Here at BPMilwaukee, Andrew Salzman surveyed Schoop’s season and the roster factors related to the arbitration-eligible veteran, and also analyzed Schoop’s batting elements in early August. Salzman noted the declining aspects of Schoop’s plate approach, which resulted in a general profile of weak contact involving groundballs and pop-ups (both headed in the wrong direction). Paul Noonan offered a thorough critique of the logic of the trade during the deadline press cycle. Noonan illustrated the confusing logic of using Schoop in potentially interchangeable roster strategies at second base (including a potential platoon scenario), and highlights the difficulty of the second baseman fitting into the batting order.

Evaluating Schoop according to his Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP) progression complicates the matter. While Schoop undoubtedly declined in 2018, his stature as an arbitration-eligible player and his exceptional 2017 season impacts almost any pricing mechanism of his performance. If the Brewers take Schoop through the arbitration process, they cannot decrease his salary according to his performance (as salaries are protected through the arbitration process, which values service time more than performance). In terms of overall career progression, Schoop’s production remains close to a $11 million per season value, which is his estimated arbitration salary according to Cot’s Contracts; other estimates are similar, assessing approximately $10 million in 2019 salary for Schoop.

The following table estimates Schoop’s three-year surplus value, which roughly means evaluating Schoop’s production and scarcity (or, production and cost), and derives one-year contracts from those models. A “harmonic mean” contract is used to balance overall 2014-2018 surplus values with the highest possible value from that time period; this is an attempt to even out the roughest edges of these value estimates.

It’s not hard to see a scenario in which Schoop is worth $10 to $11 million; in fact, balancing high- and low-value figures for Schoop places his ideal contract in that neighborhood. Even if Schoop is not “truly” worth $10 million or $11 million, it should not be difficult to see a League Championship Series caliber team overpay a player if they believe they can yield the best possible performance from that player. The difficulty is determining whether Schoop fits that logic.

An additional difficulty is that because Schoop is so young, the “Aging Curve Logic” suggests that he should be working in a prime season, and therefore produce quality performances. Yet, relying on an aging curve to promote a bounce back season from Schoop is somewhat dubious, as there are numerous disagreements about peak age, evidence that season-over-season statistics become less volatile once a player reaches age-26, and a recognition that different types of players age in different ways, anyway (Silver 2015, 81-86). There is a very real sense that Schoop already “is who he is.”

As of March 30, 2018, PECOTA picked Bret Boone, Howie Kendrick, and Jeff Kent as the age-26 comparable players for Schoop. Kendrick is an interesting pick, as his 2010 season fell backwards from a 2009 breakout, but Kendrick eventually recovered to produce better offensive value. Kent is an interesting pick because at age-26 he was not yet “Jeff Kent,” and there were some real doubts about what he might become. Boone is more interesting still, as the young phenom fell back during 1995-1997 campaigns, and produced fringe average seasons prior to breaking out again during his early 30s. These last two comparisons should be kept in mind, as it could be possible that Schoop takes several years to continue developing aspects of his plate approach, and that his 2018 and 2019 season have little to no bearing on what Schoop eventually becomes. This may not appear to be a likely scenario, but it’s a possibility worth keeping in mind given the long and often unpredictable twists of player development.

The simple point is that projecting and pricing 2019 Schoop is not simply a binary exercise; his future is not one basic either/or scenario.

With these caveats in mind, I investigated MLB seasons with at least 300 plate appearances in their age-24, 25, and 26 seasons during the Wild Card Era (1995-present) with the intention of finding players similar to Schoop’s extreme plate discipline and power approach. This is a biased sample in several ways, most importantly in the sense of seeking out “starting roles,” which I roughly designated as players with 300 or more plate appearances (which reasonably excludes players with catastrophic injuries, fringe players, and many bench players). Additionally, the sample is confined to the institutional, player development, and game constraints of the last generation, which means that this survey is in no way representative of some “true population” of age-24, 25, or 26 players throughout baseball history. Additionally, by excluding minor league players of the same age groups, I am not fully assessing Schoop’s development and plate discipline against potential replacements or other developmental trends in the game, which is another limitation for assessing players by age. Given these biases, I am reasonably asking, “Who are relatively recent MLB starting players who approach the game like Schoop?,” and “How did these players age?”; since this is not any sort of sample representative of a population, I am using this to describe development trends rather than predict Schoop’s path in 2019.

(1) Schoop and Grichuk. In the last 24 seasons, there is one player who matches Schoop’s general trend of striking out more than 20 percent of the time, walking less than 6 percent of the time, and homering more than 3.5 percent of the time during each of his age-24, 25, and 26 seasons. Interestingly enough, that player is also a contemporary of Schoop, Randal Grichuk. Even within these general parameters, Grichuk is quite different than Schoop, as his walk totals are sometimes closer to that 6 percent threshold, and the strike outs are also much higher; Grichuk is more of a “Three True Outcomes Hitter” (relying on strike outs, walks, and homers) than Schoop, who is more of a bizarre type of contact hitter.

It is startling that even given the general acceptance of strike outs over the last generation, and the proliferation of home-run based batting approaches, baseball simply does not produce batting profiles like Schoop. This could be a good thing for the Brewers, as the club certainly seems comfortable working with unorthodox plate approaches; for example, another recent Stearns era player with an unprecedented approach is Keon Broxton; additionally, another unprecedented role on the Brewers’ roster is Hernan Perez. It certainly cannot be said that Stearns is squeamish about working with relatively oddball player profiles, and that trait probably helps to explain his ability to quickly turn around the Brewers franchise by assembling a bunch of high-floor players with extremely prominent scouting flaws. The only question now is whether Stearns will pay $10 million for that privilege.

(2) Examining “low walk” players (Schoop and Salvador Perez). Working with the parameters defined above (1995-present survey), Baseball Prospectus CSV provided 29,397 players overall, which whittled down to 6,495 players with 300 (or more) plate appearances; when searching for players with at least 300 plate appearances in each of their age-24, 25, and 26 seasons, I constructed a batch of 246 players for analysis (thus the above caveats for sample bias). This is quite an interesting group of players, and as one might expect from the present biases, it’s a very productive group of players:

Within this group of players, the most striking and promising trait for comparison with Schoop was walk rate, which was a good indicator to separate comparisons and descriptions of development from big walk, big strike out, big home run players. For Schoop’s intriguing trait is generally huge power (and indeed, he consistently produced better-than-median power for this group) without corresponding high walk totals. Thus, it wouldn’t do much good to compare Schoop to Mike Trout, Adam Dunn, Prince Fielder, Edgardo Alfonzo, and other age-26 walk monsters; those players are doing something different at the plate to reach their prodigious power. So, I isolated a group of 37 low-walk total players that posted an additional 300 (or more) plate appearances during their age-27 campaign, in order to describe an age-26 to age-27 aging pattern for these players. This is quite a fun group!

Here, the top table shows the change in category performance from age-26 to age-27 season, while the bottom table shows the basic age-26 production for Wins Above Replacement Player, Plate Appearances, True Average, and Strike Outs / Walks / Home Runs.

By plate discipline (K / BB / HR), the most comparable player to Jonathan Schoop on this table was Salvador Perez. Perez was able to cut down the strike outs and tap into more power during his age-27 campaign, which provided a boost back to league average batting production for the catcher. Jedd Gyorko was the best of these players at age-27, but did so by completely retooling both walks and home run power; this is a demonstration that large scale plate discipline changes can occur on a season-over-season basis. What is striking is that even among players who are comparable to Schoop in terms of low walk rates, there are very few that strike out as much as Schoop, or hit for big power. Hence the lack of comparable players, save for Randal Grichuk.

Schoop has his work cut out for his age-27 season, as the middle infielder can retain value through his power if his strike outs and groundball / pop-up fluctuations do not impede that power. He’s a strange $10 million gamble for a front office, as the general ideal of age-27 seasons from players with 4.0+ WARP seasons on their resumes suggests bright futures rather than large question marks. Yet, there could be reason to suspect that Schoop may age differently than other prime age middle infielders, both due to his consistently better than average power and due to his extreme plate discipline. Nobody hits like Schoop, and in some sense this ought to result in a vote of confidence from GM Stearns when the opt-in is a one-year gamble. But the lean months of 2018 speak loudly, where the power was rendered empty by low batting averages and the lack of another offensive carrying tool when that one vanished. So here we are, fixated on a relatively marginal roster deal, looking for excellent production in the middle of the diamond.

Citation

Silver, Nate. 2015. The Signal and The Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail – but Some Don’t.. Penguin.

This post was updated at 5:24 PM on November 23, 2018 to correct the figures in the Grichuk / Schoop table.

• (1) The front of the rotation is improved with a true, proven pitcher. (Although “aces” do not exist, if an ace were to exist, Darvish is about as close to an “ace” as it gets).

• (2) The competition in Chicago is slightly downgraded by “subtraction” (ex., if the Brewers and Cubs both were courting Darvish, the Brewers’ signing results in an abstract “loss of runs prevented” for the Cubs. This is a good thing).

• (3) Milwaukee is established as a free agent destination by virtue of their proximity to contending (this is another excellent thing).

There is nothing that is not exciting about a player like Darvish coming to Milwaukee. One of the most common fears expressed by Brewers fans and analysts is that the club could not afford Darvish’s contract, or that Darvish would divert resources in crucial roster crunch years. However, it is worth noting that this is not the case; in fact, if the Brewers were truly looking to compete with their southern rivals, the front office could be justified in adding another impact free agent (aside from Darvish) this offseason. This strategy would basically concede that the team cannot afford the elite class of 2019 free agents (which is probably true), since big markets are loudly sitting out this free agency round in order to land elite, expensive talents in 2019. That’s fine; should the Brewers land Jake Arrieta and Darvish, or Lorenzo Cain and Darvish, those are quite grand improvements for this roster.

It is worth visualizing just how strong the Brewers’ current financial standing is, in order to support multiple signings. First, a look at Forbes surveys from 2016 shows that even during the rebuilding year, the Brewers were increasing revenue, approaching the $240 million mark as a club. Given the club’s low payroll, this produced a substantial operating profit, which one can reasonably assume carried over to the 2017 scenario as well (due to the club’s low payroll in 2017, as well). Extrapolating the Forbes revenue trend, and setting aside negotiations for a new television deal after 2019, and using Cot’s Contracts figures, here is the Brewers’ five year payroll and revenue outlook:

Edit (9:00 AM): This analysis ignores future playoff revenue, since it is an unknown, as well as future MLB Advanced Media revenue, since it is unclear whether these payments will be annual or “one-off” based on MLBAM contracts.  A playoff run into the National League Division Series would likely increase annual revenue by [at least] 10 to 15 percent.

This is a team that is operating significantly in the black, or leveraging this robust financial health to purchase additional capital assets (such as the Carolina Mudcats, Spring Training upgrade, and Miller Park concessions renovations). I will not treat the normative argument about whether ownership should be investing in capital expenditures at this point, at the dearth of investing in labor. Using an “ideal” and “realistic” labor revenue allocation, as well as scenarios in which the forthcoming MLB Advanced Media payment and 2016-2017 profits are redistributed to payroll (either through debt or cash), here is the estimated “payroll ceiling” for the Brewers over the next five years:

Assessing guaranteed contracts alone, and averaging the various revenue scenarios, here’s one likely payroll space estimation for the Brewers:

This team is absolutely swimming in cash, and thanks to the relatively swift and severe rebuilding efforts by Doug Melvin and David Stearns, the club owes almost nothing in guaranteed contracts. Signing two elite free agents in this offseason, even to five year deals, will still allow the Brewers to meet these upcoming arbitration requirements by impact players (with tougher questions for players like Corey Knebel and Jimmy Nelson, who will be deep into arbitration):

Of course, even grouping these players together is not necessarily an adequate way to express the club’s actual future arbitration demands. For example, in 2021, if Domingo Santana, Lewis Brinson, and Brett Phillips are each in arbitration, Santana will be likely entering his final year of arbitration, while Phillips and Brinson will likely be entering their first years. Yet, if each of these players demopnstrate an ability to start at the MLB level, it will be interesting to see whether Milwaukee maintains their extremely deep outfield with this trio and Ryan Braun, or trades from this depth (which would free up more actual revenue for payroll).

The long and short of it is, the Brewers are a club with fantastic revenue trends, current profit potential, payroll space, and current and future contract demands. Should the club wish to take advantage of this slow free agency market, they absolutely have the resources and future outlook to make such a spending spree possible and worthwhile.

According to Spotrac, in 2011, Braun’s $21 million average annual value (AAV) would have been among the ten largest contracts in the game. He was a budding superstar who would go on to win the MVP that same year, but he was certainly being paid like it, and there was little room for any sort of decline if the Brewers were going to avoid being hamstrung at the end of the deal.

And that list of baseball’s largest salaries in 2011 was full of cautionary tales. Vernon Wells, who was making over $26 million, had posted below-replacement-level seasons in two of the previous three years. Johan Santana, who was making over $22 million, would not pitch at all that season. And Alex Rodriguez was making $32 million, was 35 years old and coming off three consecutive injury-riddled seasons, and was (and still is) under contract through 2017.

One caveat here is that these numbers do refer to a player’s individual season salary, while Braun’s $21 million is the AAV of his extension. I used this $21 million figure rather than any sort of individual season because I am comparing the context of Braun’s full deal with other players’ single-season salaries. In any event, the values will not be hugely different between AAV and single-season salary unless arbitration years are involved, so I believe this use is justified.

Looking at this list, the Brewers had to be confident in at least one of three things: (1) Braun would age better than these other elite players, (2) money would continue to flow into the game and create inflation, or (3) they had no other way of acquiring a superstar through his prime.

Without having any actual knowledge or information from the front office at that time, it’s impossible to know what their exact thought process was. However, I think it is safe to assume that number three was certainly a consideration, and I assume that all front offices think they’re smarter than every other one. But I don’t know what their internal salary projections looked like.

Regardless, though, there would have been some amount of uncertainty built into any inflation calculations. Increasing amounts of money in the sport would increase payroll, but the exact way in which it would manifest itself was unknown. It could have been spent on top-end players and increase the top limit of contracts, or it could have been poured into the “middle class” of baseball players and make mid-tier players overpaid.

As the above graph shows, top-end salaries have in fact risen steadily since 2011 (Alex Rodriguez’s massive deal aside), and they have risen to the point that Braun’s salary is no longer untradeable. When he signed his extension in 2011, he was probably one of the three best players in baseball, and he was being signed to play like it.

But in 2016, he is not one of the three best players in the league; he is probably not even one of the twenty best at this point. But his salary is no longer as exorbitant as it once was. Where his $21 million AAV was in the top ten in 2011, it is no longer even in the top twenty.

It is still a large number, of course, and teams are not going to jump through hoops to pay someone $20 million. But it is no longer such a heavy burden that taking on that type of salary for anyone other than a perennial MVP candidate would be unfathomable.