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

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┻┳| •.•) #Brewers didn’t need a SP
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— BP Milwaukee (@BPMilwaukee) July 31, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rotation Two: By Team

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course, the Brewers are a bit odd about what they look for in pitchers, with command studs like Zach Davies and reclamation projects like Wade Miley  more attractive to the front office than your stereotypical, and overpriced fire-ballers. The Brewers are focused on one thing above all else, that being a pitcher’s numbers on their first, second, and third times facing an order, and once you understand this, a lot of seemingly mysterious actions from the Milwaukee front office suddenly look very clear. For starters, for anyone who once claimed the Brewers need to add a starting pitcher, it will become clear that any starting pitcher would, to be valuable, need to be better at preventing runs on his third time through the order, than the vast majority of Brewer relievers are their first time through. Because the Brewers pull starters so early, most Brewer starters don’t routinely face a lineup three times, and even moreso in the playoffs. A new starting pitcher isn’t adding value by replacing just Zach Davies; A big name free agent stud needs to be better than Davies plus Josh Hader, or Jeremy Jeffress, or Corbin Burnes, or Brandon Woodruff, or Corey Knebel. As it turns out, there are basically no starting pitchers available as free agents, or otherwise, that actually fit the bill, and those that do are fantastically expensive. To the extent the Brewers do look for starters in the off-season, it’s unlikely you will think much of them because they will likely have a proven track record of excelling the first two times through the order, and not much more.

This brings us back to Anderson, who, in the grand scheme of things, was pretty good at preventing runs. But, the Brewers don’t care about the grand scheme of things, only the first two acts, and as it turns out:

First time through the order, OPS against.

1. Jhoulys Chacin – .577
2. Wade Miley – .601
3. Freddy Peralta – .633
4. Gio Gonzalez – .678
5. Junior Guerra – .695 (.908 the second time)
6. Zach Davies – .700
7. Chase Anderson – .758
8. Brent Suter – .769

Now, Anderson does improve drastically the second time through the order with a .639 OPS against, and it’s possible that a lot of this is just bad luck or noise, but the facts are the facts, and Anderson did give up 13 of his 30 home runs allowed his first time through the order. Given how the Brewers are constructed, falling behind early can be ruinous, and because the Brewers have depth, they don’t need to be cute about such things. Anderson has been a good Brewer and deserves a ton of credit for his efforts, but because of this one deficiency he simply couldn’t fit on a playoff roster. Over the course of his career he is not quite so bad, and has shown fairly normal “times through the order” splits, But the home runs make him prone to some early blowups, and being bad early is the one thing the Brewers can’t tolerate out of a starter. If he’s back next season, I’ll be shocked.

As such, there is no one more fitting than Miley to lead the Brewers into Wrigley Field. The Brewers are likely to face another lefty-heavy series against the Cubs, potentially including exact rematches (either Montgomery versus Miley or Quintana versus Chacin, depending on how the Cubs rearrange their rotation after Sunday’s postponement in Washington, D.C.). Known for his redeveloped cutter as a means for 2018 success, Miley presented that profile to the extreme in his last outing against the North Siders. The Lakeview club saw nearly 50 cutters from the southpaw on September 4, and otherwise Miley basically balanced his curve and change, shelving his remaining arsenal.

While the cutter gets top billing, the Cubs bats could not solve Miley’s curve and change, so it is worth watching to see if the wily veteran doubles down on the soft stuff.

During Zack Greinke’s rough stretches of 2011, a friend of mine once questioned whether the righty’s stuff moved too much. It’s an interesting concern to consider: typically, a pitcher might like as much movement as possible on pitches, in order to induce weak contact by keeping batters off balance (or unable to square pitches on the bat). I keep this idea in mind with Jhoulys Chacin, who throws a baffling array of wiggles and dips. During his recent stretch of five consecutive quality starts, Chacin whittled down his arsenal to a sinker (34 percent) and slider (50 percent), with his split and primary fastball balancing the remaining offerings. In his last outing against the Cubs, Chacin doubled down on the sinker, moving slightly from his successful August recipe. Which way will Chacin wiggle this time? His selections could not only help bolster a division run, but more importantly get the righty back on track to his August success.

On a more serious note, if a “true” junkball pitcher is one that throws a change up more frequently than any other pitch, what is a slider-first pitcher? Is a slider-first thrower merely a variation of a junkballer, or another type of pitcher altogether?

Meanwhile, Chase Anderson has not faced the Cubs since June, battling a couple of stretches of rough starts following his exceptional seven scoreless at Miller Park on June 12.

After allowing eight runs in 8.7 innings during two starts in the middle of August, Anderson has roughly produced league average starts for the Brewers, a crucial correction leading to a 3-1 team record during those outings that forcefully snapped a three-start team losing streak for the 2017 Ace. I presented both Brooks Baseball tables above because although it’s often tempting to look for pitch selection adjustments to help explain success, it’s worth emphasizing that Anderson has basically kept the same profile for his recent success that he was working with during some of his June-through-August rough stretches. What is key, however, is that Brooks Baseball strike zones demonstrate that Anderson is migrating from armside-upper zone (in on righties) locations to glove-side lower zone locations (away from righties). While the shift is not inducing more whiffs (yet), Anderson is yielding more ground balls without a notable arsenal rearrangement.

Most importantly, for the coming series, the weather in Lakeview should hopefully hold:

According to the National Weather Service, this Chicago outlook appears much better than the battered mid-Atlantic, where the Cubs and Nationals may have postponed Sunday’s game for nothing other than a chance for more rain:

With a potentially strong Hurricane reaching land in the mid-Atlantic and potentially forecast to stall during the week, one is inclined to question why MLB, the Nationals, and the Cubs did not simply attempt to postpone the Sunday contest until the end of the season (if it proved necessary to define the playoff race). As much as Brewers fans might enjoy sending shade over the wicked travel schedule for the Cubs, the safety of the players and personnel associated with both teams should be fully considered in this case. In this case, a divisional race during the first three days of this week should make for a delightful end-of-summer vacation at Wrigley Field.

Baseball Prospectus’s DRA is the best and most recent attempt to evaluate pitchers.  As its name (“Deserved Run Average”) suggests, however, it has a backward-looking component.  It attempts to apportion credit and blame for what happened while a pitcher was on the mound.  Context-based Fielding Independent Pitching (cFIP), which is another recent BP statistic, attempts to measure only true talent.  (A summary of DRA and cFIP are available here.)  Both are valuable resources, but they measure pitcher effectiveness in different ways.

Chase Anderson was good last year by any publicly available measurement, though.  His ERA was 2.74, his FIP was 3.59, his cFIP was 93 (where 95-to-105 is average, and a lower number is better), and his DRA- was 81.9 (here 100 is average, with a lower number better).  These were all career-best marks, so there were two possible interpretations: either Anderson had developed and taken a step forward, or 2017 was one of those unrepeatable career years that players occasionally have.

In 2018, Anderson has not been as good.  All of his cumulative numbers have regressed, and both his DRA- and cFIP are worse than his career average.  All of the public pitching stats agree that he has not been good, but they all agreed that he was good last season.  Both the forward-looking stats and backward-looking stats agree on this.

It is this conundrum I find the most interesting.  In broad strokes, we can break pitching metrics down into two categories: forward-looking and backward-looking.  FIP and cFIP are prospective, while ERA is retrospective.  DRA is somewhere between the two, but seeks to explain past performance.  And both sets believed Anderson was good last year in terms of underlying performance and run prevention.

But that performance has not carried over into this year.  The traditional regression examples are pitchers who have good ERAs but bad cFIPs or DRAs, which indicates that they just got lucky and there was no uptick in performance.  Those pitchers are expected to not be as good the next year.  By contrast, good peripherals (as taken into account by cFIP) that match good run prevention numbers are supposed to indicate that someone is able to sustain that performance going forward.  Anderson breaks that model, though.

There are possible explanations for this that don’t require metrics to have missed.  Anderson could be pitching while hurt this year, or he could have made a mechanical adjustment that has not worked.  But we don’t know whether that has occurred, so I am assuming he isn’t dealing with any physical issues beyond the general fatigue we expect big league players to battle through.  He could also just be an outlier in these numbers; a sample size of one is insufficient to draw overarching conclusions about the validity of the stats, and that is not what I am attempting to do here.

Anderson provides the fulcrum for this discussion, but he is just a part of a larger question about how to measure pitcher performance.  There has been increased focus on how accurate our defensive metrics are because they have not kept up with shift tendencies, but pitching, although not seen as reliable as offensive numbers, has not received similar scrutiny.  I don’t believe anyone is suggesting that the current pitching metrics are perfect, but I wonder what else is missing that can be incorporated to help fix this type of blind spot.

The most basic analysis of Anderson’s season last year would have been that it was just a career year and he was likely to return to being the type of fourth starter he had been previously.  DRA, cFIP, and similar metrics provided possible justifications for Anderson having made substantive improvements that would carry forward.  To this point, though, those possibilities have not panned out.

I do not intend to just point to pitchers who public metrics cannot comprehend.  Instead, Anderson demonstrates a specific phenomenon: he had a career year last season, but it was backed up by improved peripherals in such a way that we don’t normally see in fluky performances.  The statistics that try to remove luck from the equation thought that Anderson had improved, but, at least to this point, it appears he had not.

New Runs Prevented Workbook || Runs Prevented Primer

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

With this in mind, it is worth previewing the Brewers and Cubs series by highlighting Chicago’s superior playoff rotation. One of the most common questions that appeared throughout the offseason, and sometimes during regular season chats on @bpmilwaukee Twitter, is whether the Brewers have a rotation that matches the Cubs. After nearly 75 percent of the season, there is a definitive answer to this question:

And I’m not being disingenuous about this: I understand how one can scout the set of Kyle Hendricks, Jose Quintana, Jon Lester, and now Cole Hamels, in terms of stuff and experience, and label them an exceptional rotation that is set to demolish the upstart Brewers. I understand that completely. These are proven guys, too, as Jon Lester has a 1.77 ERA in six World Series games, Cole Hamels has a 3.48 ERA in 16 (!) career playoff games, and the unsung hero Kyle Hendricks has a 2.88 ERA across the Cubs’ recent playoff runs. In fan consciousness, these are the types of pitchers that teams need in order to succeed.

So, the Brewers’ excellent team defense (.722 defensive efficiency according to Baseball Prospectus) leading a lovable, motley crew of rotational ragtaggers hardly seems fun when you could string together a rotation that cost around $100 million annually plus prospects like Eloy Jimenez and Dylan Cease. This price was underscored at the deadline, when Stearns presumably refused to send talent like Corbin Burnes and Keston Hiura to Tampa for a pitcher like Chris Archer, or a pitcher like Josh Hader to New York for one of the Mets aces. It’s rarely stated out loud, but one has to guess that the Cubs’ ability to afford a legitimate sticker shock rotation informs at least part of the jealousy in the hearts of Brewers fans.

Yet here we are: the Cubs have the worst rotation among NL division leaders, and the only contending club with a rotation in worse shape is in Pittsburgh.

One of the common complaints I see in debates about the pitching staff is that the Brewers solely have a great rotation for weathering the regular season. This is typically meant to be an indictment of their lack of playoff talent, while still recognizing that indeed the Brewers prevent runs. But, I do not think that the general paucity of quality MLB starting pitching is understood.

For example, take a look at how MLB starting pitching categories rank by Games Started:

If MLB pitchers were evenly distributed and then ranked solely by games started workload (which is essentially “times through the rotation”), by SP #91 the average workload is approximately 70 percent of the size of the first starter; by SP #121 the average workload is just about half the workload of the first starter; and so on. This table should explain the need to design a pitching rotation with more than five spots, which to my mind vindicates the manner in which David Stearns constructed his rotation (see Zach Davies, Brent Suter, and of course, Jimmy Nelson, alongside other in-season injuries suffered).

Ranked by Runs Prevented, it should be striking how quickly the #2 spot falls off from the top slot, and the sheer volume of innings pitched worked by replacement types. This table should demonstrate the baffling inefficiencies in assembling an MLB rotation (evident prior to 162 games, even!), and the extent to which an uneven distribution of talent can be assumed and exploited by front offices. This should help to underscore the strength of Stearns’s rotation building strategy in 2018.

What you will undoubtedly notice is just how good the top of the Brewers rotation has been, relative to the remaining MLB teams, in terms of Runs Prevented: they do not have a #1 starter, but did feature three #2 starters entering Sunday (Junior Guerra, Wade Miley, and Chase Anderson). This sounds like the beginning of a riddle: would you rather have a rotation with a true #1 and a true #9 or #10? Or a rotation with a bunch of #2s and #4s?

Are there other “Playoffs Rotations”? Let’s have a look across the National League, and also survey three phenomenal AL clubs. How many clubs actually have top rotations suitable for the playoffs?

(1) Cardinals and Pirates: Lately, the Cardinals and Pirates have come on strong in the Wild Card race, and both clubs have rotations that would have to stretch to fit a “Playoffs Ace” mold. Miles Mikolas had not even pitched stateside over the last three seasons, and the righty is leading the Cardinals rotation along with rookie Jack Flaherty; Jameson Taillon is almost certainly an “ace” by the definition of some, but Joe Musgrove arguably was not viewed as a potential improvement upon Gerrit Cole when he was acquired (surprise!).

(2) National League East Leaders: In the National League East, the race between the Phillies and Atlanta is fun because both rotations are lead by young or up-and-coming starters. Plus Anibal Sanchez, which has to be one of the best acquisitions for 2018.

(3) National League West is the Ace Race!: The Diamondbacks and Dodgers get us into “Playoffs Ace” territory, with both Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw serving key rotational roles. But even here, one should notice the bizarre assemblages of rookies, upstarts, and comeback candidates gracing both rotations. Two of the best rotations in the MLB certainly have their top rotation types, but after that, it drops off quickly.

Can we appreciate that Clayton Kershaw is having his worst season in a decade, and has prevented 16 runs?

(4) The Rockies and Nationals are contending, too: Of course, the rotation most fans have in mind when they think of a playoffs rotation is the Nationals, who feature Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Gio Gonzalez. Additionally, the Rockies are playing at the edges of the Wild Card race with Washington, and they may have the closest thing to a true five-man rotation on the Senior Circuit.

(5) Divergent Top Rotation Fates: Mets and Cleveland:It may be kicking someone while they are down, but prior to looking at the rotations of Cleveland, Boston, and Houston, it is worth looking at the Mets rotation to emphasize that top rotation talent does not always materialize in playoff contending teams, or even elite runs prevention. Noah Syndergaard has struggled with injuries, lagging behind his much-praised teammate Jacob deGrom; both are cited as aces that the Brewers would do well to acquire, even given the steep price.

Meanwhile, Cleveland’s rotation may better suit the “cost” at which the Brewers can comfortably acquire elite pitching. Trevor Bauer and Corey Kluber were both acquired in three-team trades, in which Cleveland surrendered Shin-Soo Choo and Jake Westbrook (respectively). Meanwhile, Carlos Carrasco was part of a relatively large rebuilding move (Cliff Lee and Ben Francisco), and Mike Clevinger was acquired in a depth move. This quartet of trade acquisitions and long development cycles is now worth 100 runs to Cleveland, without always having accompanying prospect hype associated with that type of runs prevention.

(6) The True Playoff Rotations?: Boston and Houston demonstrate two extreme ends of the spectrum of rotation building. The Red Sox feature high-cost aces (Chris Sale and David Price), as well as a couple of pitchers acquired in rebuilding or counterbuilding moves (Andrew Miller and Yoenis Cespedes trades, respectively). On the other hand, the Astros rotation demonstrates the acquisition of three varieties of stalled veterans (Charlie Morton, Justin Verlander, and Gerrit Cole) who fit profiles the Astros front office and coaching staff could work with, as well as a supplemental first round pick (Lance McCullers) and seventh round pick (Dallas Keuchel). If any team has a model for acquiring pitchers that fits Milwaukee’s budget, it’s the former team of GM Stearns.

While the tables above should demonstrate the wide ranging backgrounds, scouting pedigrees, and production demonstrated in contending rotations, I am presenting the following table as basic summary of the last three years of performance among the top Runs Prevented pitchers for current NL contenders (sticking with #1 and #2 starters). Once again, the point is to emphasize the relative variance in performance among these pitchers, as well as the number of newcomers leading these clubs.

Basically, the player development profile of the 2018 NL vindicates Stearns’s rotational vision: in a league run by newcomers, comeback players, and depth acquisitions, a league that requires nearly 10 starting pitchers per team to complete a season, building #TeamDepth was a viable playoff strategy. Stearns has constructed a rotation that compares well to the rookies and comeback kids leading many of the playoff clubs, while also giving fans the fun of rooting for the underdog when Milwaukee faces the few remaining aces in the league.

Now the 2018 Brewers are on pace to challenge the 1988 Brewers for the best pitching staff in franchise history. As it stands, the Brewers could basically pitch average baseball for the remainder of the season and finish with the third best staff in franchise history; as the table above shows, Milwaukee has already surpassed their 2017 Runs Prevented total this season.

The purpose of this post is not to present a normative argument about whether or not the Brewers should be expected to produce the best pitching season in franchise history. Evidence abounds in all directions. First and foremost, at the time of this writing, the trade deadline has yet to pass, which means that the Brewers could further improve their pitching; second, the latest average Runs Prevented table demonstrates that the Milwaukee hurlers are already approximately 12 runs from their May 31 pace, meaning that the club has slowed slightly in their elite Runs Prevention; additionally, key injuries and subsequent ineffectiveness (ranging from Brent Suter and Zach Davies to Matt Albers and, of course, Jimmy Nelson) also impact projections of runs prevention. Alternately, Chase Anderson has prevented approximately seven runs since the beginning of June, and is beginning to look like a rotation leader at the same time the club traded for Joakim Soria and recalled Corbin Burnes to bolster the bullpen. If anything, this swirling set of evidence might allow one to believe that the pitching staff will at least remain steady.

Rather, I am going to investigate the pitching staff structure for a few of the best franchise pitching staffs listed in the table above. The purpose here will be fun, first and foremost, as almost everyone can name the key Brewers batters and supporting casts of the club’s great offensive performances (ten of the top 13 runs production seasons come from the 1978-1983 and 2009-2012 roster cores), but the great pitching staffs beyond Teddy Higuera, Ben Sheets, and CC Sabathia remain underappreciated or perhaps even unknown. Furthermore, by comparing the structures of these great staffs, one can get an idea of how pitching roster construction has evolved over time. For example, the 2018 Brewers may very well end up producing the greatest bullpen in franchise history, but how does their rotation compare? On the other hand, one might expect the classic 1980s clubs to be rotation-first, in terms of value.

Defensive Efficiency
Prior to investigating Baseball Prospectus pitching profiles of these classic Brewers pitching clubs, it is worth emphasizing that most of the top Brewers pitching teams were also typically very good fielding teams relative to their respective leagues.

Indeed, the table above demonstrates that the 2018 Brewers shares the top of these fielding profiles with the 1992 club, which were the most efficient fielding unit on the Junior Circuit. Here, I am using defensive efficiency to assess fielding because it is a basic number that calculates the extent to which a fielding unit converts outs. The outliers here are the 2005, 2011, and 2017 Brewers clubs, which prevented runs despite mediocre fielding performances (they prevented approximately 26, 47, and 47 runs, respectively, despite their middle of the road fielding).

Roster Construction
Teddy Higuera had quite a career for the Milwaukee Brewers, posting single season WARP totals above 4.0 in three of nine seasons. Higuera’s best year in Milwaukee occurred during the 1988 season, in which the southpaw worked nearly 230 innings while striking out 192 batters to only 59 walks. Using Deserved Run Average (DRA), a statistic that scales pitching performance to numerous contextual components, Higuera was better in 1988 than in any other season in Milwaukee, and those results total nearly 7.0 WARP.

Yet the 1988 club was also a crossing of two eras in Milwaukee, where the fading glory of Harvey’s Wallbangers (who never got the consistent ace they deserved in Higuera) would congeal into a roster core that could never quite get Robin Yount and Paul Molitor into the playoffs with a second generation of talent. Behind Higuera, the 1988 squad featured four prominent contributors age-25 or younger in Juan Nieves (23), Don August (24), Chris Bosio (25), and Bill Wegman (25), ostensibly giving the Brewers a stable pitching rotation around which their next contending seasons could follow. Yet injuries, ineffectiveness, and inconsistencies derailed this group, leaving 1988 their best performance. Of these youngsters, Bosio was en route to beginning a stretch of several quality pitching seasons, and in fact the righty was more valuable each of 1989, 1991, and 1992 (compared to 1988).

Chuck Crim deserves mention, of course, because the 26-year old rubber arm worked more than 100 innings over 70 appearances. Not only did the righty work 42 multiple inning appearances according to Baseball Reference, but he also inherited 68 runners. In terms of percentage points, Crim’s strand rate was eight points better than the league average, meaning that aside from his own exceptional runs allowed total, Crim added several Runs Prevented simply by stranding runners that occupied bases when he entered ballgames; this performance foreshadowed Brian Shouse’s efforts for the excellent 2008 pitching staff (60 IR / 20 scored), as well as Jeremy Jeffress and Dan Jennings (62 IR / 14 scored (!!!) entering Sunday) in 2018. This excellent performance is reflected in Crim’s leads converted statistics, as the righty successfully produced nine saves and 13 holds, against only two blown save or hold opportunities.

The Crim mention is a perfect transition to the 2017 pitching staff, which featured a few excellent starting pitching performances boosted by an even better bullpen. Thus appears Jacob Barnes in the club’s top performers for 2017, as the hard near-cutter / slider reliever is not only a throwback to the bread-and-butter 1980s reliever (enter Crim, a favorite media comp for Barnes, too), but also one of the only 2017 Brewers pitchers to accumulate more than 1.0 WARP. What is interesting about the 2017 pitching staff also foreshadowing the strengths of the 2018 staff, and that is the sheer depth of the pitching operations. Eventually, the pitching-by-depth gamble unraveled as the club faced injuries and a rotating cast of fifth starter ineffectiveness down the stretch. But along with the more popular impact relievers of Corey Knebel and Josh Hader, Barnes was one of the key reasons for the club’s success in 2017 and, like Crim and Hader, another deep round MLB draft success story.

By the way, let it be said that for any other critiques of the Brewers current GM, David Stearns sure can build a runs prevention unit. Despite being in his third season as GM, and ostensibly leading the club through a rebuilding phase, Stearns already boasts two of the 17 average or better pitching staffs in franchise history. Interestingly enough, for all the grief President Doug Melvin gets about his apparent inability to assemble a pitching staff, the highly regarded Harry Dalton also had the same issue. While Sal Bando is not highly regarded by most Brewers fans, the GM sure could build a pitching staff, and Bando (more than Melvin or Dalton) is Stearns’s target for building quality pitching; Dalton and Melvin are obviously the targets for beating postseason appearances.

Comparing Jimmy Nelson, Chase Anderson, and Zach Davies, who was an excellent Runs Prevented starter in 2017 even if his WARP did not look great, to the 1988 squad should underscore the difficulty of building a consistent rotation. Producing a great starting rotation certainly does not come close to guaranteeing pitching success in the following season, when injuries, mechanical adjustments, and inconsistencies that were absent in the “great year” can creep up in the following campaign. Once again, though, the Brewers have a group of truly controllable, quality starting pitching arms (as they did in the late-1980s), but it is worth raising questions about the scouting profiles and future prospects of these arms following the mechanical adjustments and injuries that have plagued 2018. The book is not closed, however, as Chase Anderson has shown over his last ten starts (59.7 IP, 3.02 ERA, four quality starts); if all goes well, Anderson’s contract extension would be well-justified if he comes anywhere near Chris Bosio’s best four years in Milwaukee.

2008 needs no introduction, as the Brewers media and Twitter recently celebrated the tenth anniversary of the CC Sabathia trade. Of course, as Sabathia rightfully carries the reputation as the arm that saved that season, it is always worth emphasizing that Ben Sheets was phenomenal in 2008 as well. Sheets managed a 3.13 DRA and 5.3 WARP across 31 starts, including an electrifying 1-0 complete game effort over the Padres while pitching through a torn elbow ligament. In terms of pitchers putting their careers on the line for Milwaukee, it’s tough to top Sabathia and Sheets, as both pitchers risked millions of dollars on the 2008-2009 free agency market to will the Brewers to their first playoff appearance in a generation; Sheets lost the bet for future millions, while Sabathia cashed on an uncanny performance.

But oh, ode to Manny Parra, Dave Bush, and Carlos Villanueva, the sometimes frustrating but often dependable low rotation and swingman crew for the mid-00s Milwaukee teams. Bush was worth approximately 10 WARP to the Brewers over his 2006-2008 seasons, with 2006 being the high mark; Villanueva and Parra each had their best Milwaukee years in 2008, which is not a bad thing to occur during a playoff race. This trio of pitchers seems quite comparable to many of the 2018 Brewers group, for this trio either had unassuming stuff, or serious profile questions or command concerns when the stuff was there. While one will be quick to point out that the 2018 Brewers do not (yet) have their Sabathia, nor do they have their Sheets, one can find semblances of the Bush, Parra, and Villanueva trio in profiles such as Junior Guerra, Jhoulys Chacin, Wade Miley, and/or Freddy Peralta. This is not an insult: the 2008 trio have never truly received enough credit for their respective roles in carrying the rotation early in the season, nor for their overall value.

Finally, if 1988 was the best franchise pitching season, 1992 exemplified the turn of generations once more, as Jamie Navarro and Cal Eldred were set to join Bosio and Wegman atop the pitching staff. This time, Wegman bested Bosio in terms of value, but both pitchers were quite strong, producing nearly 10 WARP for those 1992 Brewers. Eldred and Navarro also acquitted themselves well, although they would reprise the injuries, inconsistencies, and ineffectiveness that has served as a theme throughout these pitching profiles.

In 1992, one can suddenly see the eras shift, as baseball’s strategic tides moved toward relief pitching prominence, and these Brewers had a deep and fantastic bullpen. Fetters, Holmes, and Orosco were not even the most prominent relievers on the staff (see Plesac, Dan; Henry, Doug; and Austin, Jim). What is stunning about this group is that despite their excellent and deep composition, the Brewers were near the bottom in the American League in both Saves and Holds, and their relievers mostly faced low leverage innings according to Baseball Reference. In 1992, 42 percent of Brewers relief appearances qualified as low leverage; to get a sense of what that might look like, consider than the 2018 Brewers are nearly the exact opposite, with 36 percent of relief appearances qualified as high leverage. It is interesting to think about this strategic snafu of 1992 during a current season in which managers are reaching for their bullpens early and often in order to gain every advantage possible.

Yet is a bullpen ever a vehicle for anything other than strategic failure? Is there a proper way to manage the pen over an extended period of time? If the 2018 Brewers are going to catch the 1988 squad to produce the best pitching season in franchise history, hopefully manager Craig Counsell effectively dispatches those Runs Prevented in the most strategic manner possible.

Baseball Prospectus. Milwaukee Brewers Individual Statistics by Team [CSV]. Retrieved July 29, 2018.

Baseball Reference. Milwaukee Brewers Franchise [CSV]. Retrieved July 29, 2018.

Baseball Reference. Park Factors and League Encyclopedia [CSV]. Retrieved July 29, 2018.

Runs Prevented were calculated using the average of park factors between Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Reference sources, with the addition of a basic league environment runs prevented stat as well. Each Brewers team was assessed by average runs prevented and standard deviation.

FIP and DRA both seek to improve on Earned Runs Average (ERA) and Runs Average (RA9) as a way to evaluate pitchers.  The components of the two are different. For example, FIP uses the three true outcomes (strike outs, walks, and home runs), while DRA’s formula is more complex, and FIP is scaled to ERA while DRA is scaled to RA9. Both stats attempt to produce an ERA-scale number that provides a “better” approximation of a pitcher’s performance, and research over the last year addresses the descriptive and predictive outlooks of both stats. Additionally, recent Baseball Prospectus research into MLB Advanced Media demonstrates predictive characteristics of FIP and DRA compared to popular Statcast “x” metrics.  FIP and DRA can be compared with their “traditional” counterparts to determine whether a pitcher has gotten lucky, or has some other ability to control the type of contact hitters are generating.

In the last twenty years, 241 starters have made at least 100 appearances.  Of those 241, only 14 have posted an ERA at least ten percent lower than their FIP. As you may have guessed, Anderson is one of those fourteen pitchers.  There is no particular pattern to the caliber of names on the list; they range from as successful as Kyle Hendricks (2.96 ERA) to as unsuccessful as Armando Galarraga (4.78 ERA).  Anderson is right in the middle of this list, as his career 3.92 ERA ranks eighth.

There is, however, a pattern to the type of skillset that appears on this list; the highest BABIP allowed on this list is .288, which is lower than the league average has been at any point during these twenty years.  I don’t think this is a huge surprise, but it does confirm an intuitive understanding of the relationship between peripherals and run prevention.  Pitchers who give up fewer runs than their three true outcomes would suggest are better at minimizing hard contact.

This relates to Anderson because it tells us about the indicators of his success.  There have been a multitude of factors this year; as described above, his command has deserted him and his walk and strikeout rates have inverted.  His messy 4.42 ERA is, for better or worse, the main story.  In 2017, his ERA was 2.74, and the Brewers were counting on him to replicate at least most of that performance.  He has been unable to do that.

Weirdly, Anderson’s BABIP this season is the lowest of his career (.219).  Given the ballooning ERA and poor walk and strikeout rates, I would have expected him to be getting hit particularly hard.  That does not seem to be the case, however, and what we should take from that is uncertain.  On the one hand, his low BABIP seems to be driving his ability to outperform his FIP/DRA, which is a positive given that that ability is a calling card of his success.  On the other hand, it may be the only reason his performance has been somewhat respectable, and any type of BABIP regression could see his season balloon out of control.

Going forward, this gives us another aspect of Anderson’s performance to focus on.  His walk and strikeout rates will get the headlines because they are the most obvious and most visible, but his BABIP is interesting as well.  He is a FIP- and DRA-beater, but he does that despite not having ridiculously low BABIPs (career .285).  If the low BABIP in 2018 is covering his inability to outpitch his peripherals, then any type of regression in his batted ball luck could be disastrous.  We will just have to wait and see.

Photo Credit: Benny Sieu, USA Today Sports Images

Aside from the team getting shutout for the 9^th time this season on Thursday, the biggest concern of the week is Chase Anderson’s ongoing home run problem. Since Opening Day, Chase Anderson has only had one start where he didn’t allow a home run. Last year Anderson cut his HR/9 rate to 0.9, which was a career low, en route to his best season by DRA and WARP, and pretty much any other advanced metric you want to use to evaluate pitcher performance. Through two months of the 2018, Anderson’s home run rate has surged to 2.1 per 9, which would be a career high by almost 25 percent. In ten starts this season he’s almost allowed as many home runs as he did in twenty-five starts in 2017 (13 to 14).

Where are all these dingers coming from and can Anderson salvage his season? First, a chart with some home run rate splits:

The fourseam fastball, sinker and cutter are the three pitches where Anderson has traditionally given up the most home runs, and they’ve seen the biggest jumps this season in home run rate. While batters are whiffing slightly less often against these three pitches, there hasn’t been a huge drop off which would indicate that the pitches aren’t fooling them. Swings are generally stable and line drive rates are down.

Anderson hasn’t dramatically changed his pitch mix for these three pitches. He’s thrown the cutter at the same rate as 2017 and seems to have traded some sinkers for fourseam fastballs. If he stays with this mix, his rate of fourseamers would increase for the first time in his career and its usage would approach 2014, when he was a rookie in Arizona. Digging deeper into his pitch usage, there isn’t a particular pattern which batters could use to gain an advantage. Lefthanders see more sinkers early in the count, then Anderson moves to fourseam fastballs as he gets ahead and right handed hitters can expect to see fourseam fastballs almost half the time in their at bats, but nothing here is as extreme as say, Corey Knebel throwing a fastball when he’s behind in the count.

The velocity on all three fastballs is slightly down from 2017, when he posted career highs. The good news is that his velocity has slightly ticked up in May, but he’s still behind the pace he set last year. These slightly slower pitches are moving horizontally about the same as last year, but across the board there is less vertical movement. If those pitches that got down in the zone last year are meeting more upper cut swings as part of the MLB-wide change in launch angle over the past few years, that may explain Anderson’s subpar results.

For his career, Anderson does try and keep his fastballs middle and low, working away from both lefties and righties. He’s been working the same spots in the strike zone, staying below the top and not going below the zone, but he’s throwing much more to his glove side, meaning that while righties are still getting fed a steady diet of away pitches, Anderson is now focusing on pitching inside to left handers, and he is getting them to swing at more inside pitches, but those aren’t translating to whiffs.

Looking at all of these different indicators as a whole, there’s no smoking gun to point to which shows why batters are hitting so many home runs off Chase Anderson. Looking at the zones where batters are doing the most damage, and it honestly looks like he’s just throwing too many good pitches for batters to hit. As a pitcher who keeps the ball in the zone, he can fall pretty to hitters who will look for the ball in certain spots. Right now, Anderson is likely catching too much of the plate and batters are punishing those pitches.

The Brewers have used twenty-two pitchers this season (including Hernan Perez). Of the five pitchers with at least seven starts in 2018, the highest ranked on the team in DRA is Brent Suter, who is 14^th. Anderson is only ahead of Wade Miley, J.J. Hoover, and Boone Logan and is performing at about his 15^th percentile PECOTA forecast. As the forecast shows, there is potential for Anderson to perform as a good number two starter. It may be prudent for him to shelve the increased four seam usage and move towards his changeup and curveball. Batters are getting hits on those pitches at the same rate as the fourseamer, but they aren’t driving the ball. Introducing more pitches for batters to think about may help Anderson catch them off guard and start to produce similar results as 2017.

Photo Credit: Benny Sieu, USA Today Sports Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo Credit: Patrick Gorski, USA Today Sports Images

Among Anderson’s big changes last year was a velocity spike that impacted all his pitches.  Because of that increase, he was able to rely more on his four-seam fastball and cutter, which subsequently resulted in him using his sinker less.  This is a plausible explanation for Anderson’s improved strikeout rate; sinkers are traditionally used to induce contact because their movement is more subtle, while cutters have sharper movement and can resemble sliders that dart away from bats.  Increased velocity on its own can help create more swings-and-misses.  When that is paired with a move towards more dynamic pitches, batters will whiff more often.  As we head into 2018, whether Anderson maintains this improved velocity will be something to watch for.

Where that velocity change came from is an interesting question, though.  We don’t have complete answers about how mechanical tweaks impact pitch effectiveness; if we did, pitchers would know exactly what they need to do to improve certain pitches.  We do know, though, that pitchers are constantly making adjustments, and occasionally they find changes that work.  Brewers’ pitching coach Derek Johnson has a reputation for helping pitchers find tweaks that work for them individually, and so it is plausible that Anderson’s velocity spike is a result of a mechanical adjustment.

Another change is that in 2017, Anderson’s release point moved from where it had been in years past.  His horizontal release point shifted over six inches from where it had been the prior year, but his vertical release point did not really change.  This likely indicates that Anderson moved sideways on the rubber, although off-center camera angles make that hard to confirm.

The exact consequences we should have expected from this shift are unclear.  Moving on the rubber can impact the level of deception a pitcher can create because it changes the hitter’s view of the ball coming out of his hand, and it can therefore help neutralize platoon splits.  Because there was no change in Anderson’s platoon splits (he continues to have a reverse split), though, I don’t know why this change would have made him better.

Additionally, moving on the rubber would not have caused a velocity increase.  Not all mechanical adjustments show up in what the PitchF/X or Statcast cameras capture; for example, a more compact motion could increase velocity because a pitcher is better balanced, but this would not necessarily cause a corresponding release point change.  Similarly, it seems as if Anderson’s mechanical tweak is not captured by release point data.

The big question for 2018 is whether Anderson’s improvements will continue.  The two trends I identified above are two keys to watch for as this season begins.  His velocity spike is likely the biggest factor in any potential continued success, as a better fastball allows off-speed pitches like a curveball to play up as well.  But whether he moves on the mound again will be interesting as well, because it would indicate he is uncomfortable and feels as if he needs to make changes.

The 2018 data in the graphs above are through his first start only, so it is an incredibly small sample size.  Pitcher velocity tends to increase after April, so any current decline is not necessarily worrying.  But it would be encouraging to see Anderson’s fastball velocity tick up towards his 2017 levels as April progresses.  If that increase does not happen, I would begin to be worried about which version of Anderson we will be getting this year.

Photo Credit: Benny Sieu, USA Today Sports Images