Do the Brewers have enough starting pitching to win a World Series?

Leading up to the trade deadline, starting pitching was the primary question for the Milwaukee Brewers.

They addressed the need in quantity, adding Frankie Montas and Aaron Civale to round out the rotation.

Both additions give the Brewers depth, which is needed for a rotation as injured as theirs has been.

“I think we’ve been built on depth,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “That’s what we’ve done so far this season with the number of significant injuries we’ve had. Depth became very, very important. I think the deadline shows that. We didn’t go out and get any big rentals or anything like that, but we got some nice pieces that will contribute.”

Performance – both Montas and Civale possess an earned run average on the season north of 5.00 – remains to be seen, though. Questions remain, too, regarding whether the Brewers have enough pitching to make a deep run this postseason.

And when looking at winning in the postseason, the discussion shifts to a trio of starters the Brewers already had: Freddy Peralta, Colin Rea and Tobias Myers, who have combined for a 3.55 ERA while being the team's three innings leaders.

Whether the Brewers do or do not remains to be seen, but let’s try to answer those questions as best we can using history as an example.

Do the Brewers have enough pitching to win it all?

The answer, in short, is yes, though more recent history offers more of a glass-half-empty view.

Looking at the last eight World Series champions, the average league rank in WAR (Wins Above Replacement) from starting pitchers during the regular season is 5.9.

The lowest-ranked team was the Atlanta Braves, who were 13th in baseball in WAR from their starting staff during the 2021 season.

The 2019 Washington Nationals and 2022 Houston Astros were each ranked first, and the 2016 Chicago Cubs were second. Every other champion beside the Braves was in the top eight.

This year, the Brewers rank 26th in MLB in WAR from their starting staff.

That data would suggest the game has shifted toward starting pitching winning out in October in the modern game, but you don’t have to go much further back to find examples of teams with similar starting pitching numbers to the Brewers that went all the way.

From 2010 through 2015, the eventual champions ranked 13th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 20th and 25th in starting pitcher WAR during the season. That’s an average of 17.8.

The Brewers, of course, are still quite a ways behind that average, ranking 26th in 2024 – though interestingly, the Cleveland Guardians have the best record in baseball and rank second to last in MLB.

The best-case example for the Brewers in relatively recent history is the 2014 San Francisco Giants, who finished the season 25th in WAR from their starters and then got a 3.37 ERA from them in 17 postseason games. That was boosted significantly by having one of the greatest playoff pitching performances in history from Madison Bumgarner, who threw as many innings as the rest of the team’s starters combined and did so with a 1.13 ERA.

The 2006 St. Louis Cardinals won the Fall Classic with a ranking of 28th.

Brewers pitching also typically out-performs its underlying numbers because of the team's strong defense.

What about just winning a playoff series?

Given the Brewers’ recent track record in the postseason, perhaps we should take baby steps as we tackle this subject.

Since 2010, on average, the lowest ranking in starting pitcher WAR of any team to win at least one multi-game series is 15.3.

Unsurprisingly, there is a wide range in starting pitcher quality for teams that win a playoff series in baseball. So while that number may not seem to be very favorable for the Brewers – they are a ways off from being average by WAR ranking – keep in mind that there’s so much variance within a single playoff series in this regard.

Not since 2018, when the Brewers did it, has a team ranked 20th or lower won a multi-game playoff series, but while that may not bode great for the 2024 Brewers it’s far from a death knell.

OK, but what about the (lack of) innings?

The Brewers, if they can hold on and make the postseason, will try to do something that has no history of working.

Milwaukee is on pace to get 770 innings from its starters, which averages out to fewer than five innings per start. Only once before has a team gotten fewer than 800 innings from its starters in a full, 162-game season and won a multi-game playoff series (2019 Yankees).

This may be more jarring than some of the numbers above but, again, is not quite a sentence of doom.

In the regular season, innings help a team get through to the finish line while taking workload away from a bullpen. In the postseason, starts are inherently shorter. Pitchers don’t face lineups a third time through nearly as often and bullpens, with extra days of rest added into series, can pitch more often.

Milwaukee has a trio of starters – Peralta, Rea and Myers – who have shown an ability to give length when needed, too, while also pitching at a generally solid level this season.

So even though there’s no precedent of a team with as few regular-season starter innings as the Brewers are on pace winning much in the playoffs, it also might not be all that prohibitive.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Do the Brewers have enough starting pitching to win a World Series?