Like the July deadline, David Stearns is giving Brewers fans transactions that can be viewed from many standpoints:

• Stearns is improving both key roles and marginal roles through both deadlines.

• Stearns is arguably stockpiling as much talent as is physically possible (within the constraints of the 40-man roster).

• The GM is dealing prospects with lofty Overall Future Potential (OFP).

• The GM is dealing ultimate roles that may be blocked (Brett Phillips), uncertain (Jorge Lopez), or years away from fruition (this can apply to everyone from Jean Carmona to Orimoloye, Lara, Connell, Dominguez, and Harrison).

• Stearns is looking toward potentially longer outlooks by acquiring several players with 2019 options or roster reserve rights.

This is a lot to take in, and frankly it’s made it difficult to write about the trade deadlines in one swift motion. For on the one hand, by estimating long term value of some of the roles traded away, it appears that Stearns truly did overpay in several deals in order to succeed within a short window. Yet, it’s not entirely clear that Stearns traded away anyone that was fitting into Milwaukee’s immediate window. It pains me to say this even with strong prospects like Brett Phillips, or serviceable roles like Jorge Lopez (one of my favorite pitchers in the system for a long time). As much as I love to use depreciated surplus value to assess trades, since it is a tool that attempts Benefit-Cost Analysis on players’ production and contract, Stearns is providing a clear template for critiquing moves outside of any WARP/$ framework.

Specifically, by moving clear MLB players from a small market club that ostensibly requires cost-controlled, easily reserved talent to win, Stearns’s deadline provides an excellent opportunity to survey the uneven landscape of player development. In this regard, it is worth noting that no trade can truly meet WARP/$ standards, because in the universe of player development a pitcher can add a new pitch or rework their mechanics, a batting can revise a timing mechanism or refine a swing, a player can fall under the influence of a new coach (for better or worse), or a player can simply experience a new environment in which opportunities shift. Information asymmetry is the landscape of player development, and thus MLB transactions, and in this regard no deal can ever reach equilibrium between parties, as both teams involved in a given trade will arguably be assessing players through different environments (this argument has hidden behind my work on depreciated surplus, but surfaced in a demonstration with the Brian McCann trade).

On Tuesday, another one of the prospects dealt away from Milwaukee acquired a true MLB floor as well, as the Baltimore Orioles selected the contract of RHP Luis Ortiz (traded away as the lead prospect in the Jonathan Schoop deal). Now, the “surefire” MLB players that one could have assessed from the July deadline deals are all in The Show (Brett Phillips and Jorge Lopez are in Kansas City, and Ortiz is now in Baltimore). I will not be focusing extensively on Phillips’s case here, as he is doing pretty much what could have been expected on the day of the trade: starting in center field (21 of 26 games) and right field (4 of 26 games). Lopez and Ortiz, however, offer completely asymmetrical development from the Brewers’ system, and this is worth investigating because the Brewers have what is justifiably regarded as a strong pitching program, due to their track record in 2017 and 2018 (yes, in 2018!), oft-praised coach (Derek Johnson), and their unorthodox pitching acquisitions that appear to follow very specific profiles (this applies to everyone from Oliver Drake to Chase Anderson and Zach Davies, among others). Answering questions about Lopez and Ortiz may help to address other bizarre roles in the 2018 pitching system, most notably involving Brandon Woodruff, Adrian Houser, and even (arguably) Corbin Burnes.

First, let’s establish two role discrepancies that may be the result of different organizational interpretations of information:

• Jorge Lopez has already started four games for the Kansas City Royals, boasting an 18 strike out / eight walk / two homer / 37 percent ground ball profile (4.86 Deserved Run Average). He has alternated good and bad starts thus far. However, the Brewers failed to use Lopez as a starter in 2018, instead employing Lopez as a successful member of the Triple-A shuttle team between Milwaukee and Colorado Springs; this mirrors Lopez’s 2018 minor league role (reliever) and follows his organizational shift to relief role in 2017. Despite what may be viewed as a spotty command profile and a lack of a deep pitching arsenal, the Royals promptly started Lopez and have him shifting sinker / riding fastball and slider offerings to “re-balance” his approach.

• Luis Ortiz battled some injuries and stamina concerns during his time in the Milwaukee organization, which spanned 44 games at Double-A Biloxi across parts of three seasons. Ortiz was mostly a starter in the Milwaukee organization, building his innings pitched total to career highs in three consecutive seasons; the righty is now at 99.7 innings and counting upon entering the MLB. Upon acquiring Ortiz, Baltimore assigned him directly to their Triple-A Norfolk club, and now are selecting his contract for a September showing. One might surmise this is to help boost his innings pitched total closer to 120.0 IP by season end, setting the youngster for a perfectly respectable workload floor for 2019.

Since I do not have additional, unpublished scouting information on Ortiz from his short time in the Baltimore organization (and there do not appear to be any updates from Norfolk), I am going to simply note that according to his minor league game data, there is no discernible statistic that demonstrates why the Orioles might recall the prospect. Alternately, there is equally no discernible argument as to why the Brewers did not view Ortiz as an immediate depth option to potentially bolster a contending pitching staff (and their aggressive handling of Freddy Peralta supports that question).

On Ortiz, the following table is from Baseball Reference CSV:

I would like to reject the “Orioles have nothing to lose” argument for recalling Ortiz, and I’d apply that same reasoning to the Royals, as well. For example, the Brewers apparently have everything to lose in 2018, and they entered the season with Jhoulys Chacin, Yovani Gallardo, and Wade Miley as their major pitching acquisitions for a year in which they probably suspected Jimmy Nelson would miss substantial time. The point being, “having something to lose” has not kept the Brewers from making unorthodox development moves and acquisitions, and that applies equally to starting Freddy Peralta ahead of top pitching prospect (and much clearer starting role) Corbin Burnes as it does to Chacin, Gallardo, and Miley. For goodness sake, the club just recently acquired veteran southpaw Gio Gonzalez, a starting pitcher by trade, and then mentioned that they might not use him as a starter. So, it is clear that “having something to lose” is no motivator for the Brewers to make “expected” or orthodox pitching moves; relative position in the standings should not explain these player development moves.

The flipside of this argument, I will add, is that this should not be taken as a “Derek Johnson is magic” argument, either. I do not believe that Brewers fans and analysts should fall back on that argument, because it basically substitutes a new type of devotional thinking about pitching development for previous orthodox thinking about pitching roles, and solely using a coach’s successful cases for transactional justification is a bad thing. Those of us relying on public knowledge will not understand or know any of Johnson’s potential “failures” in terms of mechanical or arsenal adjustments among Brewers pitching. Furthermore, this type of magical line of argument about Johnson’s skills could thus theoretically justify any pitching acquisition, which should be viewed as ridiculous on the face of it. For example, none of us should be rummaging the lowest DRA of 2018 simply to argue “x, y, and z should be Brewers targets because of Wade Miley and Derek Johnson,” and that’s not meant as a knock on either Johnson or Miley.

Jorge Lopez, on the other hand, has provided new data as a member of the Royals, and the righty is demonstrating a complete shift in his arsenal. Brewers fans will recall that Lopez used his big, tall frame to generate a fairly traditional rising fastball, curveball, change up arsenal. During Lopez’s time in Milwaukee in 2018, the Brooks Baseball classification system captured a “sinker,” which might also be called a riding / running fastball (although the vertical movement readings on the pitch hint that it may actually be a sinker). Lopez also introduced some variation of a slider:

Thus far in Kansas City, Lopez has reoriented this arsenal by reducing his “primary fastball” in favor of his sinker and slider. Along with these noticeable moves, Lopez is also ticking up his change and curve slightly.

Lopez has had two rough starts, but his most recent start against the Orioles was the best of his young career. In this start, perhaps Lopez cashed out the most extreme version of his arsenal adjustment, working sinker or slider for nearly 55 percent of his deliveries. Yet that curve still figures prominently at 21 percent of his overall selections, meaning that Lopez could also be called a sinker-curve guy.

This new arsenal is a fantastic look for Lopez, and it raises a difficult question that is worth asking, but must be asked in the proper critical mindset and organizational vantage point: when is a pitcher simply a new pitch, or a re-balancing of their arsenal, away from success? When is a pitcher simply in need of an opportunity? I hinted at this question following the July trade deadline, as the Brewers traded a pitcher who might be dismissed as “merely serviceable” at a time of increased need for quality depth due to injuries and ineffectiveness. Yet the Brewers did not give Lopez a start, nor did they keep him as a fixture in the bullpen, perhaps as a multi-inning guy. I don’t mean this as a criticism of the Brewers, however, because one could have reasonably asserted at the time that previously lofty goals of Lopez’s rotational Overall Future Potential were a thing of the past; here we are, though, with the tide potentially shifting within the Royals rotation.

The least satisfactory answer is that the Brewers simply missed on Ortiz and Lopez. Perhaps they were so cautious with Ortiz as to miss the potential upside (or even the current MLB floor!) in his profile. One could have said on deadline day that Luis Ortiz was maybe two or three years away from being a true impact, Number Two starter (if he were to reach his ceiling); perhaps that logic misses the value of how good a low rotation floor can be on many days in the MLB (cf. the 2018 Brewers, from Wade Miley to Freddy Peralta and, yes, even Junior Guerra most days). A more realistic answer, and perhaps the Lopez development supports this, is that maybe Milwaukee simply was not the place for these developments; even the acquisition of Jake Thompson and Jordan Lyles suggests that Stearns may have already found other development projects that better fit the organizational plan.

It is interesting to work with these unsatisfactory, vague conclusions while designing a framework for assessing Brandon Woodruff’s future with the organization, or even the potential future role for someone like Wade Miley:

• Is Miley a Brewers pitcher now, worth a contract extension and a trip back to the well, a celebration of a job well done and certainly a job worth tens of millions of dollars?

• Is Woodruff, about as bread-and-butter middle rotation starter / potential impact relief profile as one could ask for, a pitcher with a steady rotation or bullpen future in Milwaukee?

• With the continued development of Adrian Houser as a starting pitcher in the minor leagues, is Houser already poised to become the MLB starting role recovery for the Brewers that Jorge Lopez was not?

The trouble with these questions is that they could be answered in different ways for different organizations, but the benefit is that the Brewers currently reserve an crucial opportunity to learn from their recent transactions and maximize their development approach with each of these pitchers.

Photo Credit: Denny Medley, USA Today Sports Images

Related Reading:
The Piggyback Rotation
Piggyback Cost-Savings

Of course, that’s not always the case. Brewers fans will fondly remember the power-hitting ways of Yovani Gallardo, and current starter Junior Guerra is a onetime catcher who managed a .229 average on 43 at-bats in 2016. But it’s clear to anyone who watches the game for an extended time frame that these guys are the exception, not the rule. Madison Bumgarner is noteworthy precisely because he shatters our expectations with each home run he mashes.

Statistically speaking, the 2016 Brewers rotation was a nightmare in the batter’s box:

While talks of bringing the designated hitter to the National League have picked up in the past couple of years, it’s not enough for the Milwaukee front office to sit and wait for a favorable rule change. Fortune favors the bold. Through boldness, the Brewers could develop a strategic wrinkle that would be all their own, and would significantly limit the number of plate appearances seen by unqualified pitchers. The fact that Milwaukee is clearly making positional depth a priority could open up a window a few years down the road to try something brand new, something that could revolutionize the way we approach the lineup card.

Much research has been done over the years into the sabermetrics of the batting order. How do teams get their best hitters the most, and most valuable, plate appearances possible? Similarly, is there an edge to be gained from hitting the pitcher eighth, or can that be an advantage only with a better-hitting pitcher in the lineup? These are all questions with no definitive answer. That’s not to say that we haven’t given some definitive answers to ageless baseball questions. For example, each spot you move up in the order is worth approximately one-tenth of an additional plate appearance per game as this graph of data from 2014 shows:

This is backed up by Tom Tango’s 2007 publication, The Book, which analyzed historical data up to that year and found that each lineup slot was worth about .11 plate appearances. A few years ago, the Brewers experimented with moving the pitcher up to the eight spot in the order, but that would not be a wise move with the current roster. Giving that six-man black hole another chance at the plate every nine games or so is a terrible, horrible fate that would best be avoided.

Milwaukee can take this even further. If the Brewers are going to be doomed to a pitching staff of duffers at the plate, they could actually move the pitcher lower than ninth in the order, at least for road games. That’s because road teams get to take a turn at bat before their pitcher has to do his thing. For a team with weak-hitting pitchers, the club is looking to lift their starter for a pinch hitter at the first available opportunity. What if I told you that, for a team like the Brewers that is built with a deep bench and positional flexibility, that “first available opportunity” came in the top of the first inning?

Recent research suggests there is an advantage to be gained from radical road strategies during the first inning. Milwaukee would accomplish this goal on the road by starting a batting order of nine position players, using one of those bats to serve as pitcher for one batter in the bottom of the first, and then substituting the starting pitcher into the batting spot that ended the top of the first inning.

If there’s an aspect of the game that’s just as gauche and awkward as pitchers forced to hit, it’s position players forced to pitch. And recent years have seen a surge in occurrences of this anomaly–the You Can’t Predict Baseball blog noted it as early back as 2014, and it’s only surged in the two years since then.

Baseball-Reference keeps a historical list of all players who were primarily non-pitchers who pitched in a game. To make the list, a player needs five times as many non-pitching games as games in which they pitched. But in the early days of baseball, the two-way player was fairly common, just like the player-manager. However, the last player to be designated as a “part-time pitcher” was Johnny O’Brien, a reserve infielder for the Pirates in the 50s.

Because of this, I took every player on the list whose career started in 1960 or later to combine together, as that makes as much sense as anything from a “modern era” of specialization; the cusp of the expansion era. Since I wanted to look at just regular position players, I deleted the stats for the two players who could be considered “part-time” pitchers.

I excluded pitchers that also worked as position players, like Jason Lane and Rick Ankiel, and focused on emergency pitchers. The numbers are brutally ugly. Combined, the pitchers on my short list threw a total of 322 and 2/3 innings. That’s not a small sample size; that’s more than a full season from a starter these days. And in those innings, the numbers are as follows: a 7.11 ERA, a 1.93 WHIP, 1.65 home runs per nine innings, 6.19 walks per nine, and just 3.48 strikeouts per nine.

That’s awful; probably worse than you were expecting. But let’s be honest here–is it comparatively any worse than Matt Garza’s .136 OPS?

Many fans are under the mistaken impression that the starting pitcher must, unless injured, complete a full inning of work per the rules. This is not the case. The rulebook stipulates that the starting pitcher “named in the batting order… shall pitch to the first batter… until such batter is put out or reaches first base.” It’s rule 5.10(e)(3.05(a)), for those scoring at home.

Rarely does this rule come into play, but it was an essential part of one of my favorite old-time baseball stories. The 1924 World Series was the first of the live-ball era to reach a winner-take-all rubber game, and Washington Senators player/manager Bucky Harris took advantage of the one-batter rule to checkmate his counterpart, the legendary John McGraw. McGraw’s best hitter that year was Bill Terry, a lefthanded slugger who was actually pretty tame against lefty pitchers but absolutely pummeled righties. So against lefthanded starters, McGraw would sit Terry and save him to use as a pinch hitter against a righty reliever later on in the game.

Harris’s listed starter for Game 7 was an anonymous, journeyman righthander named Curly Ogden, who had only joined the team after Philadelphia waived him early on in the season. Because of this, McGraw penciled Terry into the fifth spot in the order. But Ogden was just a decoy. After he walked the leadoff man, then issued a walk, Harris called time from his spot at second base, sent Ogden to the dugout, and called for the day’s original scheduled starter: lefty George Mogridge.

Terry grounded out weakly in his first appearance against Mogridge, and struck out in his second plate appearance. In the top of the 6th, Terry came up for the third time with runners on first and third and the Giants trailing 1-0. McGraw pinch-hit for his righty-killer, and Harris immediately pulled Mogridge. In the ninth inning, Harris brought in Walter Johnson, his ace, for the big righty’s first career relief appearance. The game went twelve innings, and Terry would have had as good a chance as anyone in the Giants’ lineup of cracking the fireballing Hall of Famer. However, Terry had been pulled from the game, and had to watch helplessly from the bench as Washington won in the bottom of the 12th inning.

That game turns 93 years old today, but since the rule has not been changed since, our variation on that strategy just might work. The problem is, it could only work if trading that pitcher’s plate appearance for a batter faced by a position player made sense.

Could such a bold move make sense, given the propensity for walks and home runs position players seem to show on the mound? I’d argue that it could, if they were actually prepared to pitch. And though the part-time pitcher feels like a silly anachronism, a throwback to the days of spitballs and spike-first slides, it’s got a more recent hold on the game than one might think. In fact, the Padres are experimenting with a two-way player of their own this spring. Catcher Christian Bethancourt mopped up an inning last season and looked damn promising, if woefully unpolished, in doing so. It will be interesting to track how the experiment goes if Bethancourt makes the team.

But Brewer fans might remember another two-way player quite well. Brooks Kieschnick was a two-way star in college, who gave up pitching when the Cubs drafted him. After flaming out as a big-league outfielder, he spent 2002 pitching at AAA, and the Brewers signed him hoping to effectively extend their roster to 26 men by having him do double-duty as a pinch-hitter and reliever. Kieschnick wasn’t great, but he was fun, and he wasn’t bad either–he paired a .970 OPS with a 5.26 ERA in 2003, and a .689 OPS with a 3.77 ERA in ’04. Either of those pairings is surprisingly decent–and if it were fifteen years earlier, Kieschnick might have been the perfect player to run this experiment with.

And as rare as such a skill set is, the Brewers might have a minor leaguer who could serve as a two-way player. The player would be brought up with the expectation that he was going to perform that way, to be an offensive force who is a competent enough pitcher to record an out or two at the start of the game. I’m talking about 2016 second-round pick Lucas Erceg.

Erceg, who has done nothing but impress with his bat since the Brewers drafted him, was actually a two-way player in college. His player profile on the Cal Bears’ website still lists him as a “Pitcher/Utility” for his position, in fact. And at that level, Erceg was a force on the mound. He put up a 1.93 ERA as a freshman, which rose slightly to 2.53 for his sophomore year. Prior to that, playing at Westmont High School, he put up a 0.59 ERA and 106 strikeouts vs. just 19 walks in 83 and 2/3 innings.

Erceg could not sustain that level of success at the big league level. But I don’t think there’s any doubt he’d be much, much better than the 7.11 ERA-standard for position players pitching. And he doesn’t even have to be much, much better; he just has to be good enough to be less bad than a starting pitcher hitting. Considering the 2016 Brewers employed four different starters who flirted with, or outright succumbed to, the Mendoza Line with their OPS, this is not a difficult proposition.

If you’re worried about using Erceg as a glorified pinch hitter, fear not. The beauty of employing this strategy when you’ve got a deep, versatile roster is that the position player used as the “first-inning pinch hitter” can be just about anyone, provided you can fill out the field behind your actual pitcher when he comes in for someone. Here’s an example, if one were to assume Erceg could play as a two-way player today:

This would be made possible thanks to a batting order full of flexible players.

Villar 2B
Broxton CF
Perez 3B
Braun LF
Santana RF
Shaw/Thames 1B
Two-Way Player P
Arcia SS
Bandy/Susac C

• If Milwaukee hits all the way to Arcia: Villar plays short, Perez plays second, Erceg plays third.
• If Milwaukee hits hit to Erceg: well, that’s pretty self-explanatory now isn’t it?
• If Milwaukee hits hit all the way to Shaw/Thames: Perez plays first, Erceg plays third. Or, flip the two.
• If Milwaukee hits hit to Santana: Perez to right, Erceg to third. Or first, with Shaw to third, if you’re feeling fancy.
• If Milwaukee hits to Braun: Perez to right, Santana to left, and follow the above the rest of the way.
• If Milwaukee goes 1-2-3, Erceg plays third for Perez, who comes out for the pitcher.
• If the catcher makes the last out, just hit through the order. Follow the same strategy as Arcia, and don’t sweat an extra tenth of a plate appearance when you just staked your starter to a multi-run lead.
• Similarly, I’m not going to go into a plan for Villar and Broxton because, again, if they’re making the last out the Brewers are doing something so right that strategic minutiae aren’t going to make a big difference.

As this strategy is such a jarring break from conventional strategy, Erceg’s developmental path is a blessing in disguise, too. The Brewers could convert him to this role now, and begin this experiment in the minor leagues this season. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But if those teams outperform expectations, well, we might be onto something.

One final thought to bring this series all together: the true strategic value in the first-inning pinch hitter strategy and the eight-man piggyback starting rotation is in using them simultaneously, giving yourself the ability to destroy platoon advantages in all of your road games.

The eight-man piggyback rotation is structured in a rotation of four spots, with those spots held down by “piggyback teams” of two starting pitchers. The ideal setup for this is two pitchers who throw with the opposite hand and have contrasting pitch arsenals and styles.

Now, imagine “starting” the festivities with the third baseman working to the first batter, and then bringing in one of the piggyback pitchers. The opponent doesn’t know until the door opens: will it be the hard-throwing lefty, or the junkballing righty?

Almost a century ago, the utilization of a very similar strategy was enough to sink John McGraw, one of the smartest baseball men in the history of the game, and deliver a championship to our nation’s capital. Could a revival of such a strategy give the future Brewers their signature edge, their definitive exploit that takes them to a level beyond the rest of Major League Baseball?

The practice of being able to play multiple positions is something that should be instilled at the minor league level. Earlier this year, Russell Carleton explored the idea of “Growing Zobrists” for the Baseball Prospectus main site: “We’ve gone beyond the days of the utility infielder who was the shortstop who had enough bat to fit on a bench and more than enough glove to fake it at second and third. Teams are starting to recognize that having a player (or five) around who can shift around makes things more interesting for the manager. I’ve estimated that the “Zobrist Effect” could actually be worth a half a win or so in the right circumstances. But first, you need a Ben Zobrist.”

So, is David Stearns making sure that what his manager is preaching at the major league level is being practiced at the minor league level throughout his organization? Using the register at Baseball-Reference, I dug into the positional appearances of Milwaukee’s minor leaguers from 2015, the final season under Doug Melvin, and 2016, the first season under David Stearns. (You can see the complete breakdown of both seasons by name, age, position, and level played at here.)

In 2015, 106 players (average age 22.4 years old) made at least five appearances in the field while playing for a Brewers’ minor league affiliate:

So in 2015, 61 of 106 players (57.55 percent) made at least five appearances at two different positions. 28 players (26.42 percent) played at three or more positions, and nine players at four or more positions.

In 2016, 119 players (average age 21.7 years old) made at least five appearances in the field while playing for a Brewers’ minor league affiliate:

In 2016, 69 players, a very nice amount, made at least five appearances at two or more positions (58 percent). Again, 28 players played at least five games at three or more positions (23.53 percent), and six players at four or more positions.

While the Brewers did see a slight increase in players appearing at multiple positions this season, versatility overall took a small step backwards. Despite 13 more players taking the field this season, the overall number of guys who appeared at three or more position stayed the same at 28, so there was a three percent decrease in that category from Doug Melvin’s final season at the helm to David Stearns’ first.

There may be an explanation for this decrease, however. Carleton’s research suggests that minor leaguers tend to become more flexible on the field as they age. Often times guys are looking to hang on to playing pro ball anyway that they can, and if you’re not going to hit .300 the best way to make sure you can keep finding jobs is to be able to play all over the diamond. In 2015, Pete Orr (age 36), Donnie Murphy (32), Elian Herrera (30), and Matt Long (28) were four or the nine players who appeared at four or more positions. None of those players returned to the organization for David Stearns’ youth movement in 2016.

On an individual level, the organization is working on developing utility profiles in several of their young players. Hernan Perez is the obvious prime example and appears to have carved out a nice niche for himself in the big leagues after twice being designated for assignment in his young career. Jake Gatewood is another player who impressed this season. He may never get on base enough to warrant everyday playing time in the big leagues, but after playing all of 2015 at shortstop he spent time at third base, first base, and even left field in 2016. If he can continue to develop a “true-corner” utility profile as he progresses, that versatility combined with his plus raw power could make him a valuable bench player for the Brewers.

Beyond those two, Garrett Cooper spent a decent amount of time in both corner outfield spots after playing primarily first base for the first few seasons of his career. Recent draftee Ryan Aguilar played first base and all three outfield spots in Helena this year. Michael Reed’s usage went from predominantly right field to more of a utility outfielder role, as did Tyrone Taylor’s. Blake Allemand, Nate Orf, and Yadiel Rivera all profile well as utility infielders, and Luis Aviles served in the “Hernan Perez role” for Class A Wisconsin this season, making five or more appearances at six different positions.

It’s become rare to see the same lineup take the field at Miller Park for two days in a row under the Stearns/Counsell regime, and there’s no reason to expect that to change going forward. The small market Brewers need to find creative ways to be competitive in the National League and one way the club plans on doing that is by fielding a group of positionally flexible personnel, a plan that is already being executed at the minor league level.