Winless Brewers’ big red flag: Why Milwaukee’s fastballs could be behind all those blowout losses

Things could not possibly have gone worse for the Milwaukee Brewers in their first four games of 2025. They are 0-4 with three blowout losses. A relatively normal 4-2 loss on Opening Day was followed by 20-9, 12-3, and 11-1 beatdowns. The Brewers have been outscored by 32 runs, 10 more than any other team, and their 47 runs allowed are the most through four games in history.

“We’ve been boat-raced the last three games,” manager Pat Murphy told 620 WTMJ following Monday’s loss. “You’ve got to keep believing in the process. Stick to what you do. Win pitches, steal a game, and wait for the guys to get healthy.”

The Brewers are 0-4 after being the only team to never once lose four straight games last year. That’s a good reminder that a) this game will humble you quick, and b) teams lose four straight all the time! Granted, they don’t get outscored by 32 runs while losing four straight all that often, but four-game losing streaks are part of the season. It just so happens Milwaukee did it to start the year.

You’re never really as good as you look when you’re playing your best and you’re never really as bad as you look when you’re playing your worst. The Brewers are not actually this bad and they will right the ship eventually, probably sooner rather than later, though there are some real red flags popping up. Not everything can be hand-waved away as “it’s still early,” you know?

Most significantly, the Brewers simply do not have much velocity on their pitching staff. Here are the most fastballs thrown at 90 mph and under in the early days of the season:

1. Milwaukee Brewers: 160 (23.0% of all pitches)
2. Chicago White Sox: 146 (25.9%)
3. (Sacramento) Athletics: 133 (16.6%)
4. Baltimore Orioles: 81 (10.8%)

You don’t want to be near the White Sox or A’s on any leaderboard, but there the Brewers are, with nearly one out of every four pitches they’ve thrown this season being a fastball at or below 90 mph. Those 160 pitches don’t even include first baseman Jake Bauers, who has already made two pitching appearances and is currently seventh on the team in innings pitched (yes, really). 

Velocity is not everything, we know that, but it is part of the pie. Velocity equals margin of error. The faster you throw, the less time the hitter has to react. Fastball velocity affects everything too. If they have to gear up for 95-97 mph, the more effective your slider and changeup and everything else will be. Let’s put some numbers on it. Here are the 2024 MLB averages (since 2025 just started):

The Brewers have spent entirely too much time living the most dangerous fastball velocity range earlier this season, which is why their opponents have hit .330 with 13 homers and a .777 slugging percentage against their heaters. Spend a weekend in Yankee Stadium throwing mediocre fastballs to Aaron Judge & Co. and, well, bad things are going to happen.

To be sure, Milwaukee did not intentionally build their pitching staff around soft-tossers. Not entirely, anyway. That said, their most significant offseason move was trading Devin Williams for Nestor Cortes (and Caleb Durbin), and Cortes has sat in the 90-93 mph range with his fastball the last four years. He’s had a lot of success in that range (124 ERA+ from 2021-24), but it’s not a great fastball.

Milwaukee currently have seven pitchers on the injured list, only two of whom (Robert Gasser and Brandon Woodruff) were injured going into spring training. The other five all got hurt either in spring training or during the season’s opening weekend, putting the Brewers in a pitching bind. Here are those five pitchers and their 2024 average fastball velocities:

In Ashby and Mears especially, the Brewers lost big fastballs. The others aren’t the hardest throwers, though they are all comfortably out of the 90 mph and below danger zone. Civale, Mears, and Myers are expected to rejoin the team later this month. The others are out more long-term (Hall is on the 60-day injured list and can’t return until late May at the earliest).

The Brewers are in enough of a pitching bind that Elvin Rodriguez, a reliever with the Yakult Swallows in Japan last year, started Monday’s home opener as a quasi-opener. Rookie Chad Patrick, who had a 5.59 ERA between Double-A and Triple-A last season, will start Tuesday night. The Brewers are already having to dip deep into their pitching reserves one week into 2025.

No, the Brewers are not really as bad as they’ve looked these first four games (or at least I don’t think they are). The lack of velocity on their diminished pitching staff is a legitimate concern though. It’s a real thing and a shortcoming they must navigate, similar to a team lacking power hitters or reliable defense. Milwaukee’s staff is operating with a razor thin margin right now.

“You can’t control some of the things that have happened,” Murphy told MLB.com on Monday. “You just roll with it and learn something. Now we have an opportunity to learn. We haven’t been smashed in the face like this in a long, long time.”