But some metrics aren’t as fond of Nelson’s performance. According to BP’s DRA, he was 11 percent worse than average in 2015, and 21 percent worse in 2016 — the 14th- and third-worst marks in the majors, respectively. The peripherals don’t match up with the production, which could mean the reliable righty will regress going forward.

What’s caused ERA and DRA to diverge like this? A lot of the disparity stems from the area that ERA, by definition, doesn’t consider: unearned runs. Nelson allowed eight of those last year and 16 of them this year, which harmed his RA9 considerably:

Since DRA is scaled to RA9, taking into account every run a pitcher gives up, this explains some of the difference. The Brewers haven’t fielded well since 2015 began — they ranked 17th in DRS during those seasons — and Nelson hasn’t aided his own cause in this regard: By DRS, he’s been the worst defensive pitcher in baseball over the past two years.

But even when we judge Nelson based on RA9, he still overperforms, as the last two columns of the above table illustrate. We need to delve into the inner workings behind DRA, which BP handily provides. Here’s how Nelson has done by each of the four “DRA Runs” groups:

These figures work in the opposite way you’d suspect — a negative one means he’s done better than average, while a positive one means he’s done worse than average. For Nelson, one of these metrics stands out above the rest: Not-In-Play Runs, which measure a pitcher’s skill with strikeouts, walks, and hit-by-pitches, none of which Nelson excels at.

Across 2015 and 2016, Nelson struck out 18.5 percent of the batters he faced and walked 9.7 percent. The former was the 13th-lowest among 63 qualified pitchers; the latter, the fourth-highest. Meanwhile, his 30 hit-by-pitches during that period tied for first in the majors with Chris Sale, who faced more than 200 more batters than Nelson did. Without success in the defense-independent metrics, he’s received nothing but scorn from DRA.

Earlier in the year, we might be able to attribute this to an error in DRA itself. A previous iteration of the metric had a bias against groundball pitchers — it consistently gave them higher DRAs than RA9s, suggesting they were getting unlucky. However, Jonathan Judge corrected this flaw in July, leaving Nelson and his 51 percent lifetime ground ball rate without an excuse.

DRA, in its current form, accurately summarizes how well a pitcher has done. We might think of Nelson as the dependable, respectable Brewers starter, but underneath that he really hasn’t done all that well. Once those unearned runs turn into earned runs — and those walks and HBPs start to come around more often — his ERA will start to rise. At 27, he’s certainly not old, so he could get better from here; if he doesn’t, though, he’ll see his DRA come back to haunt him.

Tyler Thornburg is no faceless bullpen arm. He’s struggled with injuries in the past, but this season, when he finally got healthy, he broke out. With an 80 DRA- and 79 cFIP, Thornburg established himself as one of the best relievers in the majors — in other words, he stood apart from the Badenhops, Cottses, and Broxtons of the world.

In one regard, though, he bore a striking resemblance to the aforementioned names. Thornburg had a pretty major platoon split this season — albeit in the opposite direction:

Mostly because of a spike in strikeouts and a glut of grounders, Thornburg crushed lefties this year, sticking with the trend he’d established in prior years. From 2012 to 2015, Thornburg compiled 152.2 innings of work for the Brewers; across that time, lefties posted a .264 wOBA off him, whereas righties knocked him around for a .338 wOBA. In 2016, Thornburg certainly didn’t struggle against righties, but he didn’t blow them away to the extent that he did lefties. Why?

Thornburg’s changeup accounts for a good deal of the split. This season, the pitch had a 21.9 percent swinging-strike rate, far higher than the clip on his fastball (11.9 percent) or his curveball (12.6 percent). Its 44.4 percent ground ball rate, meanwhile, easily topped his fastball (31.1 percent) and didn’t trail his curveball by much (47.6 percent). And as is the case for most changeups, it saw action primarily against opposite-handed hitters:

Everyone Thornburg faced saw the fastball about two-thirds of the time. That last third made a lot of the difference —since the cambio reigned supreme above the bender, the hitters who saw the former more often had far less success. Improving on his curveball, which will probably remain Thornburg’s out pitch to righties, would go a long way toward eliminating this split.

The changeup doesn’t explain all this, however. Thornburg’s primary offering — that heater — dominated lefties, with a 14.5 percent whiff rate and 38.2 percent ground ball rate. Versus righties, its whiff rate declined to 10.2 percent, while its ground ball rate dipped to 27.8 percent. That’s likely due to the pitch’s shifting location:

Thornburg’s fastball is rather distinct. My BP Milwaukee colleague Kyle Lesniewski observed back in April that Thornburg has changed his location of the pitch; although it still has a ton of rise, he now places it lower within the zone, and its arm-side break means it runs in on right-handed hitters. This plot bears that out: Righties saw a lot more inside fastballs this year than lefties did. Against the latter, Thornburg threw 20.9 percent of his fastballs in the closest two-fifths of the strike zone; against the former, he did so 41.8 percent of the time — exactly twice as often. Given a more hittable heater, opposing batters unsurprisingly hit it quite well (or comparatively well, at least).

The break on Thornburg’s fastball should, in theory, make it an equalizer. Max Marchi’s platoon split research showed that “jumping” and “rising” fastballs — the ones without much horizontal movement, but with a ton of vertical movement — play much more neutral than straight heaters. With this location pattern, though, the fastball will have its potential capped, and so will its owner.

The 2016 version of Thornburg was still an elite reliever, which means he probably has the inside track on the closer position for 2017. In that role, he’ll probably continue to excel against lefties, but without a better curveball and a different fastball strategy, he won’t carry that excellence over to righties. Like Jeffress and many other erstwhile Brewers, Thornburg needs to retire everyone indiscriminately if he wants to be as great as he can be.

The MLB-average fastball this season, at 92.6 mph, clocked in 1.5 ticks ahead of the mean from nine years ago. For whatever reason, pitchers are throwing harder nowadays, which means big-league (no, not bigly) cheese isn’t what it used to be.

This brings us to Corey Knebel, who, as you may have heard, throws pretty hard. In his 2015 Brewers debut, Knebel prospered, twirling an 87 DRA- and 85 cFIP 50.3 innings. He established himself as the second-best Corey K. in the majors (because as much as I admire Knebel, he doesn’t yet have his own society). And his four-seam fastball enabled his success: He threw it 68.6 percent of the time, according to Brooks, and it was worth 1.9 runs in that sample, per FanGraphs.

But Knebel couldn’t keep up his dominance this year: His DRA- and cFIP inflated to 95 and 94 in just 32.2 frames. Across the board, his fastball either stagnated or got worse:

That regression cost the heater dearly, as its value fell to -0.4 runs in 2016. If Knebel wants to return to his 2015 level of play — and since he’ll turn 25 next month, he’s certainly young enough to accomplish that — he’ll need to start by working on his fastball.

Given all this and nothing else, we might assume the problem stems from velocity. Maybe, we’d guess, Knebel tired out last season, and his fastball didn’t travel as hard as it did the prior year. This wasn’t the case, though — in fact, Knebel actually gained fastball velocity in 2016:

Knebel still throws hard. The issue is that he doesn’t throw hard enough. 187 relief pitchers used their four-seamer 200 or more times in 2016; of those, Knebel’s 96.2-mph velocity ranked 39th. He didn’t get much rise on the pitch (9.8 inches of horizontal movement, 68th in that sample), or much run (3.4 inches of horizontal movement, 137th in that sample). This sort of offering can stand apart down on the farm, the domain of junkballers and crafty veterans; up in The Show, however, it’s just not good enough anymore.

With that said, Knebel isn’t a one-pitch pitcher; he also owns a curveball. When Knebel made his major-league debut in 2014, Jordan Gorosh wrote that the pitch was “certainly in consideration for “plus plus” territory.” That offseason, following the Yovani Gallardo trade that brought Knebel to Milwaukee, Mark Anderson noted that the curve had “earned 70 grades from scouts since his amateur days.” While Knebel’s curveball hasn’t quite lived up to that billing — it was worth 0.7 runs this year, according to FanGraphs — it’s still performed better than his fastball. And since he deploys the latter about two-thirds of the time, it needs to be up to snuff.

Coming up through the minors, Knebel relied on his velocity to put hitters away. Questions surrounded his health — a slight ligament tear had ended his 2014 campaign early, although he’d later say he had made a full recovery — but if he could stay on the mound, his heat would develop him into a bullpen weapon, the thinking went. Now that he’s in the majors, the velo is still there, yet the results haven’t followed. Whether the solution is better command or a third offering remains to be seen; for now, though, we can say that Knebel can’t survive with a fastball alone.

Regardless of where Braun heads for 2017, though, we can make some observations about his 2016 performance — and what it could foretell. The outfielder hit for a ton of power this season; his .233 ISO ranked 29th in the majors and was far above the .200 clip he’d played at in the prior three years. On the back of that clout, Braun put up a .305/.365/.538 triple-slash and .316 TAv, which played the largest role in the aforementioned WARP.

But did he deserve that kind of power production? Braun put the ball on the ground a lot more often in 2016 — his 55.7 percent ground ball rate, according to FanGraphs, was the highest of his career. Even with a respectable hard-hit rate of 34.4 percent, good enough for 71st in the majors, that many worm burners might have hurt his cause. The fact that they didn’t suggests Braun got lucky this season, which we shouldn’t expect him to maintain.

This might seem like a lengthy leap to make, so to bear it out, I ran a simple regression for expected ISO using these two metrics. That yielded this equation:

xISO = .065 – .240*GB% + .663*Hard%

I applied this equation to the 146 hitters who qualified for the batting title in 2016. On the graph below, you’ll see their ISOs and xISOs, with our favorite Brewer circled in red:

Not many qualifiers had this large a gap between their peripherals and their results. And by “not many,” I mean none:

In terms of residuals, Braun, Dozier, and Cruz established a class of their own. But what sets Braun apart is just how far he falls by xISO. Even Dozier and Cruz fared better than average by the expected metric; Braun, on the other hand, couldn’t even top the .162 baseline (which was the major-league average ISO for 2016). That’s what happens when you pound the ball into the ground so frequently — or, at least, that’s what should happen.

Just to drive home how fluky Braun’s 2016 was: FanGraphs has tracked ground ball data since 2002. In those 15 years, 2,258 player seasons have qualified for the batting title. The following list shows the qualifiers who had a ground ball rate above 55 percent and an ISO above .200:

• Ryan Braun, 2016 — 55.7 percent ground ball rate, .233 ISO
• Jacque Jones, 2006 — 55.9 percent ground ball rate, .214 ISO

Yeah, that’s it. Considering Jones would wash out of the majors after 2008, I wouldn’t call this the best company to keep.

So why did Braun have such a high ISO this year? Mainly because of his MLB-leading 28.8 percent home run/fly ball rate, which gave him 30 long balls in a mere 511 at-bats. Not only is that HR/FB rate a career high, by far, it also doesn’t have much evidence to suggest it’s legitimate. Of the 176 players with at least 150 air balls tracked by Statcast, Braun ranked 57th with an average distance of 292 feet. He didn’t club the ball like other power hitters, and I’d expect that to start costing him in the future.

This problem, on the surface, has an easy fix: Braun just needs to elevate! If he can start consistently putting the ball in the air again, he’ll cushion himself from regression in the power department. That’s obviously easier said than done, though. As Braun explained to FanGraphs’ Eno Sarris last year, the changing MLB environment has forced him to adjust and put the ball on the ground. With his 33rd birthday coming next month, Braun certainly doesn’t have youth on his side anymore, which means his days of fly balls galore might be gone for good. If he doesn’t find some way to trim his ground ball rate, expect the ISO to drop — fast.

Braun has kept a pretty open mind about the offseason, so he might not have a problem with a trade should it arise; of course, if David Stearns does make a deal, Braun can always shoot it down with his no-trade clause. But the Brewers — and their possible customers — should keep Braun’s ground ball rate in the back of their mind. When those fly balls stop leaving the yard and start falling into outfielders’ gloves, his output could take a nosedive, which wouldn’t please his future employer.

If you tuned out the later months of 2016 — which no one would hold against you — you might have missed out on Barnes. After all, he had never made a BP top prospect list, even in a sparse Brewers system. Prior to this year, he had a lifetime ERA of 3.42, without ever tasting the major leagues. Beginning his career in the rotation, he transitioned to the bullpen and didn’t fare much better there. With his 26th birthday this April, Barnes didn’t seem to have much of a future, if any.

But something changed in 2016. Barnes began the year with Triple-A Colorado Springs, whose home ballpark sits a full 800 feet higher than Coors Field — and plays like it, too. Despite pitching half his games in a bandbox, though, Barnes dominated, soaring to a 1.21 ERA and 2.40 DRA across 22.1 innings. During his brief cup of coffee in the Show, he sustained that success, with a 2.70 ERA and 3.87 DRA in 26.2 frames. And he excelled in terms of peripherals as well, striking out 24.5 percent of his major-league opponents while walking only 5.7 percent. A year ago, Barnes was a nobody; now, he’s well on his way to becoming a somebody.

Barnes works with a basic two-pitch mix, composed of a four-seam fastball and slider. The former did pretty well for him in 2016, on the back of its 95.8-mph cheese. The latter, by contrast, really stood apart. Only 14 other pitchers threw a harder slider than Barnes, who averaged 89.3 mph on the offering. Here’s the pitch in action against the Pirates’ David Freese:

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Here’s that same pitch again, but slower, and more embarrassing for Freese:

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That high velo made the slider a deadly weapon. Its whiff rate was the fourth-highest in the major leagues:

All rankings among 296 pitchers with 100+ sliders thrown in 2016.

Diaz is one of the rising stars in all of baseball, and his slider — aided by a teammate — will grant him that fame. Gregerson and Giles, meanwhile, rode their sliders to dominant campaigns out of the Houston bullpen. (Hooray for self-promotion!) Placing on this list, in this kind of company, convincingly makes the case for Barnes’s elite slider.

Plus, Barnes got something with his slider that the others in the top five didn’t: ground balls. His slider had a grounder rate of 58 percent this season — which slotted him 27th in baseball — whereas none of the other high-whiff sliders broke 50 percent. That combination made the slider a nightmare for opposing hitters, which in turn made Barnes a formidable bullpen presence for the Brewers.

The righty does have some warts. Since Barnes has no offspeed pitch to speak of, he struggled against lefties in 2016, who knocked him around for a .299 TAv. But some pitchers can use their breaking balls to retire all opponents. For an example of this, look no further than Smith; the southpaw ratcheted up his slider usage last year against everyone and became a phenomenal reliever by doing so. Barnes’s slider might have a higher ceiling than Smith’s, since the former has higher velocity and even more whiffs. Perhaps as he works to hone it, he’ll lose the platoon split and blossom further.

It’s always dangerous to read deeply into a small sample size, especially for relief pitchers. Axford had two phenomenal seasons, then melted down; Henderson put together one spectacular campaign before falling apart. It’s entirely possible that a similar fate could befall Barnes. In the doldrums of the offseason, though, we like to dream big. Why can’t the guy with a 94th-percentile whiff rate over 20 innings sustain that over 60 or 70 frames? The limits of the sample notwithstanding, Barnes has displayed elite potential, and he stands a decent shot at fulfilling that potential if he can keep this up.

Heading into the 2017 season, Tyler Thornburg most likely has the inside track on the closer job for Milwaukee, owing to his consistency throughout the 2016 campaign. That shouldn’t discourage Barnes, whose unheralded breakout established him as a top-notch reliever. With that slider in tow, and a respectable fastball supporting it, we could be seeing this face…

…a lot more often.

Worst Play: Oddly enough, the player who nearly blew the game for the Brewers was (arguably) the team’s most reliable contributor. Thanks to Domingo Santana’s eighth-inning blast, Milwaukee carried a 4-3 lead heading into the bottom of the ninth, where Tyler Thornburg would hopefully seal up the W. The righty allowed a leadoff single, then set down Carlos Gonzalez and Tom Murphy on strikes, but not before the runner advanced to second on a wild pitch. Down to their last out, the Rockies made that advancement count: Jordan Patterson lined a single into right field, bringing in the run and advancing to third on Andrew Susac’s throwing error.

Patterson’s single/error (-.478) dropped the Brewers’ chances of winning from 83.7 percent to 35.9 percent. It was the single biggest play of the day for either team, and for Thornburg, it was the worst play of his career by Win Probability Added. At the end of the day, it didn’t make a difference — and Thornburg getting an inning-ending groundout to strand the runner at third helped matters — but the untimely hit still cost the Brewers.

Thornburg entered 2016 without much major-league experience to his name, thanks to a series of injuries and incompetent play when he made it onto the field. He broke out this year, with a 2.15 ERA and 2.93 DRA across 67.0 innings, and he slotted in nicely as the team’s closer after Jeremy Jeffress went to Texas. But he did relinquish eight leads on the year, which a reliable reliever should avoid. (I’ll talk more about Thornburg’s 2016 in a moment.)

Best Play: The Brewers wouldn’t stay down for long: In the very next inning, they took back the lead for good. After Chris Rusin retired the first two hitters, Orlando Arcia tallied his third hit of the game, a double down the left-field line. That brought Susac back to the plate, where he redeemed himself for his earlier misplay. On a 1-1 changeup, he drove a tie-breaking home run into the seats in left, the first long ball of his Brewers career.

Susac’s dinger (+.432) upped the Brewers’ win probability from 45.0 percent to 88.6 percent. It didn’t matter that Jake Elmore grounded out to end the frame — with Corey Knebel coming on in the bottom of the tenth, the Brew Crew was in line for victory. Knebel held up his end of the bargain, setting down the side in order to close the book on Colorado and end Milwaukee’s year on a high note.

Susac’s offense probably isn’t his strongest feature — he’s always done a phenomenal job framing-wise in the minor leagues, although that ability hasn’t yet made the leap. Still, it helps to have a solid bat from a backstop, which he’s possessed thus far in his major-league career. If his injury woes don’t hold him back, he could become a serviceable replacement for Jonathan Lucroy. And hell, Lucroy had an offensive breakout in Miller Park; maybe Susac could develop into a weapon at the plate as well as one behind it.

Trend to Watch: Craig Counsell wanted to make the final game of 2016 a bullpen affair, meaning no pitcher (ideally) would see the lineup turn over. Together with the trip to extra innings, that brought eight Brewers pitchers to the mound; combined, they struck out 11 and issued only three walks. I want to narrow in on the penultimate Milwaukee hurler in this game: Thornburg, who blew the save for the eighth time this season.

The run that Thornburg allowed on Sunday was part of a larger trend. He permitted an opponent to cross the plate in each of his last four outings of 2016, which inflated his ERA for the year from 1.55 to 2.15. And those weren’t flukes, either: All year, Thornburg had trouble limiting solid contact. According to FanGraphs, he had a hard-hit rate of 36.3 percent, one of the worst marks in the majors. Sooner or later, that was bound to lead to some runs.

How can Thornburg move away from this in 2017? He should start by moving his fastball up in the zone, where it gets a lot more whiffs and a lot less hits. In 2016, he kept his four-seamer down in the strike zone a lot; while that served him pretty well overall, as the low ERA attests, it can leave him vulnerable to implosions like the one on Sunday. It would also aid his cause if he improved his slower offerings — the curveball and changeup — both of which registered negative run values for the year as a whole, per FanGraphs.

The Brewers will probably revamp their roster in the offseason, bringing in more relievers to compete with Thornburg and his fellow holdovers. Thornburg obviously has the inside track due to his strong 2016 and history with the club, but he won’t stick as closer if hitters keep squaring him up like this. John Axford and Jim Henderson taught us about the volatile nature of relievers; hopefully Thornburg won’t be another cautionary tale in that mold.

Up Next: The playoffs! Toronto takes on Baltimore in the AL Wild Card game tomorrow at 7 CST, and the Mets and Giants duel in the NL Wild Card game on Wednesday. In a breathtakingly miraculous turn of events, the Cardinals didn’t make the playoffs this year; that means we’ll have to wait until the Wild Card winner takes on the Cubs to have an active rooting interest.

Jonathan Villar’s Power

Most middle infielders won’t accomplish much with the bat. The Troy Tulowitzkis and Daniel Murphys of the world are the exception, not the rule. That’s why Villar’s 2016 breakout caught so many people by surprise — not many shortstops (or, in his case, shortstops-turned-third basemen) will club their way to a .285/.369/.458 triple-slash and .292 TAv. That level of play, perhaps unsustainable, combines with average defense to make Villar a marquee young player.

And in the last month of 2016, Villar has taken a step forward in another regard. From April to August, he hit 11 home runs and tallied a .144 ISO. In September, he’s swatted eight long balls already, upping his ISO for the month to an astounding .345. Over a 25-game span, he’s never before pulled that off:

This graph doesn’t reflect just how much Villar’s current hot streak stands out. During the peak at the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016, he accrued a mere 56 plate appearances; his 2014 hot streak occurred over 91 plate appearances. By contrast, he’s stepped to the dish 100 times this month, making this a duration of high power he hasn’t come close to equaling.

So what changed for Villar when August ended? He’s hit the ball pretty well in September, but not to an unprecedented extent. While his ground ball rate for the month is lower than normal, that hasn’t dropped to a new low either. The difference has come when he’s put the ball in the air. Villar has hit a lot fewer line drives this month, which means a lot more fly balls:

Over the first five months of 2016, Villar piled up 34 doubles and two triples. Those totals have come down to three and one, respectively, in month six, as more of Villar’s air balls have gone over the fence instead of to the gaps.

This leads to the principal problem with swapping out fly balls for line drives: Your batting average plummets, because those flies don’t go for hits when they stay in the yard. Indeed, Villar has a .192 BABIP this month — one of the lowest 25-game levels of his career — which has reduced his September OPS to .883. Selling out for power can sometimes pay off, but if Villar doesn’t pump up his average with some singles, he won’t take his production to the next level.

Still, a power-hitting middle infielder has some value, especially if he can take a free pass, as Villar can. And hey, Craig Counsell believes that Villar could hit 30 long balls in a single season — or so Villar says, at least. With an 25.7 percent strikeout rate and 11.6 percent walk rate, he already has two of the three true outcomes down. It would certainly be a sight to see if he could master the third one. Although a single 25-game hot streak does not a slugger make, it does put Villar in the right direction.

Wily Peralta’s Whiff Rate

Peralta’s trend is distinct from Villar’s in two distinct ways. For one, the hurler kicked off his hot streak before September began. In his final start of August, Peralta mowed down the Cardinals, allowing a lone run and racking up 10 strikeouts in a 2-1 extra-inning loss. That set him on a five-game hot streak in which he’s posted a 3.03 ERA, with a 23.9 percent strikeout rate and 5.1 percent walk rate.

What’s given him that success? A boatload of swings-and-misses. He’s put up a 13.2 percent whiff rate over those five games, the highest level of his career:

This leads to the second area where Peralta sets himself apart. A high ISO can have some drawbacks for a hitter, especially if it brings with it a dip in BABIP, but more whiffs for a pitcher are always welcome. And Peralta’s never fooled batters to this level before — his previous five-start high for swinging-strike rate was 11.9 percent toward the end of 2014. Something has made Peralta more deceptive. What could it be?

Well, his out pitch — the slider — has started working again. Over at Brew Crew Ball, my BP Milwaukee colleague Kyle Lesniewski observed that Peralta’s improved his slider since coming back up. Across this five-start span, the slider has induced a whiff 22.5 percent of the time, and perhaps recognizing that, Peralta’s relied on it much more often:

Like Villar, Peralta may not keep this up heading into 2017. The slider can, in theory, put a lot of stress on a hurler’s arm, so Peralta might not want to risk this heavy usage. These results are hard to turn away from, though. Peralta always had the potential for stardom as a prospect, and over these five contests, he’s lived up to that billing. If the slider can take his play to another echelon, who is he to turn it down?

Peralta takes the hill tonight for his final start of the year, facing a mediocre Rockies club that the Brewers haven’t lost to this year. Ending his 2016 campaign on a high note would raise his chances of sticking around for 2017. The Brewers will re-evaluate their rotation as we head into the winter, and the newly deceptive iteration of Peralta might stick in it for the long term.

Best Play: Don’t say the Brew Crew didn’t put up a fight, because they did. After pitching five shutout frames, Brandon Finnegan gave way to Josh Smith. Cincinnati’s starter had limited Milwaukee to three hits, which its reliever came close to matching. Jake Elmore poked a single through the infield to kick things off, and on a 3-1 count, Villar walloped an 89-mph fastball to deep center field, putting runners on second and third with no one down.

Villar’s double (+.133) inflated the Brewers’ win probability to 33.7 percent, the highest level since the second inning. But they wouldn’t get any higher from there. Domingo Santana struck out after working the count to 3-0, Ryan Braun popped up to hold the runners in place, and Chris Carter went down swinging to end the threat. The Brewers would manage to tack on two runs in the following inning off Jumbo Diaz, but by then it was too late.

Perhaps other fans feel differently, but for me Villar’s 2016 season has always seemed surreal. I kept thinking that the hitter who came to Milwaukee with a lifetime triple-slash of .236/.300/.353 would fall back to Earth eventually, yet he never really did. Entering the final week of the year, Villar has a .280/.365/.437 line, good for a .286 TAv and 4.2 WARP. While Orlando Arcia remains the Brewers shortstop of the future, the club can’t — and won’t — overlook Villar’s breakout. Whether he remains at third base or returns to his natural position for another team, Villar has a future in the big leagues, which is more than I could say at this time last year.

Worst Play: Before the Brewers fell short in their comeback attempt, they had to fall behind in the first place. Wily Peralta was happy to oblige. He retired the leadoff man in the top of the first, but the Reds went to work after that. Scott Schebler and Joey Votto reached base, setting the table for Adam Duvall. The 2016 All-Star (hey, it’s true) launched a 1-2 heater over the head of Ryan Braun in left, bringing around the first of his team’s four runs.

Duvall’s double (-.137) dropped the Brewers’ chances from 46.2 percent to 32.6 percent; they wouldn’t rise above 40 percent for the remainder of the afternoon. The Reds notched another run in the first inning, when Brandon Phillips hit into a fielder’s choice; one more in the third, when Schebler capitalized on a Martin Maldonado throwing error with an RBI single; and one more in the seventh, when a bunch of slap hitters manufactured a run off Jhan Marinez.

With Peralta, my feelings are similar to Villar: After as putrid a first half as he had, I didn’t expect him to make it back to the majors, much less excel. But he’s soared past my expectations — and those of pretty much everyone, I suppose — with a 3.23 ERA since the All-Star Break. On Sunday, he had the Reds coming up empty, tallying one whiff for every seven pitches he threw; that kept the game in reach, although the offense ultimately couldn’t capitalize. If he sustains his hot streak into next year, Peralta could solidify a slot in the Brewers rotation for the long term.

Trend to Watch: Peralta’s had some trouble with holding runners this year. (He’s had some trouble with a number of other things as well, but those depress me, so let’s zero in on this one.) Per Baseball-Reference, baserunners have tried to steal in 20 of their 202 chances, a 9.9 percent clip that’s far above the 5.7 percent NL average. But on Sunday, the two Reds who took off against him didn’t make it in safely. That’s because of Maldonado: He made phenomenal throws to nab Schebler in the third and Phillips in the sixth.

With Lucroy out of town, Maldonado has seen more action behind the plate for the Brewers. We’ve known him for six seasons as the human incarnation of Nichols’ Law of Catcher Defense: He’s combined a .229 career TAv with 34.7 FRAA. That’s made him worth 5.0 WARP over 1,078 plate appearances. While most of his strength with the glove has come from framing — he’s racked up 31.8 CSAA in that span — we shouldn’t write off his arm. He’s gunned down 17 of 46, or 37.0 percent, of would-be base stealers this season, one of the best marks among all catchers. 

Those caught-stealings have come at a bit of a cost: Maldonado’s also recorded six throwing errors on the year, including the aforementioned one from Sunday that led to a run. But on a fundamental level, he displays everything you want out of a backstop — a smooth glove-hand transfer, a quick pop time, and a laser-accurate arm. He won’t remain the club’s catcher for 2017, with Andrew Susac waiting in the wings. Still, with an arm that deadly, and that receiving ability to back it up, Maldonado may continue to stick around, no matter how low his bat sinks.

Up Next: Because the Astros moved to the AL in 2013, the Brewers will head to Texas to face the Rangers. Matt Garza and Martin Perez kick things off at 7:05 CST tonight, Jimmy Nelson and A.J. Griffin face off on Tuesday, and Chase Anderson will duel (if you can call it that) Cole Hamels on Wednesday. The jump from the Reds to the Rangers is…large, to say the least. Hopefully, the Brew Crew can make the leap; with a .500 record over their final six, they’d avoid a 90-loss season, which is always a solid goal.

Related Reading:
Can Keon Broxton Make Enough Contact?
Chris Carter’s 2016

I’m not entirely sure which camp I fall into. Instead of ruminating on that, I’d rather look at the players who cross over between the two — the ones who have noteworthy plate discipline in the view of one group, and cringeworthy plate discipline in the view of the other. The Brewers, for the time being, have two such players: Chris Carter and Keon Broxton. Each of them possesses a great batting eye when it comes to balls and strikes…as well as not-so-great judgment when it comes to making contact.

Take a look at their 2016 production in the aforementioned metrics, along with a comparison to the major-league baseline:

As is standard for plus stats, 100 is average, and each tick above or below that is one percentage point above or below average. Also, none of these metrics are park-adjusted. Park factors are hard.

Both Carter and Broxton lay off most of the stuff they see outside the strike zone, and in doing so, they don’t become passive within the strike zone. But when they decide to take a cut, they’ll come up empty disturbingly often. The question is, can the former ability negate the latter?

In a poor attempt to answer that, let’s look at some similar players. We’ll set our thresholds at:

• O-Swing+ of 90 or below
• Z-Swing+ of 100 or above
• Whiff+ of 130 or above

How many qualified campaigns, since 2008 — when PITCHf/x data became reliable — can meet those criteria? In addition to Carter’s current one, just 23:

From here, we’ll look at a few different era-adjusted metrics. One obvious question arises, based on the parameters of this study: How did these players fare in terms of strikeouts and walks?

In general, not too terribly. Except for A-Rod last year and Corey Hart — remember that guy? — in 2011, they all went down on strikes at a clip 20 percent worse than average. They compensated for that, though, with a boatload of free passes: Only five of them weren’t at least 20 percent better than average in that regard. On average, these players notched a 157 adjusted walk rate and a 149 adjusted strikeout rate; in other words, their on-base ability made the lack of contact stomachable.

What about when they put the ball in play? Did all of those whiffs bring weak contact, or did their pitch recognition allow them to see meatballs coming and pounce?

The latter theory holds true, and it’s not especially close. In terms of BABIP, the results are a mixed bag — Pena repeatedly struggled to get hits, while Stubbs never stopped racking them up — but overall, this group was just three percent worse than average in that regard. And evidently, they swung-and-missed so often because they were aiming for the fences: These sluggers averaged a 144 adjusted ISO. In the end, that patience seemed to pay off.

And the final, most salient question: How well did these players perform as a whole?

Not too shabbily! They averaged a 113 wRC+, and only five of them had a subpar batting line. In the end, it doesn’t seem to matter if you whiff a ton — so long as you can make up for that with a discerning eye. For Carter and Broxton, this seems to be welcome news.

Now, a couple of massive differences do exist between Carter and Broxton, chief among them being speed. The former plays at first base, and he’s not the Anthony Rizzo breed, either: In his career, his baserunning has been worth -10.5 runs, per BP’s data. The latter, by contrast, covers a ton of ground in center — and on the basepaths, where he earned 1.3 runs in just 244 plate appearances this year. That speed translates to hitting, too, as Broxton can leg out infield hits and take extra bases more readily than Carter.

This distinction, and the results of the study, can help us to establish a rough floor for both players. I’d imagine that, if Broxton maintains this plate discipline, he shouldn’t fare any worse than Stubbs’s 2011 season. During that year, the Reds outfielder put up a wRC+ of 90 — the lowest in this sample — and accrued 1.8 WARP over 681 plate appearances. For Carter, he’d probably bottom out around Reynolds’s 2010, when the nominal third baseman earned 2.4 WARP in 596 plate appearances despite a 96 wRC+.

Of course, the other difference is that Carter has a lot of experience — and he has bottomed out before. He came to the Brewers this season when the Astros non-tendered him, following a 104-wRC+, 0.4-WARP 2015 campaign. If he regresses to that again, he won’t have much value. Broxton, though, just surpassed the rookie limits this year, meaning the sky remains the limit (in theory). Who knows? Maybe he’ll cut down on the swings-and-misses, retain the selective swings, continue clobbering the ball when he makes contact, and become a star. Even if he doesn’t accomplish that, we’ve seen that this approach won’t doom him.

All data as of Thursday, September 22nd.

Worst Play: Thanks to two second-inning singles — one of them off the bat of Peralta — the Brewers held a 2-0 advantage heading to the bottom of the sixth. Once there, however, Peralta ran into some trouble. Jason Heyard led off the frame with a single; Peralta induced a popup and a fielder’s choice, but the Cubs wouldn’t go down easily. Pinch-hitter Tommy La Stella lined a 1-1 slider into center field, where Domingo Santana misplayed it and allowed Javy Baez to score.

La Stella’s double (-.150) dropped the Brewers’ chances from 79.4 percent to 64.4 percent, the lowest they’d been since the third inning. Peralta would stop the bleeding, though, by coaxing Dexter Fowler into grounding out. That run remained his only fault, and three shutout innings from the bullpen later, Milwaukee would leave Chicago with the 3-1 victory.

Remember early-season Peralta? The one who lumbered his way to a 6.68 ERA and earned a one-way ticket to Colorado Springs? Evidently, that one has disappeared, and good riddance. Peralta must have fixed something down in Triple A, because he’s now made eight successful starts in August and September. The Brewers will re-evaluate and revamp their rotation in the offseason, and if Peralta sustains this momentum over his final two outings of the year, he’ll lock down a spot for 2017.

Best Play: Luckily for Peralta, his teammate at first gave his lead an extra cushion. With two outs in the eighth inning, Joe Maddon brought in a formidable righty to retire Chris Carter. In Triple A this year, Felix Pena struck out 31.6 percent of opposing batters; to this point in the majors, 10 of the 30 hitters to face him have gone down on strikes. But Carter made himself one of the other 20: After working his way to a full count, he turned on a slider and forced it over the wall in left.

Carter’s long ball (+.134) upped the Brewers’ win probability to 85.3 percent, its highest level of the day to that point. A 3-1 lead is quite different from a 2-1 lead; in the ninth inning, when two Cubs reached against Tyler Thornburg, that meant the winning run was at the plate instead of on base. That insurance run may have been what allowed Thornburg to bounce back — he fanned Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant on seven pitches combined.

As the Brewers gauge their outlook for 2017, they’ll have a hard time deciding what to do with Carter. He’ll go through arbitration this offseason and the next; they could decide to let him walk, as the Astros did in February. That seems unlikely, though, as Carter has put together a solid campaign (and he’s come on strong recently). Maybe he’ll depart via a trade, or maybe Milwaukee will keep him around to man first. If he can crack 36 homers and put up a .290 TAv next year, as he’s done in this one, he’ll have a job somewhere.

Trend to Watch: The obvious takeaway from Sunday’s game is Peralta’s continued excellence. Since returning to the rotation on August 9th, he’s worked his way to a 3.26 ERA over seven starts, with a 21.4 percent strikeout rate and 6.5 percent walk rate. But my colleague Seth Victor has already covered Peralta’s return, so I’d instead like to focus on Carter. He’s gone on a tear as of late, the causes of which I’ve had some difficulty discerning.

When the Brewers acquired Carter in the offseason, I noted he was a streaky hitter. He’s certainly shown that in 2016, following up a scorching April with subpar middle months that made his overall line mediocre. Then came September, in which he’s flipped the switch again. This month, he’s stormed his way to a .241/.348/.593 line; the resultant .942 OPS is his highest of any month this year.

Has he made any real changes in September? It’s hard to say. He’s certainly put the ball in the air more often — his ground ball rate this month has dipped to 22.9 percent. But that has occurred over a mere 16 games; it’s nowhere near a career low for him, or even a low this season. Likewise, his September hard contact rate of 42.9 percent is actually lower than his mark from May (44.3 percent), when he hit an unsightly .198/.235/.450. His strikeouts and walks line up with his overall season averages, so they don’t explain the explosion.

The answer might not be that Carter has broken out. Players in Carter’s mold, who prioritize the three true outcomes bring ups and downs. While we at BP Milwaukee — particularly me — like to analyze every minute happening on the Brew Crew, sometimes the best option is to sit back and enjoy it. Did Thornburg care whether or not Carter’s hot streak was sustainable when he had two runs supporting him instead of one? The visceral beauty of one of Carter’s long balls is enough for me.

Up Next: After a respite tonight, the Brewers head to Miller Park for their final homestand of the year, beginning with a three-game set against the Pirates. Matt Garza and Steven Brault kick things off on Tuesday at 7:10 CST. Then it’s Jimmy Nelson versus Chad Kuhl on Wednesday, and Chase Anderson facing Ryan Vogelsong in the Thursday finale.