Mike Fiers
Fiers was non-tendered because Oakland is not paying a mid-rotation starter, at best, a $10 million salary. According to Cot’s Contracts, the last Oakland starting pitcher earning that much money was Scott Kazmir in 2015.

The Brewers immediately come to mind as a home for Fiers because he’s a former Brewer that has survived in MLB despite having below average fastball velocity. His fourseam fastball sits around 90 MPH, which Milwaukee has some experience with. There is ample cause for concern with Fiers though. Last season his swing and miss rate dropped for the fourth straight season, and dipped below 20 percent for the first time in his career. As his whiff percentage has dropped, Fiers has allowed more home runs (ranging from 1.2 to 1.9 per 9 innings) and struck out fewer batters (losing almost two strikeouts per nine innings as there are more strikeouts now than any time in the history of MLB).

However, there may be an area ripe for exploitation which could bring renewed success for Fiers: his curveball. He threw the curve for around 16 percent of his pitches in 2018, which is around his career average. Based on results though, Fiers should be throwing it more. Batters have hit .196 and have slugged .307 against the pitch, both of which are his best numbers. In 2018, those numbers improved to .145 and .181, once again performing as his best pitch results wise.  The pitch also generates his most ground balls: over 60 percent of curveballs put in play over his career have been ground balls. His 2018 ground ball rate on curveballs in play was almost exactly his career average.

Fiers consistently buries the ball below the zone and generates a large amount of whiffs on pitches that would be balls. In 2018, almost all of the damage against the pitch was on pitches out of the strike zone, which a player can live with.

For a pitch that he’ll throw equally to lefties and righties, it’s a little baffling that Fiers hasn’t decided to ride the curveball hard as his overall results have gotten worse. His curveball usage was actually down almost 20 percent last season when compared with 2017. Even after the trade to Oakland, while he threw the pitch more, there’s opportunity to make it the focal point of his attack and Milwaukee has some experience in signing free agent pitchers and having them focus on throwing more breaking balls.

Fiers may not be worth $10M, but I think he would be an interesting signing for a team that has helped pitchers maximize their stuff to more fully reach their potential.

Blake Parker
After a season that saw regression across the board, the Angels non-tendered Blake Parker rather than pay his projected $3.1 salary. Superficially, his 3.26 ERA and career high 14 saves indicate a decent reliever. Digging a little deeper reveals some problems, though:

Most of Parker’s regression is found in performance against his fastball. In 2017, batters hit .179 and slugged .313 against his fastball, with a .204 BABIP, but those numbers rose to .315, .562 and .328 in 2018. Batters hit more home runs against his fastball in 2018 (10) than he allowed in total in 2017 (7).

After spiking in 2017, Parker’s fastball velocity fell from 94 to 92.8 last season. The pitch started the season slower and the velocity continued trending down. He also had a location issue. Parker had previously located the pitch away from both righties and lefties, generally avoiding the middle of the plate and looking to jam hitters as much as possible. That plan failed against both sides as Parker literally had a Rudolph nose in his fastball strike zone plot. While the velocity may not come back, better location can cure a lot of Parker’s ills as batters did the most damage against his poorly located pitches.

Parker also has potential with his other two pitches: the curveball and splitter. The curveball used to be his secondary pitch, but he shelved in it favor of his splitter in 2017. Parker brought the pitch back towards the end of the season. His whiffs on both pitches were down in 2018 and location may have played a role here as well. In his most effective season, Parker threw almost 62 percent of his curves and splitters below the zone, which dropped to 56 percent in 2018. In particular, he consistently missed that spot against left handed hitters. His whiff numbers on those pitches compare favorably in 2017 and 2018, but because he was missing his spot more, batters made more contact.

Aside from the velocity drop, Parker also just didn’t execute his pitches in 2018. If the Brewers think there’s an easy mechanical fix, then Parker is a potential cheap addition to Milwaukee’s monster bullpen.

Note: Projected arbitration salaries are from MLB Trade Rumors.

Related Reading:
Brewers Organization Catchers

The Baseball Prospectus top 2019 Free Agents list had four catchers in the top 50: Yasmani Grandal, Wilson Ramos, Kurt Suzuki and Jonathan Lucroy. Eliminating Lucroy, who was the second worst catcher who received regular playing time in 2018, the Brewers have three options if they wanted to dip into the free agent pool to try and upgrade the position.

Yasmani Grandal was ranked 9^th best free agent this offseason and projections put him at least a  three year commitment between $15-16M a year. At that salary, Grandal would rank second on the team in annual salary, only behind Ryan Braun. While Grandal is entering his age-30 season, he only trailed J.T. Realmuto in catcher Wins Above Replacement Player (BWARP) in 2018 and was close enough that one could consider him the best in baseball. Grandal may have been the most complete catcher as he ranked second in both Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) and FRAA amongst catchers, which respectively measure offensive and defensive value, showing that he’s strong at both ends of the game.

If there’s one area of concern, it’s that most of Grandal’s defensive value came from framing. He led MLB in framing runs in 2018 but provided only slightly positive value for blocking and throwing runs. If the Brewers were to commit the resources necessary to sign Grandal, then they would need to believe his bat will age gracefully as well as that  he can continue to provide defensive value through framing, which is not a given.

Wilson Ramos is a year older than Grandal and with his injury history projects for a three year contract at $36 million. He doesn’t provide much defensive value. In his last season before tearing his ACL, Ramos had a 10 FRAA. Since the tear, he’s -3.9. Amongst catchers who caught at least 2,000 pitches, Ramos ranked 35^th of 61 catchers in FRAA, which make sense given his numbers: he’s not bad in any one area, but he also doesn’t stand out defensively.

Ramos will provide offensive value. In 2018, his True Average (TAv) was right behind Grandal and ranked fourth amongst all catchers. If you were concerned that a rate stat props up his value, then don’t worry because he was tied for seventh in VORP.

A big worry with Ramos would be playing time management. Prior to his knee injury, he maxed out at 131 games and 523 plate appearances. Last year he appeared in 111 games and went to the plate 416 times between Tampa and Philadelphia. While the Brewers don’t have any problems with rotating players, Ramos has no positional flexibility and would need to be paired with a competent backup who can cover somewhere between twenty-five to thirty-three percent of the playing time. Unless the market on Ramos falls short of projections, it’s difficult to see the Brewers making a strong play for his services because they’d also need to commit to a strong backup, perhaps straining the payroll too much for one position.

The last catcher in the top fifty is one who may make the most sense as a Brewer if he’s willing to leave his current club. Kurt Suzuki has had a late career renaissance at the plate in Atlanta, posting his two best TAvs in 2017 and 2018. In those two seasons, Suzuki started swinging more. Whereas prior to 2017, he was swinging at less than forty-five percent of the pitches he saw, he’s above a fifty two percent swing rate now, while also maintaining a contact rate above eighty percent. Suzuki finished sixth in both TAv and VORP amongst catchers in 2018, providing near equal offensive value to Ramos.

Suzuki does not provide much value behind the plate. He had a -5.5 FRAA in 2018, which was fueled by his poor framing numbers. He finished 52^nd out of 61 catchers in framing runs and his modest blocking and throwing numbers couldn’t offset the framing numbers.

Suzuki’s numbers have increased as he’s played fewer games. He’s split time with Tyler Flowers in Atlanta, playing in 186 games over two seasons with less than 700 plate appearances. The good news is that his advanced age and limited playing time make him a potential cheap upgrade for Milwaukee. Projections have him at two years and $10 million, which is reasonable enough to make him a realistic alternative to Pina or Kratz.

If the team does decide to look to the free agent marker to upgrade the catcher position, it feels like Suzuki would be the target. He’s a low cost option who could provide outsized production when compared with his salary. For an organization that always looks for surplus value in their acquisitions, a player like Suzuki makes sense for the team. Grandal and Ramos are buzzier additions but the cost of those two veterans may not fit in the budget. The good news is that the team has options at different levels outside the organization, so they can negotiate from a position of strength.

A quick recap on roster rules: the non-tender deadline this offseason is November 30. By that date, teams have to offer a contract to all players on the 40-man roster with fewer than six years of service time. If the team does not offer a contract to a player, then he becomes a free agent. Because Jonathan Schoop has 5.027 years of Major League service time and has not signed any extension, the Brewers have until November 30 to decide if they want to retain him for next season.

Jonathon Schoop is the greatest young power hitting second baseman of all time. There’s a lot to unpack there, but if we wanted to measure by players twenty-six and under who have played at least fifty percent of their games at second base, he’s hit the most home runs. However, impressive raw home run totals don’t necessarily mean a player is a star; even with that fun fact to his name, Schoop’s bat completely fell apart in 2018 after showing so much promise in 2017.

As a twenty-five year old second basemen in 2017, Schoop had a .280 True Average (TAv) and produced 37.6 Value Over Replacement Player (VORP), which estimates the number of runs Schoop produced beyond a freely available minor league replacement. PECOTA pegged him for a regression with .256 TAv and 15.8 VORP, yet his numbers sunk lower. Schoop’s plate discipline remained remarkably similar. His swing rate rose four percentage points to 56.8 percent, while his contact rate (71.4) and swinging strike rate (28.6) remained virtually unchanged from 2017, so his strikeout percentage only rose from twenty-one percent to twenty-three percent. The biggest difference is that his walk rate sunk from 5.2 percent to 3.8 percent, both of which are below average. Schoop’s walk rate would have placed him in the bottom five of all qualified hitters if he’d had enough at bats.

As I noted back in August, there was no smoking gun on Schoop’s poor performance at the plate, he just wasn’t hitting the ball as well. From that article’s publication date on August 13^th, Statcast numbers only slightly recovered. Even with some improvement his barrel percentage, exit velocity, launch angle, and hard hit percentage all were career lows. His expected WOBA placed in the bottom 1 percent of all hitters.

The Brewers traded for a player they probably saw as a buy low candidate. If they elect to offer Schoop arbitration, it likely means that they see something in his 2018 performance that they believe can be corrected to get him back to his 2017 numbers.

One projection for Schoop’s potential arbitration award places him at a $10.1M salary in 2019, which would be 3^rd on the team in salary, just above Christian Yelich, in case you needed another reminder about how great that contract is for the Brewers. The only other potential second basemen on the 40-man roster, presuming that Shaw is back at third base on Opening Day, are Tyler Saladino, Hernan Perez and Mauricio Dubon. None of these players are projected as a starting caliber player on a contending team.] in 2019.

The most intriguing internal option to replace Schoop would be Keston Hiura. Our mother site’s midseason top 50 prospects list had Hiura at number five and claimed that Hiura was “basically major-league ready” back when it was posted in mid-July. If the team agrees with the assessment, then he could be the starting at second by May 1, with service time manipulation likely preventing him from starting the season with the big-league club. While he’s considered a bat-first prospect, if the Brewers could shift and game plan their way into making Travis Shaw league average at second, fans shouldn’t be too worried about Hiura.

The Brewers could also look at potential free agents who could sign a one-year deal and provide flexibility in case the team wants to wait on Hiura (or if he proves not to be ready). Ian Kinsler had a terrible post-trade run with the Red Sox capped with baserunning and fielding blunders in Game 3 of the World Series. However, he provided above average defense according to Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA) (even if it wasn’t quite Gold Glove worthy). If you squint, his offense wasn’t terrible in 2018! From his nadir on May 28 through his trade to Boston on July 30, he slashed .286/.349/.518, which is above his career line of .271/.339/.443. One wouldn’t expect a two-month hot streak to be his baseline production going forward, but it does show he has some life left in his bat, and could serve a useful role as a bridge to Hiura.

The Brewers are lucky to be in the position where they don’t need to double down on the Schoop trade. It would hurt the front office’s external perception to write off the acquisition as a total loss after three months of poor production, but I don’t believe that’s going to factor into their calculation. Milwaukee is always going to operate on a limited budget, but if the team decides its best choices are Schoop and Hiura, two different budget issues arise. Is the team willing to keep Schoop at more than $10 M when there’s a non-zero chance he’s not worth a roster spot? If Hiura shines in spring training and proves he’s the best player for the team, are they willing to ignore service time considerations and have him start the season with the team? If not, who would cover the gap of at least two weeks? Milwaukee’s front office has a few weeks to make these decisions, but whichever direction they turn will shed light on their internal evaluations of the players in question.

While the series is over and done with and the team should be looking forward and planning for next season, there was one decision I wanted to revisit from Game Seven. Before the game, the pitcher usage had been fully mapped out, with contingencies built in based on what actually occurred once the game started. Thus, lifting Jhoulys Chacin for a pinch hitter in the bottom of the 2^nd inning with two outs and runners on second and third was not a surprise, nor is it a decision I feel qualified questioning. However, I think using Jonathan Schoop as the pinch hitter in that specific spot was a legitimate tactical error which contributed to the Game Seven loss.

Leverage Index is a stat which quantifies the importance of a situation in a game, where the average is 1.0 and the higher the number, the higher leverage the situation. That plate appearance had a leverage score of 1.86, making it the highest leverage plate appearance in the game for Milwaukee, yet Jonathan Schoop was the batter at the plate.

Up to that point, Schoop was 0-for-7 in the playoffs, including two pinch hitting appearances. Schoop’s performance since coming to Milwaukee had no hidden indicators that he was good selection for this spot. Other than running into a few balls, Schoop hadn’t hit in three months and spent October swinging at everything. Using Schoop didn’t even get Milwaukee the platoon advantage, so there was no old-school baseball rationale either.

Walker Buehler attacked Schoop with sinkers. He threw only nine sinkers in the game, and four were in this at-bat. Schoop only swung at two of the pitches, both of which were arguably balls, but he still grounded out the end the threat.

Domingo Santana would have been a better choice for the situation. Since his recall on September 1, Santana slashed .409 batting average /.458 on-base percentage /.909 slugging percentage in pinch hitting appearances during the regular season, and added another two hits and two walks in ten playoff pinch hit opportunities. Pinch hitting is an acquired skill and Santana had at least shown some knack for it in the past six weeks. He did get a pinch-hitting appearance with one out in the fifth inning, but the leverage index on that at bat was .97, almost exactly half of Schoop’s plate appearance.

With the aggressive use of the pitching staff, it’s slightly baffling as to why they held back their best pinch hitter and Curtis Granderson in favor of Schoop. None of them played in the field, so no defensive considerations seemed to play into the decisions, so it should have purely been the best hitter in that spot. You cannot save a better hitter for a higher leverage situation which may never come, and it didn’t in Game 7.

Jeremy Jeffress had a poor postseason, as I’ve unfortunately noted in the past two weeks. He allowed runs in three of his eight appearances and only had one game where he didn’t allow at least two baserunners. On Saturday entered the game in the 6^th inning with a runner on first and wound up giving up a backbreaking home run to Yasiel Puig which shot the Dodgers’ win expectancy up to ninety-one percent. In Jeffress’ 1 and 1/3 innings, he threw twenty pitches, none of which were splitters. It was only his third game this season where he threw at least twenty pitches and no splitters. All of those outings have occurred since September 10^th.

Starting in September, Jeffress drastically reduced his splitter usage. For the season, batters hit .209 against the pitch with only a .045 isolated slugging percentage, making it one of his most effective pitches. The splitter also had a seventeen percent whiff rate, on par with Jeffress’s curveball. However, those whiffs almost completely disappeared in September and October, with only one swing and miss on eighteen total splitters.

While it probably doesn’t fully explain Jeffress’s struggles, his pitch mix lost its balance when he stopped throwing the splitter and he started struggling. If it was a matter of feel, he has the whole offseason to regain confidence in the pitch or develop another weapon to induce swings and misses, because his results took a step back in October.

Christian Yelich had a tough postseason, but his struggles shouldn’t be a cause for concern for Brewers fans. First, the approach pitchers took against Yelich is not sustainable for a full season, unless they’re prepared to walk him at a rate comparable to Barry Bonds. Here’s the zone profile for Yelich for all of 2018:

Here’s Yelich’s zone profile during the playoffs:

While there was some effort to stick with the general plan to pitch him low and away, there’s a lot of blue in the strike zone and a lot of red bordering it. Pitchers spent three weeks staying away from Yelich, which makes sense after his second half of the season. However, pitchers will have to throw him more strikes in 2019. Yelich also maintained his plate discipline during the barrage of balls. He cut down on his swings on non-fastballs and also swung and missed less on breaking and offspeed pitches, while staying around his seasonal fastball whiff rate. By focusing on pitches in the zone, Yelich will lure pitchers back into throwing more strikes and he should pick up at the start of next season where he left off on October 1^st.

Unfortunately, there’s no new series to preview this week for the Brewers. While the result fell short of what fans were hoping for, it’s important to remember the ride to Game Seven and not focus on the NLCS loss itself. This was a fun team to follow all season and is poised to repeat its performance next season while also changing expectations on what a pitching staff should be in terms of usage and the best fits of skills in each role. The organization works as one unit and made an experiment like Travis Shaw: Major League Baseball Second Basement evolve from a sarcastic joke to a legitimate option by the end of the season. Remember the fun in getting to this point and start getting excited about what team will be put together this offseason.

P.S. They’re still not trading for/signing an ace.

Jeremy Jeffress has had an up and down playoffs. While he’s provided three scoreless outings, Jeffress has allowed fifteen baserunners in 5.7 innings and that has led to four runs scoring as he was on the mound. In a look at Jeffress last week, I noted that when he’s locked in, he’s looking to keep the ball down in an effort to induce groundballs and whiffs. In the first two NLCS games in Milwaukee, he did not succeed in keeping the ball low or out of the strike zone. While Jeffress is still hitting his favorite spot low and away, he’s leaving the ball up and in the zone entirely too much compared with the regular season. Batters have been able to lay off his low pitches because he’s leaving enough hittable pitches in the zone.

Against the Dodgers, Jeffress has only induced whiffs on his curveball, and his whiff rate on that pitch is slightly below his season average. Two percentage points isn’t particularly noteworthy, until one notices that he’s not getting any other whiffs. Expanding the sample to include the NLDS helps his curveball numbers, but the only other whiffs are against his fourseam fastball and also below his regular season whiff rate.

The veteran’s velocity is right around his season numbers, so there isn’t a dramatic drop off, nor is he overthrowing his pitches. However, he is seeing less movement overall. All of his pitches are moving less horizontally and are closer together now. Back in April, he had his largest spread, when his average curveball and sinker were eighteen inches apart. Vertically, the fourseam and curveball had a thirteen-inch difference. Because Jeffress isn’t hitting his spots, each of those ranges have narrowed and batters have less territory they need to worry about it. Game One of the NLDS didn’t scare Craig Counsell about inserting  Jeffress into high pressure situations, nor should it have based on his track record this season. However, with the plethora of options at his disposal and the little room for error nature of a best of seven series, it wouldn’t be surprising if there was an attempt to get Jeffress a lower leverage situation in Game Three or Four to get him back on track.

Dodgers pitchers have taken note of the Rockies’ approach to Christian Yelich and are not throwing him much to hit. After he had a 10.5 percent walk rate during the regular season, that number has skyrocketed to 37.5 percent in the playoffs. Pitchers are still avoiding the middle of the zone when throwing to Yelich and they seem content to throw him balls in an effort to make him chase bad pitches. To his credit, Yelich has not expanded his willingness to swing out of frustration. During the regular season, Yelich had been vulnerable to pitches away from him and while he didn’t miss those pitches often, he also didn’t hit them for much power. With the season he had, Yelich is the guy the opponents are going to fear and want to pitch around. By not swinging at bad pitches, Yelich has forced pitchers to make a choice: they can walk him or take a chance and throw it in the strike zone. Yelich’s approach will let him continue to accumulate walks and eventually he’s going to run into a few pitches and make the opposing team wish they had just walked him.

Corbin Burnes had a spectacular start to his postseason career. In two NLDS games, he pitches four innings and only allowed one baserunner while striking out five batters. Unfortunately, his last game was not quite as successful. Burnes is a fastball/slider pitcher, throwing the fastball for around sixty percent of his total pitches, and he’ll usually mix in a curveball. During Game 2, Burnes abandoned his curveball and threw his fewest sliders in a month. While he got swings on five of his eleven pitches, there were no swings and misses. Burnes had a whiff rate 32.1 percent during the regular season, which was 53^rd out of 442 pitcher who threw at least 570 pitches.

Burnes got whiffs on about a quarter of his sliders, but only threw two on Saturday. The speed on his slider was the lowest it had been since early September. It seems like he was having trouble locating his fastball. Burnes’s fourseasm fastball is generally located inside on his arm side or low and away. In a limited sample size, Burnes appeared to be all over the place with his fastball in Game Two and did not fool the Dodgers hitters. He rarely throws the pitch glove side and up, yet three fastballs ended up there, and he had threw well below the strike zone. It seemed like he focused on trying to get a feel for the fastball above trusting his arsenal.

Burnes will pitch in at least one of the games in Los Angeles and it will be interesting to see how he approaches the hitters. Ideally, the Burnes that kept the ball down against the Rockies and utilizes his breaking pitches to keep hitters off balance steps on the mound. When he gets those swings and misses, he can string together some scoreless innings for a team that is seeking to mix and match its way to a pennant.

Orlando Arcia has a hit in each playoff game he’s started and his streak extends to six games including the end of the regular season and his solo home run started the scoring in Game Two. The home run came on a first pitch cutter which caught enough of the bottom of the zone, in one of the areas in which Arcia demonstrated some power this year.

Arcia set a new standard for futility this year. His .268 OP was below his batting average last year. His .307 slugging percentage was below his OBP last year. The only position player with more than 100 plate appearances who had a lower OBP than Arcia was Eric Sogard.

Arcia’s hot streak began in September. While he’s not drawing many walks, his batting average since September 1 is above .300 and he’s slugging .443, which would be his MLB best by around forty points. He’s always been a whiffy hitter. Arcia swung and missed at 28.8 percent of the pitches he saw in 2018, which is around his career average of 27.5 percent. However, one area Arcia has cleaned up is his misses on pitches which most batters should hit. Before September 1, Arcia had huge holes in his swing almost everywhere. High and low and even belt high pitches could be missed. However, since September 1, Arcia is missing less, especially towards the middle of the zone, which are pitches any hitter should drive. The numbers bear out that he’s whiffing less on all types of pitches. Arcia doesn’t need to turn into Christian Yelich, but if he can bat eighth and get a hit a game, the Brewers will definitely take that offensive performance with his superlative defense. He isn’t likely to be a player who decides a series, but if he can be a player who puts some pressure on a pitcher facing the bottom half of the order, Arcia can provide a boost for the offense.

As the Brewers head west for three games in Los Angeles one point to monitor is the bullpen usage. While Craig Counsell goes into every game with a set plan in mind, emergencies do occur even in games which seem well at hand, such as the 8^th inning of Game 1. The 2-3-2 format will put a large amount of stress on Milwaukee’s pitching staff. I would guess that the pitching appearances have been scripted and written in pencil in advance of the publication of this article, any plan which relies on a large amount of players performing creates more opportunities for something to go wrong. Without an off day, there are no chances to reset the bullpen. Milwaukee can make it through these three games, but it feels like they’ll need some innings from their starters in at least one game so the bullpen gets a chance to rest. Jhoulys Chacin will start Game 3. He already had a five inning start in the NLDS and he led the staff with 5.5 innings pitched per start during the regular season. If Chacin can provide at least five innings tonight, he’ll put the Brewers in position to take at least one game in Los Angeles and guarantee that there will be at least one more game played in Miller Park this month.

Jeremy Jeffress struggled in his Game One appearance. The Rockies started the inning with three singles, then an Orlando Arcia error allowed a fourth straight runner to reach base before Jeffress settled down and recorded the next three outs. Looking at his pitch plot, he spent too much time in the strike zone.

About sixty percent of Jeffress’ pitches are sinkers or curveballs. His approach is to keep the ball low, either inducing swings on balls below the zone or living in the bottom third, extending from the middle to wide of the zone. The intent is even more pronounced when the sinker and curveball are isolated. Whether due to playoff jitters or just poor placement, Jeffress threw two sinkers that caught much more of the plate than he intended.

The playoffs are a heightened atmosphere where each mistake is magnified and takes on an outsized importance, but as his subsequent two scoreless appearances showed, this was one bad outing and there doesn’t seem to be a flaw that could come back to haunt Jeffress. His fourseam fastball velocity was slower than in any outing since April, but it ticked back up in Game Two and Three, and none of his other pitches showed any decrease in speed. There seemed to be some loss of horizontal movement, but the two pitches with the biggest drops were his sinker and curveball, which also rely on vertical movement for their deception. The sinker moved more than ever, while the curveball did suffer some loss in vertical movement.

Even taking into consideration his unexplained medical absence from the NL Central tiebreaker game, I think that there’s not much cause for concern with Jeffress. The team immediately inserted back into high pressure situations and he’ll continue to contribute as a back end member of the bullpen.

One of the major storylines coming into the series centered on how the Brewers would handle Trevor Story. Single season numbers against a team are too small of a sample size to be regarded as having any type of predictive value, but Story’s .333 batting average /.387 on-base percentage /1.222 slugging percentage slash line, which included seven home runs in seven games, worried some fans and pundits and became a talking point after the Rockies won the Wild Card Game.

It turned out that no one needed to worry, the Brewers executed their plan perfectly. They planned to keep the ball out of the strike zone and dare him not to swing. During the regular season, Story swung at thirty-two percent of the pitches he faced out of the strike zone. That number went up in the NLDS. The Brewers kept the ball low and away. The approach was best exemplified by his at-bat against Jeremy Jeffress in Game 1. Jeffress had run into some trouble and Story came to the batter’s box with runners on first and second with two outs and a chance to win the game with a hit. Jeffress threw three curveballs, none of which were particularly close to the strike zone, and Story waved at all three pitches.

Story finished the series 2-for-12 with six strike outs and one of his hits came in the bottom of the ninth in Game 3 when the series had already been decided. This pitching staff can lock down any batter in the league and will be up for the challenge of whichever team emerges from the other side of the National League bracket.

Josh Hader made fifty-five appearances during the regular season. He pitched on one or no days’ rest for sixteen of those outings. How often Hader will be used will continue to be a sub-plot throughout the postseason run.

Hader pitched four times last week, including the tiebreaker game. If the gloves are off, it was inevitable that he would need to pitch on back to back days, which he hadn’t done since August. After throwing 1 and 1/3 innings in Game One, Hader was used in a high leverage situation in Game Two to get Milwaukee out of an inning with a runner on third base and two outs. His spot in the lineup came up in the next half inning and Jonathan Schoop pinch hit for him, so Hader only threw twenty-two pitches in the two appearances. He exceeded that number in more than half of his 2018 games.

Hader added another seven pitches in Game Three and by finishing the series so quickly, he’ll get some extra time off. The middle of the NLCS includes three games in three days and it is unlikely that the Brewers can avoid using him in at least two of those games. The Brewers will need to hope that their regular season usage plan for Hader will keep him fresh for these important games.

The Brewers finished in the top 10 in MLB in baserunning runs. The area where they far outpaced all of baseball was opportunities to advance on wild pitches, passed balls and balks. Milwaukee is an aggressive team on the base paths; they were top four in stolen base opportunities. There is value in putting pressure on opposing pitchers and defenses and giving them something real to worry about when a batter reaches base. However, the team could use this next week to tighten up their running game. There were a few baserunning gaffes against the Rockies. The competition will level up in this next round and beyond, and Milwaukee cannot give away outs on the base paths from ill-advised advancements.

Jesús Aguilar struggled against the Rockies. He hit 1-11 with a walk a home run and four strikeouts. Aguilar started to scuffle in the second half, when he slashed .245/.324/.436, well below his first half line of  .298/.373/.621. As the year went on, Aguilar’s absurd numbers against fastballs went down, but his power against non-fastballs completely fell off a cliff.

Through the first two games, Colorado pitchers made sure to attack Aguilar low and away, which has been a season-long focus for pitchers. They also noticed the numbers in the above chart and gave him fewer fastballs to hit. For the season, he faced around sixty percent fastballs and never dipped below fifty five percent for a month. Fewer than half the pitches he faced in the NLDS were fastballs. The best news for Aguilar coming out of the series is that his home run came off a curveball. To get pitchers to respect him again, he probably needs to start laying off those pitches as much as possible. The effect of pitchers going low and away is even more pronounced when fastballs are stripped out of the zone plot. Aguilar can’t dramatically improve his pitch recognition on the fly, but even something like taking any pitch that appears like it’ll go below his belt will help him out because right now decent breaking balls are giving him fits and it’s creating a hole in the lineup.

Christian Yelich collected two walks in each game of the series. His regular season walk rate was 10.5 percent, but in the NLDS it approached fifty percent. In his second at bat of Game One, Yelich hit a home run off a poorly placed changeup. Pitchers had some success with changeups against Yelich in 2018, but all of them were inside or low; otherwise, Yelich had a good chance of hitting it far. After that, Rockies pitchers had their own plan to avoid getting hurt by Yelich.

While pitchers generally looked to get inside on him or keep the ball low, Colorado was all over the place, so long as the pitch wasn’t in the middle of the zone. They seemed content to make Yelich chase bad pitches, or take a walk. He also saw more fastballs than in any other month in the 2018 season. To Yelich’s credit, he was willing to take the walks. Pitchers have had more comfort pitching this way to Yelich because Lorenzo Cain has struggled at the plate. He went 1-12 with two walks; Games 1 and 2 was only the second time he went hitless in two straight playoff games. If Cain can get on base, pitchers may feel more pressure to give Yelich pitches in or closer to the strike zone. If they don’t, then it gives Ryan Braun the opportunity to hit with more men on base.

With Atlanta’s escape against the Dodgers last night, there’s a Game Four in that series (today, Monday, October 8). Brewers fans will want the series extended to a Game Five to ensure another cross-country trip for their eventual opponent. According to Baseball Prospectus’ adjusted standings, the Dodgers are the best team in the league and they’ve played like the superior team against the Braves so far, but this is why the games are played on the field.

Since the tiebreaker game counts as a regular season contest, the Brewers will have full use of their expanded September roster and one can expect aggressive use of the bullpen and pinch hitters from Craig Counsell. The Cubs, however, are looking to take a different approach in the game. In an effort to quiet the Milwaukee offense, which averaged 5.5 runs a game in September, the Cubs will start Jose Quintana. In six starts this season against the Brewers, Quintana has pitched 37 and 1/3 innings while allowing nine runs on twenty-three hits and ten walks; the southpaw struck out thirty-three batters. The Cubs are 5-1 in those games.

While there has been some variation in how he’s approached the Brewers, Quintana has hewed close to his seasonal pitch mix when facing the team. The most drastic change came in his fifth and sixth starts against Milwaukee. In those two September starts, he almost completely shelved his changeup. In the first game, he primarily relied on his fourseamer and curveball. Next start, he threw his sinker at his highest rate this season against the Brewers.

Quintana likely moved away from the changeup because the Brewers had been able to stay on the pitch. Over the course of the season, batters whiffed on close to thirteen percent of the changeups that Quintana threw. However, during the June 11 and August 14 starts, the pitch didn’t induce a single whiff.

The Milwaukee lineup also swung at the pitch less often when compared with all batters faced by Quintana. Hitters swung at thirty-nine percent of Quintana’s changeups, but that number dipped to thirty-three percent and seventeen percent after the Brewers had gotten two looks at him. It rose again in the September starts, but Quintana was choosing his spots with the changeup very carefully at that point. In addition, he only gave up two home runs on changeups in 2018; one of those came on a pitch to Eric Kratz in June.

Quintana has done a good job at inducing harmless groundballs from the Brewers. His 2018 groundball rate was 44 percent and batters hit groundballs on more than half the sinkers and changeups he threw. He hit that mark with his sinker in four of the six games he started against Milwaukee. One of the two misses was a game in which the sinker had its second lowest usage rate of the season. Quintana only reached a fifty percent groundball rate with his changeup in two of his Milwaukee starts, which could also explain its disappearance from his arsenal, as noted above.

The August 14 start is the one game where the Brewers really got to Quintana, scoring five runs in his five innings of work. Those five runs all came via home runs from Lorenzo Cain (the Brewers’ other MVP candidate) and Ryan Braun. They got to Quintana because they pounced on his mistakes. He’s looking to keep the ball down and out of the zone, ideally away from his arm side. However, the three home runs came on pitches down the middle and in the strike zone. Those are the pitches that the Brewers can’t miss.

If Quintana continues to rely on his curveball as his one change of pace pitch, then his preferred location on those pitches is even more low and away. However, when he places it over the plate, batters can hit it. It’s incumbent upon the Brewers to resist the balls he wants them to swing at and wait for the curveballs that don’t break enough.

In a one game tiebreaker, it’s impossible and foolhardy to predict what’s going to happen. Based on Quintana’s performance this season though, we do have some hints. If he hits his spots all game, it’s going to be a long afternoon for the Brewers. They’ll need to control the strike zone and hope that the umpire isn’t giving Quintana a few extra inches low and/or away. If they have good enough sequencing on their groundballs they can string together some hits and score. Or Quintana misses some spots, and they punish him for those mistakes. He allowed a career high 1.3 home runs per nine innings, so neither possibility should surprise Brewers fans. Enjoy the free baseball and remember that no matter what happens this afternoon, Miller Park will host at least one more baseball game this week.

Photo: Associated Press, Copyright Associated Press.

Only a few short weeks ago, there was a legitimate question of over who was the MVP of the Brewers, as both Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain had strong cases. An unfortunately timed injury to Cain slowed his pace, while Yelich has only increased his production throughout the season. Since the All-Star break, Yelich is slashing .352 batting average /.417 on-base percentage /.709 slugging percentage, and he is now third amongst National League position players in Batting Wins Above Replacement Player (BWARP). Yelich has made a few changes to his approach which made this breakout possible.

Comparing pre- and post-All-Star break performance, Yelich is facing the same basic arsenal and attack plan from pitchers. As noted when I looked at his performance immediately after the All-Star break, pitchers want to attack Yelich low and away. That plan hasn’t changed over the past few months. The only notable difference in attack has been a slight uptick in fastballs. This season Yelich has seen his highest percentage of fastballs since 2015. In the first half, he saw 58.6 percent fastballs, which was up a tick from 2017, but in line with 2016 and well below the approach his first few years in MLB. However, since mid-July pitchers have thrown fastballs almost 62 percent of their pitches. Yelich hasn’t seen such a high proportion of fastballs in several years. In fact, he’s seeing 69.2 percent fastballs in September, as pitchers have almost given up on throwing him breaking balls. If that rate holds, it’d be the most fastballs he’s seen in a month of games since August 2015.

Yelich’s whiff numbers look virtually identical before and after the break. Looking at his zone profiles, he is whiffing less frequently, both above and below the strike zone when compared with earlier in the season, although he appears to only be swinging less on high pitches. One area where he appears to be locked in is breaking pitches. Yelich had been swinging at around 40 percent of breaking balls he faced, which is slightly higher than his career numbers, but not dramatically out of line. Yelich has swung at 56 percent of those pitches recently, which is completely out of character with his career.

However, Yelich is completely locked in on breaking balls at the moment. He’s killing every breaking pitch that is a strike. Those numbers are compounded by his slugging against all other pitches. Since the All-Star break, you cannot throw Christian Yelich a strike. Pitchers are aiming low, but when they miss, he smashes the ball. They are loath to pitch up in the zone, because he’ll hit mistakes there as well and whiffs at even fewer of those pitches.

The only weakness in Yelich’s game recently has been when pitchers throw sinkers. In his career he slugs .491 against the pitch, his second best number. He bested that number in the first half, but the pitch has caused some trouble in the second half of the season. Pitchers have done a good job keeping the pitch in tougher to square areas. Yelich is swinging and missing at sinkers, even when they’re thrown in his hot zones. When he does make contact, he’s hitting a lot of ground balls, which depresses his batting average against and slugging percentage.

Based on these numbers, if a team wants to get Yelich out, all it needs a sinker specialist who can place the ball low and away and not leave one over the plate. This is an exploitable weakness, and definitely something to watch when scouting potential playoff opponents. However, if a pitcher misses his spot, Yelich will hit it. If a pitcher throws anything other than a sinker, Yelich will hit it as well. If he continues his torrid pace through the next week, there is a real chance that he becomes the fourth Most Valuable Player as a Brewer.

Corey Knebel had a rough start to the season. Injuries and ineffective performance actually led to a demotion in late August to try and sort the righty out. Since he returned to Milwaukee, Knebel has thrown 10.3 innings and allowed two hits and two walks while striking out eighteen batters.

Knebel is throwing fewer fastballs in September after elevating his fastball rate earlier in the season. In his successful 2017, he threw approximately 72 percent fastballs, with the rest of his pitches curveballs. He was over 73 percent fastballs before September but is at approximately 67 percent in September, which is actually his lowest fastball usage rate over the last two seasons. The percentage differences here are all fairly small, but when a pitcher only has two pitches, and one of those pitches is hittable, then any predictability can be perilous.

Earlier in the season, Knebel’s velocity was done. In 2017, he averaged nearly 98 mph on his fastball and his velocity increased every month of the season. His April fastball velocity was around .5 mph slower this season, but unlike 2017, it has stayed relatively flat throughout the year. It also has less vertical and horizontal movement when compared with 2017 and has lost a little motion as the season has progressed.

It looks like Knebel made some mechanical changes while in the minors to try and shore up his arsenal. His vertical release point started close to this low point from 2017 and dropped through August to a new low. He has raised it in September, though he still does release the ball, specifically his fastball, at a lower point than in 2017. Knebel also appears to have moved closer to the third base side of the rubber, his furthest position in two years.

All of these tweaks have led to great results from both of this pitches. Since his return, both hits have come against his fastball, but batters haven[t had much chance against either of his pitches. The twenty seven percent whiff rate against his fastball is his best month. After laying off his fastball more early in the season, he’s inducing more swings in September.

Even though it looks like we’re seeing the 2017 Corey Knebel in September, Craig Counsell has not reinserted him into the closer role. Only 2.7 of his innings have come in the 8^th inning or later. His aLI (Average Leverage Index), a statistic that considers the game situation in which a pitcher is working, is .79 since September 1; anything below 1.0 is considered low pressure. For reference purposes, his aLI in 2017 was 2.11 and it was 1.69 before his demotion. Considering the strength of the bullpen, Knebel isn’t needed to anchor the late innings. Notwithstanding his struggles, Knebel’s 2.90 DRA is still fifth on the team. A month ago, it was questionable whether Knebel would make the postseason roster, but his recent performance shows that he can still contribute, even if in a less important role in the bullpen.

Milwaukee begins a huge three game series tonight in St. Louis. The team can clinch a playoff berth, as well as place themselves in a strong position to host the Wild Card game. The teams are 8-8 against each other in 2018, with all but three of those games occurring in the first half of the season. The Cardinals are coming in hot. They won five of their six games last week against the Braves and Giants. They’ve outplayed their expected record by 5.2 games, which is 1^st in the National League and 3^rd in MLB.

LHP Gio González was the most buzzworthy name acquired by the Brewers prior to the August 31 waiver trade deadline. The aftermath of the trade surprised some because out of his 308 career MLB appearances, only six have been in relief, yet the Brewers did not commit a rotation spot to the new acquisition. Before looking into his potential role in September and potentially beyond, I want to review his season to see what the team can expect.

Throughout his career, González has been a four pitch pitcher. At the time of his debut, the fourseam fastball was his primary pitch and he threw that pitch as well as his curveball on three-fourths of his selections. He rounded out his arsenal with a sinker and a changeup. As his career has progressed, that specific mix has changed, in particular as his average fourseam fastball velocity dipped from a high of 94.2 mph in 2012 to 90.8 in 2018. Now González throws the sinker most frequently, but his usage of all of his pitches has converged between twenty and thirty percent, as this year he is throwing a career low percentage for fourseam fastballs and a career high for changeups.

However, González’s new pitch mix has not produced good results. This season he has a 4.48 Deserved Run Average (DRA), which is his highest number since his late season debut in 2008. National League pitchers are striking out 8.5 batters per nine innings in 2018, up from 8.2 in 2017, yet González’s strikeouts per nine innings have dropped from the league average in 2017 to 7.8 this season. Among all MLB pitchers with at least 140 innings, González ranks forty-third out of sixty-eight pitchers in this ratio.

Naturally, whiffs are the first place to look to see if the veteran is not fooling batters anymore, but González’s swinging strike rate this season is 23.2 percent, slightly up from 2017 and only .6 percent off his career average. The lefty is getting a career low whiff rate on his curveball and his changeup whiff rate has declined for the fourth straight season, but his fastballs are in line with his career numbers. Maybe he should be throwing a few less curveballs when he has two strikes, but nothing in this pitch mix looks like it needs to be immediately corrected.

The usual indicators don’t show anything terribly off with González, yet batters are hitting him harder than before. Compared with 2017, his Statcast numbers have exponentially jumped. He was a top eight percent pitcher according to exit velocity and hard hit percentage last year. In 2018 he’s barely in the top seventy percent in both metrics.

His True Average (TAv)-against is .277, well above his career average of .253 and the highest full season number of his career. His Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) is .319, which is twenty-four points above his career average but not a career high and he’s run much better DRAs in his other season above .300. He’s also right around his career average home run rate, so he isn’t encountering bad luck.

This is not the portrait of a savior for the pitching staff that is in desperate need of a course correction from a terrible August. However, there’s been some speculation that the plan is to use González as more of a long man, turning over a lineup once as a bridge between the brigade of five inning starters and the back end of the bullpen. This season, González has consistently allowed a lower batting average against and isolated slugging earlier in his appearances when compared with hitters’ second and third looks at him, and he gets more swings and misses.

2018 Batting Average Against Times through the Order vs. Overall

2018 Isolated Power Against Times through the Order vs. Overall

2018 Whiff Percentage Times through the Order vs. Overall

González doesn’t vary his pitch mix throughout his starts, which may hurt him as the outing goes on because he isn’t holding any pitch back and hitters are getting looks at everything the first time through the order. If he’s going to pitch this way, the numbers show that he is outperforming his seasonal stats in that first look at the order. González has not relieved since 2009, so asking him to come out of the bullpen is uncharted territory. However, he could be deployed effectively as an opener or as the first option out of the bullpen who can go for two plus innings, depending on where the batting order sits when he enters the game. This usage would make him a non-traditional acquisition, but it fits within the team’s overall strategy and pattern in looking outside the organization for help. The team needed innings, and there’s no reason why González can’t give them four to six effective innings a week, which would be better than ten mediocre innings in a traditional starter’s role.

Curtis Granderson was the lone bat acquired by the team last week, and he fills a narrow niche for the roster as well: lefty masher off the bench who can also spot start in each corner outfield position. As a team, the Brewers are slashing .253/.320/.425 against right handed pitchers, which is slightly above MLB-wide numbers against righties. Granderson’s unimpressive slash line of .245/.342/.430 improves around ten percentage points in each category when his twenty six plate appearances against left handed hitters are removed from his numbers.

Right handed pitchers are looking to locate low and away against Granderson, and a good amount of his five season high swing and miss rate of  27.6 percent is coming on low pitches out of the strike zone. Throughout his career, he’s generated the most power when he’s hitting higher pitches, and that pattern has continued in 2018.

The veteran is showing some age related decline as it appears his bat has gotten a little slower. Granderson has always performed well against fastballs, posting career Isolated Slugging Percentage (ISO) of .313, .250 and .282 against four seamers, sinkers and cutters from right handers, which are his best numbers against all pitches. Those numbers have fallen off this season, and his production has been buoyed by an uncharacteristic performance against split finger fastballs. In addition to catching up to fewer fastballs, Granderson is also whiffing more on breaking balls and offspeed pitches, which could be a sign that he’s cheating to try and catch up to velocity.

In Granderson’s limited role, the Brewers can hide his weaknesses and hopefully coax out a performance even higher than his current numbers against right handed hitters. He’s appeared in three games so far as a Brewer, with one start in between two pinch hitting appearances. That one start was against a pitcher who throws hard and mainly uses fastballs. He has one single and three walks in his six plate appearances. Hopefully his batting eye can be supplemented with some pop over the next month as he provides a breather for the outfield regulars.

The three-game series against the Cubs continues today, then the Brewers will host the San Francisco Giants over the weekend. Before yesterday’s game, the Cubs still had a ninety percent chance of winning the division, with the Brewers taking the crown in two thirds of the other scenarios. The two series against the Cubs and one against the Cardinals are the only head-to-head chances for Milwaukee to increase their odds the rest of the season. The Brewers have the best projected rest of the season performance out of Central division teams, but right now that’s not projected to overtake Chicago. San Francisco has had a disappointing season, which has seen them overperform their Pythagorean Record (estimated from Runs Scored and Runs Allowed) by 5.9 games, which is first in the National League and third in MLB. However, the team will play out September without two of their top three regular position players by TAv as Andrew McCutchen has been traded and Buster Posey is now on the sixty-day disabled list.

The biggest news of the week seemed to come on Friday when the Brewers appeared to be on the verge of completing a trade with the Reds for Matt Harvey. The rotation is currently missing Jimmy Nelson and Brent Suter due to injury, and minor league performance issues delayed the activation of Zach Davies. Milwaukee is currently 18^th in team DRA over the season, but that number is heavily propped up by their dominant bullpen. Even though the team does need more production from their starters, it looks like they made the right call to hold the line on trading for Harvey.

One area where the team has noticeably struggled is in getting bulk innings from their starters. Part of this is by design as Craig Counsell and the front office subscribe to the third time through the order penalty, and will pull their starters to avoid overexposure. However, a team does need its starters to pitch enough to avoid depleting the bullpen. As I noted last week, Jhoulys Chacin is the only Brewers starter who has pitched seven innings at least three times. Currently, the MLB average start length is 5.5 innings. Milwaukee comes in slightly below that number at 5.4 innings per start. Matt Harvey is averaging 5.3 innings per start in 2018 in both New York and Cincinnati. In addition, his game log doesn’t show any recent trend reflecting increased durability over the season. Even before looking at his performance, Harvey was only ever going to slot into the five-inning starter role, with occasional longer outings. Milwaukee already has a bunch of those pitchers.

If Harvey isn’t going to provide bulk innings, then for the transaction to be worth the price, he’d need to provide quality innings. He has a 4.55 DRA this season, and PECOTA projects a 4.69 DRA for the rest of the season. His K/9 has rebounded in Cincinnati up to 7.1 from 6.7 with the Mets, but his Reds number and seasonal average of 7 is well below his career rate of 8.4. His swinging strike rate is 19 percent, slightly below last year’s performance. It’s also fallen every season he’s been in MLB.

Seasonal trends don’t paint a rosier picture. Harvey’s changeup is getting increased whiffs as is his slider, but the fourseamer and curveball are flat. However, he throws the fourseam fastball almost twice as much as the changeup and slider combined, still utilizing it as his go to pitch with two strikes, even if the other two options seem more effective. Since arriving in Cincinnati, the veteran has slightly decreased his fastball usage and thrown more sliders, but slider whiffs have fallen as he’s thrown it more. Maybe the Brewers could have persuaded him to change his pitch mix further, which could increase his strikeout numbers and effectiveness. That’s quite a bet to make with the playoffs on the line, but the Brewers have more information in this area than the public does.

Harvey is currently running a .279 BABIP as a Red, which is around his numbers when he was a dominant force in New York.  Much of that is fueled by hitters’ futility against his slider. While that pitch is still giving hitters fits, the improvement in results against his other pitches still leaves him as a pitcher batters don’t fear.

Fans love trades, and I think the team’s slump in the standings as well as an easy area for improvement left people disappointed that the team came close to consummating a deal that could have helped the squad. However, after looking into Harvey’s performance, he just hasn’t performed much better than the pitchers currently in place. There’s a chance that Harvey has some untapped upside that the current rotation doesn’t possess, but the odds of seeing that pitcher in Milwaukee aren’t particularly high. If the Reds were giving away Harvey, then a case can be made to complete the deal. However, there’s no reason for Milwaukee to give up a legitimate prospect for what Harvey is now.

Ryan Braun hit another homer on Sunday and has been on a heater since the All-Star Break. Over twenty six games, he has a .382 on-base percentage and .573 slugging percentage, with thirteen extra base hits and only eleven strikeouts. Braun’s True Average (TAv) has improved to .273, which would still be a career low but is well ahead of his .258 number from early June. Most importantly, he’s produced while only sitting out five games.

Braun is seeing more pitches to hit now than he was earlier in the season. Previously, pitchers had been pounding him low and weren’t afraid to throw balls, so long as he wasn’t getting anything in the upper area of the zone. Now, whether through mistake or bravado, Braun is getting more pitches in the middle of the strike zone, and he’s been crushing them. He’s also swinging and missing less, in particular at pitches that aren’t great. Pitchers weren’t going upstairs on him often through July 19, but when they did, Braun had no answers. That’s a sea of red in an area where he traditionally produced. Now Braun is still getting beat by the lower stuff, but he’s not swinging and missing at as many of those high balls. In particular, he’s tightened up against breaking pitches. Over his career, he’s whiffed on around fifteen percent of the breaking balls he’s seen, but now he has that number under ten percent.

Statcast metrics already were in Braun’s favor when he was in his slump. At BPMilwaukee, Sean Roberts wrote that he was underperforming his underlying numbers a few weeks ago, and his numbers have risen even more since then. Braun’s expected slugging percentage is now up to .539, which would be a career high. He also currently has a career high in hard hit percentage (48.2). His exit velocity is 91.9 and barrel percentage of 10.3 only trail his 2015 numbers. He’s a top twenty hitter in both of those metrics. So long as Braun stays healthy, which is always the worry with him, he’s a productive hitter who can hit as well as anyone in the lineup.

The Brewers will spend this week on the road. They’ll have a three-game series in Cincinnati, then go to Washington to face the Nationals. After losing the series finale against Milwaukee last week, the Reds proceeded to get swept in a four game series by the Cubs, allowing twenty-nine runs across the four games. Last week Cincinnati had a team DRA of 5.12 and it now sits at 5.18, comfortably twenty-sixth in MLB. The Nationals have the third best run differential (Runs Scored / Runs Allowed) in the National League but are 7.5 games out of a playoff spot. They’ve underplayed their Pythagorean projection by 7.1 games, which is second worst in MLB.