Kyle Harrison is About To Change Everything...

Kyle Harrison is about to change everything for the Milwaukee Brewers strategy in the postseason and not for a good reason. Chris Hook has to figure out if Harrison's not a go-to lefty, does Robert Gasser or someone else on this team take a step up? Just saw Kyle Harrison get another opportunity for a start for the Milwaukee Brewers and he definitely struggled. I'm going to talk about all of that and more on today's episode of Brewers Digest. I welcome you in. I'm your host, Taylor Bredel, and we just saw the Milwaukee Brewers fall to the Pittsburgh Pirates 7-4. Are we too surprised they lost this game? Not too much because their lineup offensively was definitely a rest day lineup, but it's unfortunate that the reason they lost it was because Kyle Harrison put them in such a big hole early on. We're going to take a look at this box score at this 7-4 final that we saw happen at PNC Park. Kyle Harrison, you know, that five run bottom of the second inning, the Brewers took a 1-0 lead and then five scored in the bottom of the second, put them in that early divot. They try to climb back, made it 5-4, and then Aaron Ashby unfortunately gave up a two run homer to Henry Davis to make it 7-4 where the final score stood. But Kyle Harrison is the story of this contest. He's the guy that we have to talk about. He has just been an absolute struggle. There's no nice way to put this. Kyle Harrison on the contest. He got his fifth loss of the season, only lasted five outs, one and two thirds innings, gave up four hits, five runs, four of those runs were earned. He walked two batters, was able to strike out two, and hey, he didn't give up the long ball. I guess that's some positive signs, but outside of that, not really great at all. His ERA is now above a four. I believe there's a 3.89 entering this one. It's now at a 4.25, but over the last couple of outings, it's probably at double digits. I'm not sure the exact number, but it is not great at all. That's what we've been seeing from Harrison. And what I want to talk about is his pitch mix. I mean, Harrison has been a guy that has only used two pitches, sometimes three. We see today through 50 pitches, 25 of them four seamers, 18 of them slurs, and then he got seven change-ups in there. He's trying to use the change up a little more, but Harrison is really nine out of 10 times he's throwing one of those two pitches between the four seam fastball and the slur. So when he was dominating earlier in the season, I think it was more impressive because it's like, how the heck do you have two pitches and no one can figure it out? Seemed like maybe Harrison, you know, maybe his ERA would bump up a little bit, but this is a disaster. We look at the strike zone with those 25 fastballs, half of his pitch is fastballs. When he's throwing the fastballs and he's able to find the zone, I mean, it is really in the zone. He had some painting the edge, but you see some at the top painting the edge. I mean, two hanging slurs, I guess you painted the edge because you got a strike out of it, but you look at the ones outside of the zone, lots of fastballs way above the zone, lots of slurs way below the zone, and they're trying to get a little bit of chase here, but there's a lot of pitches that aren't even close. And then when they're in the zone, I mean, they are usually the fastball, and that has been hittable. Kyle Harrison, this outing was not great at all. He did not really seem confident even from the get-go. It's unfortunate to see because it seemed like Brewers absolutely fleeced the Red Sox with a trade like this. Giveaway Caleb Durbin and crew, and you're like, oh my gosh, Kyle Harrison, Cy Young candidate outside of Jacob Mizorowski. I mean, this guy's phenomenal. Brewers pitching lab, they did it again. Well, now it's starting to fade just a little bit. We look at his full outing against Pittsburgh today, and Kyle Harrison after retiring the first two batters in the second, or sorry, in the second inning when everything started to really implode from there. He had a scoreless first inning, retired the first two in the second, and then a walk, a single, a catcher's interference that loaded the bases. So again, he only needed one out. Then he gave up a double that scored two runs. Then he gave up a single that scored two runs. Then he hit a batter, walked another batter, hit a batter, scoring a run, and he had to leave the game, giving up those five runs in the bottom of the second. After he was able to get five outs, giving up no runs, he still ends his outing with five outs, giving up five and four of them earned. He's now allowed 21 earned runs over his last nine innings pitched, and whoof, there is your ERA as of recent. It is not good at all, but the one thing that was good was his velocity. A lot of people thought his struggles were because his velocity was low. Well, he got that back up today. He was actually throwing around 96 miles an hour, but Jack Stern had a good analysis of it here. He says, I don't think he's getting to that velocity in the right way mechanically. He's not backspinning the ball like he used to. It was down to 13 vert today. He said he started going very secondary heavy as the second inning progressed, and he couldn't control the slur. We saw those in the pitches right there. A little bit of some of those slurs were hung. It's not going to work if you can't attack with the fastball and get it past guys. Again, when he attacks with the fastball, I mean, it is right there. It is right there. He can't get it past them. Not much movement on it. The velocity is there, but there's not much movement. I know a four seamer doesn't move that much, but he's not really able to get any chase at all. You look at the total strikes. I mean, those two kind of to the left, I guess those are some that are a out of the zone there, but clipped the edge, so did count as a strike in the strike zone. There's just so many fastballs that are meatballs for some of these hitters, and the Pittsburgh Pirates, they have an underrated offensive team. Don't get me wrong, but they're not a team competing for anything right now, so it's not like you're facing the Dodgers, and they had the Avengers up there, and you say, you know what, maybe Kyle Harrison, he's battling some tough batters to face. No, he's had a pretty light game log compared to ones in the past, but we look at that game log. We're going to take it back to the start of July, and I'll actually throw this up on the big screen for you guys, because there's a lot of numbers to take in here. At the start of July, he had two struggle outings, only lasted two and two-thirds, and four innings, giving up three runs in each of those contests. Then he went on the I.L. for a month, and you're like, you know what, maybe this is an injury type thing. Kyle Harrison, those were two odd outings for him. He hadn't really had a bad outing outside of that one in Vegas back in June before that, but then he comes back from the I.L., and you see, all right, home game, start of the month near August, you know, August 5th against the Pittsburgh Pirates, and oh my gosh, welcome back Kyle Harrison. Five innings, one hit, no earned runs, one walk, 10 strikeouts, threw 50 strikes among 69 pitches, threw five innings, and you're like, absolutely perfect. He did get removed from the game because he wasn't feeling great, so it's not, so he could have gone longer. Obviously, 69 pitches in an outing is not that many for Kyle Harrison, but then after that, we have not really seen much from him, and I'm just going to kind of take it down to the bottom of the screen. You look at his last outing in the month of August, and then these three in September, he's given up nine earned runs, four earned runs, four earned runs, and four earned runs, so over those last four outings, he's given up 21 earned runs, which was that six-inning sample size, or sorry, that nine-inning sample size that was just talked about. Very, very bad for Kyle Harrison. I mean, there's nothing pretty that you can look at there. His width this month in September is a 4.64, like, oh my gosh, that's, again, walks, hits, or inning pitch, 4.64. That is, that, it's historically low. That's why this is concerning. That's why we're talking about it, making a whole episode out of it, because he really controls this Brewers, their postseason decisions. Will he even be on the roster? I mean, that sounds like absolutely insane to say, because he's a guy that was, you know, Cy Young candidate, should have been an all-star, got snubbed kind of a guy. Now he seems to lack confidence, and it's really tough. Pat Murphy had a quote on Kyle Harrison. This dates back to September 6th, so this is 11 days ago, saying maybe he won't start, maybe he'll end up being in the middle of the game or something like that. Harrison's now had more time to prove himself since that quote, and this quote honestly feels nice when you go 11 days back, if Pat Murphy were to say this today. It's very, very tough, but we have to look outside. If Harrison's not a starter, who else could the Brewers start in the postseason? Well, in my opinion, Jacob Mizorowski, Logan Henderson, that is the easy one-two punch to be the top two guys to start a playoff series for the Brewers. Then you got to kind of figure out what they do from there. I think the Brewers will go with a deep-ish rotation. Some teams in the playoffs can last with three pitchers. I think the Brewers will go at least four, because you can't pitch Mizorowski that much. His arm is going to fall off, and that is the last guy that you can get hurt if you want to make the World Series. So behind Mizorowski, behind Henderson, you might have to go with the lefty, so you don't have righty, righty, righty. That lefty could be a Robert Gasser. I don't think it'll be a Shane Drohan, but Dustin May is probably the third best option, but do you go righty, righty, righty? There's a lot of tough questions. We could look into the bullpen too. I mean, we have guys like Chad Patrick, who used to be a starter, who we saw have great starts in the postseason, have great appearances. We know he can do it. D.L. Hall, that's a lefty option that can go multiple innings. Aaron Ashby, a lefty option, didn't play great today, that can go multiple innings. Do you need a guy to go multiple innings like a starter? Will Pat Murphy only need him to go like two or three and then maybe set up a guy like Gasser or whoever that will maybe go three more? These would be the questions that we have to ask, so I ask it to you guys right here. If you were Pat Murphy, outside of Jacob Mizorowski and Logan Henderson, because I assume those are the top two that you guys would pick in your rotation, how would you build out the rest of the rotation? I think the Brewers need a four-man rotation. I think Dustin May has to be one of the two remaining spots, and then you need a lefty in there, so I'll go Robert Gasser, but I wouldn't be shocked maybe. Do you like a Robert Gasser? And you know, Gasser, he's pitched as well, but when he goes to the order a second time, then he seems to struggle to get an out, so if Gasser is able to go like three and some change, we'll give him four innings. Do you bring in a Chad Patrick and you hope for like a fifth and a sixth inning out of him? It'll be a lot to track. It's a tough question to ask, but it all is because Kyle Harrison is struggling and we have not really seen great baseball from him, and it's unfortunate I'm talking about it that much and I'm talking about him like this, but that is where the Brewers sit. They sit with the best record in Major League Baseball, the best record in the NL, NL Central champs, and there are still questions on if this team is legit in the postseason. No one talks about the Brewers in the postseason highly at all, and I understand because they haven't proved it year after year after year. This is a team that hits like the least amount of homers in Major League Baseball, but I am confident in their ability to score in the postseason. It is crazy that we're talking about a Milwaukee Brewers team that was underrated and that is very good, and we are talking about how we are worried about their starting rotation. That usually never happens. That's usually the one thing they got going for them, so it'll be interesting to see. We got about, you know, a couple more games left. It's September 17th. We're not yet at October baseball just yet. The Brewers open to get a franchise record 98 wins, break last year's record of 97, maybe even get 100 wins on the season. They got to take it one game at a time. Will we see Kyle Harrison once more? He'll be lined up to be to pitch once more, but we'll be curious how the Brewers control that. Does he go back to Arizona? I don't even know the options anymore. You guys let me know in the comments down below what would you do with Kyle Harrison because it's getting pretty, it's going to be pretty quick, and when the postseason is here, the Pat Murphy and the Brewers have a decision to make, but that's all I got for this episode of Brewers Digest. I appreciate you tuning in. As always, the Brewers will travel to Baltimore on the road still. They will play the Orioles in a three-game series, and I'd be satisfied if the Brewers take two from there, but you got to take it one game at a time. That Orioles team is hot. Pete Alonso is raking. They are destroying the Mets, and you know, just that's a disaster in its own right there. So happy to be following the crew. Happy to follow them to Baltimore as well. We'll talk about if the Brewers are able to get it done in Baltimore, but they got to figure out first what to do with Kyle Harrison.