The Brewers need starting pitching help. The Brewers need an ace.

┻┳|
┳┻|
┻┳|
┳┻|
┻┳|
┳┻|
┻┳|
┳┻|
┻┳|
┳┻|
┻┳|
┳┻|
┻┳|
┳┻|
┻┳|
┳┻|
┻┳|
┳┻| _
┻┳| •.•) #Brewers didn’t need a SP
┳┻|⊂ﾉ
┻┳|

— BP Milwaukee (@BPMilwaukee) July 31, 2018

Of course this would be the return line for the 2018-2019 offseason, because the line never went away during the season. A large faction of fans were dissatisfied with the starting pitching in April; they were satisfied with the starting pitching in May, “but can this staff beat ‘a dude’ in the playoffs?” (Yes!, it turns out); they were particularly dissatisfied with the starting pitching when the season ended in June and July, and again they were dissatisfied with the starting pitching at the trade deadline. This debate was simply never going to be won, because there is a contingent of baseball fans that refuse to either understand or accept what GM Stearns, pitching coach Derek Johnson, systemwide player development, and the front office are trying to accomplish. For arguably the first time in Brewers franchise history, certainly for the first time in a generation, the Milwaukee system strength is pitching, and not of the sort of high octane, all-risk dreamy profiles that flamed out at the turn of the 21st Century; this is a system that is built on turning a fabulous diversity of pitching profiles into potentially successful MLB profiles (witness the scouting range between Freddy Peralta and Corbin Burnes, for example).

When the dust settled, the system worked. The Brewers rotation was good. It was good any particular way you measured it; it was a good rotation if you divide rotation spots based on overall Games Started and workload measurements; it was a good rotation if you divide rotation spots based on true rotational scarcity (i.e., comparing each spot across the MLB); and it was a good rotation if you separate pitching classes into “true starters” and “replacements,” and measure each set of pitchers against different “spots” or “workloads.” The pitching staff was good if you believe in “Aces,” and it was good if you don’t believe Aces exist.

The Brewers rotation was good by every measurement except DRA, which should be the significant focal point of 2018-2019 offseason analysis in an effort to understand how Milwaukee assembled an elite fielding component in order to prevent runs.

If you do not wish to read the details, the table above summarizes the comparative results from each model. Each Brewers starter was assessed according to their relevant spot, and then compared by Innings Pitched (IP), Deserved Run Average (DRA), and Runs Prevented.

Rotation One: By Games Started
One way to assess a starting rotation is by ranking pitchers according to games started on a leaguewide basis. This ranking method is effective because it approximates the scarcity of both MLB resources (there’s not a whole lot of pitchers that can work full seasons) and roster construction. One benefit of focusing on games started instead of another performance metric is that analysts can reflect the success or failure of an MLB club across games started totals; for example, it matters that Gerrit Cole and Lucas Giolito both started 32 games despite widely divergent performances. The distance between Cole and Giolito is approximately 65 runs prevented, even though they worked the same number of starts, which raises an important question about how different teams assess the importance of effective starters versus soaking up innings. In fact, had Brent Suter and Zach Davies not faced injuries in 2018, they may have forced this question with the Brewers front office, and Freddy Peralta also arguably faced this (along with innings workload concerns) down the stretch run.

According to this measurement, there are approximately 10 rotation spots discernible by workload throughout the 2018 MLB, as well as emergency starters (who started one game; I will always assess emergency starters as their own category). On the surface, this is a pleasing model; the top starters by workload typically are the best starters in the game, even if there are differences between guys like Cole and Giolito, as discussed above.

On this model, it is clear that the Brewers succeeded because of their depth. A critique about the top of the rotation could be true in terms of DRA, as the contextual performances of Jhoulys Chacin and Chase Anderson were not comparable to top workload pitchers across the MLB. The importance of the depth should not be understated, from Wade Miley and Peralta to Brandon Woodruff and even Gio Gonzalez. If you’re reconsidering Gonzalez’s trade cost, not only should the veteran lefty’s surface performance be assessed, but one should not that, marginally, he was worth seven runs better than his median workload.

Another benefit of using this model is that analysts can assess “phantom” runs prevented where teams “miss” particular spots. For example, Chacin may not measure up to the median Top Spot prototype, but having his performance was better than not having a heavy workload pitcher whatsoever (in theory; Giolito’s performance would obviously have not validated a heavy workload benefit for the Brewers). If a team was missing a Top Spot, they theoretically would be punished 16-to-17 Runs Prevented. Milwaukee did not use a Five, Seven, Eight, or Ten workload, each of which approximately ranged from 2 to 4 runs below average; one could argue in this way that the Brewers also received 10 “phantom” Runs Prevented by avoiding these typical workloads.

This should help to validate the ideal that there are a couple of different ways to construct a rotation. A team could indeed bank on a Jacob deGrom type atop the rotation, and seek a 30 run advantage from their top workload. One must be careful of the cost for this type of pitcher, however, as if considerable resources are spent at the top of the rotation, they may be diminished at the bottom of the rotation. The Brewers demonstrated the “bottom-up” approach: they lost out on the Yu Darvish sweepstakes, and Alex Cobb did not bite on a one-year deal, so they proceeded with Chacin and Miley, plus their developmental pipeline. That internal pipeline was worth approximately five runs (better than their median workload) to the 2018 Brewers, while external candidates were worth more than 15 runs (better than their median workload). It was not flashy, there were no “dudes” on the marquee, but it worked.

Rotation Two: By Team

Of course, even the preceding model is relatively clean or “idealistic,” for MLB teams do not necessarily construct their rotations according to the same ideal. An additional method for assessing rotations is to judge each team’s rotation spot by turn; since two pitchers literally cannot start the same game, this method goes spot-by-spot, start-by-start for each MLB team. The benefit of this method of rotational assessment is that it reflects team preference, or injury and ineffectiveness circumstances, across the league. Some teams attempt to duct tape 13- or 14-pitcher rotations together, whether they are contending or tanking, while others attempt to yield more mileage from each spot. By giving each team one exclusive spot for each turn (until their pitchers run out), this type of rotational model can allow teams to be analyzed against attrition across the league.

Every team in the MLB required at least six rotational turns throughout the season, but this model demonstrates the divergence of team strategies one they hit six starters. Some teams preferred to give replacement starters two or three starts each, while others leaned on emergency starters.

The Brewers front office, coaching staff, and pitchers did a fantastic job weathering 162. They hit the right buttons in replacing some starters at certain points in time (such as resting Peralta down the stretch, or [arguably] “shuttling Woodruff between Triple-A and MLB), while giving starters room to breathe at others point in the season (this also applies to Peralta, who was given some time to adjust from rough starts, as well as Junior Guerra). By spitting on rotation spots 10 through 14, the Brewers also arguably saved 16 “phantom” runs, as the club would not have found effective pitchers (on average) digging that deep into league or organizational resources. (This line could be argued with further research, however, as one could note that someone like Corbin Burnes could have been effective in two starts, for example).

Rotation Three: By Type
During my time writing at Sportsbubbler (RIP) and Disciples of Uecker, I published annual starting pitching rotation rankings based on the decision point of 100 IP. If a pitcher worked 100 or more innings with 50 percent of their games as starts, they were a starting pitcher; if not, they were replacement depth. On this model, I attempted to assess pitchers according to Runs Prevented, with the ideal that (a) working a lot of innings should be worth more as a starter, and (b) rotation spots could be designated based on the resulting Runs Prevented rankings. I’m no longer certain of this method’s veracity, as I believe there are better ways to assess rotational scarcity and usage across the MLB. But, here we are, testing the Brewers 2018 rotation, so let’s assemble the pitchers.

Wouldn’t you know it, the 2018 MLB did not have many “true” rotation spots: there were only 129 pitchers across 30 teams that fit the first criterion listed above. This is not enough pitchers to fill a true five man rotation, and it’s hardly enough to fill a four man turn.

Yet, those Runs Prevented totals present some order to the universe. There are aces, even if there’s only a couple of them. There are nice middle of the rotation “dudes” that you can really sink your teeth into; 150 IP and 2 Runs Prevented feels like a solid effort for a team. Every contender would accept that workload (every MLB team would, for that matter).

Where there are not full-time starters, replacements are necessary, and MLB really dug deep in 2018: there were 227 replacement starters, including 57 Emergency Starters, across 30 MLB teams in 2018. Basically, on average, MLB teams were using more replacements than they were using regular starters. The Brewers are no different here, and in fact, that’s partially how they gained their value. Viewing the range of Runs Prevented across each of these roles should demonstrate the importance of having a solid organizational pitching strategy; replacement starters need not simply be the pitching equivalent of throwing spaghetti against the wall. Tampa Bay demonstrated this with their genius “Opener” strategy, and they produced one of the elite Runs Prevented units in baseball. The Brewers accomplished their success by using long-term replacements like Miley and Peralta, but they also received value elsewhere across their high-floor organizational depth.

If you previously thought the idea of “Phantom Runs Prevented” by not using a rotation spot was a suspect idea, this seems to be your chance to pounce on the Brewers for not using an “Ace” or true “Number One” starter. By this model, the Brewers were gutsy, punting nearly 63 runs prevented at the front end of the rotation. Yet, the club also did not use a true “Number Four” or full-time starter that should have been replaced, which bought the club another 43 runs prevented. All told, the Brewers rotation of regular starters lost the club approximately 19 runs here, thanks to their cavalier strategy.

Of course, the Brewers used every Replacement typology except a “true swingman,” and this is where the club torched the league. Gio Gonzalez and Wade Miley covered the lack of an “Ace” or “Number One” starter, and demonstrated the value in not having a Regular Four, either. Peralta, Dan Jennings (yes, Dan Jennings), and Woodruff gained significant Runs Prevented advantages in the replacement ranks as well. On top of these depth successes, the rotation was not bad overall; Suter and Guerra were close to true Number Three starters, and Anderson was close to a true Number Two starter. Chacin was better than a typical Number Two starter, boasting a Runs Prevented performance that almost placed him in a phantom “Number One” role for the club.

What is startling on this model is that the Brewers typologies also worked according to DRA. Once an analyst accepts that the club did not have a True Ace or True Number One starter, the threshold for assessing DRA is lowered significantly. Witness Chacin, for example, who was assessed against DRA that were significantly better than 4.00 on the first two models; his DRA performance looks much better on the final model, because once you stop comparing him to Aces, the comparison becomes more realistic. The Brewers deep organization also performs very well against median DRA requirements on this model, which raises a question about which model’s expectations one should use going forward.

The last remaining criticism for fans and analysts rests on how one interprets Deserved Run Average results for the Brewers rotation. On any model one chooses, be it based on Games Started, Team Rotational Turns and Scarcity, or Actual Runs Prevented performance, the Brewers’ rotation was good in 2018. Now it is worth digging through these models during the offseason, in order to gain important lessons for Corbin Burnes, Woodruff, and Peralta during their potential first full workloads in 2019, and even for reworking Jimmy Nelson. Milwaukee has proven the success that can come with aggressive rotational swings and an organizational pitching strategy, coupled with elite, efficient fielding.

An underrated 2018-2019 offseason would find David Stearns making moves to further improve the fielding (such as improving Right Field, and then working Christian Yelich primarily as a Left Fielder), which should in turn help boost the pitching depth strategy going forward. As it stands, the Brewers do not even need an external pitching move; this makes potential offseason moves even more interesting for speculation.

New Runs Prevented Workbook || Runs Prevented Primer

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KBQ19VcMZ4g7oW1jkGiYwxCadqjw3rYXkqN200f4lHc/edit?usp=sharing

This is not even some “to-be-expected” regression, as even if one wishes to look at Deserved Runs Average (DRA) throughout the season as a “true” measure of the Brewers talent (which should be cautioned), the Brewers would have been expected to allow anywhere between 23 and 30 fewer second half runs than they actually have allowed.

This is unforeseen and catastrophic.

The blame can be spread around to everyone, from the post-forearm injury Junior Guerra (10 IP, 9 runs on July 24 & 29), injured reliever Matt Albers (1.7 IP, 10 R), former? closer Corey Knebel (9.3 IP, 8 R entering Sunday), and even rookie rotation depth Freddy Peralta (19 IP, 17 R since the break). Worse yet, there is a sense of adding insult to injury, as newly acquired Joakim Soria hit the disabled list promptly after surrendering a grand slam home run in a devastating loss to San Diego, and quietly effective Taylor Williams hit the disabled list with an elbow injury. While fans will feel less sympathy for Matt Albers, who had a couple of different bouts of ineffectiveness surrounded by separate disabled list stints, the veteran righty was crucial to early season success (25 IP, 4 R through the end of May) and each day his injury status and effectiveness is not answered is a day that manager Craig Counsell must carefully ration Jeremy Jeffress and Josh Hader with little back-up. The same goes for Williams, and now Soria; while Jacob Barnes was previously an impact reliever and boasts solid peripherals and a 2.99 Deserved Run Average (DRA), his runs prevention performance in 2018 has not been to the level of that injured trio, and now it’s Barnes, Corbin Burnes, and Jordan Lyles trying to nail down the quietly effective support roles.

It’s as simple as this: the Brewers’ bullpen has two truly fantastic options in Jeffress and Hader, and those options will be great regardless of their surrounding cast. For the purposes of contending, however, this duo is amplified when Stearns’s excellent depth picks (Albers, Williams, even Corbin Burnes), closer (Knebel), and additional acquisitions (Soria) are performing well. Jeffress and Hader cannot do it themselves.

Injuries have also trimmed the rotation, as Brent Suter’s torn elbow ligament and Zach Davies’s back ailments have limited the Brewers’ effective rotational depth. Using Baseball Reference Three Year Park factors, both Suter and Davies combined for 18 Runs Prevented over 273 innings in 2017, offering excellent middle and replacement rotation depth. That level of impact depth performance will not be matched by the duo in 2018. Additionally, even if one could have argued that the club might not have expected Jimmy Nelson to return from his shoulder injury in 2018, having that materialize as a likely injury-scenario reality in 2018 is quite another ballgame. Consider this as Freddy Peralta meets a likely innings limit, Chase Anderson continues an uneven season, and Brandon Woodruff finds himself without a rotational role: #TeamDepth is now basically #TeamNecessity in terms of rotation building.

There’s no need to state it any other way: as much as one would like to criticize the Brewers pitching staff, and GM David Stearns for his failure to build a staff, the club is now to the point where injuries are diminishing even his strongest moves. The Soria trade looms loudest here, as the Brewers grabbed a legitimate high leverage, veteran reliever at the trade deadline and did not get six innings from his right arm before he hit the DL with a groin injury; Albers and Williams could be fan whipping posts when they were ineffective, but the Albers free agency deal looked like a brilliant low-cost gamble early in the season while Williams seemed poised to catapult himself into the high leverage workload discussion (Williams worked a 17.3 IP, 5 R stretch, Holding three leads, from June until the All Star Break).

Citing injuries to the pitching staff is not an “excuse” for the poor performance.

It would have been enough to deal with this group of recent injuries and setbacks, but the Brewers also simultaneously were gifted with a set of role reversions on the pitching staff. Corey Knebel’s descent from excellent closer in 2017 cost the Brewers a chance at a truly elite relief corps; according to Baseball Reference Three Year Park Factors, Knebel prevented nearly 25 runs in 2017. Even a 50 percent regression from that performance level would fit nicely with Jeffress and Hader, who have both been consistent Top 25 pitchers in the 2018 MLB. Add in the aforementioned struggles of Peralta, Barnes, and a bit of stalled usage from the shuttled Houser (he’s only worked two MLB appearances from July onward), and Counsell’s strategic options are looking much more thin while they are also being exasperated by some ineffective starts.

Beyond these role question marks, it is worth questioning the timing of the inclusion of Jorge Lopez in the Mike Moustakas trade. Since Lopez has served the season as an up-and-down member of the Triple-A / MLB “shuttle team” relief squad, discussions of the quality of Lopez’s performance were largely nonexistent at the trade deadline (I’m also guilty of this charge). But, it is worth emphasizing that as a back-roster depth strategy, the “shuttle team” prevented runs at a solid clip, especially when one considers the nature of this replacement role and the likely quality of other replacement pitchers to be acquired in their place.

In fact, these shuttle relievers combined to produce near-average aggregate performance for the Brewers, which leads one to question why Stearns traded Lopez and simultaneously decided to keep Brandon Woodruff at the Triple-A level to serve as replacement starting pitching depth. With Lopez in the Royals system and Woodruff now serving as starting pitching depth, the revolving door relief strategy is effectively dead at what could be the worst time of the season. Given that Woodruff boats a 3.55 DRA at the MLB level to accompany a 52 percent ground ball rate, while also demonstrating an average DRA at Colorado Springs with a consistent ground ball rate there, it is worth questioning why Stearns has not simply replaced Peralta with Woodruff (on the one hand) or simply promoted Woodruff to a steady MLB relief role (on the other hand). According to Brooks Baseball, the relief role is agreeing with Woodruff, who is throwing a sizzling 95-to-96 MPH fastball with more armside run than his 2017 variation, complete with steady change up and slider usage (both with more whiffs than in 2017, too).

This is not a bottomless pit (yet). That the Brewers remain the 12th best pitching staff in the MLB, within one standard deviation of the 10th spot, and sixth best pitching staff in the National League, should demonstrate just how good the club has been for most of the year. Indeed, this pitching staff has fallen off, and it’s important to underscore that it’s not simply “regression,” but a bad combination of regression, injuries, and strategic missteps at the worst possible time. But there could be a quick way out of this issue for the club:

• Get Zach Davies healthy, without any further setbacks, and use him to replace Freddy Peralta in the rotation.

• Develop an MLB role for Brandon Woodruff; preferably this would be a rotational role to spell another ineffective starter down the stretch (or add a sixth man for September), but even a well-defined one-inning bullpen role could be extremely helpful at the moment.

• Re-evaluate depth roles for Ariel Hernandez, Jordan Lyles, Alec Asher, and Aaron Wilkerson, and make any necessary waiver trades to boost the pitching staff. E.g., is Jordan Lyles the right arm to work in the shadow of the successful Triple-A shuttle crew? Is now the best time to make a potential long-term development play for Ariel Hernandez?

• Reconsider Adrian Houser’s shuttle role in favor of a regular one-inning role.

With the assumption that some combination of Soria, Albers, and Williams can get healthy for the stretch run, and that some of the “role regression” pitchers can make adjustments at the MLB level once again, this is a pitching staff that can improve quickly and regain its flexible frontier of roles and runs prevention that were celebrated in April and May. With Zach Davies healthy, a waiver trade acquisition (or two), and potentially prominent roles for two righties that can rush it up there (Woodruff and Houser), this pitching staff can rebound. Now we wait and watch.

Related:
Depth Beats Attrition
Trust the Rotation
Aces Do Not Exist
How to Turn One Hader into Two and a Half Chris Sales

Teams are eager to rely on their bullpens more frequently, and at 5.18 IP/GS for his starters, manager Craig Counsell is about as eager as anyone to turn away from the third time through the order as a starter.

If you’re new to baseball analytics, one of the best possible strategies to learn is the starting pitcher’s “times facing a batting order.” The table above demonstrates On-Base-Percentage plus Slugging-Percentage each time through the order for National League starting pitchers. This may seem like a trivial aspect of the game, but if you read the new midseason scouting reports emerging on your favorite arms, or even look into 2018 MLB Draft scouting reports, chances are you’ll see a line like “without a third pitch, a role in the bullpen could be most likely.” What you’re reading, in nearly any variation of this line, is the strategic idea that in order to beat MLB batters a third time through the order, a starting pitcher is going to need additional pitches to cross-up batters and make adjustments as the game deepens. Milwaukee left-hander Warren Spahn is classically attributed with the quote, “pitchers need two pitches, one they’re looking for and one to cross them up,” but even here Spahn was not quite right; a pitcher needs as many pitches as are necessary to adjust to their designated role. I imagine that if you’re Warren Spahn (perhaps much like Ben Sheets or Clayton Kershaw), life is rather easy with mostly two pitches; if you’re Dave Bush or Victor Santos or Zach Davies or pretty much anyone of the other 300+ starters that work in the MLB, life with only two pitches would probably be miserable.

But perhaps the stats speak on their own: last year, the average NL batter the first time through the order was Cory Spangenberg. By the third time through the order, the average NL batter was Christian Yelich. In order to keep batters closer to the Cory Spangenberg level of production, having command of that third pitch (with a quality “stuff” grade, too) will get the scouts ready to slap that “#3 SP” Overall Future Potential grade.

Manager Craig Counsell was handed a group of supposedly below average-to-horrendous starting pitchers according to most Brewers fans, but as most fans could have surmised from the 2017 squad, pitching was the strength of the organization. And indeed, pitching has continued to serve as the strength of the 2018 club, although statistics like Deserved Run Average suggest that the club may be due for some regression to the mean (in terms of preventing runs). But what was most important about the 2017-2018 offseason was that GM David Stearns built a pitching system, and Counsell’s eagerness to pull starters at just the right time has indeed reflected a machine-oriented approach to pitching. Setting aside the injured Zach Davies and the mechanics-ironing Chase Anderson, the 2018 Brewers starting rotation is lead by Chacin (4 Runs Prevented in 69.0 IP), Brent Suter (2 Runs Prevented in 63.3 IP), and Junior Guerra (approximately 9 Runs Prevented in 60.3 IP after Tuesday night). Counsell has pulled these pitchers early almost uniformly; the Table below compares each pitcher’s last major workload as a starting pitcher to their 2018 workload, in terms of facing a batting order multiple times:

This is what managing with an elite bullpen can do for someone: pretty much every night of the week, Counsell can give each starting pitcher the same workload. In contrast to the narrative of burned out bullpens, which Kyle Lesniewski has also studied at Brew Crew Ball, it is worth arguing that Counsell is providing starting pitchers with a clearer definition of a workload. In fact, the old saying for starting pitchers to “go as deep as you can into the game” is rather problematic; if your stuff isn’t there, you’re probably done after 100 pitches and five (or fewer innings), which will be offset by the great 7.0-to-8.0 IP evenings, or complete games. Counsell and the Brewers are almost giving their starting pitchers better role certainty than any “traditional” starting pitcher has ever had (at least in the last 30 years): “give me your best 16 outs.” This is how you turn Guerra, Chacin, and Suter in a 15 Runs Prevented machine, which is one hell of a low rotation, by the way, and exactly the type of performance that turns a low rotation into an entity that offsets the lack of a so-called “Ace” at the top.

Has it worked? The Table below demonstrates that while there are some hiccups along the way, this Big Three low rotation has indeed improved in at least one area of the game, and in some cases the third time through the batting order is receiving grand benefits. These stats are even before Guerra’s course correction at Cleveland:

What is notable about minimizing a pitcher’s times through the batting order is that they can theoretically readjust their plan of attack. Someone like Guerra or Chacin no longer has to think about establishing his best stuff and figuring out what he’s going to do 100 pitches later; Suter might not ever have been expected to go that deep into ballgames, but even the Raptor-esque southpaw can arguably find some benefit in his ballgame by understanding that he needs to go 16 outs. Looking through Brooks Baseball pitching logs, it is arguably the case that what Counsell (and presumably Stearns, coaching staff, and the Front Office in this case) is doing is indeed turning each of these guys into….let’s call them “really, really long relievers who start the game”:

• According to Brooks Baseball, compared to his full season in 2016, Junior Guerra cut his splitter and slider usage (both below 15 percent!) while increasing his secondary running fastball (which Guerra selected approximately 23 percent of the time entering Tuesday night). As a result, Guerra is getting more whiffs on both of his fastballs as a group, and improving his slider whiffs without yielding too much value from his splitter. He’s also improving his pop-ups, suggesting batters are getting weak contact even though they are facing his fastball more frequently (presumably making Guerra more “predictable”).

• As covered by Andrew Salzman in the latest Weekend Recap at BPMilwaukee, Brent Suter is becoming a fastballl-first pitcher. The southpaw is firing what appears to be a near-cutting, rising fastball (think Jacob Barnes) two-thirds of his offerings, with good results in terms of improving swings-and-misses.

• By contrast, Chacin is much more of his previous self, with the caveat that he’s working his slider slightly more frequently than in 2017 while moving away from his primary fastball a bit. His outcomes with these pitches are rather similar as well, which suggests that even if the Brewers are deploying Chacin in a manner that is more systematic and potentially more radical, he is not deviating from what got him through a very successful 2017 campaign, earning him his excellent contract.

Milwaukee is receiving much deserved praise for their bullpen, which was expertly curated by David Stearns during his first two seasons with the club. Now the rewards are visible during what could become one of the most important seasons in franchise history, returning the club to their first extending contending window in quite some time. But it is worth emphasizing that Stearns was correct in assembling a starting pitching staff that could complement the relief staff, and together with the efficient fielders, the arms are a Runs Prevented machine. None of these moves were terribly difficult to make, either, which means that the most thrilling part of this series of moves is that they can be repeated in future seasons: Junior Guerra was Stearns’s very first acquisition, Brent Suter was a deep draft pick during the Doug Melvin era that was freed into a stunning big league role, and Jhoulys Chacin was a proven veteran signed off the margins of an underwhelming free agency class that nevertheless yielded some surprising contracts elsewhere. This is what systematic baseball can look like in Milwaukee, and it involves neither being “cheap” (Chacin signed a decent guaranteed deal) nor “dogmatic” about acquisition style (waivers, free agency, and draft are represented here). Most importantly for the prospect arms, both hyped (Corbin Burnes and Luis Ortiz) and unassuming (Freddy Peralta and others), the Brewers front office is gleefully demonstrated that nobody needs aces any longer. Bring your two best pitches for 16 outs, and let’s get on with it!

Photo Credit: David Richard, USA Today Sports Images

Resources:
Baseball Reference. Player Pitching Splits, NL Pitching Splits, 2016-2018 [CSV].

On Sunday, Brent Suter pitching 5+ innings, allowing two runs on three hits and two walks, while striking out six. It was his fourth straight start where the lefty struck out six batters. Suter induced twelve whiffs off his four seam fastball, the third straight game in which there have been at least ten swings and misses on the pitch. In his twenty-two previous starts before this stretch, he’d only gotten ten whiffs on the fastball twice. Suter’s feat is amazing because he throws the slowest fastball in the majors.

Suter threw seventy-two fastballs against the White Sox, increasing his fastball usage even more. Suter has varied his pitch mix throughout his career, and in May he almost threw the pitch at his highest usage rate for a month in his career. In April 2017 he was a reliever, and he only had three starts in August 2017, so May 2018 was the most sustained usage rate as a starter of his career.

What’s driving the increased usage and success for what seems like it should be a mediocre pitch? Suter has seen a velocity bump. When he first broke onto the big league club, he was throwing the pitch at 83.5 mph, which is only slightly faster than Jamie Moyer at the end of his career, and not sustainable in the majors. While he could max out the pitch close to 88 mph, he didn’t sustain that level through an outing. This season, he’s throwing harder than before, including his bullpen stints. Suter’s history suggests that there probably isn’t much more room to grow, the closer he can sit to 90 mph, the more effective he can be. And ideally this would also help his changeup, since there’s more separation between the pitch speeds, but so far that hasn’t happened.

Aside from the velocity bump, Suter is also getting a little more movement on the fastball. There’s slightly more horizontal movement and the most vertical movement of his career. The combination of factors has lead to increased swing and whiff rates on the pitch when he’s throwing it to the top and above the zone. His already very high swing rate on high fastballs has increased in almost all of those upper zones this year. Swings on those high fastballs play into his plan. He gets most of his swings and misses on those pitches, and even when batters make contact, they don’t drive the ball well in that area.

Baseball history suggests that Suter is walking a fine line that is likely not sustainable. Fastballs that slow should be very hittable. According to DRA, he’s already outperforming his peripherals. However, if he can maintain the new and increased velocity level, then he has more breathing room for success. The Brewers are 5-3 when he allows less than four runs, which is achievable. With this bullpen, five solid innings is enough.

Over the weekend, Lorenzo Cain went 1-10 with three walks. In his age 32 season, he’s currently producing a .301 TAv, which would tie his career high, which was set back in 2015. His slugging numbers are slightly down from 2017, but his plate discipline has taken a massive step forward. Cain’s OBP has surged to .389, which would be a career high, because he’s walking more than ever. His increased selectivity at the plate is extraordinary.

Other than his first season with regular playing time in MLB, Cain has consistently swung at a higher rate than the league, and 2013 is his worst season by VORP. Somehow Cain has dropped his swing rate by nine percentage points, and now only thirty-two regulars swing less than he does.

Cain’s made improvements across the board. He’s cut his swing rate on pitches out of the zone from 30.3 percent to 20.2 percent, which would be the lowest rate of his career, including partial seasons. Looking broadly at pitch types, he’s swinging at career low rates against hard and breaking pitches, with a slight uptick on offspeed pitches as a result of swinging at more changeups.

When examining his zone profile from this season, Cain has made improvements in a few areas. It looks like he’s making a conscious effort to be more selective on pitches away, especially those out of the zone when compared with his career rates. He’s also laying off more pitches above the zone, with those takes increasing as the pitches move further away from him in the box. These are traditionally pitches where he’s not seen a great rate of success, so if these changes stick, Cain could produce the best season offensively of his career.

The Brewers have a rare two days off this week, as they have a break before and after their two game series in Cleveland, then go to Philadelphia to play the Phillies. When in Cleveland, the Brewers will face Corey Kluber and Carlos Carrasco. Even with Carrasco’s disappointing season, both starters have better DRAs then the current Milwaukee rotation and the Cleveland offense is 4^th best in MLB, scoring 5.02 runs per game.

There is no reason that pitchers shouldn’t be able to pinch run effectively.  Pitchers run a lot in between starts, so it’s not as if they’re out of practice.  Most of them were such good athletes in high school (or even college) that they were position players for most of their developmental years, and baserunning is not a skill that requires thousands of hours just to become average.  It makes sense that pitchers are bad hitters; big league hitters practice for hours a day and not all of them are good enough to remain in the majors.  Pitchers, meanwhile, are not selected for their hitting ability, and they get far less practice time.  As a result, they are not up to big league teams’ expectations at the plate.

But the basepaths seem like they should be a different story.  I wouldn’t expect pitchers to come in and steal bases; that is hard to do and requires certain levels of skill and training.  But just running the bases smartly requires minimal training, and pitchers should at least be capable of going station-to-station.  For various reasons, though, they are not given the opportunity.  The perceived injury risk is the most obvious and the most logical, as pitchers are valuable for their ability to throw the ball rather than their athleticism, and putting them on the basepaths increases the chance that they get hurt doing something that has nothing to do with their actual job.

On rare occasions, however, roster crunches force pitchers into duty in the late innings.  The Brewers do not do this often. In the last four seasons, it has happened just five time.  Brent Suter has done it twice (April 9, 2018, and July 4, 2017), Kyle Lohse did it twice in 2015, and Michael Blazek was called on once in 2016.  In general, pitchers pinch running tends to look like Suter’s appearance from earlier this year.

Once upon a time, though, the Brewers had an experienced option.  In 2010, Dave Bush pinch ran seven times.  Seven!  In the last ten years, only Jason Marquis in 2008 and Mike Leake in 2011 made more appearances as a pinch runner (eight for each).  Bush scored three runs, although all were on home runs, but he was called upon in high-leverage situations.  The Brewers trusted him enough to pinch run in the bottom of the tenth inning in a tie game on July 9, and then again two days later in a tie game in the bottom of the ninth.

What I find most amazing, though, is that Bush was actually not a good baserunner that season.  The type of information the clubs had available was obviously different in 2010 than it is now, but Baseball Prospectus BRR dates back that far and measures how successful players are at taking extra bases and being efficient on the basepaths.  In 2010, 174 pitchers had at least five plate appearances.  Of those 174, Bush ranked 164th in BRR, with -0.9 runs.  The normal sample size caveats apply here; single-season baserunning metrics for players who are on the basepaths once every five days at most are likely to be noisier than they would be for everyday players.  Nonetheless, Bush ranked in the bottom ten percent of pitcher-baserunners that year.

I assume the Brewers were making informed decisions based on their own measurements and what they saw in practice, but it looks quite odd in hindsight: Bush’s teammate, Randy Wolf, was second on that leaderboard.  The likeliest explanation is that Bush was faster, so he took more chances and thus ran into outs.  The fact remains, however, that the Brewers used a bad baserunner to pinch run seven times during one season even though an ostensibly superior option was sitting equally idle next to him.

Pitchers pinch running is must-see TV for me.  Whether we see it more or less going forward is an open question; teams seem likely to continue to prioritize pitcher health and avoid taking unnecessary risks, but we also are seeing benches get shorter.  With just four players available as a substitute for most teams, injuries or extra innings could force this situation more often.  When it does happen, I will tune in.

Photo Credit: Patrick Gorski, USA Today Sports Images

On Method:
When I run Twitter chats from BPMilwaukee, one of the most curious things to my mind is that followers of BPMilwaukee will not necessarily support general BP stats work. No concerns there, really; it’s not necessary to “brand” MLB stats analysis, and indeed when one begins supporting stats-as-brands, that’s just as problematic as how so-called Old School stats like Runs Batted In or Earned Run Average are used in orthodox baseball discussions. No, what I find curious is the general idea that a stat like WARP or DRA is faulty because it is “made up,” which is presumably a concern because the BP stats team are extremely transparent about how the stats are constructed and also how (and why) they are changing. So folks actually know that DRA changes…which is different than how the vast majority of websites present baseball stats. What is problematic about this attitude about DRA is that it ignores how other statistics are merely “constructs” in the very same way that DRA is merely a construct, and it also trades in the murky waters of false certainty.

For the past two years, I have worked in Community Development and Economic Development positions while completing a professional urban planning and policy degree. I used to believe that I was a “stats” guy or an “analytics” guy, but I never quite understood the importance of what actual statistical analysis means until I was forced to reckon with my biases while training for economic analysis. Before I learned and studied stats, and was required to use them on the job, I thought the “numbers” were most important. While fields aligned with statistics are concerned in some sense with “numbers” and thus with producing “numbers-oriented results” (i.e., sometimes your boss really wants the results of your analysis), by far the most important elements of statistical analysis are “concept validity,” methodology, and uncertainty. What is most important about statistical analysis is process, it turns, out: how an analyst reaches a conclusion is much more important than the concluding numbers on their own, for it is only in light of outlining methodology, and explaining what is at stake with a certain measurement, that anyone (including a consumer of those numbers) could understand the numerical results of statistical analysis.

It’s ironic that many victories of the so-called “analytics movements” are now enshrined in their own dangerous orthodoxy, for what everyone seems to have forgotten is that even if the debate was about numbers, the original controversy was to convince the “Guards of Baseball Knowledge and Value” that there were legitimately different ways of thinking about the game and that that meant there were legitimately different measurements that could be presented. Somewhere along the line, we became obsessed with those measurements, rather than the process-oriented creed of focusing on how to think about baseball. This extends to statistical analysis, then, too: it is as though when many fans were convinced of the merits of WARP and other stats, they simply turned over the box containing ERA, RBI, etc., dumped out those contents, and stuck the new measurements into the box. That was never the point, and to the extent that many of us did not communicate the significance of process-oriented thinking about baseball stats, that was our problem (and I place myself in this camp, having only realized the significance of this issue over the last few years).

Anyway, “concept validity” is the most important thing that I have learned about statistical analysis, aside from clearly stating your uncertainty in proper terms. “Concept validity” is basically the extent to which the phenomena you’re trying to measure match the methods that you’re using to measure the phenomena. What should be inherent in this process is an understanding that as an analyst’s approach to measuring phenomena changes, so too should their results change; one need not hold the numerical results of analysis sacred, for if new empirical evidence emerges, methodological research unearths a better way to measure something, or a literature review reveals a better way to define a concept, there is nothing wrong with the analytical results changing.

So, keep this in mind when you’re thinking about why DRA has “changed.” DRA doesn’t “hate” anyone on your team, or love them. It is not a mark against DRA, or WARP, that the stat is consistently updated and changed, because that is a sign that its authors are attempting to reach that mark of “concept validity.” If it is the goal of DRA “to tease out the most likely contributions of pitchers to the run-scoring that occurs around them” and updated methodological approaches, or an updated understanding of pitching-related data, helps to accomplish that goal, revising the stat is a methodological strength. That said, I can understand that within a statistics field, one may have disagreements with some of the particular methodological approaches; but I don’t take any substance of that type of disagreement to dismiss the value of the overall methodological process of DRA.

This is why the new DRA is so important: it continues Baseball Prospectus’s commitment to presenting uncertainty (as has been done on Brooks Baseball, as one example) in publishing baseball statistics. Embrace this approach: so far as DRA is “made up,” it is made according to a methodologically sound process that upholds honest and transparent thinking about uncertainty.

DRA Values
One of the approaches to constructing DRA is to valuate the Run-value of pitching outcomes, and those outcomes are published by Baseball Prospectus. These elements are arguably more important than the DRA output itself, for these outcomes show the balance of a pitcher’s performance: is a pitcher saving runs during hits, balls not in play (e.g., Home Runs, strike outs, walks, etc.), or outs on balls in play?

My favorite Brewers pitcher, Zach Davies, is a “casualty” of the new DRA (h/t to Kyle Lesniewski for beating me to this realization). But we’re not going to say, “DRA hates Zach Davies.” On the contrary, it is possible to see that from Davies’s Out Runs (-1.4), Not In Play (NIP) Runs (1.9), Hit Runs (1.4), and Framing Runs (-0.1) that Davies is not getting the job done in terms of limiting runs when the ball isn’t in play, and he’s not limiting runs that occur on hits, either. Here’s how the 2018 Brewers look, sorted by NIP Runs (Josh Hader is real!):

These run elements help to define DRA. At this point in the season, however, it’s important to note just how large the Standard Deviation appears for DRA. For example, Davies’s DRA is currently published at 6.02, but with a standard deviation of 1.00, approximately 70 percent of the time, Davies could be expected to land between 5.02 DRA and 7.02 DRA. Tracking DRA with RA9 (Runs Allowed per 9 IP), something like a 5.02 RA9 gets Davies into respectable rotation territory, and there’s no telling that the righty could also prevent runs to a greater extent (i.e., serve as an even greater outlier).

Here are Brewers starters by variation, sorted by lowest Standard Deviation.

Now, let’s repeat this measurement with WARP, which should help to underscore the extent to which fans should quote Replacement Level stats with certainty. Doesn’t this make you wonder what the error bars might be on Baseball Reference or FanGraphs WAR? Hopefully those websites follow suit and publish WAR error bars where possible.

What I find extremely interesting about this exercise is the extent to which the Brewers starting pitchers exhibit variation in their potential WARP production. Almost to a man, the Brewers remaining rotation (after Brent Suter was moved to the bullpen to make room for Wade Miley) could range anywhere from replacement level to solid rotation piece (for reference, among 149 pitchers with 17.0 IP or higher, 0.34 WARP is a median 2018 performance thus far). This will be a stat worth watching for the remainder of 2018.

Finally, the last stat worth watching is whether the Brewers can continue to out perform their DRA. For my last publication on Runs Prevented, the Brewers as a pitching staff were approximately 18 runs better than their DRA suggested. My hypothesis here is that the Brewers groundball efficiency machine is leading this charge, but that could be one of many explanations including random luck.

These statistics provide a wide range of tools for Brewers fans and analysts. Ranges of DRA and WARP can be compared in order to assess both uncertainty and potential overlapping fields of value. To my mind, the best aspect of this new presentation is that fans and analysts no longer need to feign false certainty over WARP, and this is great; one shouldn’t need to say “Zach Davies has a 6.02 DRA” right now, when one can say “Davies’s DRA ranges from 5.02 to 7.02.” This exercise can be repeated throughout the season, and perhaps through embracing uncertainty we can find better hypothesis about how and why a team is under-performing (or over-performing) their peripheral stats or DRA estimates.

Photo Credit: Patrick Gorski, USA Today Sports Images

I’m serious about my answer, and so far, this is exactly what is happening. What do I mean when I say Craig Counsell and the Brewers found a new way to play baseball? Well, to start things off, it’s important to understand the “times through the order penalty” (TTTOP for the rest of this post). Pitchers, either due to fatigue, or familiarity with the lineup, generally get worse the more they see a hitter in any given game. This results in the sixth and fifth innings (respectively) typically being the highest scoring innings in a major league baseball game after the first. (The first inning is the highest scoring inning due to the offense’s ability to line up their best hitters to start the game.)

Old Reliever Strategy

Too much ink has been spilt by SABRmetrics people yelling at saves. The ninth is frequently a high leverage situation, and while it’s not optimal to have a set closer, there have been thousands of dumber ideas in baseball, and in sports generally. One of those terrible ideas is the notion that over the course of a game, after your starter has departed, you should use relievers from worst to best until the game is over. Generally, your seventh inning guy is worse than your eighth inning guy, who is worse than your closer. If you have to go to your sixth inning guy, pray, hope, and watch out. This strategy creates the perverse result of exacerbating the TTTOP by replacing your struggling starter with one of your worst relief pitchers.

Instead of all of this arbitrary nonsense, the Brewers have taken a novel approach. They are happily accepting the best two thirds of starters like Brent Suter and Jhoulys Chacin, and replacing the back third with the superhuman Josh Hader.

Suter is an extreme case of TTTOP, as opponents have OPSs of .593-.783-1.007 on his first, second, and third trips through the lineup, respectively. Chacin’s numbers are .676-.733-.766 for his career, which isn’t bad at all, but he still does get worse over the course of the game. Zach Davies often gets off to a bit of a rough start, but just like everyone else, the third time gets him as opponents OPS .754 the first time around, .691 the second, and .764 the third. Hader, by the way, has allowed an OPS-against of .331 this year, and while he has pitched multiple innings regularly, he has never turned over the order. For his career, his OPS-against is .501.

Sale and Hader

Chris Sale, the outstanding starter for the Red Sox, formerly of the White Sox, is a frequent comparable for Hader due primarily to left-handedness and hair, and those who wish to push Hader to start often cite Sale as the example. I used to be in favor of pushing everyone into a starting role if there was a chance it would work, but I’ve changed my mind on Hader. The Brewers have figured out the best way to use Hader, and they should keep at it. They should be widely lauded as progressive geniuses on this front, and what they’ve actually managed to do is to turn average (or in some instances below average) pitchers into Chris Sale 2-3 times per week.

Hader has been completely dominant in 2018, having struck out 25 of 41 batters faced, walking only 3, and allowing an opposing slash line of .079/.146/.184. That is simply ridiculous. The Brewers’ strategy with most of their starters has been to let them traverse the lineup twice, and then go to Hader at the first sign of trouble on their third trip. With Knebel out and Guerra pitching well, they have strayed from this a bit, but that’s a good thing. There is no reason to be set in their ways on the bullpen, and it’s good to see that Counsell is so adept at either reading situations, or taking advice from the numbers guys, or both.

With a pitcher like Suter, Hader converts him from someone who goes through the lineup at .593 – .783 – 1.007 clip to .593 – .783 – .331. Chacin goes from .676 – .733 – .766 to .676 – .733 – .331. Davies goes from  .754 – .691 – .764 to .754 – .691 – .331. Chris Sale’s career OPS-against is .626, and his TTTOP slash for his career is .591 – .621 – .662. 

The bottom line is that every time Hader takes the 3rd turn for one of the back-end guys, he’s taking away a big run-scoring chance for the Brewers’ opponent, and he’s preventing that pitcher from being exposed. Hader has shown himself capable of throwing about two innings every other day, and so he can pull this off two or three times per week. Once Hader does his job, the “traditional” Brewer bullpen is more than capable of taking it the rest of the way. With the exception of Oliver Drake, everyone has been excellent in the early going, and if Knebel can get healthy, the Jeffress-Barnes-Knebel combo should be as deadly as any in the league, with a game Matt Albers backing them up.

Is This Sustainable?

My biggest fear when this all began was that they would burn out the bullpen, and maybe they will, but it’s clear that the front office and Counsell have thought about this, and have a plan to deal with it. They have freely swapped out pitchers from Colorado Springs, and Counsell is open in his press conferences about the fact that they have a certain number of bullpen innings in mind for the season.

I started the season as a huge skeptic on this strategy, but I’m coming around to it. It is, if nothing else, an extremely creative tactic, that makes excellent use of a rare asset in Hader. The recognition of the 5th and 6th innings as fixable trouble spots seems obvious in retrospect, and if the pen can hold up for 162 games, the Brewers will wind up with one of the best staffs in the league, all because Josh Hader acts as a starting pitcher catalyst.

Photo Credit: Jeff Hanisch, USA Today Sports Images

These six starting pitchers, justifiably described as bad or less-than-ideal (if you’re feeling kind) in 2016, worked 750.3 innings while preventing nine runs in 2017. The club definitely suffered from Guerra’s opening day calf injury (and then his lack of command), while Peralta showed that he could not build on any gains made during the previous season. But Davies was no joke, improving on his 45 Overall Future Potential (OFP) role to the extent that one might at the very least discuss enshrining him as the ideal back-end starter (at best, he’s surpassed that role). Anderson and Nelson both proved to be the real deal at least for one season, leading the 2017 rotation to an even greater extent than Guerra and Davies lead the 2016 group.

Everyone knew the 2017 returning rotation was going to be dreadful, until it wasn’t.

So here we stand, with almost everyone (including myself) assuming that David Stearns will make another pitching move entering 2018. What’s strange, however, is that for all the #InStearnsWeTrust that Brewers fans fly, they still largely refuse to learn or analyze the GM’s inner workings, such as his 2016-2017 lack of rotational moves and the resounding success that followed. It remains worth repeating that pitching is the strength of this Brewers club, which is why Stearns spent significant monetary and prospect resources (justifiably) improving the outfield and, by extension, batting order for 2018.

Related:
Low Rotation Shift
Aces Do Not Exist
Rotation Spots
How the Brewers Beat the Cubs

Stearns did not necessarily need to improve the starting pitching rotation in 2018, unless one rambles off a set of beliefs: Anderson isn’t who he was, Davies isn’t who he was, Nelson is injured, Garza and Peralta are gone, and Junior Guerra cannot be relied upon. Okay, so Stearns signed the inimitable Jhoulys Chacin, who looks like a rich man’s Junior Guerra (seriously, look at his arsenal and tell me that’s not Guerra’s ideal form), and brought back Franchise Pitcher Yovani Gallardo for what could be another spin at the rotation in Milwaukee.

Meanwhile, the rotation is filled with enough “You’ve got to be kidding me” to give the excellent 2017 staff a run for its money. Homegrown arms take the shape of Brandon Woodruff and Brent Suter; deeper into the system, there are advanced prospects like Jorge Lopez and Freddy Peralta (on the 40-man roster) and Corbin Burnes (off the 40-man roster). If you squint, there’s at least two #3 starters among that trio, maybe as soon as 2018 to boot. If you’re a glass-half-empty kind of fan, that’s a whole bunch of low rotation and reliever risk. But this is not a problem, either, and I direct you to the 2013 rotation as evidence.

Although, perhaps that 2013 rotation is a precisely perfect corollary to the 2018 rotation, as then GM Doug Melvin punted on replacing Zack Grinke or Shaun Marcum and only really received a rotational upgrade after Mark Attanasio negotiated with Scott Boras deep into Spring Training. Still, having lived through that rotation, I’m not convinced that Alfredo Figaro (74.0 IP / -6 runs prevented), Hiram Burgos (29.3 / -9), Mike Fiers (22.3 / -10), Johnny Hellweg (30.7 / -16), and Wily Peralta (183.3 / -21) are quite the same as Guerra, Woodruff, Suter, Gallardo, and Lopez. Even if you’re the glass-half-empty type here, that low-rotation floor should be substantially higher for Woodruff and even Suter than it ever was for Johnny Hellweg or even Peralta (although that’s probably rewriting history with hindsight). In fact, looking at this story again makes it seem inevitable that Jake Arrieta will be wearing Brewers blue on March 26.

With all this in mind, it’s time to take Stearns seriously with this rotation. Even the fact that the Brewers were rumored to be involved with Yu Darvish, and are still connected to nearly every free agency or trade rumor with a pulse, does not negate the fact that Stearns has built a rotation with a very particular character. And this is a very particular character that has worked in 2017, as well:

• Stearns may work with starting pitchers who are typically smaller than the ideally hyped “rotation workhorse body.”

• Stearns works with starting pitchers who do not throw with elite (or even median!) velocity.

• Stearns largely continues the Doug Melvin trend of working with over-the-top deliveries (Anderson is probably his best example here, and Suter was an anomaly be it with Melvin or Stearns).

• Stearns loves starting pitchers who have some type of wiggling fastball (be it a sinker or cutter) and a change-up / curveball profile.

Obviously, you can’t check all three boxes with all pitchers (e.g., Chacin and Woodruff both approach that ideal workhorse body while working as primarily fastball / slider types, and Woodruff’s primary fastball velocity was in the Top 15 percent of all 2017 starting pitchers who threw at least 50 pitches). But there’s enough of a trend across these arms that one can begin to assess what Stearns is looking for in a rotation, and there’s enough success (even if it was somewhat surprising success) in 2017 to begin to take seriously the idea of “trusting” in Stearns’s rotational ideals.

So here we are: why trust the rotation?

• Baseball Prospectus recently released three new pitching statistics that approximate a pitcher’s Power, Command, and Stamina. Of the 608 pitchers that threw at least 10 innings in 2017, Brandon Woodruff is one of only 51 to score a “50” (or better) in all three categories. This list is dominated by two types of players: young pitchers or injured pitchers who posted mediocre (or worse) DRA during their 2017 campaigns, veteran starters generally regarded as solid-to-top rotation types (see Jacob deGrom and Justin Verlander or Gerrit Cole, Lance Lynn, or Jeff Samardzija), or elite relievers (Woodruff’s teammates Corey Knebel and Jacob Barnes are also on this rare list). Woodruff probably is not slated to become Verlander or deGrom or Cole, but even if he reaches Michael Wacha’s range of production, the club is in fantastic middle rotation shape.

• Zach Davies and Brent Suter are both command “aces” (for lack of a better term), overcoming their velocity shortcomings by hammering the strike zone in quality locations (the Command statistic actually tracks certain pitching zones deemed ideal for working corner / borderline strikes).

• Yovani Gallardo and Chase Anderson are near clones of one another (one might ask whether the Brewers are still using biomechanical data that drew the club toward the high release point years ago!). While neither pitcher is graded as a strong “Power” arm, both make up for their lack of power pitching with better than average command and stamina grades.

• Jhoulys Chacin and Junior Guerra both grade as mediocre Power and Command pitchers, but Chacin makes up for these grades with his Stamina. On the other hand, Jimmy Nelson probably grades as the club’s truest “Power” starter, as the righty does not grade well in Command but makes up for that shortcoming with Power and Stamina.

• Across the rotation, Nelson, Davies, and Chacin grade as groundball pitchers (each with a rate at or slightly better than 50 percent in 2017), while Suter, Anderson, and Gallardo grade as steady or improving groundball workers (this trio sits below 50 percent grounders, but one might question whether Suter and Anderson can flirt with that mark given their improvements).

• Finally, as I examined with the club’s approach to the elite Chicago Cubs offense, the Brewers starting pitchers attack the strike zone. Compared to the 2017 National League, the Brewers starters walked notablty fewer batters (23 fewer batters than expected, a 7 percent improvement versus the league). What is particularly interesting here is that the pitchers as a group do not grab an 0-1 count more frequently than the National League average, which suggests that the Brewers win their command battle by yielding weak first swings (95 split OPS+), and winning 2-0, 3-0, 1-1, and 2-1 counts.

The Brewers are entering one of the most important seasons in franchise history with a “What on earth?” rotation. Their likely best pitcher is either injured and therefore an unknown (Nelson), a low-velocity sinker/change command master (Davies), or on the wrong side of 30 with one good career year (Anderson). Their major free agent signing is best described as a potential darkhorse improvement candidate (Chacin), and their other free agent is on a change-of-scenery, win-a-job-in-camp contract (Gallardo). Behind this group, there’s either the one-off age-31 star from 2016 (Guerra), the Raptor swingman working from the south side (Suter), and the Top 10 prospect who grades as a middle-rotation guy (Woodruff). Ironically, the warts on this group resemble the 2017 #TeamDepth that nearly lead the team to the playoffs, where everyone could find so many words to describe the team’s shortcomings without finding enough words to figure out how it would all work.

I’ll be damned if this doesn’t look like another market inefficiency (pick up guys with profiles other teams might punt on and throw some strikes!); I’ve learned my lessons as an analyst, and with these beautiful shortcomings in mind the best story of Spring Training could be the Brewers entering with the rotation as it stands.

Photo Credit: Lance Iverson, USAToday Sports Images

Against the mighty Cubs, then, the Brewers went +6 RS / +12 RA compared to an average distribution of the Cubs seasonal Runs Scored and Runs Allowed. Compared to the Brewers’ own performance, Milwaukee went +2 RS / -3 RA against the Cubs based on an average distribution of their seasonal Runs Scored and Runs Allowed. On balance, this means that the Milwaukee Nine held their own against the vastly superior Cubs, which was evident throughout the tense September series in which the Brewers forced a divisional conversation and nearly made the playoffs.

Brewers fans are largely complaining about the state of the club’s Winter Meetings, as the club is expected to improve pitching but came away from the meetings without any new starting pitchers or relievers. Obviously, the offseason is very young, and Stearns himself has shown a penchant for working deep into the offseason: see the Khris Davis trade in February 2016, as one example, or even the bullpen-depth-defining Jared Hughes signing entering 2017. But even as fans fret about a rotation featuring Chase Anderson, Zach Davies, Junior Guerra, Brent Suter, and Brandon Woodruff to enter 2017, it is worth remembering the performance against the Cubs to frame the potential of this group of arms. Specifically, it was the unassuming Davies (and, arguably, equally unassuming Anderson and Suter) that strung together some of the best outings against the Cubs.

In fact, selecting a biased sample of these four pitchers’ best starts against the Cubs, a 58.7 IP, 15 runs (2.30 runs average!), 47 strikeout / 11 walk / 4 home run performance appears. Despite a 47 RS / 28 RA (!!!) team performance in these ten, Milwaukee’s bats and bullpen unfortunately failed to support the starters in some of these games, resulting in a 6-4 record despite the successful starting pitching (Milwaukee went 3-6 in the other nine games versus the Cubs with a much worse 41 RS / 56 RA performance).

Selecting the successful games obviously presents a biased image of performance, but it is worth diving into these starts in order to see how the Brewers succeeded. In what follows, it will be clear that the Brewers succeeded by adjusting throughout the year against the Cubs, and (for the most part) sticking with extremely balanced pitch selection approaches against the monstrous Cubs offense. What is meant to result from this study is increased fan confidence in the approach of the pitchers along with the catching staff, coaches, and (probably) team baseball research department. The Brewers undoubtedly had a lot go right in 2017, and if no baseball season can be successful without luck, the Brewers were particularly lucky in their convergence of events. But, luck does not explain the full story, as across the board a group of relatively unknown or unheralded players quietly gave hell to the most hyped team on the Senior Circuit.

This is not to suggest that the Brewers will have continued success against Cubs bats simply by working in similar zones, but rather that these Brewers processes of dancing throughout the zone from start to start could continue to orient these arms for seemingly surprising success. Indeed, the Brewers arms already improved by 26 runs between the first and second half of 2017, thanks to a 4.11 runs average in August, capped off with 3.64 runs average in September/October. Milwaukee is a pitching-first club, and the nails approach against the Cubs demonstrates one of the keys to that success.

The image of Zach Davies conjures a sinker-change up starter who constantly works low in the zone. What’s intriguing about Davies’s success against the Cubs throughout 2017 is that the righty consistently worked up into the zone to offset his low, sinking change up and blooping curve. Moreover, the righty’s additional pitch, what Brooks Baseball calls a “Cutter” but could be somewhere between a traditional cut fastball and slider, became one of the balancing aspects of his approach with the Cubs. The “cutter” itself for Davies is an interesting pitch, one that the young righty first expanded in 2016, and then shifted slightly in 2017; the PITCHf/x readings are slight, but essentially in 2017 Davies was using the pitch to “run” slightly more armside and rise slightly more than the 2016 version. Unlike 2016, Davies basically evened out his exceptional change up and big curveball, an arsenal change that churned out more groundballs and whiffs from the cutter in 2017.

Here are Davies’s four best starts against the Cubs. The shifts are subtle, but it’s clear that the righty was changing his approach with each meeting against the Cubs simply based on pitch selection. But these aren’t wholesale changes, instead (like the pitcher) they went on-a-bit, off-a-bit, adding and subtracting subtly to find a successful approach with each start. By the end of the year, the approach was working wonders for the righty.

Davies did not simply rely on pitch selection to baffle the Cubs, however. The righty consistently changed his approach within the zone for each start, including challenging the Cubs up in the zone with both fastballs and breaking balls. According to Brooks Baseball, here are the four best Davies starts versus the Cubs in terms of total zone migration:

By separating Davies’s sinker and fastball, as well as his cutter, change, and curveball, one can isolate the specific areas of the zone in which the righty was attempting to work “hard” and “soft.” Here are Davies’s sinker and the occasional fastball:

I grouped Davies’s “cutter” with the change and curve, because I’m simply not certain that it works like an additional “hard” pitch for Davies. The righty’s arsenal is beginning to look like that of Shaun Marcum at his best (a very good thing, remember Marcum was a 12.1 WARP starter from 2007-2011), meaning that the righty can provide armside- and gloveside-breaking pitches, while also essentially changing speeds on his “sinker” (with the change up) and “fastball” (with the cutter), making the curveball the “great” equalizer. Against previous scouting reports, size questions remain for Davies, although he has remained particularly durable in each of his advanced seasons thus far, and he is succeeding beyond the expected back-end starter “Overall Future Potential (OFP)” role because of his ability to adjust at the MLB level and due to his new cutter.

The cutter is typically the breaking pitch that Davies throws “uo” in the zone, with the curve and change dropping low. This gives Davies the distinct advantage of working three different velocity levels through different areas the zone:

What is striking about both migrations throughout the zone is that Davies does not simply “climb the ladder” with the hard stuff as time progresses, but he also locates his “breaking” and “off speed” offerings higher in the zone from time-to-time, too. As a result, Davies is essentially going straight after Cubs batters, and despite their acumen for power, they were largely unable to hit the righty as the season wore on. This could be an effective mindgame from Davies, insofar as he has established himself as someone who not only prefers to work low in the zone but also is perceived to be someone who cannot come into the zone to challenge batters. One might question whether batters’ lack of expectation for pitches within the zone allowed Davies to have an advantage for pounding those areas with strikes. Indeed, he was rather successful throughout these four starts in terms of limiting hits:

Notice that by the last start against the Cubs, despite locating heavily throughout the zone and especially gloveside (to your right on the GIF), the Cubs simply did not end AB in those zones, and did not collect hits in those areas.

Like Davies, Chase Anderson’s success in 2017 swirled around a cutter and a curveball, although those tow pitches mean two different things for both arms. Anderson has become slightly more of a “velocity” pitcher, ramping his fastball from roughly 92 MPH in 2014 to nearly 94 MPH in 2017, and he famously revamped his curveball and cutter under the watch of pitching coach Derek Johnson. With a new grip, and increased usage of both the curve and cutter (at the expense of the change and other fastballs), Anderson upped the whiffs and groundballs on the curveball within the system of his new arsenal.

What is interesting about Anderson is that while one might expect Davies to be the wily pitch shifter, against the Cubs Anderson’s five-pitch arsenal moved in a more extreme manner than that of Davies. With the added velocity, Anderson effectively looks like a cross between a pitch-bending trickster and a classic over-the-top power pitcher:

From start to start against the Cubs, Anderson also migrated his pitching approach throughout the zone. Here are the righty’s three best starts against the Cubs. Notice the total overall migration from armside-to-gloveside zone approaches, especially the sharp overall pitch location contrast between the two September starts:

Within these overall migration patterns, Anderson’s distinct alignment of the cutter / fastballs approach and off-speed stuff is a beautiful thing. Unlike Davies, I lumped Anderson’s cutter in with his fastballs, simply because Anderson has a less distinct fastball queue than Davies (who throws a true “sinker”), as Anderson’s “moving” fastball is more like a hard running, riding pitch than a sinker. That his cutter is also nearly 90 MPH makes that pitch much closer to Anderson’s original fastball velocity, and easier to classify as a true cut fastball. Watch as Anderson stacks up the Cubs gloveside with hard stuff in his first September start, then dilutes the hard pitches throughout the zone:

What’s stunning with Anderson’s fastball / off-speed pitching approach is how he completely splits the two classifications of pitches throughout the zone. Granted, this would happen somewhat with Davies as well if the cutter is treated like a fastball instead of a breaking ball, so it is worth bearing this methodological decision in mind. Still, Anderson’s split is quite extreme, as shown in his first September start: with fastballs and cutters blaring in gloveside, Anderson whips those off-speed pitches to the armside of the zone. Once again, this is a beautiful type of dispersion, as once the Cubs have this start in mind, during their second look at Anderson later in the month, he completely moves his off-speed pitches gloveside.

Like Davies, Anderson effectively used these moving selections to limit hits from Cubs bats:

With Brent Suter and Junior Guerra, there are fewer starts available, and therefore less room to compare their respective arsenals.

So let’s just appreciate that Suter throws his 86 MPH fastball as his majority pitch (he is NOT a junkballer), and that he also consistently used his fastball to challenge Cubs bats high in the zone:

With the lefty’s insistence against squaring up when he releases the ball, Suter’s high fastball must be an uncomfortable sight. Imagine the Raptor’s arms rotating at you, and then instead of a top-down delivery, the southpaw slings the ball around his body while also pushing it high in the zone. This is a beautiful pitch, and it’s also worth questioning whether Suter is really just throwing a cutter; from time to time, the Raptor throws that pitch in a way to break “in” on righties, which is precisely what he did in both starts against the Cubs.

Not to be outdone, Guerra’s post-injury work against the Cubs revealed a bizarre variation of his splitter, where the off-speed pitch actually flattened out and seemed to flutter as a “straight change up” to the plate. Guerra often seemed to have no idea where the bizarre splitter would run, as the pitch sometimes dropped, sometimes rose, and sometimes simply landed on a straight line like Rich Harden’s ghost pitch:

It should not be viewed as a cliche that the Brewers beat the Cubs because their best pitchers consistently adjusted against Chicago bats. It’s not a truism that MLB players succeed by adjusting; they succeed by adjusting, and at times when the adjustments don’t work, the struggles can be difficult to turn into effective performances. The Brewers succeeded with a gang of unheralded pitchers, in the form of swingman Suter, old rookie Guerra, “back-end” Davies, and replacement level Anderson. But none of this quartet was what they were supposed to be during the 2017 season, in part because of their ability to use flexible approaches to maximize their tools. Davies maximized his approach by coming after presumably unsuspecting batters high in the zone, while Anderson maximized his approach by running vast migrations throughout the strike zone. The difficulty of this approach is that while it is true that Milwaukee will once against need these pitchers to adjust to succeed in 2018, their adjustments may not necessarily mimic their 2017 success; new or changed pitches may emerge, new pitch sequencing, or velocity questions (or surpluses) may also impact zone approaches.

At the very least, the ability to adjust in 2017 should cause Brewers fans and analysts not to count out this unsuspecting rotation prior to 2018.

Photo Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki, USAToday Sports Images.

• The Marlins ownership group’s refusal to capitalize payroll indeed resulted in a bargain bottom deal for Giancarlo Stanton, who will now call the Yankees his team.
• The….Angels won the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes, prompting a range of reactions calling non-existent (see NEIFI Analytics) to positive impacts.

A non-contender won Ohtani’s services, and the Marlins are indeed officially in…well, they’re not rebuilding, so let’s call it “firesale mode,” and these two clubs fittingly define a mediocre MLB. The Marlins join the announcements from the Royals front office that they expect to rebuild, along with the Tigers who are rebuilding alongside the already-rebuilding (and maybe on the upswing) Chicago White Sox, who join San Diego, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati as rebuilds-in-progress. Other clubs in bizarre territory include the Athletics (what are they doing?) and the Blue Jays (some fans now clamoring for their share of #ThatProcess). The Mariners and Giants (losers of Ohtani sweepstakes) at least seem like they’re trying to win, as do the Pirates and Mets.

That’s half the MLB, right there. Wouldn’t it be nice to be playing 2018 in the American League Central, where the upstart Twins will battle Cleveland for the title, alongside three stated rebuilding efforts?

Anyway, with roughly half the MLB hilariously trying to rebuild, or maybe not in an earnest position to win, the Brewers have their own principles to consider: Milwaukee is on the upswing after completing their quick-and-easy rebuild, but now it’s time to watch some young (or, if not young, inexperienced) players cut their teeth at the MLB level. This is not the best scenario to be in entering the Winter Meeting, as there’s a very good argument to be made in favor of the Brewers simply sitting tight; no, they don’t need to trade Domingo Santana for prospects, and similarly, no, they don’t need to trade Lewis Brinson to win now. In fact, the Brewers are one of the few clubs in the MLB that can justifiably stand pat for the offseason and simply rerun the algorithms that powered 2017 (after all, the spreadsheets looked so good the first time around that it’d be great to give it another shot).

Of course, with so many clubs purposefully trying to shed MLB contracts and competitiveness in order to play for the future, the Brewers do have two key assets in their favor of the offseason:

• Tons of free cash, both in the form of revenue savings from 2016-2017 (probably close to $120 million), and payroll space for 2018 (and onward).
• Tons of interesting prospects behind the top tier of the system.

Thankfully, many of the aforementioned rebuilding or limbo clubs also have something that the Brewers need for 2018: starting pitching under arbitration or guaranteed contractual reserve. Where this group of arms gets interesting is their sheer boredom as a group. To demonstrate this, imagine a winter meetings in which the Brewers emerge with…Dan Straily, Kendall Graveman, and BPMilwaukee chat fan-favorite Danny Duffy; or even Jeff Samardzija and Marco Estrada; or Jake Odorizzi and Mike Foltynewicz; or any combination of these arms!

The question one could ask is, how much would these arms cost? What is difficult to assess about this group is their general trajectory, as most of these arms feature one genuinely good season over the year few years while offering stable depth in the majority of other seasons. Yet, there are clear improvements by someone like Danny Duffy, or Jeff Samardzija’s phenomenal peripheral development in 2017, that raise questions about whether spending on the heftier side of these arms’ prospect prices would be beneficial. An additional issue is that these arms feature well-priced contracts or arbitration control, which leads to a difficult market position in assessing a prospect package. What types of prospects within the current Brewers system are worth surrendering for cost-controlled starting pitching?

I did not consider popular Brewers Twitter trade discussions like Chris Archer or Jacob deGrom, simply because both of those arms are indisputably elite pitchers who will not be in any type of “bargain” position for the Brewers. Even someone like Michael Fulmer is more of a potential bargain for a club like the Brewers, given his relative lack of track record compared to deGrom and Archer (and, no, even five years of contract reserve do not erase the risk of unknown MLB performance trajactories compared to Fulmer’s previous scouting pedigree). Coupling Fulmer and Jordan Zimmermann could also be a unique strategy for the Brewers to lower the Fulmer prospect package out of “elite” territory.

What Brewers fans will undoubtedly complain about is that many of these pitchers seemingly offer nothing more than middle-, and often low-, rotation, innings-eater profiles. In some cases, recent injury questions (as in Graveman’s case) may not even lead to solidly dependable innings eating in Milwaukee. But, there are two easy responses to this:

• Outside of someone like Jake Arrieta or Yu Darvish, the current pitching free agency class is full of these types of gambles anyway.
• Some combination of Junior Guerra, Brent Suter, Brandon Woodruff, and even current fan rotation favorite Josh Hader do not profile as anything better than the immediate value provided by the arms noted above. Yes, if Hader continues his 2017 profile, he’s not a #3 starter (or better).

Of course, the Brewers also entered 2017 with a mostly innings-eating or uninspiring middle rotation set of pitchers, and their pitching staff was one of the club strengths. One also needs to assess each potential trade target’s arsenal, approach, and persona for compatibility with the new Derek Johnson coaching regime (if Johnson can help to turn around arms like Jimmy Nelson and Chase Anderson, what can he do with other middle rotation arms? What is the Brewers’ systematic pitching?). Additionally, acquiring more proven rotational options via prospect packages for arbitration controlled or guaranteed contract starters could prove to be a cheaper strategy than pursuing the current free agency market. The benefit here is that each of these arms would push options like Woodruff, Suter, and Guerra into more palatable depth roles within the rotation. It should not be detrimental to suggest that Suter is a fantastic swingman option; penciling Suter into the rotation to start the season raises some alarms about the potential of the southpaw delivering a full season rotational role.

One way or the other, the Brewers will need to win in 2018 with a motley and unsuspecting rotation. But that’s okay, because the team has the front office and coaching staff to make this type of profile work. The alternative path is parting with significant prospects (such as Brinson) to acquire an ace like Archer, or chasing the huge contract top-tier free agents. It should be noted that the beauty of this middle path will be the Brewers’ ability to trade from a position of strength (their depth) while developing key elite prospects at the MLB level (like Brinson) and giving the new pitching system another group of unassuming talent to churn into MLB winners.

Photo Credit: Lance Iverson, USAToday Sports Images