Frustrations continue to mount for the Milwaukee Brewers, who have just been shut out four times in the last five games. The offense, which was a crucial part of the Crew's success last season, has faltered.

One could point to the loss of an extremely productive bat in free agency, Willy Adames, who signed with the San Francisco Giants. To replace Adames' production, the Brewers...didn't do much.

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They added Caleb Durbin from the Yankees, a prospect with no prior MLB experience, and that was about it. They relied instead on internal improvements from players already on the roster. That has been backfiring so far.

Brewers manager Pat Murphy is known for his straightforward approach. After Saturday night's 7-0 loss to the Twins, Murphy held nothing back.

"Now, did we go spend a lot of money in the offseason, guys? Let's call a spade a spade, no we didn't. Are we real deep in the position player business? No, we're not." Murphy said.

The depth issues are really hurting the club right now as they are severely thin on the left side of the infield. Joey Ortiz and Caleb Durbin have struggled to sub-.200 averages this season, Andruw Monasterio is a light-hitting backup who won't provide much of a boost and the only other healthy infielder on the 40 man is Oliver Dunn, who was already sent down to Triple-A for poor performance and he's not doing much better in Nashville.

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This team is in this weird gap right now where their infield prospects in Double-A aren't quite ready yet and the need at the MLB level is quite prevalent. Spending a bit more in the offseason to get a veteran infielder would've helped provide a buffer to cover that gap, but the Brewers weren't able to bring one in.

The Brewers have always found a way to do more with less when it comes to putting together their roster, but they're straining to do so this year. Could this be the year it finally catches up to them? Murphy has as much of a read on the room in that clubhouse as anyone and he sees how the lack of spending is impacting the team.

Murphy went on to add that "We have good ones, and we have ones that aren't getting the results right now and aren't in their best state of mind. But that's the beauty of this thing. Maybe it'll be a different journey around the track this year. Maybe we're slow out of the gate, maybe it's a muddy track, maybe other people slow down and we close."

While Murphy tries to put an optimistic spin on the situation, if they don't start scoring some runs and stay closer to the leaders of the pack soon, they'll risk getting too far behind on that muddy track to gain enough ground later in the race to win it.

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