The 2017 Brewers pose an extremely interesting problem for those analysts that enjoy looking forward on the calendar: At least two of Milwaukee’s 2017 BaseballProspectus Top 10 could reasonably lose rookie status during extended MLB stints in 2017 (a la Orlando Arcia in 2016). At least six of the Brewers 2017 BaseballProspectus Top 10 could reasonably make the […]
Author: Nicholas Zettel
Channeling Cleveland
I’ve had the 2013 Clevelanders on my mind for quite some time, and PECOTA season has only emboldened my thoughts of Clevo’s improbable leap from 68 wins (on a 64 win run-dfferential) in 2012 to 94 wins and a 2013 Wild Card play-in on the strength of 90 Pythagorean wins. The Cleveland Nine are a […]
Starting Jorge Lopez
Brewers prospect Jorge Lopez’s tale is nearly famous by now: the righty surged onto the scene in 2015 by putting together several aspects of his game into a complete package that even saw a jump from Class-AA Biloxi to Milwaukee, only to lose his mechanics and command at Class-AAA Colorado Springs in 2016. Lopez reset […]
Villar and Creating Luck
Jonathan Villar’s 2016 breakout was one of the Brewers’ highlights of the year, if not the highlight for the rebuilding club. While the trade involving RHP Cy Sneed and Villar was a valuable move for the Brewers the moment it happened, Villar’s power/speed/discipline explosion exponentially increased the value of that deal. The resulting 4.8 WARP […]
Who is Hernan Perez?
When Hernan Perez began his 2015 campaign with the Detroit Tigers, he was thoroughly established as a utility option. The right-handed batting infielder was already playing in his fourth MLB season, although he was quite inexperienced: to that point, 71 plate appearances in 34 games during the 2013 season represented Perez’s largest set of playing […]
Matt Garza’s Value
For an MLB player, value has two elements: Production: A player can be considered valuable based on how well they perform on the field. Alternately, as advanced statistics and analytical tools emerge, a player can be considered valuable based on their underlying elements — stuff, mechanics, plate approach, command, etc. Both of these metrics, traditional […]
Fun With Platoons!
The Brewers roster has quite an issue as currently constructed: it is full of a number of fringey bench-[maybe starting positional OFP] players with extreme platoon issues. Platoon Splits 2016 Same-hand / Advantage OPS+ Career Same-hand / Advantage OPS+ Scooter Gennett 94 / 98 35 / 110 Kirk Nieuwenhuis 44 / 99 37 / 110 […]
OFP and Minor League Pay
Throughout the offseason, I have worked on analysis techniques that place minor league players and MLB players on similar WARP-based monetized scales. This task is important because it helps to iron out some of the necessary wrinkles in assessing trades that involve minor league returns for MLB players, and it also helps to quantify the […]
Translating OFP
After seeing the scouting strengths and weaknesses, as well as the Overall Future Potential (OFP) and realistic floors, for the Brewers system, one can begin the New Year with a great sense of the “what if…?” that is the current state of the rebuilt farm system. There is no question that the Brewers front office […]
BaseballProspectus Brewers Top 10
When you’re following a rebuilding club, “Prospect List Day” is like a Holiday morning: it’s a chance to quantify some of the difficult aspects of future roster building that (by necessity) are not quantifiable. This is perhaps the most difficult part about rebuilding, and the BaseballProspectus team nails that in their report of the system. […]