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

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.

So it goes tonight at Miller Park, where Ace Junior Guerra hosts Ace Jeremy Hellickson, in a battle perhaps of who can throw the most off-speed pitches, or who can inexplicably baffle batters the longest. It is a battle of unexpected success from low-cost MLB acquisitions, a battle of success from seemingly pedestrian scouting profiles, a battle of baseball lifers who just don’t quit, even after facing adversity in 2017.

Runs Prevented Workbook, July 22:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tmMK4LKWkYmDrkjnwHvJDvuur7evmWAUrwynvyRapYo/edit?usp=sharing

Primer: Exploring Runs Prevented

The Brewers Have a Good Rotation
While it’s not a monthly turn of the calendar, it is the beginning of the unofficial second half of the season, so I assembled another Runs Prevented workbook to assess the progression of MLB pitching performances. The instructions are in the workbook, but basically I used Baseball Prospectus team average and individual pitcher Park Factors, as well as Baseball Reference Three Year and Single Year Park Factors, and basic MLB Runs Allowed per Game, to construct an average of Runs Prevented across the league. Runs Prevented is an important statistic not because it is predictive or attempts to say anything about underlying performance (for that I use Deserved Run Average [DRA] to construct a Runs Prevented “counterfactual”), but because Runs Prevented can simply be plugged into the context of each team in order to assess the actual distribution of runs allowed on the field. Basically, this is everything messy and contextual about the game that ends up on the scoreboard: who receives the best fielding support? Who receives the best bullpen support? Questions like these impact Runs Prevented, but since the game is typically won according to outscoring opponents, I like Runs Prevented as an actual estimation of a pitcher’s real time performance quality.

Since most teams are approximately 100 games through the season, I added a new feature to this workbook: Rotational Averages. Thus far, MLB teams have employed 242 “regular” starters and 36 emergency (“One Game”) starters, which basically averages to more than nine starting pitchers per MLB team. If you were questioning the Brewers rotation during the off season, and continue to question their quality throughout the season, preparing for this war of attrition is indeed the strength of the club; MLB teams have around sixty games remaining and have already required throngs of starting pitching. GM David Stearns’s brilliance for the offseason came in constructing a seemingly mundane rotation that fit the quietly exceptional fielding unit, and could be seamlessly shuffled between roles (or MLB and Triple-A Colorado Springs) to provide starts whenever necessary.

So what does an MLB rotation look like? That depends on what you value. Below, I’ve constructed two tables: the first table assesses MLB rotational roles by Games Started (under the theory that a Number One starter pitches the most rotational turns, and each spot slots in behind that pitcher); the second table assesses MLB rotational roles by Runs Prevented (under the theory that a Number One starter is actually the best starter on the club, and each spot slots in behind that pitcher).

What is interesting about this table is that Runs Prevented are rather evenly distributed, between good and bad pitchers, according to Games Started category. Here a Number One starter is Justin Verlander (30 Runs Prevented) and Clayton Richard (-9 Runs Prevented), and so on. The value here is filling rotational turns, and recognizing that MLB teams need those rotational turns filled.

By Runs Prevented, on the other hand, a so-called Ace is closer to what I believe fans mean when they talk about Aces. But the bottom really falls out on the rotation:

Here, Justin Verlander is clearly a Number One starter, and Clayton Richard is something like a Number Eight or Number Nine starter, even though both pitchers have taken the most turns for their respective clubs.

Each of these rotational assessments demonstrates the shortcomings of analyzing an MLB rotation. Fans and analysts alike prefer to conceive of a rotation as “Five Turns,” following the traditional “five-man rotation” that operates in the MLB, but the trouble is that that classification only suggests a “rest” cycle. One could also use pure scouting grades to categorize each pitcher’s arsenal, command, mechanics, etc., and that might get us closer to a No. 1 / No. 2 / No. 3 / No. 4 categorization; here the trouble is that No. 1 pitchers really don’t exist, then, and most MLB teams are defined by how well they scout and prepare a group of No. 3 / No. 4 starters to “play up.”

This should help to frame the dissonance, and brilliance, that is the Brewers rotation:

By scouting profile, there is nothing close to a No. 1, or even a No. 2, in the Brewers rotation. Currently, Junior Guerra might reach the best grades based on his splitter, which could legitimately be the best pitch in the rotation; based on 2017, one would clearly expect Chase Anderson to serve as the top rotation hurler in terms of pure stuff, but that has not materialized in 2018 (showing the true difficulty of consistent mechanical adjustments by MLB pitchers). In scouting terms, Jhoulys Chacin, Brandon Woodruff, and Zach Davies would probably fight for the purest “No. 3 starter in a good way” classification, although Davies’s injury and Woodruff’s usage pattern would certainly impact that. Otherwise, it’s not even clear what type of MLB roles these guys should be given: Freddy Peralta is a bizarre type of “all-floor” pitcher (meaning, take him as he is, from deception to fastball movement to command profile), and Brent Suter could probably be scouted the same way.

By Runs Prevented profile, however, the Brewers have done what could have been expected of them during the preseason analysis cycle. Many people misunderstood the value of how the Brewers were constructing a rotation, but basically the runs saved by keeping a truly bottom-of-the-league, replacement-style Runs Prevented pitcher out of the rotation would boost the lack of an ace; coupled with the fact that the Brewers were reasonably expected to have several middle of the rotation types, truly serviceable arms, that advantage of not “bottoming out” could be exponentially exploited with each turn in the rotation. For designing a team to withstand a baseball season, even a playoff series, is all about how one distributes risk profiles (and therefore, Runs Prevented): by flattening the risk of a truly awful start almost every single time through the rotation, the Brewers “play up” from their expected scouting roles, DRA underlying profiles (thanks to the defense), and therefore distribute quality Runs Prevented for the team. This is a systemic pitching staff.

Is Junior Guerra an Ace?
I’ve written extensively about the lack of aces in the past (here too), in order to emphasize that a pitching rotation need not be conceptualized by top-tier talent. Furthermore, given the variance at play in MLB pitching from season to season, the simple fact is that very few pitchers, so few pitchers so as to be impossible to categorize, work the consistent, year-in, year-out Runs Prevented profiles that match what fans and analysts (seemingly) mean when they talk about “Aces.”

Now, however, it is worth asking whether Junior Guerra may become a true “Ace” if his 2018 campaign continues. For Guerra prevented approximately 22 runs during his unprecedented 2016 breakout season, and now the righty is holding steady at approximately 10 runs prevented throughout the 2018 campaign. This is really, really good: if the top 10 percent of MLB starting pitchers is demarcated by approximately 16 runs prevented, Guerra is threatening to reach that threshold in two of his last three seasons. This is an excellent occurrence for the Brewers, who stuck with Guerra through a difficult 2017 campaign, and (presumably) allowed the righty to once again work throughout the winter in order to iron out his mechanics. Thus Guerra is clearly establishing himself as some type of globetrotting rotation leader, a workhorse who does not stop pitching year-round and flashes his splitter across the Americas.

If Guerra keeps this up, he’ll simply be #BrewersAce, Ace Guerra, not #2016BrewersAce or #2018BrewersAce. Which should be a great lesson for Brewers fans: aces need not hail from praiseworthy draft profiles or big International bonuses, or nine figure free agency contracts; sometimes they’re just waiting there, on the waiver wire, in need of a mechanical adjustment or a simple chance to pitch.

Correct for the Wrong Reasons
In the offseason, I wrote about Jeremy Hellickson as a potential free agency target for the Milwaukee Brewers rotation. The veteran righty was coming off of a poor surface statistics season that nevertheless featured fantastic underlying performance metrics and very clear areas for improvement in pitch selection. Summarizing Hellickson’s potential surplus value and areas of improvement, I compared the veteran righty’s arsenal and approach to Chase Anderson, using Anderson’s development from 2016 to 2017 as a potential model for Hellickson. I am writing about this now, though, because my words on Hellickson have the privilege of appearing correct, but for the wrong reason; I suggested that the concern with Hellickson was between the balance in his fastball and change up usage, as his cutter was looking for a comfortable place within his arsenal. The implication was that if Hellickson could find a balance somewhat akin to Anderson’s 2017 development, the veteran’s quality change up could return.

By contrast, Hellickson went entirely in the opposite direction, by decreasing his primary fastball, secondary fastball, and cutter usage in order to select his change up and curve more frequently than any other pitch (!!!).

According to Bill James, a junkball pitcher is one who throws a change up “first,” i.e., more than any other pitch, and I like that definition because it attributes junkball status more to pitch selection than velocity (hence my favorite sometimes-junkball pitcher, the fire throwing Edinson Volquez). But if a pitcher throws a change up more than any other pitch, what of a pitcher who throws a change and curve more than any other pitcher? I enter 2018 Jeremy Hellickson as the vaunted “Double Junkball” pitcher, a pitcher who gives you the blues thrice over because he throws a change up more frequently than any other pitch, a curveball more frequently than any pitch but the change, and he was available for nothing more than a minor league contract despite exhibiting underlying traits worthy of nearly $30 million in depreciated surplus value.

But Brewers fans can’t be picky, as this is the organization that made Junior Guerra work (twice!), signed Jhoulys Chacin as their rotational front piece over the offseason, is currently making Wade Miley work, and skipped Fastballer Freddy Peralta over the much-more hyped (and much clearer scouting role) Corbin Burnes to round out the back end of the rotation. Wanting to add Hellickson to that mix is just greedy, but oh what a rotation it could have been, what one with some of the slowest fastballs and most unsuspecting command profiles in the MLB combining to prevent runs like their lives depended on it.

Here, I’m revisiting my past work on Hellickson in order to understand why I was wrong, and to demonstrate the fickle nature of scouting profiles. A perceived fix to a glitch in a pitcher’s arsenal can run in many directions, and it is worth using probabilistic thinking to clearly demarcate and analyze each of those potential directions. Probabilistic thinking means designing a thinking process that thinks through the potential outcomes in a given scenario, including reasons for those potential outcomes and (ideally) assigning weights or probabilities to those potential outcomes. This is the type of thinking that can be applied to difficult-to-quantify areas such as pitching profiles, where data are assembled but can move in multiple directions due to strategy. In the offseason, I thought Hellickson needed to balance his fastballs and take back his change up a notch in order to reassert its success; it turns out that that could mean diminishing fastball use all together, and playing up the curveball to reassert a successful profile.