Despite an overall even month record wise, the Brewers bats netted their highest position player WAR through April than any other season in recent memory.
Their everyday players have compiled a net 7.1 WAR, whereas the pitching efforts have evened out the overall team number to 5.5; still good for sixth in all of baseball, third in the National League:
Overall WAR through April (NL)
Cardinals – 9.1
Reds – 5.9
Brewers – 5.5
Ironically enough, they only trail familiar division foes in St. Louis and Cincinnati.
Most notably this is all set to the sweet tune of Prince’s farewell tour lining up with Ryan Braun’s Player of the Month worthy (if it weren’t for Andre Ethier) offensive tear, although there have been some unlikely contributors as well.
Some of those surprises include Yuniesky’s home splits. In 50 home PA’s his line reads .370/.400/.457. Wow. As we all know he certainly does what it takes to stay himself by slumming it on road trips, but that’s impressive..or maybe just surprising. (He’s just trying to raise his stock for our next poll I suppose…)
4 of his 5 walks were drawn at home and though it’s completely far fetched for any of this to trend onward, his overall defense has also been above his own head (while still below most defensive metrics’).
Rickie’s more obvious contributions are a factor tool. Though he has a history of average-above average starts, his +900 OPS is a new career peak for him in the month of April.
And maybe some of our posts create legitimate Brew Crew karma because Jonathan Lucroy has contributed some of the best offense the Brewers have seen from the catcher position in a very long time:
Again, limited sample size, just under 50 PA’s in fact, but his line reads .333/.400/.444
One could only imagine what could happen if/when Ron’s collective two hole hitters could OPS above .600 (Return of the Plush platoon!!)
In all reality, the Brewers are .500 and are just now getting healthy. I would say that no matter how they got to this point, an even April record wise in a competitive division is a net positive by most standards. Looking ahead again to the return of Nyjer Morgan, Zack Greinke and the continuation of a collective prime of homegrown talent, welcome to May Milwaukee.
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