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The Foolish Bailey

Why the Brewers do not perform worse vs good pitching, and why bad statistics are worse than nothing.

In August 2026, Foolish Bailey’s Foolish Baseball video “The Brewers Aren’t Built for October” ranked Milwaukee second in baseball against bad pitching and twentieth against good pitching, and read the gap as an October warning. This site dissects that statistic with 4.6 million plate appearances (2000–2025): how much of a good-vs-bad is real, how much is , and whether any of it predicts the postseason. New to the topic? Start with the reader’s guide.

-0.003
correlation of team vs-good-pitching slopes, across 780 team-seasons
12%
of a split ranking’s spread survives ; the rest is sampling noise
66%
of the October offense drop is explained by the pitchers actually faced ()
5 places
average move in a team's vs-good rank, of 30, when the bucketing definition changes

Build the statistic yourself

Every version of the statistic depends on choices the analyst makes before any baseball enters the picture. Make them yourself: pick a season, decide how pitchers get labeled “good” and “bad”, and watch the Brewers’ ranking move.

Pitchers grouped by their season results including what this team did to them. The broadcast convention, and the circular one.

Under this definition, the MIL rank #11 vs good pitching and #7 vs bad pitching.

#TeamwOBA vs goodwOBA vs badGapRank vs bad
1CHC.303.3656218
2LAD.295.3951013
3MIN.290.3768613
4SD.289.3526327
5COL.289.384959
6TB.288.3809210
7NYY.287.384978
8MIA.285.3961112
9ATH.285.3718615
10BAL.283.3547226
11MIL.282.3841027
12ARI.281.3587722
13NYM.280.3436330
14BOS.279.3799911
15WSH.279.3941154
16TOR.276.3578123
17HOU.273.3719814
18PIT.272.3931215
19DET.272.3659219
20ATL.271.37710612
21CWS.271.3991291
22TEX.268.3679917
23LAA.268.3599120
24KC.268.36910216
25CLE.266.3528528
26STL.263.3559325
27CIN.262.3589621
28SEA.260.3559524
29PHI.257.3851296
30SF.250.35210229
How to read this table
What this data is
Every team’s hitting (wOBA, where league average is about .320) against the top and bottom pitcher-quality buckets, under the classification you chose. The gap column is the “vs bad minus vs good” number broadcast graphics are built from.
How to read it
Set season to 2026 and change the classification from “ex-post results” to either ex-ante option. The Brewers move from mid-pack to the top three vs good pitching on the same plate appearances; only the labels changed. Then compare terciles with quartiles in any older season and watch mid-table teams shuffle.
  • Every definition a team cannot influence (projections, leave-team-out, xFIP) agrees: the 2026 Brewers hit good pitching well.
  • Only labels the team's own hitting can move reproduce the broadcast pattern. The split describes a procedure, not a roster.

What survives honest measurement

Suppose you measure the properly anyway: continuous ex-ante pitcher quality, park, platoon, and order-penalty controls, 26 seasons. Here is every team-season estimate, and what says you should believe.

-2-1012HOUCWSCLEATLTEXKCNYYNYMCINSDATHSEABOSBALCOLLADTORCHCPITMIAMILPHIWSHTBSFDETLAAARIMINSTL

δ, in wOBA points lost per point of pitcher quality, relative to the league slope. Positive = holds up better against good pitching. Every interval crosses zero.

How to read this figure
What this data is
Each dot is one team’s slope in the selected season: positive means it held up better than the league against good pitching, negative means it wilted. The whiskers are 95% intervals.
How to read it
Click “Apply shrinkage”. The spread collapses by roughly a factor of eight, because the raw spread is almost entirely measurement noise. This is what an honest August segment would show.
  • The league-wide slope is real: everyone hits worse as pitcher quality rises.
  • No individual team's slope is distinguishable from zero, in this season or any season since 2000.

The trait does not exist twice

slope, odd-numbered datesslope, even-numbered dates

Each dot is one team-season measured twice: its vs-good-pitching slope in odd-numbered dates against the same team’s slope in even-numbered dates. If the trait were real, the cloud would tilt. r = -0.003 (95% CI -0.075 to 0.066).

October, decomposed

-40Total Octoberdrop-26Pitcher qualityfaced-14Unexplained “chill”

wOBA points relative to the regular season, 70,057 postseason plate appearances, 2000–2025. Two-thirds of the famous October offense collapse is just the pitchers being faced.

The full postseason analysis, including one unresolved result and its 2026 test, is on the October page.