Even the most optimistic of Milwaukee Brewers’ fans didn’t see this season coming. Sure, the club has been reliable contenders for years now despite modest payrolls, but the loss of manager Craig Counsell to the rival Cubs and the trade of ace starter Corbin Burnes to the Orioles this spring seemed to herald a bit of retrenchment, if not an outright rebuild.
And here are they are a week from the All Star break, comfortably leading the NL Central with a 53-38 record. Sure, they’ve had some standout performances in the field, chiefly from All Star starters Christian Yelich and William Contreras. But their run prevention has been just as impressive as their offense, if not more so. They have the 4th best ERA with the 4th fewest runs allowed in the NL, and that’s with staff ace Freddy Peralta doing barely better than league average work.
Colin Rea has been the unlikely staff ace for the Brewers. Yup, that Colin Rea, the one who was selected on the 12th round of the 2011 draft out of Indiana State by the Padres. The same Colin Rea who made 19 basically replacement level starts for those Padres before injuries, ineffectiveness and a side trip to Japan limited him to all of 20 more major league innings before 2023, his age 32 season.
Since his return, Rea has been a revelation for the Brewers, logging 219 innings while posting a better than league average 4.03 ERA. By that measure, his best work has been done this season, as he’s taken a regular turn while logging a 8-2, 3.34 mark, good for an 82 ERA-.
You watch Rea pitch and you wonder how exactly he is getting this done. His stuff is – well – unremarkable, to say the least. He averages 92.7 mph with his four-seam fastball, and his 7.4% swinging strike rate is remarkably low compared to contemporary norms.
To understand – at least to an extent – his success, and in fact his very presence in the Brewer rotation we have to take a step back and understand the way this club does business.
Yes, the Brewers are competitive every year, but they have completely dug in and decided they are not going to pay the going rate for high end pitching. To prevent runs, they instead are going to field an exemplary team defense and run starting pitchers out there who aren’t going to beat themselves. Get out there, go around the lineup twice without incident, don’t walk anyone and let the defense earn its keep.
Rea is the poster child for this approach. His 7.1% BB rate is solidly below league average. His 16.8% K rate (way down from last year’s 21.3%) is even more significantly below league average. He has avoided the big inning this season – his 3.34 ERA is much lower than his 3.84 component ERA, or what his ERA should be given his actual OBP and SLG allowed. Through some combination of guile and good fortune, Rea is escaping innings with less damage than he should be.
But it only begins there. In 2023 and 2024, Rea has allowed significantly higher overall (89.8 mph in both years), fly ball (92.8 and 92.0 mph) and line drive (94.6 and 95.1 mph) average exit speeds. He’s trended the wrong way in all batted ball frequency rates (4.4% to 3.4% pop up, 33.3% to 34.6% fly ball, 18.6% to 19.9% line drive and 43.8% to 42.1% grounder rates). He hasn’t exhibited a go-to pop up or grounder tendency, and hasn’t shown a proclivity to limit contact authority or frequency.
Looking at his arsenal on a pitch-by-pitch basis doesn’t make things any better. My pitch grading system, which rates bat-missing and contact management on a pitch-specific basis compared to league norms, doesn’t think highly of him either. His sweeper has been a “B+” pitch this year (an incredible 40 Adjusted Contact Score paired with an awful 8.9% whiff rate), while his four-seamer (”C+”, 165, 11.7%), sinker (”C+”, 97, 3.4%) and cutter (”D+”, 138, 6.9%) have all been below average offerings.
So far this season he’s posted a 110 “Tru” ERA- (my batted ball-based proxy for ERA- and FIP-), way worse than his 82 ERA- and actually better than his 114 FIP-. In 2023, he actually had an exactly league average 100 “Tru”-, better than his 104 ERA- and 111 FIP-. His contact management performance (105 and 104 Adjusted Contact Scores in 2023 and 2024) has been essentially unchanged, while his “Tru” ERA- has worsened due to his significant K rate drop.
I would assume that the Brewers are well aware that Rea is not built to have massive success relative to the league over the long haul. But they are getting a nice bang for their relatively modest investment in him in the short term. He’s earning $4.5 million this season, and the team has an affordable $5.5 million team option on him for 2025. In the unlikely event he continues to record better than league average results both quantitiatively and qualitatively until he reaches free agency after the 2025 season, the club – rightly – will allow someone else to belly up and pay market price for him. The club will instead attempt to unearth the next Colin Rea (who they may already have in Tobias Myers).
The plight of the small t0 mid-market team is real. You need to sift through the castoffs of other clubs to find hidden gems. Some clubs, like the Rays and Brewers, are really good at this. Colin Rea’s greatest strengths are his availability every fifth or sixth day, and his resilience to keep his head in tight spots, maintain his stuff from the stretch, and other things that aren’t always that easy to measure. Players like him eventually hit their expiration date, but deserve credit for their underrated contributions to team success.
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