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Jhan Marinez: Stuff & Results

One name in the bullpen that even casual Brewers fans might not be familiar with, given his usage, is human white flag Jhan (pronounced Yahn) Marinez. If you’re not familiar with the name, that’s probably because his appearances come after most people have stopped watching. Milwaukee is 3-15 in games Marinez appears in, and the Brewers were trailing by four or more runs in 11 of his 18 appearances (and had leads of that size in two more). 84% of the batters he has faced with Milwaukee this season have been in low leverage situations. That kind of usage pattern suggests a poorly performing mop-up guy and forces upon the Brewers fan psyche horrifying flashbacks to Wei-Chung Wang in 2014.

Yet Marinez has been one of the most effective pitchers on Milwaukee’s staff this season. His 3.63 DRA is the fourth-lowest on the team, better than Junior Guerra and Jeremy Jeffress. His PWARP of 0.4 is fifth, ahead of every starter except Guerra and Zach Davies. He has a stellar 24.6 percent strikeout rate that pairs well with an acceptable 9.5 percent walk rate. His 2.59 ERA (including 3.2 innings with Tampa Bay) this season places him squarely in the top quarter of relievers, all while suffering the effects of a .380 BABIP in front of one of the league’s worst defenses.

Why, then, is he being utilized in such a manner? I’m going to do something I don’t really like doing when I write for you fine folks and tell you that try as I might, I couldn’t find the answer. He hasn’t proven incapable of handling pressure: he’s one for one in hold opportunities, having successfully navigated choppy waters in his only chance to do so. In just his second game with Milwaukee, Marinez’s number was called to protect a one-run lead after Wily Peralta put runners on second and third with one out. He struck out Reid Brignac (look, he is a major league baseball player, it counts) and coaxed a fly out from Nick Markakis to keep the score 3-2. He has actually performed better in mid- and high leverage situations this season, though we’re of course forced to concede small sample size bias. In 18 batters faced, he has a 44.4 percent strikeout rate, an 8.0 K/BB ratio, and he’s held opponents to a .532 OPS.

The 27-year-old owns a mid-90s heater that he pairs with a slider that sits around 83-88. The latter is the out pitch: 25 of his 37 strikeouts have come via the slider, and opposing batters have just five hits off of it. He’s an erstwhile top prospect who appeared in the Futures Game in 2011, and though he debuted in 2010 he remains a rookie, having entered the season with just six major league innings. Milwaukee is Marinez’s sixth team, having been acquired in exchange for cash from the Rays after they designated him for assignment after three solid appearances. He appears now to be the winner of David Stearns’s game of musical chairs that was conducted throughout the season’s first month, having replaced Michael Kirkman, who replaced Sam Freeman, and so on.

The knock against Marinez throughout his career has been problems with control. He was jettisoned from the Tigers organization in 2014 after putting up a 21 percent walk rate in 18 innings with Triple-A Toledo. He surrendered a free pass 13.6 percent of the time during his minor league career. So far this season, however, he’s figured that out: he’s right around the major league average with a 56.8 percent first pitch strike rate, and while his percentage of balls in the zone is slightly lower than average, he’s generating an above average swing rate on those pitches.

Marinez’s two-pitch arsenal and his occasional bouts of wildness likely limit his potential role to that of a solid middle reliever, but that’s not how to Brewers are using him. Instead, he’s been relegated to “last man in the bullpen” status. As we head into the trade deadline weekend, Milwaukee is expected to make plenty of moves, and a number of pitchers in their bullpen are drawing big interest. Should there be movement, Marinez’s role must increase, and who knows? Maybe this time next year, it’ll be his name that the Rosenthals and Cotillos of the world are constantly tweeting.

TOP PLAY (WPA)
Milwaukee hit back immediately after Anderson surrendered the Brewers’ early lead. Trailing 3-2, Ryan Braun led off the third with a single and Jonathan Lucroy followed with a walk. Both advanced into scoring position on a double steal, and after Chris Carter did one of the three things that he does (strike out), Scooter Gennett painted the first base line to score both runners (+.161). Gennett was awarded a ground-rule double on the play when the ball was fielded quite expertly by a gray-shirted man in the first row, though both runners likely would have scored regardless. The hit flipped the lead back to Milwaukee and put the Brewers ahead for good.

BOTTOM PLAY
Two of Pittsburgh’s strongest offensive threats this season were at it again in the fifth inning. Starling Marte led off the inning with a single, then tied Jonathan Villar atop the stolen base leaderboard with his 33rd swipe of the year (Villar retook sole possession of the crown a half-inning later). Known Brewers killer David Freese cashed in, drilling a double to center (-.140) to bring Pittsburgh within a run.

THE MOMENT
A.J. Schugel’s first inning out of the bullpen was a successful 1-2-3 affair, but the Brewers got to him early and often in the sixth. Villar led off with a walk, Hernan Perez moved him to second with a single to left, and Ryan Braun made their double steal meaningless when he walked to load the bases. A half-inning after the Pirates had drawn within a run at 5-4, Lucroy banked some Badger Mutuals with a liner to left that scored a pair. Chris Carter followed with a sacrifice fly to make the score 8-4 and put the game out of reach.

TREND TO WATCH
The Brewers have been piling up the STATs (Stuff That Angers Travis) in 2016, leading all of baseball in one-out strikeouts with a runner on third. Milwaukee picked up another pair of those on Wednesday, giving them 38 on the year in 159 PA (a 23.9 percent rate). Seems bad, right? No! Immediately following both of those frustrating at bats, Milwaukee got big bail-outs from the ensuing hitter. The first came from no less a rare source than Anderson, who singled in the second inning following a Ramon Flores strikeout to plate Chris Carter and open the scoring (Villar followed with another two-out hit to score another run). Two innings later, the Brewers seemed poised to waste a bases loaded opportunity with no one out that knocked Jeff Locke out of the game. Against the new pitcher, Braun flied out and Lucroy struck out. Instead, Carter drew a walk to score Anderson and give the Brewers a little breathing room.

COMING UP NEXT
The Brewers will wrap up their three-game series with the Pirates tonight at 6:05, as Milwaukee and Pittsburgh each send starting pitchers with 5+ ERAs to the hill for the second consecutive day. For the Brewers it’ll be Matt Garza, while opposing him from the Pittsburgh dugout is Francisco Liriano.

I tell you this because I want you to understand just how startling Gennett’s splits this season really are. In 2016, Gennett is hitting .273/.373/.477 against southpaws, an OPS which ranks ninth in baseball amongst left-handed hitters with at least 50 L vs. L plate appearances. His .850 OPS versus lefties this season is better than that of Bryce Harper, Anthony Rizzo, Carlos Gonzalez, David Ortiz and Jake Lamb, just to rattle off a quick list of All Stars. I hope you’re fully understanding what I’m telling you here: the worst lefty-on-lefty hitter in the history of Major League Baseball is outhitting Bryce Harper against lefties.

Of course given the relative scarcity of left-handed pitching, and the three weeks Gennett spent on the disabled list in April and May, even a half-season of ball still represents a small sample size of 51 plate appearances. This accounts for roughly one third of his careers PA versus lefties however, and it’s already a career high for PA in a season. In past seasons, Gennett’s inability to compete against lefties has forced the Brewers to abandon hope of him being an everyday player rather early in the season, but he’s finally making good on his proclamations in 2016.

I’ve written in this space previously about the Brewers new focus on taking pitches and getting walks, and Gennett has been at the fore of that movement for Milwaukee along with Ryan Braun. Against lefties, that improvement has been especially pronounced, as he has a 13.7 percent walk rate, compared to 7.3 percent against righties. In fact, Gennett’s splits are actually reserved this season: his .260/.313/.395 batting line against righties is significantly worse than his line against southpaws, a sentence that even as I type seems impossible to believe. Gennett’s poor performance against righties in 2016 has actually pulled his wRC+ down below the league average.

Prior to this season, your author predicted that Gennett would end the 2016 campaign in a different uniform. With the impending promotion of Orlando Arcia forcing Jonthan Villar out of the shortstop position, I surmised that he would simply slide over the the other side of the base and push Gennett, who had previously proven he couldn’t be an everyday player, out of a job and off of the team. With Gennett suddenly showing the ability to man the keystone daily, that move doesn’t seem as obvious anymore. There are going to be a lot of moving parts this month as the Brewers move forward with Phase 3 of the rebuild, and while Gennett’s long-term place with Milwaukee is still foggy, he’s no longer a lock to be cast aside.

BOTTOM PLAY (WPA):
Matt Garza’s fifth start of the year did not start out as the 32-year-old hoped. He allowed Washington’s first two hitters to reach on singles to left field before retiring National League batting average leader Daniel Murphy on a liner to left that just happened to be hit directly at Ramon Flores. Bryce Harper followed, and the young phenom jumped all over the struggling right hander, crushing a three-run home run to give the Nationals an early 3-0 lead (+.218).

TOP PLAY:
The Brewers offense tried their damnedest to bail out Garza after he staked them to a four run deficit, getting all those runs back in a big third inning off of Nationals starter Tanner Roark. The bottom of the order got things started for Milwaukee, as a pair of singles from Hernan Perez and Flores preceded a Garza strikeout to turn the lineup over with a couple of men on base. The top of the lineup cashed in, as three consecutive singles left from Jonathan Villar, Scooter Gennett and Jonathan Lucroy (+.138) left the Brewers with runners on the corners and still only one out, now trailing by just one.

THE MOMENT:
Keeping the action right where we left it, Milwaukee sent perhaps the last man they’d want to into the batter’s box, Chris Carter, to attempt the even the score. The Brewers have been abysmal with runners on third base and one out, leading the league with 33 strikeouts in a situation in which one must absolutely put the ball in play to allow the runner to attempt to score. Overall, the Brewers have been able to score a runner from third with less than two outs just 46 percent of the time this season, which ranks 27th in the league. Predictably, Carter struck out, adding to his team-high seven in such situations and seemingly killing another rally.

But oh ho, dear reader! As Carter swung through a strike three, the Brewers had a little mischief planned, as Lucroy took off toward second base, drawing a throw from Jose Lobaton, who might have been better off putting it in his pocket:

Gennett’s cunning baserunning tied the game at four, a score that would hold for less than a half inning.

TREND TO WATCH:
After a pair of starts that perhaps looked a little cleaner in the box score than they actually were to start his season, Garza has now delivered three below average-to-poor pitching performances in a row, and Wednesday afternoon’s was certainly his worst. He allowed seven runs, all earned, in four and a third innings on eight hits. He struck out just two batters, the third time in five starts he has retired less than three hitters via strike out. Perhaps most troublingly, Garza was heavily victimized by the long ball, as he watched three balls sail over the outfield fence.

The striking (sorry, I’m sorry) decline in Garza’s strikeout percentage is an obvious cause of his struggles the past season-plus. He entered the 2015 season with a strikeout rate of 19.8 percent, and has seen that steadily decline the past two seasons to 15.6 percent last year and 12.8 percent this season. His numbers this season suffer from small sample size bias, of course, but his strikeout rate would rate the fourth-worst among qualifying starters, just slightly better than flame-throwing Jered Weaver. When taken with a .300+ BABIP and a 66 percent strand rate, it’s easy to see why Garza’s ERA has been sitting over 5.50 the past year and a half.

COMING UP NEXT:
The Brewers have another off day today before returning how for a weekend set against the St. Louis Cardinals at Miller Park. Milwaukee will hope for better results than a week ago, when they were swept out of Busch Stadium and outscored 19-9, with two thirds of those runs coming in the final three innings on Sunday afternoon. It will be the final series of the unofficial first half for Milwaukee, and fittingly it will be closed out by 31-year-old rookie Junior Guerra, whose 3.12 DRA leads Brewers starters.

TOP PLAY
As has been the case all season thus far, the Brewers presumed placeholder shortstop, Jonathan Villar, was in the middle of the action in a big moment for Milwaukee. Craig Counsell swapped center fielders to lead off the ninth inning and Kirk Nieuwenhuis rewarded his manager by drawing a walk. Ramon Flores, who followed him as a pinch hitter in the pitcher’s spot, betrayed his manager’s trust, switching places with Nieuwenhuis at first when he failed to get a good bunt down and allowed the Dodgers to take the out at second base. Villar, noting that whether or not the runner is in scoring position matters very little if you just hit the ball over the dang fence, did just that, pounding a no-doubter to dead center field to give the Brewers a two run lead (+.428 WPA) and cap the night’s scoring.

Villar is still destined to lose his job at short to a phenom prospect for the second consecutive season, but the previously-held foregone conclusion that he was simply a placeholder in the Brewers organization is now a distant memory. Villar has played at an All-Star level all season and he was brilliant again Thursday night, going 2-for-5 and adding another steal to his league-leading total (24). Villar will not be arbitration eligible until 2018 and is under team control through the 2020 season, so while a trade to clear a spot for Orlando Arcia is certainly possible, the Brewers would be wise to consider simply sliding Villar to his left or to his right. The 25-year-old has shown the ability both offensively and defensively to carry either second or third base.

BOTTOM PLAY:
Twice the Brewers built three-run leads in this game, and twice they gave them back. The first exchange of runs came in the third inning, after the Brewers tallied in the top of the frame to give themselves a 3-0 lead. Junior Guerra walked pitcher Scott Kazmir, a thing that will always come back to haunt you, in between a pair of strikeouts and then surrendered a single to shortstop Corey Seager. Trayce Thompson made him pay, clouting a three-run shot to straight away center over a leaping Keon Broxton (-.309) to tie the game at roughly the same time his brother Klay was seeing his championship series draw to a 3-3 tie as well. Thompson was the offensive star of the night for the Dodgers, going 2-for-4 with a double and a pair of runs scored. The 25-year-old who was acquired by Los Angeles in the three-team trade that sent Todd Frazier to Chicago has had a stellar offensive year and become a fixture in the Dodgers lineup with Yasiel Puig and Andre Ethier on the shelf. His excellent play allowed the Dodgers the flexibility to part ways with the aging Carl Crawford, who was designated for assignment this week after hitting just .185/.230/.235 in 87 plate appearances.

KEY MOMENT:
It’s been a month since Jeremy Jeffress’ sole blown save of the season, but his 19th save was by no means a walk in the park. After retiring the first two batters he faced on harmless grounders, Jeffress loaded the bases with two outs, surrendering consecutive singles to Justin Turner and A.J. Ellis and hitting Chase Utley. The Brewers closer found his stuff again just in time, however, getting Corey Seager to wave at a curveball that Lucroy scooped off the dirt to end the game and give Milwaukee its first victory of their nine-game West Coast road trip.

TREND TO WATCH:
If you aren’t going to hit much, you had better provide some value on defense or you won’t find yourself on a major league roster for very long. Keon Broxton, who is hitting .140/.259/.160 and still striking out over 46 percent of the time, did neither on Thursday night. He went 1-for-3 with another pair of strikeouts, and he made ugly errors on consecutive singles that allowed the Dodgers to mount their second game-tying three run rally in the bottom of the sixth. The first was a routine liner from Howie Kendrick that he booted into left field, allowing Thompson to score, Kendrick to take second base and chasing Guerra from the game. The next was a grounder up the middle from Joc Pederson that he overran, scoring Kendrick and giving Pederson an extra base as Broxton had to double back to chase the ball down. Pederson would eventually score as well on a sacrifice fly from Justin Turner, a run that was upheld after the Brewers unsuccessfully challenged that they had doubled up Yasmani Grandal before the runner had touched home.

COMING UP NEXT:
The Brewers will play out the remainder of their four game set with the Dodgers this weekend with the advantage on the mound by ERA in all three games since they miraculously avoid having to face Clayton Kershaw. Zach Davies and Julio Urias will square off tonight, daring onlookers to identify which pitcher is actually a teen. Chase Anderson and Mike Bolsinger meet Saturday in a match-up of both team’s worst starting pitchers, and Matt Garza will make his second start of the year on Sunday opposite Kenta Maeda.

@AdamMcCalvy This organization needs pitching and then more pitching not another left fielder. Good grief.

— USMCforcerecon (@usmcforcerecon2) June 9, 2016

@Brewers @FutureIs_Bright @GoCards Hmm. You can never have enough pitching; pitching wins ball games, as they say…

— Greg Peck (@GazOpMatters) June 9, 2016

Oh, positional need, they cried from the rooftops! We need pitching, not more outfielders! Of course, the sort of folks who make such proclamations are more typically found calling into drive-time sports talk radio programs or in the comments section of an ESPN article, not reading an article on Baseball Prospectus, even one written by a silly fan who concocts wild conspiracies about dog mascots. However, there’s still something worth discussing when it comes how the draft fits into the Brewers rebuilding process and at the very least, I’ll give you something to link to when your less learned pals demand you cite your sources to disprove their wrong opinions. Here’s how Ray could become the Brewers staff ace of the future.

The obvious difference between the MLB draft and drafts in other major American professional sports is the lag time between being drafted and actually appearing on the major league team. NBA and NFL draftees typically make the team straight out of the draft, and first round picks are generally expected to take on major roles from day one. For this reason, drafting teams in those sports rightly consider level of talent and positional need. MLB draftees almost never appear in the big leagues right away. Since 1990, only 17 players have made their major league debut in the same year they were drafted – the last Brewer to do so was Rickie Weeks in 2003. The average position player has over 2000 plate appearances under his belt before making his major league debut, and the average pitcher has tossed nearly 400 innings. With an average gap of about four years between the draft and a player’s MLB debut, it’s silly to assume you can know what positions will be of need nearly half a decade in the future.

Of course a prospect’s value doesn’t lie only in how he can contribute directly the team effort on the field. Consider the 2007 Brewers, who spent their first round pick on first baseman Matt LaPorta. This, despite having Prince Fielder in the fold, who at 23 years old was already one of the best first basemen in the league. How foolish for a team seemingly on the edge of a long-awaited window of contention to use the seventh overall pick on a position at which they were already set long term! Of course LaPorta never played a game for the Brewers, and was instead the centerpiece of a trade that brought C.C. Sabathia to the Brewers just over a year later. LaPorta never quite worked out in Cleveland, so the bulk of his value to major league teams was not in his on-field contributions, but in the potential teams believed he had.

So Corey Ray may someday contribute to the major league team as a very good outfielder, which is presumably Plan A today. Or it could be Plan B, and he could contribute by being part of a trade that brings a major league player to Milwaukee that fills a need when the time comes. Or he could bust out and provide little to no value to the major league team at all, which we’ll call Plan E in honor of Eric Arnett. I don’t particularly like Plan E, but there’s something to be said for being prepared for all outcomes. Today, Ray is probably fifth or sixth on the organization’s long-term outfield depth chart behind Ryan Braun, Domingo Santana, Brett Phillips and Trent Clark. With Milwaukee’s next contention window and Ray’s MLB debut still over the horizon, however, there’s a lot that could change before we arrive at either.

TOP PLAY (WPA)
After Aaron Hill’s clutch two-out double rescued the Brewers from another bad send by windmill third base coach Ed Sedar and gave Milwaukee a 1-0 lead in the second, Phillies starter Jerad Eickhoff seemed to settle in a groove. He retired four of the next five batters and the only man to reach was Jonathan Villar, who was erased on a stolen base attempt. Chris Carter ended that and snapped a personal 2-for-24 cold streak with a long home run to left that doubled the Brewers lead (+.119 WPA). Carter’s 14th clout of the season came as part of a signature three true outcomes night for Carter: in four plate appearances, he homered, walked and struck out twice.

BOTTOM PLAY (WPA)
The Brewers have had a difficult time scoring baserunners all year, a fact I examined a week ago. The two-out hit in the second from Hill was a refreshing change of pace, but things returned to the status quo in the sixth. Clinging to a 2-1 lead, Jonathan Lucroy laced a two-out single up the middle to move Scooter Gennett to second. Loathe to be victimized again, the Phillies put Carter on to load the bases, giving Kirk Nieuwenhuis a chance to break the game open with the bases juiced. Instead, he skied a popup to left to leave the bases loaded for the Brewers once again (-.075).

KEY MOMENT
In the bottom of that same inning, the runners left on base very nearly cost the Brewers their lead. Anderson did his job, but an error by Villar allowed Odubel Herrera to reach to leave off the inning, and a passed ball by Lucroy allowed him to reach third with one out two batters later. Needing a strikeout to keep the Brewers in front, Anderson reached back and got it, getting Jimmy Paredes swinging for the second out. Craig Counsell went to Will Smith to get the final out, and the Fresh Prince kicked off his 2016 campaign by retiring Maikel Franco to preserve the Brewers lead. Smith remained in the game to complete the seventh, allowing a hit and striking out one for a successful debut.

TREND TO WATCH
Villar continues to make his presence felt, as his name seems to float up at key moments – mostly for good, but sometimes not – night in and night out for Milwaukee. He had another roller coaster night on Thursday: he was caught stealing in the third and his error allowed the Phillies to threaten in the sixth, but his two-run homer in the top of the ninth gave Jeremy Jeffress some breathing room that was certainly appreciated when Paredes led off the ninth with a double. Villar entered the game ranked fifth among shortstops with a .299 TAv, a number that most certainly has risen after his 2-for-5 game Thursday. He’s certainly making a case for the All-Star roster, if that’s the sort of thing you care about, though with the Cubs and Cardinals with young stars at the same position, there’s no chance he’ll earn a starting nod. So far, he seems to be well worth the mild price the Brewers paid to acquire him this winter.

COMING UP NEXT
The Brewers will look to extend the Phillies losing streak to eight, nine and ten games this weekend as they send Junior Guerra, Jimmy Nelson and Wily Peralta to the mound to finish out this four game set. The toughest pitching matchup for Milwaukee will be on Sunday, when they send Peralta, who ranks dead last among qualifiers in DRA (7.79) against 23-year-old Aaron Nola, who ranks ninth with a 2.88 DRA.

Under Craig Counsell, the Brewers have clearly shown a willingness to be more aggressive on the base paths. They are second in stolen base attempts and fifth in XBT percent, which measures how often runners take an extra base on a hit (advancing two bases on a single or scoring from first on a double), doing so 45 percent of the time. Milwaukee’s assertiveness has been mostly successful – they rank sixth in the league in Fangraph’s base running metric, BsR, which seeks to quantify a player’s contributions via the running game in a single number. Despite his 15 steals, which are thrice more than any other player on the team, Villar ranks just fifth on the team according to this stat as his over-aggressiveness, especially at third base, has weakened his overall positive impact on the winning effort.

Let’s take a look at the where the Brewers are having success and where there is room for improvement. We’ll first investigate Milwaukee’s efforts in stealing bases. The break-even point for stealing bases is, essentially, the rate at which you need to be successful in stolen base attempts in order for the free bases gained to be worth the cost in outs. As a team, the Brewers are 30 for 43 on stolen base attempts at second base, a 69.8 percent success rate that falls very near the break-even range at that base. Of course, that doesn’t mean the Brewers are doing a great job here, it simply means they aren’t shooting themselves in the foot. Over the course of the season so far, they can have expected to score at about the same rate had they just not done anything at all. Of course, Specific game situations color the utility of a stolen base, but the lesson here is, as always, never try.

The break-even point for attempting to steal third base is significantly more dependent on the number of outs but on balance, you need to be succeeding about 80 percent of the time to make the effort worthwhile – 78 percent with no one out, 69 percent with one out, and 88 percent with two outs. The Brewers aren’t close to any of those benchmarks: they’ve been caught four times in nine attempts, 55.5 percent success rate that comes nowhere close to the break-even point. The anecdotal evidence you’ve collected from frustrated viewings has not misled you: the Brewers are running into far too many outs at third base.

Quite unsurprisingly to anyone who has been watching the Brewers on even an occasional basis, a conversation about base running, not just for the team but league-wide, begins with the increasingly reckless Villar. The 25-year-old shortstop’s base running numbers resemble the activities of a relatively conservative team so far in 2016: his 15 stolen bases lead the league and are more than seven entire teams. He’s also near the top of caught stealing leaderboard, however, trailing just Mallex Smith and Nori Aoki, the latter of whom is 2-for-9 and absolutely must stop trying.

There’s more to base running than stealing bases, however. Overall, the Brewers have done well on the base paths during the course of normal play. They’ve made 15 base running outs (not including pickoffs or times caught stealing), which is just below the league average. Once again, however, the trouble spot is at third, where the Brewers have been dreadful. That’s due in large part to the exploits of Villar, who has more base running outs at third (5) than all but five entire teams. Here we see the adverse effects of Villar’s aggressiveness: while his contributions by stealing bases has been largely positive, his decision making during the normal course of play leaves much to be desired. Ultimately, this is a matter that the Brewers coaching staff needs to address. If Villar is being given the green light to take those extra bases whenever he sees fit, it may be time to take the keys to the Benz away from him until he can learn to drive it responsibly. If he’s simply running through stop signs, then a rather stern conversation needs to take place in order to stress upon him the importance of doing what the heck he’s told to do.

Villar is young enough and valuable enough to have a place in the future of this team, even after Orlando Arcia ascends to take his place as Shortstop Of The Future. As meaningless as these errors may seem here in May of rebuild year number one, the habits formed now will be hard to break later. There has been and there will continue to be much weeping and gnashing of teeth as the Brewers go through the growing pains that necessarily accompany a rebuild. Whether you’re Team “Who Cares, Let’s Be Aggressive And See What’s Possible While We’re Bad” or Team “Well, You Still Need To Make Smart Decisions And Learn To Be Selectively Aggressive” (these are horrible team names, I’m workshopping them), you can continue to expect there to be as many base running blunders as there are triumphs in the immediate future.

An increase in strikeout rate has not been the only consequence of Milwaukee’s steadfast commitment to taking more pitches the season. As Brewers fans are acutely aware after the last week’s worth of games, the Brewers have been painfully poor at situational hitting this season. Through Wednesday’s games, Milwaukee has hit .235/.333/.350 with runners in scoring position, a batting average that ranks 22nd in the league. With runners in scoring position, of course, base hits are significantly more valuable than simply getting on base.

Milwaukee’s depressed swing rate has resulted in an increase in baserunners by way of the base on balls, but it hasn’t helped them move and score runners. The Brewers left 41 men on base in their four game series with San Diego last weekend, including a season-high 16 in an extra innings 7-8 loss on Saturday. On Wednesday the Brewers left another 10 men on base against Chicago, including three in the bottom of the 12th after loading the bases with no one out and another pair, including the potential tying run on third with just one out, in the 13th.

I theorize here that Milwaukee’s decrease in swing rate is negatively correlated with the number of men they leave on base. My thinking here is two-fold. Taking more pitches, particularly pitches outside the strike zone, leads to an increase in baserunners via an increased walk rate. At the same time, the lowered swing rate tends to leave those runners stranded more often, as a lower number of balls put in play gives runners fewer chances to advance and score. Below is a graph showing each team’s O-Swing percentage against the number of men left on base:

We have a -.50 correlation coefficient here, representing a weak but statistically significant correlation between the two measures. Just a quarter of the way through the 2016 season, we’re still teetering on the edge of the dreaded small sample size, so to further test this theory, here is the three-year plot of the same measures:

The correlation coefficient for the 2013-15 seasons between O-Swing percentage and men left on base is -.46, a slightly weaker but still significant correlation. As I mentioned, however, the Brewers aren’t just swinging less at balls, they’re swinging less at everything. Here are the same graphs for 2016 and 2013-15, this time using total swing rate:

These numbers show a slightly stronger negative correlation, confirming that there does seem to be relationship between a team’s swing rate and the number of men they leave on base. The numbers here help to explain how a team that ranks in the top ten in the on base percentage can still be scoring runs at a below league average rate.

Baseball fans tend to have a confirmation bias when frustrating events happen: when your team is dominated by a pitcher of lesser quality, it’s because your team always looks bad against bad pitchers and plays down to its completion (hi, Cubs fans); when the home team fails to score a runner on third with less than two outs, it’s because they always do that. For Milwaukee fans, the latter has in fact been true: despite have the sixth most opportunities to score in that situation, their 43 percent rate of scoring that runner ranks a frustrating 26th in the league. We won’t use the dreaded “C” word here, but in order to take advantage of the baserunners their churning out with their improved plate discipline, Milwaukee needs to change their approach at the plate with runners in scoring position to focus more on putting balls in play and allowing runners to make plays.

THE PLAY:
It was Jay Bruce. It has always been Bruce, and it always will be Bruce. This time, it was a first inning at bat following a sacrifice fly that opened the scoring. With runners on first and second and one out, Bruce blasted the first pitch he saw from Anderson high into the right field bleachers for a no-doubter that gave the home team a 4-0 lead (+.180 WPA).

That Bruce is a Brewer killer is not a secret. Still, the numbers are staggering. With 21 home runs in 209 at bats against Milwaukee at Great American Ballpark, he’s averaging a home run every 10 at bats, so you can basically count on him for one per series – he’s not gone an entire series without at home against the Brewers since 2014. Bruce has 34 career home runs against the Brewers (477 PA), 14 more than against any other team and more than twice as many as he has hit against the entire American League (541 PA). Jay Bruce is a demon long dead with nothing left to lose, and his sole purpose on this plane of existence is to rend asunder the hopes and dreams of the Brewers faithful.

MILWAUKEE’S SHOT:
This is relative, because the Brewers never cut the Reds’ win probability below 95% after Brandon Phillips’ two-run clout in the second inning made the score 7-0. In the eighth inning, Jonathan Villar sparked a two out rally with a walk in front of Alex Presley, who hammered his second home run of the season to cut the Reds’ lead to four. Ryan Braun followed with a single to keep things going, but Lucroy lined out to right field to end the inning.

Presley has been a revelation since being recalled from Triple-A Colorado Springs to replace Keon Broxton, who never got his first major league hit after earning the starting job in center out of Spring Training. Presley is hitting .320/.379/.600 in 29 plate appearances and seems to be earning a larger share of playing time: he has started three of the last four days in right field as Domingo Santana has been dealing with sore shoulder. Presley’s no prospect: he’s 30 years old and has over 1000 MLB plate appearances. However, he’s walking at twice his career rate, which mirrors the shift up in plate discipline that the entire team has undergone.

TREND TO WATCH:
Milwaukee got plenty of chances against Reds starter Alfredo Simon, who entered the game with a 13.50 ERA in five appearances and four starts this season. Milwaukee put their leadoff runner on in five consecutive innings starting in the third, but any hope of a rally was extinguished quickly as the Brewers grounded into double plays in three of those innings. The twin killings allowed Simon to keep his pitch count way down as he enjoyed what was far and away his best start of the season, going 7.2 innings and allowing three runs on seven hits.

Milwaukee has hit into 27 double plays this season, third-most in the league. This can probably be attributed to a healthy walk rate (the Brewers rank third at 10.5%) and a top-five ground ball rate. The Brewers ability to get on base via base on balls is somewhat negated when those baserunners are consistently being wiped out on easy twin killings

COMING UP NEXT:
Tyler Cravy gets his first start of the year tonight in place of Wily Peralta, who is home celebrating the birth of his son. He’ll match up against Tim Adleman, who made his major league debut on Sunday a tossed six innings, striking out six and walking two in a 6-5 win over the Pirates.