place, it’s easy to clutch tightly to a sense of optimism, even if that optimism isn’t entirely rational. Zero and zero is a record that teems with promise of things to come. After a long, patience-testing offseason, that first taste of optimism is intoxicating.

But for some fans, Opening Day intoxication comes shortly after the first pitch, once that optimism has worn away and the emergency libations have been breached. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life” — or so, the cliche goes. And there are few feelings in fandom quite as all-around awful as knowing this hell is the new normal for the next 162 games.

In theory, on Opening Day, everybody is throwing their best pitcher. In practice, “best” can mean quite a wide range of things. For a franchise like the Milwaukee Brewers, whose extended history reads like a masochist’s dream journal, the “best” starter on the roster has been objectively bad often enough to take note.

When I was ten years old, I thought the Brewers hit rock bottom with their choice of Opening Day starter. The prior year, a rookie pitcher named Rafael Roque had electrified the league in his nine starts. Well, he didn’t exactly electrify the league, but he did win four of those nine starts and posted a 0.7 WAR, which translates to approximately three wins over a full season. Roque had never been a top prospect, but the mini-breakout was enough for the team to name him Opening Day starter in 1999.

Less than two months into the season, the Brewers unceremoniously demoted their struggling opening-day starter to the bullpen, thus ending his tenure as a big-league starter. Just a year later, he bowed out of Major League Baseball, never to return. I’ve always remembered Rafael Roque as a textbook example of a bad opening-day starter, and coming into things I expected this list to feature him prominently. As it turns out, Roque’s stellar performance out of the bullpen for most of the season mitigated his awful run as a starter, and he was about replacement level for the season as a whole. Believe it or not, there’s a sizable collection of Opening Day starters who performed even worse.

As a prime example, the 2015 version of the Brewers started the season in Colorado, with Kyle Lohse on the mound against Kyle Kendrick. Lohse set the tone for an awful season with an awful first outing — he surrendered eight runs, was chased from the game midway through the fourth, and watched the other Kyle finish out a shutout for the 10-0 win. Things didn’t get any better from there, either. By August, Lohse would pull a Roque and pitch his way out of the starting rotation. He finished off the last year of his $33 million contract with a truly miserable 5.56 DRA.

Unlike Roque in 1999, Lohse’s final 2015 stat line was considerably worse than what could be expected from a replacement-level player. It can’t have been the worst in the history of the 46 year history of the franchise, though? Could it have?

3A. Jeff Suppan, 2009

For younger Milwaukee fans, Opening Day uncertainty is an unfamiliar phenomenon. For the past thirteen years, the first game on the calendar has been handled by Ben Sheets or Yovani Gallardo — with two exceptions. Those exceptions, however, have been unmitigated disasters.

In 2009, Gallardo’s torn ACL delayed the start of his season and sent Jeff Suppan to the hill in his stead for Milwaukee’s opener in San Francisco. Suppan struggled, conceding a bases-clearing triple to Travis Ishikawa in the first and a two-run homer to Aaron Rowand later. In only four innings of work, Suppan gave up six hits and six runs to the Giants.

Ken Macha’s Milwaukee managerial debut ended with the Brewers on the wrong side of a 10-6 score, Suppan taking the loss. He had been a useful mid-rotation starter for Milwaukee the previous two seasons, but in 2009 the bottom fell out. He followed up his disastrous outing in San Francisco by getting chased in the fourth inning by the Cubs, five runs deep. And though his ERA eventually sank back into the single digits, his final 2009 numbers were still really bad: a 5.29 ERA, 6.09 DRA, and 1.69 WHIP in 30 starts. Suppan struggled to get hitters out at every turn, and finished a full win below replacement for the year.

Suppan and Braden Looper were something of the 2009 Lohse and Matt Garza — two veteran pitchers acquired through free agency who crushed the team’s chances to win 40 percent of the time. The two former Cardinals were two of the four worst pitchers in all of Major League Baseball that year, measured by WAR.

3B. Kyle Lohse, 2015

So, to answer our titular question: no, Lohse’s tire fire of a 2015 is not the worst ever posted by an Opening Day starter for the Brewers. It is, however, eerily similar to the narrative followed by Suppan six years prior. Both were back-end starters in the American League before Dave Duncan made them into something in St. Louis. Both signed with the Brewers in their 30s for questionably long, high-money deals. And both pitchers were downright competent for the first two seasons of those deals, before they were called upon to take the ball for Milwaukee on Opening Day.

And just like Suppan before him, Lohse proceeded to hang a crooked number on the scoreboard before the Brewers could even get their first hitter of the season to the plate.

As we all know now, Lohse would never put it back together in a Milwaukee uniform. Like Suppan once upon a time, he posted one of the worst statistical seasons by an active starter. Lohse’s 5.56 DRA might not have been quite as unfortunate as Suppan’s, but he was a tenth of a game worse relative to the replacement level. If you go strictly by the numbers, Suppan was worse — his DRA was considerably higher, and Lohse was only a tenth of a win worse by that metric — but it’s really close. Throw in all the eerie similarities, and the fact that Lohse lost his rotation spot, and the only fair thing to do is call it a tie and bind them together for eternity.

2. Don August, 1989

It’s truly amazing how history has a way of repeating itself with this team.

We’ve already established the amazing parallels between Suppan and Lohse. But believe it or not our old friend Rafael Roque was a familiar story, too, and his 1999 misadventure somewhat mirrored a situation that took place a decade earlier.

Unlike Roque, Don August entered the professional ranks with a little bit of reputation preceding his name. He was a first-round pick in the 1984 draft, and jumped immediately to Double-A in 1985. But from 1985-1987, August’s minor-league numbers got progressively worse and he was far from a blue-chip prospect by the time he made his big-league debut in 1988. Despite this, the 24-year-old took the league by storm, racking up 13 wins while posting a 3.09 ERA and 1.25 WHIP. He was fourth in that year’s American Rookie of the Year balloting with a 16 percent share.

Today, we know that there were huge warning signs baked into August’s phenomenal rookie campaign. August was allergic to strikeouts, fanning just four batters per nine innings in 1988. More troublingly, his excellent numbers were buoyed along by an unsustainable .256 BABIP. Today, we recognize this as unsustainable.

But back in 1989, nobody had ever heard of BABIP, or even K/9 for that matter. So, naturally, the Brewers thought they had a budding ace — and pushed him to take the next developmental step, handing him the ball for Opening Day. It was an ambitious assignment, but at least in this case, the player in question had been in the Major Leagues for more than eight games.

For one night, at least, the decision paid off. Opening Day 1989 between the Cleveland Indians and the Brewers was a classic, hard-fought pitchers’ duel. August locked horns with Greg Swindell in a game that would see one total walk and both starters pitching through the eighth inning. Spreading eight hits around, August managed to limit the damage against him to a two-run third-inning double by Oddibe McDowell. But Swindell was even better, allowing just five baserunners and one run.

Still, Milwaukee’s 25-year-old starter had been impressive, regardless of the outcome. If he could keep it up, there was plenty of reason for optimism.

The issue was, August was never able to keep it up for an extended period of time. His month-by-month splits from that season are enough to cause any manager to lose sleep. April and June Don looked just like the previous year’s breakout rookie; May and July Don looked like they belonged nowhere near a big-league rotation. That July, he allowed opponents to post an OPS just shy of 1.000 against him! So, come August, August was banished to a relief role.

His 5.85 DRA means that he somehow got lucky to end up with an ERA of 5.31 that year, and his 1.64 WHIP was approximately four-tenths higher than it had been a year ago. With opponents hitting .304 on balls in play, August’s true colors showed. Don August’s 1989 season was like a tug-of-war between the two sides of him as a player. Unfortunately for the Brewers, Crappy Don won out in the long run.

By 1992, August would be out of the big leagues, and he played his final three seasons in the minors. At the top level he posted a 2.5 WAR for his rookie year, and a 0.8 WAR for his career. In short, he was the Alex Sanchez of the mound.

1. Mark Knudson, 1991

Mark Knudson was a type of pitcher who likely would have never gotten his shot in the sabermetric era. Flyball pitchers nowadays usually need to compensate for their home-run tendencies with a high number of strikouts, whereas Knudsen posted a career K/9 rate of 3.6 and a career ground-ball rate of just 44 percent. Acquired from Houston in 1986, Knudson settled into a long relief/swingman role throughout the 1980s, before a dominant 1989 season propelled him to full-time starterhood.

Teddy Higuera was the team’s ace in those days, but a torn rotator cuff left him on the shelf for the entire year. His top lieutenant, Bill Wegman, was unavailable early in the season as he finished rehabbing from elbow surgery himself. An already-weak rotation was left crippled, and Knudson was named the Opening Day starter largely by default.

All things considered, the opener could have gone far worse. Knudson surrendered home runs to Kevin Reimer and Ruben Sierra, but gave up just three runs in five and a third and the final score was 5-4 for Milwaukee. It was vintage Knudson — ugly, but effective against all odds.

Unfortunately, the smoke-and-mirrors act was about to come to an end. Knudson left his next start in the third inning with shoulder soreness. Nobody knew it at the time, but he would never pitch beyond the fifth inning of a game he started again. That shoulder soreness turned out to be an inflamed rotator cuff of his own, and Knudson bounced from the disabled list, to the bullpen, back to the starting rotation, down to Triple-A when he was ineffective. Knudson’s stuff was borderline to begin with, and the lasting effects of the worn-down shoulder would prematurely turn him into minor-league filler.

Throughout all of that, Knudson appeared in a total of just twelve games during 1991, starting seven. His final WHIP that year was 1.97, a number that would make even Jeff Suppan grimace awkwardly. And his DRA for the season translated to 8.64 — somehow even worse than his horrid 7.97 ERA.

Baseball Prospectus’s player cards do not show similar players for guys who have already retired, but fortunately Baseball Reference does. Knudson’s page shows one active comparison: Dodgers reliever Juan Nicasio. Nicasio was quite useful for Los Angeles out of the bullpen in 2015, but that was only after four years of uninspiring work in Colorado’s starting rotation forced him into a relief role. Nicasio, the starter, was worse than replacement level two of those four years. As bitter as “Kyle Lohse, Opening Day Starter” might have been, there’s no objective way it measures up to “Juan Nicasio of His Era, Opening Day Starter.” Poor Tom Trebelhorn lost his job over that team, which seems truly unfair in retrospect given that his alleged best pitcher posted an 8.64 DRA.

1970

Team W-L: 65-97

Pythagorean W %: .408

Technically in their second season as a franchise in 1970, the newly-christened Brewers showed a slight improvement compared with their only season in Seattle. Tommy Harper led the team with 8.5 WARP in what turned out to be his peak year. The 1970 campaign was his age-29 season and he only produced one more year with half as much value, which occurred in Boston. This Brewers team was still basically an expansion squad, as it featured no true homegrown players. As a result, there’s no one you can point to on the roster as a potential developing talent, or a young guy still getting his sea legs in the big leagues. Fourteen players had more than 100 at bats. Of those, only two were less than 26 years old.

Dave May was traded to Milwaukee from Baltimore in June 1970. He had a nice five-year run with the Brewers through his peak and post-peak years until his bat fell off in his age-30 season. Steve Hovley, the other young player, was traded a few days before Day May was acquired for Tito Francona and Al Downing.

The pitching staff was led by Marty Pattin and Ken Sanders providing above average production, but the majority of the staff was old and ineffective.

Lessons: It’s too difficult for expansion teams to compete. With all of their veteran players, the Brewers tried to be respectable, but it didn’t quite work out. At least none of the veterans were blocking young talent.

1971

Team W-L: 69-92

Pythagorean W %: .440

The team got at least slightly younger in 1971. While, once again, only two of the top-ten players in plate appearances were under 26, only two were older than 30 years old. There are much worse strategies than giving a bunch of 27-year-olds playing time and hoping for some breakouts.

Johnny Briggs led the team in WARP with 4.4. He was acquired in April after a slow start in Philadelphia. This proved to be a shrewd move for a guy in his age-27 season, who had produced just under three wins the previous two seasons. He had several productive years with the Brewers, including 4 WARP in 1972.

On the pitching side, Ken Sanders blossomed into a relief ace, back in the day when that still meant something. He pitched in a career-high 83 games and 136.3 innings with a DRA of 3.13. Bill Parsons had a strong rookie season that saw him finish as a runner up to Chris Chambliss in AL Rookie of the Year voting.

Lessons: It looks like the Brewers were starting to move away from over-the-hill veterans and more towards guys closer to their primes. The trade for Briggs was a solid move. The team also started to see an influx of drafted talent. Namely, Darrell Porter had his first cup of coffee in 1971.

1972

Team W-L: 65-91

Pythagorean W %: .415

The good news: The 1972 campaign was the last of three consecutive 90-loss seasons for Milwaukee, as they improved every year of their existence. The bad news: The team still had five years of lackluster play, plus three more 90-loss seasons before they broke through as a contender. Aside from the Royals, all of the 1969 expansion teams struggled out of the gate.

While 1972 still featured stalwarts such as May, Briggs, and young catcher Ellie Rodriguez, the offseason saw a major trade. Milwaukee traded Tommy Harper, Marty Pattin and other pieces for George Scott and Jim Lonborg. While Lonborg only lasted one season in Milwaukee before the Brewers traded him to Philadelphia, Scott became a mainstay masher in the lineup for five years, in addition to providing Gold Glove defense at first base. Of course, all that production was for lousy teams.

Too many plate appearances went to players who weren’t particularly good. Rick Auerbach finished behind Scott in plate appearances that year. His TAv was .222 and he produced 3.4 VORP. The hitters as a collective finished in the bottom half of the American League in every traditional offensive category. They didn’t hit for power (9th in home runs) nor were they patient (9th in walks). No one on the team was terrible, but no one performed like a superstar either.

The outlook on the pitching side wasn’t much better. Lonborg was already 30 and only played one season in Milwaukee. Ken Sanders fell back from his career year. His DRA rose to 4.22 while his hits (8.6 from 7.3), walks (3.0 from 2.2), and home runs (1.0 from 0.6) per nine innings all spiked up from 1971. He was traded with Lonborg to Philadelphia after the season. Bill Parsons regressed from his rookie year and only had one season left in Milwaukee.

One bright spot was the discovery of Jim Colborn. Acquired via trade with the Cubs before the season, Colborn served five seasons in the rotation as a dependable innings eater. Outside of 1973 he was never spectacular for the Brewers, but there’s value in being able to count on a pitcher to make 30+ starts a year, especially on bad teams. Colborn fulfilled that duty.

Lessons: It’s one thing to get younger. There’s value in seeing how young guys can play, and it’s a move that can help to cut costs. However, if an organization can’t scout and find worthwhile young talent, then the team isn’t going to improve. Milwaukee was still relying on players from trades because the farm system still wasn’t producing enough talent to stock the big league club. Until the Brewers improved at scouting, they couldn’t break out of their doldrums.