Moustakas’s mutual option is difficult to evaluate.  Mutual options are not usually exercised because one party or the other is incentivized to gamble on the market.  If the club wants to pick up the option, it is because the player has performed well and thus likely can get a longer term deal as a free agent.  Similarly, if the player wants to pick up the option, the team will likely feel like it can get similar production for less money in the free agency market.  However, Moustakas is a decent player (league average or better three of the last five seasons) that the Brewers may want to keep for next year, and Moustakas may be scared off of the free agent market by what happened last winter.  Thus, it is at least possible that the mutual option here is exercised.

In that best-case scenario, the Brewers traded two prospects with less than six years of team control for eight months of Moustakas (two this year and six next year).  Of course, whether Phillips and Lopez are worthy of a major league roster spot for six years each is an open question, but Phillips seems like a solid fourth outfielder at worst and Lopez is a potential bullpen option.  Each of those profiles has value around the league, and thus value in trades.  I don’t think it unreasonable to call this an overpay.

Then, on the day of the deadline, the Brewers traded Jonathan Villar, Luis Ortiz, and Jean Carmona to Baltimore for Jonathan Schoop.  Schoop is under team control through 2019, and he has been an above-average player just once in his career (4.7 WARP last season).  Villar, meanwhile, has a similarly inconsistent track record (4.7 WARP in 2016) and is under control through 2021.  Ortiz was a highly regarded prospect not long ago.  Although Villar has not shown any indication that he will return to being the player he was in 2016, Schoop is not a sure bet to be much better.  And because Schoop is a second baseman, the Brewers’ infield defense got much worse with this trade.  Just as with the Moustakas trade, I don’t think it is unreasonable to call it an overpay.

With all of that being said, however, I do not necessarily think these were bad trades.  The Brewers were trading from depth. Phillips and Lopez were already on the 40-man roster, and Ortiz was going to have to be added this winter (as was Kodi Medeiros, who the Brewers also traded at the end of July).  Additionally, Phillips’s path to regular playing time in the big leagues is completely blocked, with Lorenzo Cain, Christian Yelich, and Ryan Braun the likely starters for the next few years.  The club also has plenty of mid-rotation and middle-relief options, so Lopez, Ortiz, and Medeiros are surplus to those requirements as well.  The Brewers know the most about their prospects, and if they decided these were the players they felt least confident about, then dealing them is a smart decision that makes some sense.

But I think we are at risk of hand-waving questionable trades so that we don’t sound like prospect hoarders.  Most prospects don’t reach their ceiling or even make an impact in the majors, so organizations should be more willing to deal those they are not confident in.  Because of the Brewers’ pending 40-man roster crunch, they did have to make moves to get value for players they otherwise would have lost for nothing in this offseason’s Rule 5 draft (which Ortiz and Medeiros were both candidates for).  And although trading for Moustakas and Schoop could work out if they both hit and the Brewers can shift competently enough to cover the defensive holes, neither one seems a particularly good fit with this roster.

I don’t expect either of these trades to look particularly bad in hindsight.  Phillips is the only prospect dealt I have any significant expectations for, and Schoop could very well return to being an above-average second baseman during his time in Milwaukee.  What I do think deserves scrutiny is whether this was the best use of assets.  Just because a trade can be justified does not mean it was the right deal.  I cannot know what other options were on the table for David Stearns, but I am skeptical that the best use of major-league caliber assets was dealing them for short-term contracts for slugging infielders with no clear-cut path for the club to accommodate all of them.

Because of the information imbalance between public observers and the front office, it is relatively easy to defend a trade by finding a justification for it.  If we assume the Brewers have certain ideas about the players they dealt and acquired, then it can make sense.  And this front office has undoubtedly earned the benefit of the doubt with the way it has managed the roster and acquired talent (the Christian Yelich trade is a good example).  However, shipping off useful pieces for players that don’t particularly fit is questionable to me.

I am not suggesting the Brewers should have kept Villar, Phillips, and Lopez because of some chance that each becomes a star.  I recognize that those outcomes are unlikely.  Instead, I believe those players could have been traded for more.  Neither Moustakas nor Schoop is particularly exciting.  They are useful big leaguers, but acquiring them together has created a situation where Travis Shaw may get less playing time despite being a better hitter than either of the new acquisitions.  This use of assets just does not make sense to me.

Previous:
Cashing Out OFP 2 (Midseason 2017)

Related:
Roster Surplus and Depth Questions
Refining WARP and OFP Pricing
2013 Prospect Class: Impact

Even the crown jewel of the system features rather extreme question marks for advanced minors prospects, as Lewis Brinson is a 70 OFP, potential All-Star Centerfielder that Baseball Prospectus christened with the risk note, “He may not hit major-league pitching. Wheeee!;” Luis Ortiz maintains a solid 50-55 OFP 3/4 starter, but as the innings pitched base fails to advance that “set up reliever” role looms larger and larger; Ryan Cordell was cashed out for Anthony Swarzak, a perfectly assessed trade ($0.0 day-of surplus, a perfectly even swap) to bolster the MLB roster that improved the club’s chances of reaching the playoffs. That Stearns cashed out Cordell’s role risk and repetition within the system at the perfect time leads one to wonder whether he’ll have the acumen to accomplish the same with Brinson and Ortiz, or whether the Brewers will go “all-in” with the risk profiles of both prospects. If you’re disinclined to desire Brinson as a headliner in a Chris Archer-type deal, recall superstar Carlos Gomez, who took three MLB teams to hit; in the case of Go-Go Gomez, would you have rather traded the all-tools, slow-growing CF for Johan Santana or J.J. Hardy?

What makes it difficult to assess Stearns’s trades thus far is that most of them feature nebulous concepts that cannot be captured at one point in time. The Adam Lind trade is a great example of this type of gamble, and it remains one of the GM’s best trades until (or, arguably, even if) none of the high-risk RHP reach the MLB. Even the Jonathan Villar trade is difficult to capture in terms of overall value; Villar is an incredibly useful MLB player, one that can offer a profile that is all-risk, all-discipline, solid power and speed around the diamond (see 2016), but one that can simply fail to click in a given year (as 2017 showed). To some extent, even the Khris Davis trade remains difficult to assess in terms of upside, for as Jacob Nottingham continues to improve catching defense (according to several scouting reports from 2016-2017), a “back-up catcher with pop” becomes somewhat intriguing (there are not many of those lying around, even if Brewers fans have recent memories of Jett Bandy they are wishing to shed).

The Jean Segura-Chase Anderson trade should demonstrate the difficulty of assessing trades in general, as well as the difficult of assessing Stearns’s trade. Since the Brewers traded a contract reserve player (Segura), they traded significant surplus, and now that surplus is further extended by the Mariners (since Segura has performed quite well in his change of scenery). But, nearly every Brewers fan knows that this surplus was not “real” in Milwaukee, or not applicable in Milwaukee; Segura was working on mechanical adjustments, and completely retooled his mechanics with the Brewers organization, to no avail. He literally ran out of time in Milwaukee, and is an example (like Villar) of how players can thrive with new opportunities (and, probably, new coaching and new vantage points on mechanical adjustments). Chase Anderson, on the other hand, pitched his first better-than-replacement WARP in 2017, thanks to mechanical adjustments and arsenal / approach adjustments. Anderson is to Milwaukee as Segura is to Arizona and Seattle, in this sense, but Anderson’s contract extension does not agree with his historical performance. One is inclined to price Anderson at his 2017 maximum, or even suggest that the righty can further improve, but this is not included in this surplus assessment. So, the Anderson-Segura trade looks awful, even including Isan Diaz’s excellent prospect surplus value to Milwaukee; my inclination is to criticize this ranking, and also learn from it: why are we, as Brewers fans, insistent that this is a typically good trade? Why might the trade be a bad one for Milwaukee? Or an indifferent organizational event?

Of course, the other problem is that former President Doug Melvin is simply smoking Stearns in terms of overall surplus returned to the organization. Obviously, this could serve as a lesson for Stearns’s trades (be patient, look what Domingo Santana and Zach Davies turned into), but Lewis Brinson and Luis Ortiz should not necessarily be viewed as 1:1 comparisons to Santana and Davies.

If 2017 was the year that the Brewers proved worthy of contending consideration, 2018 may be the year that defines Stearns’s tenure, both in terms of his ability to deliver a playoff appearance (that is absolutely one criterion for assessing a successful 2018; failure to make the playoffs in 2018 is a knock against the organization) and in terms of delivering on the future surplus of his major outstanding trades (either weave Brinson and Ortiz into immediate MLB wins, cashing out the surplus that way, or make the correct decision to wait out Brinson’s risk at the MLB level. No pressure!).

On Theory

In presenting the above trade tables, I would like to reply to some common criticisms of my surplus model, and speak to the current “Wins Above Replacement don’t mean Wins” controversy that is spreading around the Internet.

• First, one criticism of expressing Overall Future Potential (OFP) in monetary terms is that OFP is an extremely abstract concept that includes many components.
  • On a recent Milwaukee’s Tailgate podcast, former BPMilwaukee-Chief J.P. Breen described these shortcomings in useful, succinct terms: OFP includes everything from a player’s potential top ceiling to their position within a system (are they at Class-A or Class-AAA?) to multiple sources of scouting profile risk (which might be described as a player’s “floor.” Is their floor “useful MLB depth” or “won’t reach the MLB”? That’s a huge difference).
  • Ryan Topp added an excellent point about assessing a prospect’s ultimate ceiling as something that may never be attainable precisely because of risk; his example of Brewers RF prospect Demi Orimoloye was perfect, as Topp noted that if one was simply assessing Brewers prospects by absolute ceiling, Orimoloye would have one of the strongest, but his rawness and development distance from the MLB simply cloud that ultimate ceiling beyond usefulness.
  • I want to make it abundantly clear that I do not ignore these concerns, and in fact take them very seriously, while acknowledging that an OFP surplus rank is indeed one snapshot in time. This is why I use post-hoc analysis to return to surplus rankings during each season and during offseasons, and to judge trades and prospect rankings at one point in time (such as midseason 2015 for Josh Hader) as well as years later (such as preseason 2017 Josh Hader, and now, useful MLB reliever Josh Hader).
  • That one player such as Josh Hader can take a journey from 50 OFP to 60 OFP to #3 Starter Prospect to Impact MLB reliever should show the usefulness of tracking this concept over time (this also provides data to assess the type of “role appreciation” or “role depreciation” that occurs over time).
  • So, think of an assessment of OFP Surplus as “the future value a prospect potentially offers an organization, depreciated by historical risk.” One of the benefits of baseball analysis is that even as the game changes, there remain many congruent roles throughout generations, and so tracking the historical value of one type of OFP grade (such as 70 OFP from the 2013 Baseball Prospectus Top 10 list) can be calibrated with the history of the game (what is the projected value of each class of player, expressed over 18,000 careers?).

• Similar criticisms are made against using WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player) to assess a player’s future surplus value.
  • In my analyses, I use a harsh depreciation tactic to discount future production, using the general assumption that injuries, ineffectiveness, and aging curves affect MLB players, and that WARP is hardly a linear concept from year-to-year.
  • Additionally, recent discussion has questioned the relationship between wins and WARP, a position to which Jonathan Judge has provided excellent critique. There is not much to this debate that I can add that Judge has not already covered, but it is worth emphasizing that common fan, analyst, and writer usage of WARP fails to treat the metric as a tool to assess marginal performance.
  • In a sense, WARP cannot track with wins because its purpose is not to assess wins; if you want to assess wins, wins occur at the team level, not the individual level, and it is spurious logic to breach that fact with a basic question about whether individual players can be assessed their fair share of “wins.”
  • WARP is valuable precisely because it abstracts players from wins, and instead assesses them on marginal concepts (beginning with the relationship between Runs Scored and Runs Allowed, and the assumption that a minor league player would have a different production value should they be called up to replace an MLB regular). With this assumption in mind, WARP is perfectly transactional; it can be translated into dollars (typically assumed to be paid on the “free agency market”), and it can be used to compare players across teams, park environments, and leagues.
  • Keeping this in mind, it baffled me that Bill James would raise such a critique of WAR-family stats in the first place, for his criticism simply missed the concept validity of the statistic (i.e., you can’t ask a statistic to measure something it was not intended to measure). So, I understand that WARP is a problematic stat in many cases, but for the purpose of translating MLB trades into value statements, it is an excellent snapshot statistic that should indeed be updated by post-hoc analysis in every case.

• Again, these are value snapshots at one point in time. I believe my trade assessment method works precisely because MLB teams do indeed trade immediate MLB wins for future MLB wins (in the form of prospect potential), they do indeed trade players for cash and prospects (in many different combinations), and I hypothesize that because these transactions occur and we know they occur, we can measure their effectiveness. Obviously, a quantitative analysis based on surplus is not the only way a trade can be judged. A trade can be judged in terms of franchise narrative, in terms of player narrative (ex., “needs a change of scenery”), or even through different quantitative means (MLB trades could simply be assessed in terms of scouting grades on the player “tools” exchanged in the deal. This would be an entirely different system of analysis than the one I use).

• Keep in mind that these trade assessments are not absolute, they are not even intended to “hold” over long periods of time (ex., “day-of trade value” is crucial to assessing a team’s motives for a trade, but it is hardly the only point in time a trade should be assessed). But, since the Brewers spent July 2015-July 2016 rebuilding the franchise, I found it worthwhile to track the value of trades, since the value of the club would not simply be judged in terms of absolute team wins over that time period.

Photo Credit: Richard Jackson, USAToday Sports Images

• The club has one of the best farm systems, if not the best in terms of depth and top prospects, in the MLB.
• Milwaukee has extreme payroll flexibility in terms of guaranteed and arbitration contracts.
• While the front office was sorting through roster options after a disastrous April, the Brewers played sustained stretches of near .500 baseball (a 44-49 stretch from May through August 14 being the best such stretch, prior to a 4-12 stretch to close August against the Cubs, Mariners, Pirates, and Cardinals).
• Following sustained roster orchestration, the Brewers also discovered a core team that went 132 RS / 108 RA (17-13) to close the year, demonstrating average offense and significantly better than average pitching.
• As I’ve written extensively here, the Brewers are basically devoid of rebuilding trade options, to boot; it’s now time to develop players and assemble the best possible team.

What this all means is that the Brewers can use this offseason to align great future value — as any MLB team can — while also making decisions about who best fits the roster needs for 2017. This is slightly different than the goals for 2016, where assembling as much talent as possible, including several gambles, was the goal. Now, value-plays like Keon Broxton or Jonathan Villar have their respective chances to form starting roles in Milwaukee, building on their 2016 successes. This is an exciting environment, especially in the outfield, where Broxton is essentially fighting Lewis Brinson, arguably the club’s top prospect, for centerfield time; Villar will play around the infield, but undoubtedly wants to prove that he is the club’s shortstop (although an Orlando Arcia-Villar middle infield combination appears tantalizing).

Grading Trades:
III: Normative Analysis
II: Surplus
I: Inventory

So now, one can ask of the Brewers roster, who are the most valuable trading chips? Who are the most valuable roster assets to keep with the club? This is a crucial question because the right answer can both help the future Brewers and help GM David Stearns to assemble the most competitive club possible in 2017. For example, if Keon Broxton is poised to be a starter, it would be worth keeping the centerfielder to see how the first few months of the season play out, prior to Lewis Brinson forcing his way to the MLB. However, if there is a discrepancy between how the Brewers front office views Broxton versus other clubs, this is a potential area for a trade. Milwaukee can go down the line, player by player, to make this type of decision.

I’m not saying that the Brewers should trade anyone; they could arguably be justified in keeping together their exciting September core and seeing how that fast-track, power-speed combo continues to gel in April and May. Moreover, getting a “Broxton trade” (or Villar, or Gennett, etc.) correct is not necessarily going to make or break the franchise. This is not the same type of decision as, say, maximizing Jonathan Lucroy’s trade value for prospects. Many of the potential trades open for the Brewers will be depth trades, which are immensely interesting in the sense of improving the margins of the roster, but obviously not as thrilling as a rebuilding blockbuster that returns star prospects.

Following this series of trade analysis, I assembled a group of the most valuable 2016 performers, as well as each guaranteed contract and arbitration eligible player, and assessed each player on a 10 percent depreciation scale. This means that I used their previous three-year WARP performance as a baseline, and then projected three-year value at 70 percent. Since teams are not simply trading for production, but also for contracts, I then compiled the contractual value of that production, and added both figures together. Not surprisingly, extremely productive players under reserve control are the most valuable, but there remain some intriguing conclusions to be drawn from this list. I am assembling the list based on the trade return for previous Brewers counterbuilding and rebuilding deals, in order to provide an idea of what a specific value means in concrete transactional terms. I cannot stress enough that this is only one model with many shortcomings, and I am simply using it as one template for attempting to judge trade value.

(1) Jean Segura Surplus Value
Trade return baseline: 50-60 surging prospect (Isan Diaz), established MLB depth player, MLB veteran contract.

It should be no surprise that Jonathan Villar is the most valuable trade potential on the Brewers roster. The infielder has many standpoints for offensive success (discipline, power, speed), positional flexibility, and a reserve contract. This value indicator should be prohibitive — the only way Milwaukee trades Villar is if they are blown out of the water by an extremely valuable prospect or prospect+MLB package.

(2) Khris Davis Surplus Value ($39.4 million) / Lucroy-Jeffress Surplus Value ($41.4 million)

Trade return baseline: 55 prospect baseline, plus organizational depth play. Considerable risk assumed.
Trade return baseline: Two 60 prospects, plus organizational depth play. Less risk assumed.

If Villar is the most valuable trading asset for Milwaukee, Zach Davies and Ryan Braun might be the most interesting. First, both players are “traditional contending core” profiles: Braun is an elite veteran outfielder, Davies is (at the very least) a clear rotational depth option, and maybe much more if he continues to hone his ability to adjust at the MLB level. Although these players’ actual contractual value suggests that they are at a trade level lower than Villar’s value, it is worth stating that the Brewers front office should not trade either of these players for anything short of an excellent prospect package.

(3) Middle of the Road Value
Will Smith model: Blocked MLB player / potential starter, 45 prospect / controversial unclear prospect value. Extreme risk assumed.
Gomez-Fiers model: MLB-ready prospect, two 50+ range prospects, one organizational depth play. Moderate risk assumed.

This is where it gets more difficult to judge full trade value, likelihood of trading, and the value of prospect returns themselves. Since I already wrote at length about Gomez-Fiers and Smith deals this week, I will not rehash the arguments about those trades here. At this point, some of the surplus value suggestions seem absurd, as it would be stunning to see Carlos Torres traded for a 45 prospect and blocked MLB player, for example. Other players listed here have more value to the MLB roster, arguably, than via trade: Martin Maldonado is an excellent depth catcher, an essential aspect of filling 162 games; Junior Guerra is almost impossible to grade, but remains one of the best pitchers under club control; Andrew Susac, Domingo Santana, and Keon Broxton themselves are recent trade returns that will probably receive long looks in Milwaukee.

This category is where the value of this model breaks down. But if there are two interesting trade options here, those options are Scooter Gennett and Chris Carter, who presented sturdy 2016 seasons for the Brewers. While neither is clearly a first division starter, both players could offer value for the right suitor. In both of these cases, returning something like a Susac/Bickford combo (in terms of risk and potential) seems about right.

(4) Depth Players
Adam Lind model: assume extreme risk by trading for depth prospects that are extremely far from the MLB.

Gerardo Parra / Francisco Rodriguez model: take on 45 grade prospect with depth/back-end rotation profile that is close (or relatively close) to MLB.

Aaron Hill model: Organizational depth play.

This list looks like so many non-tenders in one shape or form, or even roster cut candidates. On the other hand, it is worth pointing out that this level of player can produce some value in the right type of deal. These types of players could be added to other trades to increase value in some cases, or could be moved in other organizational depth trades. Most likely, many of these players will remain in Milwaukee simply because of the demands of filling a roster for 162 games.

(5) Rule 5
For fun, I also assembled a list of 2015 Rule 5 protections, as well as 2016 top Rule 5 eligible players. For this model, I used prospect Overall Future Potential grades to predict a WARP-depreciation figure; a three-year performance for a 60 scale prospect went 4 WARP, 2 WARP, 1 WARP; a 55 scale played 3 WARP, 2 WARP, 0 WARP; a 50 OFP might play 2 WARP 2 WARP, 0 WARP; and a 45 scale player might go 2 WARP, 0 WARP, 0 WARP. Obviously, this list will show just how far some players can outperform their grades; Zach Davies is the best example here:

The most valuable players here are interesting because one can use their OFP and proximity to the MLB to gauge the likelihood of being included in a deal for an impact MLB player. Lewis Brinson, Luis Ortiz, and Miguel Diaz are the best examples here. Compare Davies’s $16.3 million surplus value here to his $60.4 million surplus value above: one season can certainly change a player’s outlook, even if that player’s overall grade might not necessarily change. In scouting terms, Davies might still be expected to serve as a middle-to-back end rotation option in terms of size, stuff, and projection, but the righty himself showed the value of making adjustments in arsenal and strategy at the MLB level.