Milwaukee Brewers: Do they have enough in the starting rotation?

Is the starting rotation deep and reliable enough to support the Milwaukee Brewers defense of its NL Central title in 2019?

The Milwaukee Brewers enter 2019 s the defending NL Central champions. They have an All-Star level outfield of Ryan Braun, Lorenzo Cain and MVP Christian Yelich which – in company with first baseman Jesus Aguilar – doubles as the heart of their order. They have a bullpen led by Jeremy Jeffress and Josh Hader that rates a 10 on the fear scale.

Yet as the winter off-season turns for home, the Brewers also have significant holes that need to be patched. Their depth chart now lists recent signee Cory Spangenberg – a .258 hitter with a .298 on base last year for San Diego – as their second baseman. Their shortstop, Orlando Arcia, hit 236 with a .268 on base average. And their rotation is populated with question marks.

Teams have been known to survive light-hitting middle infields, especially if their outfield is populated with All Stars, as is the Brewers’. They’re not committed to Spangenberg, and additional options remain available in their price range.

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The rotation might be a different matter. As of now, Milwaukee only rosters one starter who might plausibly be called an “ace” even in Milwaukee. That’s Jhoulys Chacin, coming off a 2018 in which he hit career highs in wins (15) and WHIP (1.16) while approaching career bests in ERA (3.50) and innings pitched 193).

Still, there is reason to question whether Chacin can sustain that performance level. He is a career .500 pitcher, 75-74, who has averaged just 125 innings per season. He is now 31, an age at which pitcher performance often begins to deteriorate. None of those are the credentials one normally associates with an ace.

He also has little proven backup. His No. 2 from 2018, Wade Miley, is gone. His No. 3, Chase Anderson, had a 9-8 record, a 3.93 ERA and is also entering his age 31 season.

For the moment, the Brewers have penciled in a rotation of Chacin, Anderson, Zach Davies, Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes, with Jimmy Nelson and Freddy Peralta available as backups. Nelson missed all of 2018 recovering from shoulder surgery, Davies was 2-7 with a 4.77 ERA, and Woodruff and Burnes are both transitioning from the bullpen, where they were excellent.

Obviously there’s a way for all of this to fall together. If Nelson returns to full health and good form, and if Woodruff and Burnes prove to be as dominant in starting roles as they were out of the pen, the Brewers will be staring at something approaching rotation depth. In that scenario, particularly assuming Yelich, Cain, Braun and Aguilar perform as they did in 2018, Milwaukee can contend for another division title and more.

The formula, however, is chancy. Aside from Chacin, only Anderson among those prospective starters pitched more than 80 innings last year. Starter workloads have ebbed across baseball in recent seasons, but even in these relief-oriented days you have to be able to average five innings per start – that’s a minimum of 810 innings from your rotation – or risk shredding your pen. Chacin and Anderson may have been Milwaukee’s two most heavily used pitchers last year, but even they barely hit that level.

One interesting question for the remainder of the winter will be to see whether the Brewers agree, and if so, whether they make a hard run at one more starter they can count on.

When a team has the kind of intimidating bullpen the Milwaukee Brewers possess, a rotation doesn’t have to be dominant. But it does have to be deep enough to get a game to that pen.