Most Brewers fans would scoff at the notion that Milwaukee could rebuild their club under similar ideologies or structures as one of baseball’s largest television markets, for the common note would be that the Dodgers always have larger margins of error given the fact that they can simply sign any player they please to overcome any failed acquisitions. The Dodgers do have an embarrassment of riches, but focusing too much on that fact will miss that their most valuable batter was originally signed as a minor league free agent (Justin Turner); their third most valuable batter was another minor league free agent (Max Muncy); their best homegrown batter in 2018 was drafted in the fourth round (Cody Bellinger); and Chris Taylor and Enrique Hernandez were both acquired via relatively lateral trades (the former involving a stalled Top 100 prospect, the latter thrown-in with the payroll clearing Dee Gordon / Dan Haren trade). The pitching side of things for the Dodgers is less scrappy, but Walker Buehler (24th overall pick); Alex Wood (three-team salary-clearing, counterbuilding deal); Ross Stripling (5th round); and Kenley Jansen (amateur free agent, converted catcher) each serve as extremely valuable (2.0 WARP+) arms that were “off-market” acquisitions. Like the Brewers, the Dodgers have received ample value from players preceding their current front office reign, which also shows the importance of integrating talent, independently assessing talent, and avoiding a “my guys” approach.

In short, the Dodgers are effectively doing the things that small market front offices should do well, and then mastering the big market move as well. That they were able to rebuild their front office without faltering at the big league level should be a model for MLB teams regardless of market size (for example, designing the types of decision trees and strategic models that were praised during Friedman and Zaidi’s first offseason need not be restricted to large markets).

Luckily, if teams working in television markets smaller than Los Angeles were eyeing the Dodgers’ rebuilding efforts but balking at their feasibility, that Behemoth’s League Championship Series foe happens to have designed another blueprint for rebuilding while remaining relatively competitive. Certainly, no one would call a 73-win 2016 Brewers campaign a “tank” effort, as that win total is typically within one standard deviation of a .500 record. As former BPMilwaukee Editor J.P. Breen puts so well, to the Brewers’ credit, they began rebuilding before the cupboards were bare; as one will recall, Milwaukee revamped their draft approach for the late Bruce Seid’s final draft in 2014, and was experiencing something of a system resurgence in 2015 prior to any open rebuilding efforts (as many diehard Brewers fans will debate, some believe a “soft” rebuild can be dated back to the Yovani Gallardo trade, which netted current high leverage reliever Corey Knebel and Top 10 prospect contender (and 40-man roster member) Marcos Diplan).

Brewers: just 1.4 fWAR from pre-FA homegrown players this year. Subtract them entirely, they’d still be a playoff-caliber team. Despite bottom-third payroll. Competitors: Cardinals 18.9, Cubs 17.1, Pirates 13.3, Reds 4.3. David Stearns is the best GM in the game.

— NEIFI Analytics (@NEIFIco) September 18, 2018

Recently, NEIFI Analytics recognized David Stearns for assembling a roster with very little “true homegrown talent,” a point that was picked up by Curt Hogg and J.R. Radcliffe at JSOnline. First, one will be tempted to simply emphasize that the Brewers have been “lucky,” so yes, let’s get that out of the way and agree that good circumstances are key for a contending run (especially for a small market). Now, let’s revel in the extremely simple way that David Stearns assembled the Brewers without tanking: Stearns (and his able Front Office team) recognized that cheap talent need not solely originate from the draft, which categorically allowed him to toss aside the idea that the Brewers needed to assemble multiple high draft picks (and their relatively long development cycles) in order to rebuild the organization. (This is such a crucial point that it should be consistently parsed and analyzed throughout the offseason!) Instead, Stearns recognized that there is much freely available talent in the MLB, and many of those players simply need places to play.

In case you’re hoping to point out that the rebuild afforded Milwaukee the luxury to allow a gang of “flyer”, longshot future value plays to develop on the diamond, it is worth emphasizing that Stearns did not throw aside this strategy even while the Brewers were contending. Witness the 2017-2018 offseason, when the Brewers were following a missed postseason bid with minor league free agency deals (and subsequent roster spots) to players like Wade Miley; reliever J.J. Hoover; first baseman Ji-Man Choi; utilityman Nick Franklin; and later, waiver, Player To Be Named Later, or cash transactions involving Erik Kratz, Dan Jennings, Tyler Saladino, and Brad Miller. It’s easy to cite the major success stories in Milwaukee, such as Junior Guerra, Jesus Aguilar, Hernan Perez, and even Oliver Drake (yes, Oliver Drake), but digging into the everyday moves by Stearns and company reveals that this group wins from the top-down simply by not leaving any stone unturned, and constantly seeking to add value at the margins of the roster. With moves like this, it’s not difficult to dream up a 2019 season-opening rotation that features RHP Jake Thompson and Jordan Lyles; Milwaukee’s front office designed a system for recognizing talent through any means of acquisition, and then consistently and constantly implemented, refined, and revised that approach. (To understand how special this is, imagine how easy it would have been for the Brewers to rush out and beat one-year deals to Lance Lynn, or spend their available revenue on Jake Arrieta, as opposed to Wade Miley, to sell a contending team to a fanbase.) One can expect that Stearns and company have learned their lessons, and hopefully for Brewers faithful, they are also refining those lessons into an aggressive and smart 2018-2019 offseason strategy.

So the tank is dead. Rebuilding is dead. Let us simply return to player development cycles, which are long, long, full of variance, and subject to pricing errors.

Long live competitive baseball, now exemplified by the television behemoth Dodgers, strong market Cardinals, and the tiny Milwaukee Brewers. What is crucial to takeaway here is that both of these organizations designed a specific system for success, and carefully implemented that system with transactions that fit their specification and systemic goals. This is not simply to say that every team must follow these molds, but rather that the molds for contending in the MLB are plentiful. In the absence of those molds, the Brewers and Dodgers have at the very least demonstrated the embarrassment of riches that is freely available in the murky depths of MLB transaction wires, should one choose to look. At the very least, the Brewers and Dodgers give an opportunity to every MLB club to evaluate their player development and strategy supply chain systems, for every team has deep draft picks, every team has a chance at the waiver wires, and every team has a chance at minor league free agents. This message might be loudly received in San Francisco and New York (Mets), where rebuilding efforts could justifiably be underway given new front office searches; but one can also hope that clubs like Cincinnati, Miami, and San Diego pay attention as well.

This post was edited to remove a duplicate table entry.

As we approach the end of the season, the Brewers will be looking to line their starting rotation up to maximize their chances in that one game.  They don’t have a traditional ace, especially with Jimmy Nelson out all season, so there isn’t a clear favorite to take the mound.  Because there is no one for the Brewers to turn to without question, manager Craig Counsell will probably have a quick hook and ask his bullpen to do the heavy lifting.

There will still be a starting pitcher, though, and at this point it seems likely to be Jhoulys Chacin.  He has been the club’s most valuable starting pitcher this year despite being a cheap acquisition last offseason, and he is the only starter to be worth even one win above replacement.  Even though his 4.49 Deserved Run Average (DRA) does not jump off the screen, it is the second-best among all Brewers’ pitchers who have made at least five starts (only Wade Miley’s 4.16 is lower).  Zach Davies has missed time but is now back, so he could get the nod, but neither he nor last season’s breakout star Chase Anderson have been particularly impressive this year (5.32 DRA for Davies, 5.37 for Anderson).  Chacin’s 100.4 DRA- tells us he has been almost exactly league average and he has been consistently available, so he seems likely to take the mound in the Wild Card game.

The Rockies and Cardinals also don’t have clear-cut aces to start a Wild Card game, but they are choosing from better options.  Colorado could select Jon Gray, who started the game last year but has a 4.06 DRA this year, or Kyle Freeland and his 2.96 Earned Run Average (ERA) and 3.74 DRA.  St. Louis could use Miles Mikolas (3.51 DRA), Jack Flaherty (2.89 DRA), or even Adam Wainwright (who has plenty of playoff experience, is now back from the disabled list, and looked sharp in his most recent start).  If the Dodgers are the Brewers’ opponent, Clayton Kershaw will likely be on the mound, and his track record speaks for itself.  Essentially, the Brewers will have the worse starting pitcher no matter who their opponent is.

Of course, the Brewers won’t have made the playoffs on the strength of their rotation, and they will rely on their bullpen heavily in a one-game playoff so as to minimize the role that the talent disparity in a rotation can play.  In fact, rotation quality is likely to be more relevant in a longer series when fatigue will factor into a reliever’s ability to be effective.  In a one-game playoff that comes after a day off (the NL Wild Card game will be Tuesday after the season ends Sunday), every relief pitcher should be available for as long as they can possibly go.

Most importantly, though, this is a one-game playoff and anything can happen.  Chacin may be outmatched by whoever his opponent is, but the team with the better starting pitcher does not always win these games.  This is an obvious statement about how single game playoffs work, but it is worth remembering.  The table below shows the starting pitchers for each of the Wild Card games since the playoff format was changed before the 2012 season.  It contains both the pitcher’s season DRA and career DRA to give a sense of the pitcher’s overall caliber as well as what type of season he had that year.  It is then sorted by season DRA.

As the table above demonstrates, Chacin would be one of the worst pitchers to ever start a Wild Card game.  But the only pitcher who’d been having a worse year did win the game, and six of the top seven names on this list lost or did this.

In 2012, Joe Saunders pitched 5 2/3 innings for the Orioles and held the Rangers to just one run.  Because one game of baseball is unpredictable, Chacin could very well do the same thing.  The Brewers won’t need him to do that, though.  Davies will likely be available out of the bullpen, and Josh Hader and Jeremy Jeffress will be asked to pitch more than one inning.  Chacin will only be asked to keep Milwaukee in the game.  The fact that he doesn’t match up to the usual caliber of Wild Card game starting pitchers is relevant but not determinative; the Brewers will have ridden their offense and bullpen to the playoffs, and they will count on that part of their roster in this winner-take-all game.