TOM HAUDRICOURT

Haudricourt: In terms of effective left-handers, the Brewers' bullpen cup runneth over

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Dan Jennings has contributed to the Brewers' success in the bullpen this season.

DENVER – During the 2011 season, when the Milwaukee Brewers established a franchise record with 96 victories and came within two games of advancing to the World Series, they had three left-handers appear out of their bullpen.

The lefty who appeared most often pitched in only 25 games, and none after July 14, compiling a troublesome 7.27 earned run average along the way.

Can you name him?

If you said Zach Braddock, you either cheated or need to control your obsession with Brewers trivia. The lefty who made the second-most appearances that season with 16 was Mitch Stetter, and his last outing was on May 14.

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The only other left-hander to pitch out of the Brewers’ pen that season was 5-foot-6 Danny Herrera, and if you blinked you missed him (and probably were thankful). After consecutive dreadful appearances (21.60 ERA) against the Cubs and Red Sox on June 16-17, he was sent packing, never to pitch again for Milwaukee.

So, for the entire second half of that season, the Brewers operated without a lefty in their bullpen, and it didn't slow them down. They went 47-23 the rest of the way to claim their first and only National League Central crown by six games.

It hardly mattered that the '11 Brewers were southpaw challenged. After adding Francisco Rodriguez in a trade with the New York Mets at the all-star break, they didn’t lose a game when taking a lead into the seventh inning.

Manager Ron Roenicke used “K-Rod” to set up John Axford, who had a career year with 45 saves, and righties Takashi Saito and LaTroy Hawkins split seventh-inning duty.

All things being equal, it helps the manager to have lefties in the pen, however. There are going to be late-inning situations when dangerous left-handed hitters can change the outcome of a game, and matchups become more important than ever.

Which brings us to the 2018 Brewers, whose bullpen has kept them afloat in the early weeks, while the offense sputtered and the starting rotation was challenged by injuries as well as short outings. When Boone Logan was activated from the disabled list Thursday, it gave manager Craig Counsell not one, not two, not three but four left-handers, if you included swingman Brent Suter, who currently is filling in for injured starter Wade Miley.

Brewers relief pitcher Boone Logan jokes with members of the staff of the Colorado Rockies before their game Thursday night.

Logan was expected to be in the pen from the outset but suffered a triceps strain late in spring training and had been sidelined since. Shortly after that injury, Brewers general manager David Stearns acquired lefty reliever Dan Jennings, released by Tampa Bay in a cost-cutting move.

Suter opened the season in the rotation, leaving Jennings and strikeout sensation Josh Hader as the lefty relievers. Without much fanfare, Jennings has done superb work, taking a 2-1 record and 1.69 ERA into Saturday in 19 appearances, pitching to contact with an effective sinker.

Hader has had considerable fanfare, and deservedly so. He set a major-league record with eight strikeouts in 2 2/3 innings in Cincinnati on April 30 and has been arguably the most dominating force out of the bullpen in the majors, with an incredible 48 strikeouts in 23 innings, and only five hits allowed.

Asked upon being activated if he had been part of a bullpen with three lefties during his 12 years in the majors, Logan smiled and said, “The most I’ve ever had is one other guy. Most of my career, it’s been just me down there. This will be different.”

Lefties have come and gone – mostly gone – in the Brewers’ bullpen in recent years. In 2012, Manny Parra, a former starter, was the lone southpaw for most of the season. The next year, the Brewers operated with two veteran lefties in the pen, Mike Gonzalez, who appeared in 75 games, and Tom Gorzelanny, a swingman who also made 10 starts.

The situation took a turn for the better when then-general manager Doug Melvin sent outfielder Nori Aoki to Kansas City for left-hander Will Smith before the 2014 season. Smith became an effective workhorse, pitching in a league-high 78 games (3.70 ERA) that season, and veteran Zach Duke (2.45 ERA in 74 games) provided a second lefty who liked getting the ball.

Smith was even better in 2015, posting a 2.70 ERA in 76 appearances while logging 91 strikeouts in 63 1/3 innings. With Duke moving on via free agency, another veteran lefty, Neal Cotts, was added to complement Smith and got the job done (3.26 ERA in 51 games) more often than not.

Things got dicey in 2016 after Smith injured a knee in spring training, taking off a shoe of all things, and opened the season on the DL. Before that year was done, he was traded to San Francisco as the Brewers’ rebuild picked up steam. Veteran Chris Capuano gave the Brewers a lefty out of the pen for 16 early appearances but re-injured his elbow and never pitched again.

That was the season that Suter made his debut, defying the odds of being a 31st round draft pick out of Harvard by making it to the majors. But he has been more of a multi-inning starter/reliever than a true lefty specialist, leaving the Brewers to seek other options.

Hader was called up during the 2017 season, but Stearns and Counsell had no way of knowing he’d make the transition from starting to relieving so quickly and dominantly. He has exceeded expectations wildly, and it’s certainly no accident that the Brewers are 14-0 in games in which he has appeared this season.

Which brings us back to the question: How important is it to have lefties in the bullpen? As with most managers, Counsell will take right-handed relievers who get hitters out as opposed to left-handers who struggle.

But it’s hard to argue the fact that this is the best-balanced and most effective relief corps the Brewers have had in recent memory. If Counsell needs a lefty to match up against dangerous left-handed hitters, he certainly has good choices. Ditto on the righty vs. righty front.

“We have good pitchers in our bullpen. That’s the most important thing,” Counsell said. “Hopefully, the way we’re constructed, we can put guys in good positions to succeed. That’s what we’re trying to do.

“When you have different options, left-handed or right-handed, and have some of the arms we have down there, hopefully we can do that.”

Within the NL Central, there are dangerous left-handed hitters you need to match up against, such as Cincinnati’s Joey Votto and Chicago’s Anthony Rizzo. But elite hitters usually fare well against both righties and lefties, so it’s other hitters who Counsell says dictate certain matchups.

“Every division, every team, you’re going to have good left-handed hitters, you’re going to have good right-handed hitters,” he said. “It’s not those guys as much, to me, as some of the other guys you’re after that might make a difference.”

In that regard, Counsell knows he’ll have the proper answers in his bullpen, lefty or righty.