Albers is coming off the best season of his twelve-year career. He posted 1.2 WARP, a career-high, over 61 innings in 63 games. His K/9 shot up to 9.30 after striking out just 5.26 per nine in 2016. The righty also posted a WHIP below 1.00 (0.85) for the first time in his career.

Last year, Albers was one of just seven relief pitchers to strikeout more than nine batters per nine innings and have a ground ball rate above 50 percent. It was the first time in Albers’s career he was able to pair an elite strikeout rate with his usually-excellent ground ball rate. For example, in 2011, he posted a strikeout per nine above 9.00 but his ground ball rate dipped below 50 percent.

Albers will likely fill the setup role Anthony Swarzak filled in the second half of 2017, but at about a third of the price. Swarzak signed for fourteen million over two years with the New York Mets in December. Although Albers can’t match Swarzak’s flashy earned run average and strikeout rate, he provides much needed depth while allowing the Brewers to spread out financial resources.

Since Albers had a career-year at thirty-four, the righty’s 2016 immediately screams fluke to most. However, the combination of refining his walk rate and his newfound, nearly complete reliance on his slider and sinker made Albers’s breakout possible.

Early in his career, Albers was a base on balls machine. He walked over four batters per nine innings in each of his first six seasons. In the two following seasons, 2012 and 2013, he walked 3.3 batters per nine. Since 2014, the righty has walked over 3 batters per nine just once, and walked just 2.5 batters per nine last year. Although Albers’s walk rate is still not elite, it’s respectable, opposed to the disaster it was early in his career.

Last year, Albers nearly became a two-pitch pitcher after working as a four or five-pitch pitcher throughout the rest of his career. He completely ditched his curveball, a pitch he threw just under a quarter of the time in his first four seasons in the big leagues and 12 percent of the time as recently as 2013. He used his four-seam fastball for just one month, August, his worst month of the season, and then ditched it again in September.

Albers became almost exclusively a sinker/slider guy. He threw either his sinker or slider over 91 percent of the time in 2017. In April, his best month of the season, he threw his sinker or slider over 97 percent of the time.

Because of his age and questionable late-career breakout, PECOTA is justifiably down on Albers. PECOTA calls for a 4.64 DRA and just 0.2 WARP in 52 innings for the right hander. But PECOTA may not account for Albers becoming a different pitcher as far as pitch mix goes last season. Additionally, his improved command throughout his career may change his outlook. Albers has learned to harness his control while relying on pitches that dip and cut.

David Stearns gave Albers the first multi-year contract of his career out of faith in the pitcher he was last year. If Albers can continue his solid command, while relying solely on his sinker and slider, the Brewers have just found their new setup man for Corey Knebel for pennies on the dollar.

Photo Credit: Patrick McDermott, USAToday Sports Images

Those narratives will undoubtedly carry into 2018 guided by the very same contradictions: Milwaukee will indeed be developing many young players at the MLB level (including Lewis Brinson, Josh Hader, Brett Phillips, and Brandon Woodruff), while the team also has several opportunities to improve with established players (either through trades involving their prospects, through free agency signings, or both).

To put it another way: GM David Stearns can take the roster in several directions, and certainly has the resources available to contend while continuing to develop some players.

One way to assess player value, and therefore roster needs, is to estimate the surplus value that each player (and their contractual situation) provides the team. Value is assumed to be production and scarcity, recognizing that a player is not simply valuable to a club based on production, but also based on cost and the general availability of that skill set within the MLB. Surplus is the difference provided between a player’s production and their contract, recognizing that these aspects can be double-counted (a team simultaneously receives a player’s production on the field and their production gauged against their contract). Based on these assumptions, I tracked the surplus value of the Brewers 40-man roster (as of October 20, 2017) by using harsh depreciation to reduce each player’s maximum value (recognizing that a player’s performance typically declines over time save for rare cases).

The following chart tracks changes in surplus entering 2017 to entering 2018, while also assigning an Overall Future Potential (OFP) role for each Brewers roster member:

What these surplus numbers can suggest, in the abstract, is the difference between “the number of the wins above replacement” a player will produce during their contract and the OFP a team might receive if they traded the player at this point in time (alternately, they might suggest a contract range; for example, if the Brewers offered Neil Walker a $30 million contract, they would likely retain some surplus value during that contract).

Using the extremely interesting and difficult case of Jonathan Villar to interpret this table, his 2016 campaign and contract control years still loom large enough to suggest that the Brewers should not move the infielder for cheap; but the shortstop-turned-bench/utility option does mean that Villar’s ultimate role is trending downward, meaning that if Milwaukee believes that role decline is real and will continue to materialize, moving Villar for less than his top value could offset the issues of rostering a declining role. This should outline the difficulty of making roster decisions: in the case of Villar, there is not necessarily a right answer.

I should add that surplus value is abstract in the sense that there is a point at which additional surplus does not provide a team transaction value. Scooter Gennett and Chris Carter should be the most specific examples of this phenomenon in recent Brewers memory, as both players retained solidly positive surplus value entering 2017, but were essentially unwanted on the trade market and therefore expendable for nothing. Following this example, a rule of thumb might be to expect any type of roster move once a player’s surplus value dips below $20 million (or, less than three wins above replacement). Looking at the table of the Brewers roster above, this fact should seem intuitive with many of the names on the list (for example, it is highly unlikely that the Brewers would be able to move a player like Andrew Susac or even Eric Thames for their maximal surplus value).

By averaging each player’s 2017, 2018, and OFP surplus value, and comparing that to their change in value over time, a rather intuitive 2018 roster emerges. In this case, I excluded each player with a Negative-50 percent change in value (ex., a 50 percent decline), which produced need at Catcher, Second Base, and Right-Handed Pitcher, with additional question marks about the Utility roles. This is a rather succinct picture of the actual needs for the 2018 Brewers, and it also shows that if a few key free agents are retained, or similar free agents from outside the organizational signed, the Brewers can assemble quite a good roster:

These tables need not force an analyst to rely on numbers alone in order to validate roster decisions. Compare the following descriptions of potential role upgrades for the 2018 Brewers with those players’ statistical trends, and find nearly 20 roster spots (on the 40-Man) that can be upgraded for 2018:

The benefit of this exercise is that additional roster functions can be analyzed, either through descriptive or analytical means. For example, one could compare some of the best Rule 5 Draft Roster Protection candidates with the players above in order to find the most salient moves for the future value of the organization. Via Brewerfan.net:

Once again, this should exhibit a rather intuitive process of evaluation. If the future value of a catcher such as Jacob Nottingham is better than either Stephen Vogt, Andrew Susac, or Jett Bandy (or all three players), it should not hurt to lose one of those players in order to roster Nottingham. Each of these catchers are good candidates for contractual non-tenders for this reason (and, indeed, catcher is a position that the Brewers can upgrade in terms of depth behind/alongside Manny Pina). Similarly, allowing Matt Garza to walk via free agency and rostering Marcos Diplan, Freddy Peralta, or Devin Williams in that place should improve the pitching surplus of the roster. Where it gets more interesting is considering a player like Mauricio Dubon, and whether he simply takes the spot of free agent Eric Sogard, or overtakes Villar or Hernan Perez.

Using these analytical approaches should validate the fact that the Brewers are in a unique position entering 2018. They are a good team, indeed, that also features many up-and-coming players to develop at the MLB level and many declining roles that can be replaced. Where surplus value becomes useful is targeting particular trades, or simply determining when a player should be released or non-tendered.

A player like Keon Broxton, Perez, Susac, or Vogt should demonstrate this difficult decision-making process, and perhaps cause fans to realign their expectations that these types of players can receive impactful trade returns to Milwaukee. Given the packed outfield for 2018, the Brewers could conceivably release a player like Broxton should trade partners refuse to bite with a 45-to-50 OFP / quality depth trade (matching Broxton’s $11.5M-to-$19.8M surplus), for the trouble is that Broxton’s expected role is indeed declining (and any particular trade partner will also know that). This should not simply be viewed as picking on Broxton, as the point exists for Vogt and several other players on the roster.

“Slingin’ Stearns” earned his nickname for wheeling-and-dealing on the trade market during his first offseason in Milwaukee, but that reputation has calmed over time (not surprisingly, as the club completed their rebuilding process). Stearns did not show any hesitation in aggressively using waiver claims and releases to define his 2016-2017 offseason, and now the GM’s reputation may be defined by how effectively he clears roster space for what’s next: refined future development and improved MLB roles to contend in 2018.

The 2017 season proved that these goals can align and coexist within the same roster, so there are no excuses for failing to improve this strategy by learning from the 2017 progression.

Photo Credit: Jim Young, USAToday Sports Images.

The Brewers traded for reliever Anthony Swazak on Wednesday and promptly used him in his first two games in a Milwaukee uniform. Swarzak has lived a journeyman’s life: the Brewers are his fifth team across eight seasons in MLB. The biggest difference between Swarzak now and the guy who signed as a free agent with the White Sox in January has been the massive jump in swinging strike rate. This has been quite the trick for Swarzak to pull off. To wit, here’s his plate discipline numbers. In 2017 compared with his career averages, Swarzak has thrown more pitches in the strike zone and induced more swings while dramatically lowering contact on his pitches. These changes arrived a year after changing his pitch mix to become exclusively a fastball/slider pitcher, throwing each pitch around half the time.

Over Swarzak’s two appearances last weekend, he threw an inning in each game, striking out two batters, walking one, and allowing one hit (a home run). He threw fourteen fastballs and sixteen sliders, inducing five swings and misses (in line with his numbers this season). That one blip was a home run.

Normally, Swarzak is throwing his pitches in the bottom right squares on that plot, and that’s where he’s had great success this year. The pitch to Baez was in one of those deep red squares on the other side of the plate, which was an inside pitch to Javier Baez. So long as Swarzak stays where’s he’s had success against both righties and lefties, then he should continue to produce for the Brewers. When he misses his spots, the ball goes far.

After his seven innings during Sunday’s start, Zach Davies has now pitched at least seven innings in three straight starts for the first time in his career. While Davies pitched a strong game, allowing only three runs across those seven innings, he ran into trouble after he recorded two outs in the sixth inning. He allowed four straight hits, all solid contact except for a dribbler infield single. Davies ran into trouble because he lost the strike zone. He’s not the most reliable strike thrower in baseball, throwing in the strike zone on 43.67 percent of his pitches. Among pitchers who have thrown at least 1,000 pitches this season, which seems like a good separator of starters and relievers, only twenty three pitchers out of 153 have a lower zone rate.

Davies threw a first pitch ball to every batter who got a hit in that sixth inning. Here are Davies’ numbers based on whether the first pitch of an at bat is a ball or a strike:

Obviously, batters are going to draw more walks when spotted a ball, but the big difference is in their slugging percentage. Batters tee off on Davies when he starts them off with a ball. If Davies keeps missing the zone, then he needs to aim more for the heart of the plate, which is where mistakes happen. It’s a shame that this four batter run rained on an otherwise excellent day for Davies. Unfortunately, on a day where the bats were silent, the Brewers lost the game in this stretch.

Up Next: The Brewers have today off the regroup, and possibly add another piece to the roster before the Trade Deadline closes. Then the Cardinals come into Milwaukee for a three game series, continuing one of the more difficult stretches of the season for the team. With the Brewers now in second place, the Cards are breathing down their necks, only two games behind.