It’s unclear where Perez will play next season — with Orlando Arcia likely up for good and Jonathan Villar locked into one of the remaining infield slots and Scooter Gennett still hanging around, Perez may have to float around the infield or even play some outfield as he did last season. But either way, the Brewers will have to find somewhere to play him — there was too much life in his bat in the late season to keep him on the bench. Perez has managed to play his way into the Brewers future after the Tigers cast him off, and if he can keep up this improvement in 2017, he’ll become the latest in what has become a tradition of Brewers waiver claims (or otherwise freely available talent) making good on a last chance in Milwaukee.

To me, that was the defining aspect of Doug Melvin’s tenure as Milwaukee Brewers general manager. Sure, there was the club’s great record of drafting talented hitters, as the wave of prospects that Melvin, Jack Zduriencik and company hit on in the mid-2000s — Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder, Corey Hart and J.J. Hardy — comprised the core of Milwaukee’s recent playoff teams. But that wasn’t enough to push the Brewers to victory, as we saw in the years between postseason appearances when there just wasn’t sufficient talent surrounding them. What pushed the 2011 club in particular above the rest was Melvin’s ability to grab players off the scrap heap who fit perfectly around the stars who powered those teams.

That list includes the likes of Casey McGehee, a waiver claim from the Cubs in 2009 who gave the Brewers four years as the starting third baseman; John Axford, who went from minor league free agent to nearly infallible closer in 2011; Chris Narveson, another minor league free agent who held down critical innings in the rotation; Nyjer Morgan, who was given a last chance in Milwaukee after the Nationals were all but ready to cut him before the 2011 season; Marco Estrada, who only needed a chance to prove the power of his changeup after the Nationals discarded him over supposed attitude problems; and Gabe Kapler, who was managing in the low minors before he became Milwaukee’s spark plug off the bench in 2008.

Hopefully this is an area in which the Brewers front office can learn from the continued presence of Doug Melvin as an adviser. Milwaukee will always be limited by market size. While they should have no problem getting the payroll over $100 million when the club is ready to go all in, the Brewers can’t match the spending power the Cubs displayed this past offseason in adding Ben Zobrist, Jason Heyward and Jon Lester to their rebuilt core. And that’s why they’ll need to be able to acquire difference makers off the scrap heap much like Melvin did in the latter half of the past decade.

Even with his slow start last season, Perez finished with a solid 2.4 BWARP thanks to his pop and defensive versatility. He won’t even be arbitration eligible until 2018 and free agent eligible until 2021, meaning if he can prove 2016’s second half wasn’t a fluke, he will almost certainly be a part of the next contending Brewers squad. Now as the Brewers turn their attention from scorching the earth to building a new core, they’ll need to keep their eyes trained on the waiver wire and the minor league free agent list. There are more Perezes out there, and if the Brewers are going to compete sooner rather than later, David Stearns will need to keep finding them like his predecessor Doug Melvin did so well during his time at the helm.

I thought this was an interesting topic, and idea, so decided to tackle it myself, but look at it differently. Zettel is looking at trades, but there are many ways in which players can be acquired.

If we simply look at the 2016 Brewers twelve of the players on that team were acquired through a trade, thirteen were acquired through the draft. In fact, the Brewers got players from many different ways and sources.

I think the most striking part of this graph isn’t that the Brewers mostly constructed their team through the amateur draft, trades, and free agency. These are all common resources for acquiring players. No, the most surprising aspect of this chart is that nine players came from waivers.

Traditionally I don’t, and I think most people don’t, think of teams being constructed through waiver claims. Usually, general managers get touted or criticized for their great trades, their great drafts, or free agent signings.

I mean, just look at Dave Dombrowski. He’s basically made a name for himself through his trades. Other GMs, such as Theo Epstein, get a lot of praise for their draft picks and even their free agent signings. But, you don’t often hear of GMs making shrewd waiver claims. At least, you don’t often hear it in the main stream. But, as the Brewers proved this past offseason, a team can make shrewd moves in the waiver wire, such as claiming Junior Guerra, Hernan Perez, and Kirk Nieuwenhuis, all of whom had an impact on the 2016 roster. Obviously, a number of waiver claims didn’t pan out, and obviously the Brewers were in the perfect position to take chances on these type of players. Therefore, I was interested to see how the Brewers constructed their teams in the past. Did they always consist of these waiver claims, and if not, what were the most common acquisition types?

To do this, I scraped data from baseball reference. An important note to point out is that this is not players that are acquired yearly. This data is the yearly number of Brewers players on a roster and their transaction type. This is not the yearly transactions. For example, in the first chart, Ryan Braun was on the roster and he was acquired via the amateur draft. He is also counted in 2015, 2014, 2013, and so on as an amateur draft data point. Another example: Hernan Perez signed a minor league contract to remain in Milwaukee for 2016, but he is counted as a waiver claim because that is how the Brewers originally acquired him.

First, let’s look at the overall values since 1970.

Most Brewers teams are constructed through trades, draft picks, and free agency. That’s not a huge surprise. The biggest difference between this chart, and the last one, however, is the waiver claims. In fact, on average, a Brewers team will usually only have around 1.7 players who were acquired from waivers. That’s a stark difference from the nine players who played for the Brewers in 2016 who came from waiver claims.

Therefore, I decided to look at how this information was trending.

This explains a lot. In 1970 and 1971, the vast majority of the players on the Brewers roster came from trades. More so than any other transaction type. But, as the franchise grew and changed, so has its ways of creating a team.

In the late 80s, and mid-90s, the draft mostly dominated how the Brewers were created, and free agent signings were also on the rise. Waiver claims, however, barely happened, if at all during those times. Instead, they’ve been more frequent since the start of the 21st century, at least for the Brewers, and there’s been a drastic uptick over the past few years.

I think, in part, this is due to the rebuild, and the new approach of GM David Stearns. Stearns, over the 2015-2016 offseason, made a number of shrewd and calculated player acquisition moves. He focused on getting players that are of very low risk but that could end up being high-reward.

Some of these acquisitions were obviously made through trades and low-risk signings, but a number of them were also made through waiver claims.

But, Stearns has only been in office for one season, and the four categories have been converging on each other for a few years now. Mainly, it seems that the Brewers are becoming more diverse in how they are creating their teams. Not just relying on trades or the draft.

This is important because it means that they are becoming more open and creative in their team constructing.

Building a team, and a good one, is obviously a challenging endeavor. There are many ways to do it, but if a team is only looking at one way of acquiring players, then that can be problematic. It means that you can become too dependent on a specific strategy, and less open to ulterior ways of accumulating good assets. Waiver claims, and other lesser known forms of player acquisition, usually aren’t all that sexy. They are not very popular, and most of the time we don’t even know the players that are being picked. But, these are good low risks to take for teams.

There have been reports of teams being interested in Braun, and I have no doubt those reports are real.  I assume the Brewers are listening to offers as well; they have no real reason not to, and if they get blown away by an offer I am sure they would jump on it.  However, this isn’t simply a matter of looking for the best offer and jumping on it.  The club has to decide whether they will trade him at all as well.

This is not a unique situation; for nearly all players, the team has to decide whether the return is more valuable than the contributions the player will provide.  The Brewers are even in a similar situation with Jonathan Lucroy, where they have to weigh the likelihood and value of a potential extension.

Braun, however, is a former superstar who is locked up long-term and still performing at a high level, which is a relatively unique commodity on the trade market.  There are reasons for the Brewers to both hold onto and trade Braun.

Contract Status
Braun is signed through 2020 and has a mutual option in 2021, and this is both a positive and a negative.

The fact that he is signed for so long (particularly in contrast to Lucroy) means that he is likely to still be under contract for the next good Brewers team.  If all goes right, this new wave of young talent will be coming into its own in the next few years, so it’s reasonable to expect that the Brewers will be competing for a playoff spot in 2019 and 2020.  And if he declines at a reasonable pace, he will still be a viable big-league outfielder in those years, and his presence in the clubhouse at that point would be a boon.

On the other hand, the fact that he is locked in for so long definitely impacts the amount that other teams will trade for him.  He is under control for the next four seasons, so the acquiring club will know they don’t have to replace him; however, he is also already 32, so that longevity may not be a good thing.

Additionally, it is worth noting that his contract is not as absurdly high now as it was when he signed it.  As I noted in an earlier article, what was a prohibitively-expensive contract four years ago simply is not anymore, as other contracts have risen around him.

Finally, his no-trade clause is a hindrance but not a show-stopper.  Ken Rosenthal’s report from earlier this year stated that he can be traded without his approval to several teams, but at least two of those have expressed some interest already (the Dodgers and Giants).  We also don’t know whether Braun will approve a trade to any other teams, but I imagine he would be interested in moving to a contender.

Performance
This is the interesting part of Braun’s story; his contract is expensive but not unmoveable, but teams’ ultimate interest will be based on his ability to hit.  His consecutive six-win seasons are well in the rearview mirror at this point, but he has had a resurgence this year.  He has posted 2.4 WARP through approximately two-thirds of the season, already surpassing his totals from 2013 and 2014 and matching his total from 2015.

His uptick has, of course, been buoyed by his bat.  He has a .313 TAv this season, which matches his career mark.  Whether the Brewers keep him or deal him, his employers for the next few years will be hoping that this is the version of Braun they will be getting.  As a three- or four-win corner outfielder, Braun is earning his $20 million.  As a two-win player, he isn’t really.

His performance this year is a bounce-back across the board, as his batting average, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage are all up.  Part of this improvement is driven by a high BABIP (.345), but his career mark of .336 demonstrates that he has always had that ability.  Any team trading for Braun will be gambling that this resurgence is real.

Verdict
Both the Brewers and any team trying to acquire Braun are in a tough spot.  Braun is a franchise cornerstone for Milwaukee, and he is under contract for enough years in the future that the Brewers don’t need to trade him now, especially given his improvement.  However, holding on to him–either as a piece for the future or simply to trade at a later date–is risky.  If he stops hitting, teams will be scared off again.

Any potential trade partner is also facing the same risk; the Brewers will undoubtedly have a high asking price, and meeting that for a player who may not perform as expected for the next few seasons is going to be a difficult thing to do.  Giving up real assets for a star is palatable, but taking a chance on a mid-30s corner outfielder is much more risky.

For this reason, I don’t expect the Brewers to deal Braun this season.  With just a few suitors and the Brewers in no rush, it is difficult to imagine a scenario where a contending team parts with enough assets to make Milwaukee happy.  Instead, I expect the Brewers to hold onto Braun for the next two months, hope he keeps hitting, and then explore dealing him in the offseason.

Essentially, Braun’s trade value is predicated on his bat, and he currently has a short track record of producing.  The longer he hits at this level, the more convinced other teams will be that he is worth trading for.  The Brewers just have to hope he keeps hitting or they will be stuck with his contract.

With that said, “all likelihood” doesn’t cover every scenario. In the 2009 offseason, the Brewers traded for a scrawny outfielder who had never hit for power — he’d posted a lifetime ISO of .114 in the majors and .100 in the minors. But after a few years of development, Carlos Gomez started to smack the snot out of the ball. During his five-plus seasons in Milwaukee, he earned an ISO of .186. This leap, while uncommon, does happen from time to time, and we may witness a similar transformation with Scooter Gennett.

In the minor leagues, Gennett did not take walks. Across five seasons and 2,336 plate appearances, he worked his way to a free pass 5.6 percent of the time. In the major leagues, Gennett had not taken walks. Over his first three seasons in the show, he had gone to bat 1,095 times, 4.0 percent of which ended in a walk. This, it seemed, was simply Gennett’s profile — an aggressive, low-walk hitter.

2016 has destroyed all of that. Thus far, Gennett has racked up nine walks in 47 plate appearances, for an incredible 19.1 percent walk rate. Is there any precedent for this in his past? I’ll let this amazing graph answer that question:

Gennett has played in all 12 games in 2016, so this graph looks at his 12-game rolling average unintentional walk rate throughout his major-league career. Not only has he never done this before, he’s never come close to doing this before. Prior to this season, his highest 12-game clip was 9.8 percent, back in August 2013. To put it another way: There are 321 of these 12-game chunks (since he’s played in 332 games total). In 62 of those periods, he took zero walks  — that’s almost one out of every five! Suffice it to say that Gennett has never experienced anything like this.

So what’s behind it? Perhaps because of his three home runs (!) which lead the team (!!!), Gennett has a 47.3 percent zone rate in 2016, per FanGraphs’ data. That’s a moderate dropoff from his previous zone rate of 48.7 percent, and it probably has something to do with the spike in walks. But the biggest reason for his improvement is what you’d suspect — he’s chasing a lot less often. Gennett swung at 42.3 percent of pitches outside the strike zone before this season, the fourth-highest level in baseball. To this point, he’s cut that down to 27.1 percent, which ranks 83rd out of 197 qualifiers. In terms of discipline, Gennett has gone from the bottom of the barrel to the middle of the pack, a change that has inflated his walk rate.

Gennett has made the most progress in one particular area: outside pitches. Let’s look at some numbers from Baseball Savant. From 2013 to 2015, 166 left-handed batters saw at least 1,000 pitches in zones 11 and 13 (here‘s the zone from the catcher’s perspective). On average, they offered at 29.8 percent of those pitches; Gennett swung at 35.3 percent, placing 137th. Now we’ll move ahead to 2016, in which we’ll lower our threshold to 40 pitches, giving us a 120-player sample. Where does Gennett slot in among these hitters?

Much higher. Higher than Carlos Santana (19.7 percent); higher than Joey Votto (26.2 percent); higher than, well, pretty much everyone. And this change reverberates elsewhere in Gennett’s offense. Since he swings less often at pitches away from him, that means he swings more often, comparatively, at pitches close to him; this has increased his pull rate to a career-high 42.9 percent. As a hitter who does much better when hitting to right field — he has a lifetime pull wRC+ of 164, compared to 119 to center and 118 to right — Gennett benefits from this adjustment in more ways than just walks.

The big question here, as is always the case with April breakouts, is sustainability. Most of the time, when a Gomez-type player starts hitting for power, or when a Gennett-type player starts taking walks, it’ll vanish pretty quickly. But the underlying plate discipline changes add some credence to his case — those are on a per-pitch basis, as opposed to per-plate appearance, so they’ll stabilize much quicker. While Gennett won’t sustain a Bonds-esque 19.1 percent free pass rate, a higher walk rate should be in order. Before the season, PECOTA projected 25 walks in 592 plate appearances, for a rate of 4.2 percent. Now, it predicts a 5.1 percent clip in his remaining 548 trips to the dish. The longer Gennett keeps this up, the more the projections will come around to his side.

Gennett’s transformation has epitomized that of his team. Once a squad full of free swingers, the Brewers have become one of the more patient clubs in the majors, for better or for worse. For Gennett, though, the change certainly seems like a worthwhile one. The old Gennett swung at everything, and that approach generally didn’t pay off; the new Gennett has swung a lot less, especially at bad pitches, and that’s made him one of the best Milwaukee hitters. Every major leaguer tweaks his game constantly, looking to correct his flaws and reach his potential; maybe Gennett can now fulfill his.

All data as of Monday, April 18.

On the Brewers opening day recap, I mentioned this as a trend to watch. The Brewers were also playing against the Giants and Madison Bumgarner, therefore, Derek Harvey of Brew Crew Ball and I theorized that this might be the lineup versus left-handed pitchers. The reason being, Santana has typically been a much more prolific hitter versus left-handed pitchers, as opposed to right-handed pitchers. Hence, when the Brewers face a right-handed starter, Santana would be dropped in the lineup for someone who has typically had more success with righties and who better fits the profile of a leadoff hitter.

It’s not opening day anymore and Domingo Santana has led off every game. The Brewers have also faced five right-handed starting pitchers. Therefore, it seems as though Craig Counsel will have Santana in the leadoff position for the foreseeable future.

The reason Santana is a weird choice as leadoff is not because he’s a bad baseball player, or because he’s a bad hitter. Those two outcomes have yet to be determined. The reason Santana is such a weird fit for the specific lineup spot is because of his hitting profile.

Typically, we think of leadoff hitters as short, quick players who are good base stealers. They put the ball in play at an above average clip as to avoid strikeouts and get on base at a decent rate.

What’s odd about Santana is that apart from getting on base at an above-average clip, he doesn’t fit any of those predetermined stereotypes. In fact, it’s especially odd to see a player who strikes out so much as a leadoff hitter. (Santana wasn’t the Brewers leadoff hitter last season, but since we only have one year of Santana’s major league performance to go off of, I lumped him in with the leadoff hitters. Min 100 PA).

Santana’s base on ball’s profile isn’t that anomalous as compared to other leadoff hitters, but his strikeout profile definitely is. Since 2005, the only leadoff hitter who has had a bigger strikeout percentage than Santana’s 2015 season was Michael Taylor’s 2015 season.

The interesting part of all this is that strikeout and walk rates stabilize quickly. Strikeouts stabilize at 60 plate appearances and walks stabilize at 120 plate appearances. Therefore, it’s not unreasonable to think that Santana won’t deviate too much from this profile this upcoming season. Santana has also had a strikeout rate that hovers around 30 percent all throughout his minor league career.

While that wouldn’t be an unreasonable assumption, Santana’s strikeout rate this season is down from his 2015 or minor league rate. In 2016, he’s got a 22.6 strikeout percentage, which isn’t great but is still down from his norm. Now, it’s very early in the season, and these numbers might drop off, but the Brewers could have worked with Santana during the offseason. It’s possible that either the Brewers told Santana to change his hitting approach, to cut down on his strikeouts, or Santana is making adjustments on his own. Leading off comes with many preordain stereotypes and Santana might be trying to accommodate to those. These are simply theories, however, and are extremely unlikely. It’s a lot more likely that these are merely stats that are products of small sample sizes.

Leadoff hitters also have the stereotype of making a lot of contact and being threats on the base paths. Santana is neither of those things. Throughout his minor league career, he’s never been a base stealing threat. The oddest part, though, is his lack of ability to make contact. On average, major league players contact percentage is at 80 percent. In 187 plate appearances last year, Santana’s contact percentage was at 67.2 percent. That’s well below average, for all major league hitters, let alone leadoff hitters.

We also don’t have this sort of information for his minor league career, therefore, it’s hard to know whether this is a fluke or not, but at this point this should definitely be something to keep an eye on.

In 2015, only 18 players had a worse contact percentage than Santana. Most players who are in this profile, are Brewers old friend Khris Davis, Orioles’ Chris Davis, Kyle Schwarber, Kris Bryant, Giancarlo Stanton, which sounds like good company, but there’s always a flip side. There’s also Mike Zunino, Nick Franklin, Alex Avila, David Ross, Joc Pederson, Joey Butler and more. Basically, in order for these players to be successful, they need to hit for power. If they don’t then it’s highly probable that they won’t become a very good hitter.

None of these players are also leadoff hitters. Most of them are in the middle or at the back end of a lineup.

These players also depend heavily on the home run ball and hard contact. Just take a look at Chris Davis, who’s had a contact percentage of 68 percent for his career. When he hits home runs, and when he’s able to have a good BABIP then he’s an above average player, but in 2014, he “only” hit 26 home runs and his BABIP fell from .336 to .242 causing him to be a below average hitter. Basically, it doesn’t take a lot for these hitters to become below average. Santana’s BABIP was at .330 last years, and showed above average power, but as you can see in the graph, he’s in the gray area. If one of these stats drop, then he’ll probably end up being a below average hitter in 2016.

Thus far, in 2015, Santana’s contact percentage is at 76.2 percent, which is much higher than last year. Essentially early on, Santana looks, statistically, like a different hitter, but as the old adage goes, it’s still very early. We should still keep an eye on this and see if this trend continues but it’s unreasonable to assign any meaning to these numbers just yet.