Brewers Do This Thing At Plate More Than Any Team This Decade

Much has been said lately about the unique way the Milwaukee Brewers are winning a league-high number of games this season. The Brew Crew has one of the best averages in baseball, but fewer home runs than any other team.

While it’s easy to point to their stellar rotation as a reason for success, Mike Petriello of MLB.com pointed out that Milwaukee is doing this one thing at the plate more than anyone else in the league.

“Every single team in baseball has a pull-side bat orientation, or attack direction, which shows the horizontal approach of the bat at the closest point to the ball. Pull is where you find power,” Petriello wrote. “Every team has some pull. Every team, that is, except for the Brewers.”

Petriello then graphed out the attack directions of all 30 Major League teams. The Minnesota Twins led the league as the only team attacking a full five degrees toward the pull side. The other 27 landed squarely in the one-to- four-degree range, with the New York Mets coming in as the only team even close to the other side of the graph with a near-even ratio.

Then there are the Brewers. The Brewers are the only team that leans oppo – and it isn’t a coincidence. The team as a whole has a three-degree oppo-side average attack direction.

To put it in context, this is equal to as much as the Boston Red Sox are pulling at the Green Monster, and as much as the Colorado Rockies are trying to pull it in the elevation at Coors Field.

Petriello attributed this phenomenon to the fact that Pat Murphy’s Brewers are letting the ball travel farther than most teams.

“The Brewers do that, in part, by letting it get deep,” Petriello wrote. “Power is found out front – 36 inches in front of the batter being ideal – but contact is found a little deeper, more like 30 inches in front of the batter. The Brewers, this year, are making contact 29 inches out front, or letting it get deeper than 28 of the other 29 teams.”

When it comes to pulling the ball, I’ve already told you that nobody does it less than Milwaukee. But what if I told you no one has done it less than the Brewers in all of the 2020s? What if I took it a step further and told you that nobody has done it less than the Brewers in a decade?

The team’s aversion to pulling the ball has resulted in the Brewers being tied for the most difficult chances for opposing defenders to turn balls put in play into outs.

The Brewers are passing up high-risk, high-reward pull hitting for higher-percentage swings that stress the defense more, and it is paying off in a big way.

More MLB: What It'll Take for Brewers to Win NL Central, Beat Cubs

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