There's No Place Like Home

     Going into July 20, the Milwaukee Brewers are 52-46, half a game out of first place, and have done so despite an 14-20 start, a left side of the infield straight out of a horror movie, missed time from their catcher, right fielder, and number-one starter, and a home/road split that is just plain weird. In their 47 home games, the club has amassed to a  .702 winning percentage, a full 100 points better than the Yankees' 53-35. Outside of Milwaukee, the Crew has played to a .373 clip, "good" for a 60-win season straight out of Houston.

     From there, I started searching for answers about what could be behind this discrepancy. It's worth noting that this split is persisting in every facet of the game. The Brewers are showing a big home/road differential on offense (.279/.351/.466 at home, .234/.289/.369 on the road), on the mound (3.34 home FIP, 4.23 road FIP), in the field, and on the bases (80% stolen base success rate at home, and 69% away from the confines of Miller Park).

     That last paragraph doesn't accomplish a whole lot besides illustrate just how well the Brewers are playing at home and how poorly they perform on the road. So, we need to dig a little deeper, and nothing says "answers" like a big, homemade table of individual batting splits:

	BB/K		ISO		BABIP		wOBA
Ryan Braun	0.85	0.67	0.303	0.191	0.355	0.317	0.467	0.379
Prince Fielder	1.31	0.88	0.348	0.197	0.309	0.292	0.465	0.369
Rickie Weeks	0.54	0.36	0.227	0.208	0.352	0.273	0.402	0.333
Corey Hart	0.48	0.42	0.256	0.171	0.333	0.273	0.397	0.307
Jonathon Lucroy	0.36	0.16	0.205	0.059	0.378	0.309	0.394	0.257
Mark Kotsay	1.11	0.38	0.082	0.082	0.32	0.236	0.335	0.24
Carlos Gomez	0.16	0.3	0.154	0.165	0.338	0.225	0.326	0.28
Nyjer Morgan	0.11	0.15	0.12	0.18	0.394	0.416	0.324	0.409
Yuni Betancourt	0.38	0.24	0.135	0.11	0.268	0.224	0.298	0.241
Casey McGehee	0.65	0.26	0.108	0.067	0.254	0.265	0.288	0.24
Craig Counsell	1.25	0.6	0.075	0	0.196	0.17	0.272	0.167

     A few thoughts: First off, home stats are directly below the listed metric and road stats are to the right of the home stats. For example, Prince Fielder has a .335 batting average at home and a .270 batting average on the road. Second, I am fully aware that the table, from an aesthetic standpoint, looks hideous, but I didn't want to take up five pages to give all 11 players their own Baseball-Reference chart.

     Now, some baseball-related notes: The numbers listed above are really strange, as every Brewer with over 50 PA (save for Nyjer Morgan) is performing significantly better at home than on the road. I was expecting some consistency from player to player, but not an eerily similar split shared by 10 of the 11 guys. There doesn't seem to be any real cause of/excuse for the differential (such as a low BABIP despite a high line drive rate on the road or a the opposite at home), just a large split caused by players posting large splits. The next logical step would be to see if this phenomenon is exclusive to the offense or teamwide. So, onto the pitchers!

 

Name	IP		ERA		xFIP		K/9		BB/9		BABIP
LaTroy Hawkins	16	11.1	1.69	1.59	2.79	3.79	6.75	2.38	1.13	1.59	0.294	0.348
John Axford	26	18.1	1.73	4.42	2.36	2.77	9.69	13.75	2.08	5.89	0.314	0.396
Sergio Mitre	14.1	18.2	2.51	3.86	4.11	4.36	3.77	3.86	2.51	2.89	0.234	0.254
Marco Estrada	32	27.1	3.09	6.59	3.2	4.63	8.44	7.24	2.53	4.61	0.253	0.316
Yovani Gallardo	64	57.1	3.23	5.02	3.41	3.55	7.03	8.79	2.81	3.77	0.297	0.331
Randy Wolf	58.1	60	3.55	3.75	4.35	4.29	5.71	6.75	3.24	3	0.286	0.28
Chris Narveson	52	56.1	3.81	5.59	3.34	3.79	8.31	7.35	3.29	3.83	0.327	0.309
Kameron Loe	25.1	20.1	3.91	5.31	2.7	3.28	8.17	6.2	2.49	2.21	0.279	0.299
Zack Greinke	44	36.1	4.09	6.19	1.65	2.72	12.68	11.15	0.82	3.47	0.34	0.346
Shaun Marcum	60	56.2	4.35	2.38	3.51	3.62	7.95	8.26	2.85	2.7	0.273	0.242

     

     Table #2 reveals more all-around road woes mitigated by a steady dose of home cooking, but with a strange twist that at least offers a glimmer of hope that the poor showings away from home will magically disappear like so many bad dreams. Take another look at the ERA and xFIP columns: It appears that the main cause of some pitchers' road woes are not poor peripherals, but something I'll hesitantly refer to as either "bad luck", "bad timing" or "whatever the heck is making Zack Greinke give up five runs when he strikes out ten and walks one." Significantly, this disconnect is most pronounced among Greinke, Yovani Gallardo, Chris Narveson, and John Axford, or in other words, three-fifths of the starting rotation and the top reliever. Unlike the sheer inexplicable horror of the road offense, there is some hope the aforementioned pitchers start doing better away from Milwaukee. Such an improvement would be a big help down the stretch, as Randy Wolf and Shaun Marcum both seem to be pitching a bit over their heads. Of course, none of this will matter if the offense continues to stumble their way to another 3-0 loss.

     As a team who will play 31 of their 65 remaining games on the road (including series at Pittsburgh and St. Louis in the season's last 5 weeks), the Brewers are in a bad position if they continue to lay an egg on the road. (Does anyone else notice the general pessimism that has seemingly overtook me during this article? Throughout this post, I went from pointing out the Brewers' excellent home showings to expressing concern over their big home/road split to bellyaching about the club being unable to play well on the road every chance I get.) Milwaukee's run-prevention should improve while the gap between their best pitchers' process and outcomes lessens, but there is seemingly no statistical excuse present for the lack of offense. I think this is a situation where we all have to come to terms with the fact that there is no apparent explanation for the Brewers’ problems, and the only people who can do anything about it are the nine guys on the lineup card.