Let's keep in mind that a 162-game season is a marathon, not a sprint.
That said, the staggeringly slow start by the Milwaukee Brewers has more than a few in BrewerNation shaking their heads in disbelief.
After all, getting out-scored 47-15 in the first four games -- matches a National League record set by the St. Louis Cardinals in 1954 -- is enough to make even the most optimistic fan start to have doubts.
An 0-4 start in the NFL's 17-game season would pretty much doom a team with playoff hopes. In baseball, it's a glitch.
Granted, Milwaukee didn't have a four-game skid in ALL of 2024. But that was then, this is now with a team operating a pitching staff that resembles a M*A*S*H unit. Something like 16 players are on the Injured List. Through the first four games, the pitching staff had a 12.27 Earned Run Average. It was so dire that, as we watched the slaughter in Monday's home opener (an 11-1 stomping), I kept waiting for the text to "warm up" to appear on my phone. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but a 71-year-old knucklerballer might be a little too much!
Doesn't help the team when your top four hitters (Jackson Chourio, Christian Yelich, William Contreras and Rhys Hoskins) start the year five for 55 with 20 strikeouts. As a team, the squad was batting .231 but had only 11 walks against 43 strikeouts. Not going to win a lot of games with that many bad at-bats.
Luckily, the Brewers found their first win yesterday, a 5-0 win over Kansas City. Still, until some legitimate pitching shows up, look for more downs than ups.
