Aguilar, who has spent his entire professional career in the Cleveland system, led the International League in home runs in 2016. He’s a giant, listed at 6’3”, 241 pounds, much like the aforementioned Carter. He has appeared on a few prospect lists in various different locations but has never been considered a future impact player. Aguilar spent years toiling away in the minor leagues, being held back by his inability to play anywhere besides first base, once again a very Carter-esque feature.

Projection systems are optimistic towards Aguilar. PECOTA calls for eleven home runs in 250 plate appearances, with an OPS near .800 and a .262 TAv. Extrapolate that out to 600 plate appearances and you’ve got a 25 home run hitter. ZiPS calls for 26 home runs in 568 plate appearances and a .758 OPS.

Over the last few years, since 2013 to be exact, Aguilar has displayed a reverse platoon split. He has dominated against right–handed pitching while having more run of the mill results against left-handers. His OPS was 132 points higher against right-handers in 2016; 122 points higher in 2015; 45 points higher in 2014; and, 125 points higher in 2013. It remains to be seen if this difference is just a result of the competition he faced or a small sample size, but it hard to argue with those numbers. This makes Aguilar an interesting option for the Brewers bench. A late-inning righty masher is something the Brewers can use. If somehow the coaching staff can make his platoon split look a little more traditional, the 26-year-old starts looking like a real impact bat.

The first baseman isn’t just a free-swinging power hitter. Aguilar has displayed a quality feel for the box. In 2014, in 499 plate appearances in Class-AAA, he posted a 12.8 percent walk rate. His walk rate was down to 9.2 percent in 2016, but his strikeout rate was just 19 percent. This is a strong number for a player who is marketed as a power bat. If he can keep his strikeouts down, in the 20 percent range upon promotion to the major leagues, there is a strong chance he can post an on-base percentage of .330+.

As I mentioned earlier, there is a real chance that Thames is the same hitter he was before his stint overseas. His numbers over the last three years in Korea are the only indicator that his “second” major league career will be any different, and sabermetricians are still having a hard time getting numbers from the KBO to translate over smoothly into their projection systems. Thames is on the wrong side of thirty now. The projection systems are loving him right now, but if the price the Brewers paid for Thames is any indication, major league front offices don’t expect much more than a slightly above replacement level first basemen. He is the only real option standing in front of Aguilar. In 2014, in 499 plate appearances with the Indians AAA affiliate, he posted a 12.8 percent walk rate.

Keep a strong eye on Jesus Aguilar this Spring. In your SSS stat of the week, he already has three hits in eight plate appearances. A strong Spring from him and we could be seeing his name on the 25-man roster come April. Should Thames revert back to the 2013 version, Aguilar just may be the Milwaukee Brewers next Chris Carter and starting first basemen.

How will Eric Thames’ defense be?

In the grand scheme of things, or really in any scheme of things in 2017, it’s probably not really important at all. However, given that Chris Carter posted an amazing -12.1 FRAA, good for 59^th and absolute last among first basemen in 2016, it’s possible that it might matter a little more to the Brewers than to any other team. In fact, Chris Carter’s defensive FRAA in 2016 ranks 3,081 out of 3,136 seasons by first basemen since 1950.

Projection systems so far have been fairly bullish on Thames’ offensive output. Steamer and ZiPS, respectively have Thames projected for over an .800 OPS, and Clay Davenport’s translation from his production in Korea is even more optimistic, with a 1.000+ OPS.

If his offense is even just close in production to what Carter offered, the Brewers might end up having more to gain even if Eric Thames can just be average at first base to the tune of a win or more. Could he be better than that though?

Unfortunately, publicly available KBO statistics don’t give us anything of particular use defensively. You could argue that he won Korea’s Golden Glove at first base last year, as was cited in several articles after Thames signed with the Brewers this winter. However, the Gold Gloves in Korea are actually awarded to the best players at each position overall, not solely on defensive capability or metrics—to the point of a Golden Glove awarded to a DH every year. I’ll give you a moment to collect yourself after the shock of learning that a league’s Gold Glove award might not just take defense into account.

That leaves us with his minor league and brief stints in the majors, but he hasn’t played any first base at any point in his career stateside. Splitting his time between right field and left, he has basically averaged out to slightly below average outfielder. Playing in 95 games his rookie year in Toronto mostly in left, Thames was -3.0 FRAA, and the following year splitting time between Toronto and Seattle he was close to average.

The scouting reports on Thames have  been pretty consistently down on his defense overall. In the 2011 Baseball Prospectus Annual, he was called “below average.” Interestingly, the 2013 Annual report pointed out some conflicting data on his defense, and is worth quoting here in full:

“When you start feeling confident in advanced defensive metrics, go look at Thames, who is either an above-average left fielder (+4 runs in his 181-game career, according to us) or a considerably worse option than Bobby Abreu right now (-19, by John Dewan’s +/- ratings). That’s a big difference and it’s a big deal in evaluating Thames, whose bat is just average for a corner. With an average glove, he’s an every-day player on a second-division team, and perhaps the big half of a platoon on a contender; without it, he’s quad-A. The consensus among those who watched him in Toronto, where he was frequently replaced for defense late in games, leans heavily toward the latter.”

It appears from as much information as we can cobble together, Thames was somewhere between an average to below-average left fielder. That seems like it would work out okay defensively at first base. Surely a converted left fielder at first would be…oh. We’re back to Chris Carter again.

To expand our sample size outside the Brewers organization, I used Baseball Reference’s Play Index to look at active players who have played both positions and more than 500 games. The list of those players, along with their average FRAA since they started playing the majority of their games at first base:

Obviously, the list isn’t a perfect mirror of Thames’ situation, and Albert Pujols skews the average FRAA pretty heavily. Some players moved back and forth between positions, which may not reflect their first base-only FRAA. But the larger point is that players who have switched between left and first base generally have been below-average fielders at first (the rare exception seems to be super-utility guys like Steve Pearce or Sean Rodriguez), and we might expect the same out of Thames. But even a Lucas Duda-type FRAA season for Thames represents almost 6 FRAA improvement from last year at first.

Hey, I told you this wasn’t important in the grand scheme for 2017. Unless Eric Thames is Albert Pujols…

(1) Grading Thames
Several sources of projection have outlined expectations for Eric Thames in Milwaukee, so I’m not going to attempt to project Thames’s statistical performance in Milwaukee. Instead, I want to look at the opportunity cost of Thames, as well as the potential value from his scouting profile. Really, my analysis of both Thames and Thornburg will depend on your feelings of WARP; whether or not you believe that WARP adequately captured Chris Carter’s value to the Brewers is going to be a factor that impacts how you view the slugger’s surplus value, for instance (a similar issue will arise with Thornburg below).

In my last analysis, I estimated that in terms of contractual value and production, Carter was worth between $18 million and $25 million to the Brewers (the main focal point here is not to consider the fact that he may have cost between $8 million and $10 million in salary arbitration, but that the Brewers could release Carter without spending a dime [and they did just that], which frames his contractual value). The most interesting note on Thames is that the slugger has changed his approach and mechanics while working in the KBO, which places a different lens on his outburst in that league, and also changes his scouting outlook in the USA. Beyond the Box Score features a detailed look at Thames’s swing in the KBO, which shows some development from his MLB swing.

If one attempts to balance Thames’s winding career path with his recent KBO superstardom, a “punt” scouting grade of 45-50 may be in order for the age 30-33 first baseman’s contract. Yet, visions of Jose Bautista come to mind whenever someone says “late 20s mechanical adjustment,” as the Blue Jays’ iconic slugger was little more than a .239 / .324 / .398 slasher through 2008 when Toronto acquired him. The idea that a player can unleash his power after his prime development years is not implausible, and indeed some of those players become superstars (Edwin Encarnacion, Bautista’s teammate, is another example).

In 1,000 scenarios, imagine that Thames reaches 40 OFP 900 times ($1,800M), 50 OFP 80 times ($2,976M), 60 OFP 19 times ($1,452M), and Jose Bautista once ($218M): the Brewers still come out ahead, even if in 90 percent of scenarios Thames effectively busts (0.93 WARP over four seasons). Their total surplus, in this scenario, would be approximately $2.8M. So, the Thames contract is a wash at worst, and at best a fantastic opportunity to sign a foreign league superstar that was simply a late bloomer. Now the only question is if Thames ends up closer to the 0.1 percent odds of breaking out as an MLB superstar on the strength of his KBO adjustments.
Surplus Value: Approximately $2.8M if assumed 40 OFP in 90 percent of outcomes.

(2) Trading Thornburg
How does one grade the Thornburg trade? In my previous grading of current assets, Thornburg’s three-year performance weighed down his significant gains as a reliever. Boston obviously traded for Thornburg with the idea of building on his season as an excellent high leverage relief option, and whether or not Thornburg is a closer, there is a chance that he will provide excellent value to their roster if given the chance to prove himself in the late innings over another season. The best aspect for the big market Red Sox is that they now reserve arbitration rights for Thornburg for three seasons, meaning that there is plenty of time for Thornburg to move within different high leverage roles, struggle, iron out any issues, even weather an injury. In this case, a study of the McCann trade, which caused me to reconsider using depreciation-models to assess trade value, one would do well to assess Thornburg in the most robust manner, certainly weighing his 2016 improvements much more heavily than his previous struggles.

If anything, this comparison should show that it’s extremely difficult to simply assess a trade based on one single model, or one assumption. The Brewers could assume that Thornburg’s troubles would weigh heavier, and they wouldn’t necessarily be wrong; the Red Sox could buy high and have a robust model for Thornburg, and be equally correct. I dare say there will be no equilibrium found for this deal, between either club. The deal is an immediate victory for the contending Red Sox, who bolster their bullpen with a hard throwing up-and-coming reliever that offers three years of arbitration reserve; the deal is an immediate victory for the Brewers, who turned a struggling swingman-at-best into a lights-out reliever and then sold at the best possible moment (it can be argued that even waiting to see if Thornburg could close for the first half of 2017 is too risky for the Brewers, since any issues in that regard would tank the value built during 2016).

Considering both conservative and aggressive estimates for the trade as currently constructed, it should not be outlandish to say that the Red Sox properly gambled that they can retain value with Thornburg’s contract (which can be non-tendered without cost prior to 2018 and 2019). If the PTBNL turns out to be a player with a pedigree other than organizational depth, that might push Thornburg into 2.0 WARP/year territory to regain value. Yet, given that the Red Sox are gambling for playoff spots, overpaying in a trade for a high leverage player is not necessarily a bad deal if the payoff is somewhere between $10 million and $30 million of playoff revenue. Adding together playoff revenue, playoff prestige, and potential flags flying is well worth a PTBNL. There is plenty of evidence to argue the trade a success for either team, which is a good sign that Milwaukee maximized their short-term closer’s value.

(3) Miguel Diaz’s Value
I previously called GM David Stearns’s refusal to protect top RHP prospect Miguel Diaz from the Rule 5 draft a “dreadful, terrible” move, but I think I emphasized the wrong reasons. As the Brewers potentially lost Diaz to the Padres (via the Twins), depending on how he fares early in the season and whether he sticks with San Diego, it is worth recasting the move as a failure even if Diaz does not reach the MLB or his gaudiest 60 OFP from summer 2016.

Imagine that Diaz follows the odds of reaching the MLB at approximately 20 percent; among those potential MLB futures, consider a 40 OFP / roster filler status as the vast majority (95 percent of potential MLB futures, maybe reaching 1.0 WARP over three seasons), a 50 OFP (4.5 percent of potential MLB futures, maybe reaching 4.0 WARP over three seasons), and 60 OFP in 0.5 percent of MLB futures (maybe reaching 7.0 WARP over three seasons). Spread over 1,000 potential futures, Miguel Diaz averages out to approximately 0.23 WARP, or someone worth between $0.500 million league minimum contract (replacement contract) and $1.61 million using the standard $7 million / WARP “market estimation.” This is the biggest problem with failing to protect Diaz: in the first place, he’s one of only a few true 50+ / 60 OFP prospects in the Brewers system. There are many 50 prospects in the system, and several 50+ prospects, even, but not many reached a 60 OFP grade in 2016. Diaz reached that level, and is therefore one of the best prospects even adding in all the risk one can find.
Value Lost: $1.6 million.

(4) Roster Summary
Here is a summary of notables trades, Rule 5 transactions (MLB and AAA), and free agency signings. Moves with 40-man roster impact are highlighted.

Thus far, the Brewers have added approximately $23.7 million in total surplus through 40-man roster transactions (this figure does not factor in full reserve control for minor leaguers, but instead focuses on OFP value). That is basically worth 1.7 WARP from a league minimum contract, or 2.75 WARP from Eric Thames (2.75 WARP is worth approximately $19.3 million, minus $15 million guaranteed). In total surplus value, Stearns has acquired approximately $63 million for the organization, which can be translated as approximately 4.5 total WARP from a league minimum salary, or acquiring approximately three 50 OFP prospects via trade.

The organization was in an interesting position with Carter this offseason; the slugging first baseman led the league in home runs but was otherwise not very good, but the club didn’t have a clear replacement for him. Carter was once a highly-touted prospect, but he is about to turn 30, has now had four full seasons in the big leagues, and has been worth more than 1.0 WARP just once in his career. The chances that he actually developed into a quality big leaguer were relatively low, but I thought the Brewers might hold onto him simply because there wasn’t a clear alternative at first base and he was a cost-controlled option for the next couple years.

With that information in hand, the fact that the Brewers have essentially swapped him for Eric Thames is not that surprising. But the path that the club took to get there is perplexing, and it reveals a weird lack of foresight.

Just before the deadline to finalize the 40-man roster, the Brewers claimed Adam Walker off of waivers from Milwaukee. Walker has a similar profile to Carter, as he is a first-base type with big power but lots of swing-and-miss in his game. He was added to the 40-man roster, protecting him from the Rule 5 draft at the expense of other, more viable options such as Wei-Chung Wang. Then, though, he was designated for assignment after the Brewers claimed reliever Steve Geltz.

Thames, who the Brewers signed this week, is a question mark who is returning to the big leagues from Korea. He put up impressive power and patience numbers in the KBO, but it is hard to know how well those numbers will translate back to MLB. When Thames was in the big leagues in 2011 and 2012, he was a high-power, high-strikeout corner outfielder.

The takeaway from this series of moves is that the Brewers clearly don’t want to waste more than one roster spot on this type of all-bat, no glove player. The club DFA’d Walker shortly after signing him, so they clearly were not enamored with him specifically. They then DFA’d Carter and signed Thames, so the only one currently left on the Brewers’ 40-man roster is Thames.

What is weird about this is why the club cares about having this particular archetype on its roster at all. The swapping out of Carter and Walker for Thames indicates that the club is interested in versatility, because Thames can also play the outfield occasionally. Versatility has been a theme though for the Stearns front office, though, so it isn’t as if this is a newfound desire that the organization just realized it wanted to emphasize in the last few days.

40-man roster spots are valuable. The Brewers seem committed to reserving one for a slugging first baseman, which is a surprisingly rigid approach for a team that has been quite flexible over the past year-plus. Instead, the Brewers chose not to protect someone from within the organization.

Importantly, the end result makes sense. The Brewers will go into the season with Eric Thames as the only one of these three players on their 40-man, which is a logical outcome. Most likely, Wang (or whichever organizational player would have been the 40th man on the roster) will never amount to anything in the big leagues, and Steve Geltz may or may not ever pitch for the Brewers. But this was a weird few days for that roster spot, as the Brewers specifically chose to select someone who they then released a week later.

It is difficult to find the relevant points for constructing marginal analysis of baseball transactions because MLB teams are arguably not in economic competition for resources (they are more effectively viewed as colluding firms seeking to keep other operators — competing baseball leagues — from succeeding). Also, MLB-level talent is so incredibly scarce that it is difficult to say that there is a diminishing return from adding too much talent; this is not the same as hiring too much labor or investing too much into capital infrastructure in a competitive market. To demonstrate the latter point, consider the number of 3.0 WARP players in 2016 MLB (77) compared to 1348 batters; given that teams are willing to employ 148 more batters than the total number of 40-man roster spots (1200) in a season to squeeze out every win, at the very least one would argue that (1) there is no diminishing return on adding impact players, and (2) the best place to look at marginal value would be the cost and production of those additional 148 players cutting their teeth at the edges of the MLB roster. But no one would say that MLB teams should only acquire, say, two 3.0 WARP players, and with their third 3.0 WARP player they lose value.

What does this have to do with anything? The Brewers are doing practically nothing thus far in the 2016-2017 offseason, and some of the moves from GM David Stearns are downright perplexing. Others still are non-events, and some of those moves might still produce another surprise player (like Junior Guerra or Jacob Barnes or Keon Broxton or something). So, while I am not going to be able to offer you a full theory of marginal roster value here, consider that in these early season transactions, we are judging the cost of adding one additional player to the 40-man roster, either at the expense of additional future value to the organization, additional surplus value (in terms of production value, trade value, at a certain contract rate), or additional WARP right now. Since most people still assume the Brewers are rebuilding, let’s forget the third motive for rosterbuilding, and prioritize the first two (I’d even add an asterisk to the first goal, adding future value).

(1) Dreadful, dreadful, terrible move: Not Adding Miguel Diaz to 40-man roster.
Set aside the fact that one of these days, analytical front offices will eventually start plucking intriguing A-ball prospects in the Rule 5 draft with regularity. The Brewers made such an audacious (and brilliant) move when they nabbed LHP Wei-Chung Wang from the Pittsburgh Pirates for the 2014 season, effectively stashed him, and even effectively kept him within the organization after designation for assignment. That was a phenomenal future play for a low-cost asset that addressed a (then) organizational weakness (left-handed starting pitching). Of course, the Brewers neglected to protect Wang from the 2016 Rule 5 draft, which is rather problematic in itself. But Wang himself shows the potential value in toughing it out with an extremely inexperienced professional ballplayer as a Rule 5 pick: Wang improved the system’s starting pitching and replacement pitching depth at low cost. The Padres also demonstrated this strategy by selecting RHP Luis Perdomo in 2016, suggesting that perhaps this is finally the beginning of analytical front offices doing audacious things to find value.

Miguel Diaz is probably a Top Five pitching prospect in the Milwaukee farm system to most evaluators, and if you weigh fastball, secondary stuff, potential command and development, and even risk, the righty could probably also land a Top Three pitching prospect designation on the right day (I’d slot Diaz behind RHP Luis Ortiz and LHP Josh Hader; on my own Brewers list, I have Diaz (easily) ranked within the Top Five Percent of the entire Milwaukee organization (with Ortiz, CF Lewis Brinson, and IF Isan Diaz standing as the One Percenters). In a June 2016 eyewitness report, Diaz landed heady 70 fastball OFP, 60 slider OFP, 55 change OFP, and “ability to throw all three for strikes;” risk comes from level / distance from the MLB, full command development, and delivery repetition. All told, a 60 OFP on Diaz makes him easily one of the best prospects in Milwaukee’s system; one could probably rank him in the Top Five and not think twice.

The Brewers neglected to protect Diaz from the Rule 5 draft. Consider this: if a 60 OFP player might be expected to produce at an above-average level at least once, and maybe produce at an average level at least once, it is quite easy to assign a 4.0 WARP / 2.0 WARP / 1.0 WARP three-year spread for a 60 OFP prospect. Yet, recognizing the risk of reaching that level, and the likelihood of depreciating performance, a harsh depreciation level of 70 percent still lands Diaz a three-year OFP grade of 4.9 WARP; an even harsher depreciation level of 40 percent (10 percent for each level away from the MLB, on top of 70 percent depreciation) still lands Diaz a three-year OFP grade of 2.8 WARP.

What I’m trying to say is this: at the basic cost of less than $0.6 million and maybe a burned option year, the Brewers neglected to find roster space for at least $19.6 million in OFP production value. What’s worse is that that future production does not account for the contract eating into that value (it costs nothing to release Diaz, meaning his $19.6 million minimum future value is completely untouched by his contract), nor does it account for the trade value inherent in (1) his strongest projections and (2) his potential production + potential contract. Miguel Diaz is worth at least $39.2 million to the Milwaukee Brewers in surplus value; but that’s an incomplete picture, as it does not include the full contractual reserve rights for the Brewers (but it’s also less effective to say that Diaz is worth $80 million in surplus value).

That the front office neglected to spend a 40-man roster spot on Diaz is an unforgivable offense. I know that’s harsh, but this is the first true mistake of GM David Stearns’s administration, and here’s why: the whole point of an analytical front office, if one views their aims as different than “winning ballgames,” is (a) to cut costs by steering revenue from players to ownership, (b) maximize WARP / $ ratios, and (c) value process over everything, or rather, create processes that consistently and effectively identify value.That the Brewers could not identify the clear value play in Miguel Diaz for an unforgivable risk in even 1-in-100 scenarios (that is, losing Diaz in the Rule 5 draft, for nothing), by spending nothing more than a 40-man roster spot on the righty, is plainly baffling. Moreover, if another MLB team does not select Diaz, they are also making a mistake and poorly evaluating the cost of stashing $39.2 million in surplus value on their roster.

2017 Opportunity Cost: 5.6 WARP ($39.2 million / $7 million per WARP). Ex., you could probably trade Diaz for a very good MLB player.

(2) Other Rule 5 Guys?
For fun, using slightly different calculations than the process I outlined above for Diaz, from my previous post on “Grading Trades“:

I think there are other claims to be made about protecting someone like Wei-Chung Wang, or even someone like Tyrone Taylor. But, since I just went off about Miguel Diaz for far too many words, let’s just say losing Taylor or Wang would be slightly more forgivable. Notably, Adam Walker has a similar prospect grade to both Taylor and Wang, meaning that the Brewers grabbing Walker at the expense of Wang and Taylor is probably close to a value non-event.

(3) The Waiver Shuffle

David Goforth has a career WARP of 0.3, driven by 24.7 innings worked in 2015 to the tune of 0.4 WARP, on the strength of a 3.44 DRA. On the 2016 Brewers, for context, that performance would have made him the fifth best reliever. Unfortunately, it’s a year removed for Goforth and memories are short and there are no second chances in baseball — scratch that, we’re rebuilding, there are plenty of opportunities for a pitcher such as David Goforth to get another chance in Milwaukee. Unfortunately, in the last 10 days, the Brewers have added Adam Walker, added Blake Parker, subtracted Walker, and now added Steven Geltz. The club designated Goforth for assignment to make room for Parker, which was a positive value play on the margins by approximately 0.3 WARP over six seasons (#ThisIsHowYouWinChampionships).

Much more interesting is the fact that both Geltz and Parker throw splitters according to BrooksBaseball, and even more interesting are both righties potential ties to current Brewers pitching coach Derek Johnson (Parker, potentially in the Cubs system) and Vice President and Assistant General Manager Matt Arnold (Geltz, potentially in the Rays system). It’s hard to dislike the mental picture of Stearns and Arnold emerging from the tank in Miller Park with two hard fought waiver claims based on the organization’s splitter-algorithm that caught Junior Guerra; or I don’t know, maybe like Guerra these signings are scouting-gut “I like this guy getting another chance” deals.

If you’re inclined to wonder why the Brewers are designating Walker for assignment, and inclined to be upset about it, consider the chance that he clears waivers and remains in Milwaukee, accepting a minor league assignment: the club just added a potential play worth $11.6 million in surplus value, to stash away for a rainy day (or by mid-June, we’ll see). Liken this move to the Garin Cecchini move, which was great even though it didn’t work out (or, more properly, has yet to work out). It’s tough to judge Walker’s value against Geltz’s rough WARP performance, but somewhere there’s a spin in that splitter that made someone’s afternoon in the plush offices of Miller Park.

2017 Opportunity Cost: Probably no more than 0.25 WARP assuming Walker clears waivers and accepts assignment ($1.8 million maximum roster space / $7 million per WARP). 1.71 WARP maximum cost ($12 million / $7 million per WARP).

(4)The Carter Misstep?
One of the biggest mistakes baseball fans make is viewing value as “production,” rather than “production + scarcity.” Production may be what it may be, but depending on other teams’ needs or wants, a player’s service time, and a player’s contract (among other factors), “scarcity” can be traded. This is what cannot be missed in the case of Chris Carter, after anyone smugly multiplies 0.8 WARP * $7 million, writes “Chris Carter is not worth salary arbitration,” and wrings their hands. So, while rumors suggest that the Brewers may non-tender Carter should they fail to receive a trade offer for the first baseman, a non-tender option should not necessarily be viewed as a positive event for the 40-man roster. For even at $10 million, Carter has value to the Brewers: he has three-year depreciation value at 2.66 WARP ($18.6 million), and two years of arbitration control (at zero cost to non-tender, worth approximately $12.4 million). Carter, at the very least, is worth $18.6 million to the Brewers, and even with harsh depreciation he could be worth as much as $24.8 million to Milwaukee. If you’re unimpressed by this, Carter’s contract surplus and production for one season is worth approximately $11.2 million.

Perhaps this rumor by the Brewers is a public relations plot, or perhaps it is an effort to negotiate a different contract with Carter (imagine a two year, $18 million contract, for example, which would pay Carter 100% of his production value, and 50% of his surplus value). This scenario would be valuable to the Brewers for several reasons: (1) No one better is available at 1B within the system; (2) Carter is relatively dependable; (3) the club still maintains trade value with that contract; and (4) Who cares, the team is sitting on $60 million already and there’s another $60 million due in 2017, and Carter can hit home runs like this:

Do you think Carter was aiming for his picture on the scoreboard? Anyway, the point is, it’s not enough to look at Carter’s production alone and judge a potential non-tender. In the context of the Brewers organization, and even the 2016-2017 first base free agency market, there is little opportunity cost in keeping Carter and paying him grand slam bucks. One of the few MLB free agents that would improve on Carter’s value is Steve Pearce, whose 5.39 WARP three-year depreciation score doubles Carter’s.

2017 Opportunity Cost: 3.5 WARP ($24.8 million / $7 million per WARP). Just pay the slugger!

(5) Total 2017 Opportunity Cost: 9.35 WARP ($65.5M). What this means is that Stearns is willing to pay $65.5M for these roster moves, or rather, that these roster moves have given him the space to find 9.35 WARP. In more straightforward language, the forthcoming roster moves will need to generate 9.35 WARP to balance the roster from these moves.

Related Reading:
Can Keon Broxton Make Enough Contact?
Chris Carter’s 2016

I’m not entirely sure which camp I fall into. Instead of ruminating on that, I’d rather look at the players who cross over between the two — the ones who have noteworthy plate discipline in the view of one group, and cringeworthy plate discipline in the view of the other. The Brewers, for the time being, have two such players: Chris Carter and Keon Broxton. Each of them possesses a great batting eye when it comes to balls and strikes…as well as not-so-great judgment when it comes to making contact.

Take a look at their 2016 production in the aforementioned metrics, along with a comparison to the major-league baseline:

As is standard for plus stats, 100 is average, and each tick above or below that is one percentage point above or below average. Also, none of these metrics are park-adjusted. Park factors are hard.

Both Carter and Broxton lay off most of the stuff they see outside the strike zone, and in doing so, they don’t become passive within the strike zone. But when they decide to take a cut, they’ll come up empty disturbingly often. The question is, can the former ability negate the latter?

In a poor attempt to answer that, let’s look at some similar players. We’ll set our thresholds at:

• O-Swing+ of 90 or below
• Z-Swing+ of 100 or above
• Whiff+ of 130 or above

How many qualified campaigns, since 2008 — when PITCHf/x data became reliable — can meet those criteria? In addition to Carter’s current one, just 23:

From here, we’ll look at a few different era-adjusted metrics. One obvious question arises, based on the parameters of this study: How did these players fare in terms of strikeouts and walks?

In general, not too terribly. Except for A-Rod last year and Corey Hart — remember that guy? — in 2011, they all went down on strikes at a clip 20 percent worse than average. They compensated for that, though, with a boatload of free passes: Only five of them weren’t at least 20 percent better than average in that regard. On average, these players notched a 157 adjusted walk rate and a 149 adjusted strikeout rate; in other words, their on-base ability made the lack of contact stomachable.

What about when they put the ball in play? Did all of those whiffs bring weak contact, or did their pitch recognition allow them to see meatballs coming and pounce?

The latter theory holds true, and it’s not especially close. In terms of BABIP, the results are a mixed bag — Pena repeatedly struggled to get hits, while Stubbs never stopped racking them up — but overall, this group was just three percent worse than average in that regard. And evidently, they swung-and-missed so often because they were aiming for the fences: These sluggers averaged a 144 adjusted ISO. In the end, that patience seemed to pay off.

And the final, most salient question: How well did these players perform as a whole?

Not too shabbily! They averaged a 113 wRC+, and only five of them had a subpar batting line. In the end, it doesn’t seem to matter if you whiff a ton — so long as you can make up for that with a discerning eye. For Carter and Broxton, this seems to be welcome news.

Now, a couple of massive differences do exist between Carter and Broxton, chief among them being speed. The former plays at first base, and he’s not the Anthony Rizzo breed, either: In his career, his baserunning has been worth -10.5 runs, per BP’s data. The latter, by contrast, covers a ton of ground in center — and on the basepaths, where he earned 1.3 runs in just 244 plate appearances this year. That speed translates to hitting, too, as Broxton can leg out infield hits and take extra bases more readily than Carter.

This distinction, and the results of the study, can help us to establish a rough floor for both players. I’d imagine that, if Broxton maintains this plate discipline, he shouldn’t fare any worse than Stubbs’s 2011 season. During that year, the Reds outfielder put up a wRC+ of 90 — the lowest in this sample — and accrued 1.8 WARP over 681 plate appearances. For Carter, he’d probably bottom out around Reynolds’s 2010, when the nominal third baseman earned 2.4 WARP in 596 plate appearances despite a 96 wRC+.

Of course, the other difference is that Carter has a lot of experience — and he has bottomed out before. He came to the Brewers this season when the Astros non-tendered him, following a 104-wRC+, 0.4-WARP 2015 campaign. If he regresses to that again, he won’t have much value. Broxton, though, just surpassed the rookie limits this year, meaning the sky remains the limit (in theory). Who knows? Maybe he’ll cut down on the swings-and-misses, retain the selective swings, continue clobbering the ball when he makes contact, and become a star. Even if he doesn’t accomplish that, we’ve seen that this approach won’t doom him.

All data as of Thursday, September 22nd.

Best Play: Matt Garza struggled, Ariel Miranda did pretty well, yada yada yada, Tom Wilhelmsen came on in the ninth. The score at the time was 6-3 Mariners, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Keon Broxton greeted him with a solo home run, his second of the day, which trimmed the deficit to 6-4. Hernan Perez followed up a Ryan Braun strikeout with a double to deep center, bringing Chris Carter to the plate. With a full count, the slugger turned on a fastball and managed to squeak it over the outfield wall in right-center.

Carter’s two-run blast (+.358) tied the game at 6-6 and gave the Brewers a 44.5 percent win probability, their highest odds since the third inning. Three batters later, Scooter Gennett would bring home Domingo Santana, pumping the team’s chances up to 87.3 percent. It was a stunning comeback, considering the Brewers headed into the ninth with just a 2.8 percent chance of winning. Chalk it up to Wilhelmsen being terrible — and Milwaukee capitalizing.

In his first year with the Brewers, Carter has seen his bat ebb and flow, as it’s done in the past. He’s gotten hot again in August, though, with a .250/.377/.500 line heading into Sunday’s action. Will that production cool off heading into September? Yeah, probably. But if it doesn’t — if Carter closes out 2016 on a high note — he could become a hot commodity on the offseason trade block. Not bad, for a low-cost January free agency signing.

Worst Play: Tyler Thornburg had entered in the bottom of the eighth, retiring the side in order, so he would be the pitcher of record after the offense’s heroics. Since he needed just 11 pitches to record those three outs, Craig Counsell wisely decided to leave Thornburg in. The choice didn’t look wise initially, however, as Ketel Marte worked the count to 3-2 before leading off the bottom of the ninth with a single to left.

Marte’s single (-.132), representing the tying run, brought Milwaukee’s chances down to 68.7 percent. He’d later advance to second base on a wild pitch, bringing Seattle 90 feet closer to a counter-comeback. Prior to the errant pitch, though, Thornburg would retire Nori Aoki and Shawn O’Malley; two pitches later, he’d induce a flyout off the bat of Robinson Cano to seal the victory.

Now that Jeremy Jeffress and Will Smith have gone to those big contenders in the sky, the Brewers have real uncertainty at closer. Or they would  have real uncertainty at closer, were it not for Thornburg’s breakout this season. The kind of reliever that can pile up 30 pitches to end a six-game skid is the kind of reliever you construct your future bullpen around. While there are no guarantees with ninth-inning guys — remember the implosions of John Axford and Jim Henderson — Thornburg has done as well as anyone, and he stands a good shot of keeping this up.

Trend to Watch: The Brewers wouldn’t have had the chance to come back if the bullpen had imploded like Garza did. Thankfully, Jhan Marinez excelled in his regular role as the stopper, facing the minimum seven batters across 2.3 innings. My colleague Travis Sarandos and I have each written about the righty, but I think we’ve both glossed over what might be his defining attribute: a high ground ball rate. Of the seven balls in play against him Sunday, just two went into the air; he’s kept the ball on the ground an even 50.0 percent of the time this season, per FanGraphs.

Strangely, Marinez hasn’t attacked the bottom part of the zone, as most ground ballers do. Many of his pitches have leaked up, in fact:

Despite this, he still manages to get a ton of grounders, and mostly on those pitches he deigns to throw low. We saw this on Sunday as well — although many of Marinez’s offerings traveled into the upper regions of the zone, the ones in the lower areas stayed on the ground when put in play. For some reason, hitters just can’t take advantage of those high pitches.

Milwaukee has a sizable gap between its infield and outfield defenses. The club’s .764 ground ball defensive efficiency is the eighth-best in baseball, while it ranks in the bottom half of the majors in efficiency on fly balls, line drives, and popups. Presumably with this in mind, Brewers pitchers have garnered grounders at a decent clip — their 45.8 percent ground ball rate, by FG’s calculation, puts them 12th in baseball. Marinez has topped that, which seems to have benefited him. Even as his strikeout and walk rates have regressed, the continued presence of ground balls has granted him some level of dependability.

Up Next: The Brew Crew heads home for 10 contests, starting with three against the Rockies. Jimmy Nelson, Chase Anderson, and Zach Davies will square off versus Chad Bettis, Jon Gray, and Tyler Anderson, respectively. After that, it’s all NL Central for the next month (seriously, August 25 to September 25). Let’s hope that Carter, Thornburg, and Marinez make these next few duels more watchable than the first six-and-8/9 games of this road trip.

At the beginning of the season, this Carter pickup looked like a great move for the Brewers. He had been a top-50 prospect three consecutive years (although that was five years ago at this point), but he simply had never performed to the level that was anticipated prior to his debut. But the Brewers were able to buy low, signing Carter to a $2.5 million deal this offseason.

This deal was low-risk; the club didn’t have an incumbent first baseman, nor a top prospect knocking on the door who Carter would block. Even the worst-case scenario was just that Carter would fail to produce and the Brewers would be out a couple million dollars. So even if Carter’s full season ends up being a negative and a waste, the opportunity cost simply wasn’t very high.

But at this point—given the hot start—a lost season would be a disappointment. As I discussed earlier this season, Carter looked to have made some real changes to his swing and his approach. However, his approach has regressed, as the charts below show. Where he was swinging far less frequently earlier in the season, he has now mostly reverted to the same levels as previous seasons. In fact, his overall swing rate this season is up to 44.5 percent, which is not far off his career level of 45.9 percecnt.

Through May 8, 2016

Through August 15, 2016

To my mind, at least, the most interesting aspect of Carter’s season is that his exit velocity has remained consistently high. Throughout the season, he has been hitting the ball hard.

Obviously, there are a few low points recently on the above graph. However, the general point stands—Carter has been hitting the ball hard, and that hasn’t correlated with success. One might generally assume that good contact leads to good results, but that clearly has not been the case with Carter.

This phenomenon is probably most well-known in the case of Pedro Alvarez. Alvarez would hit the ball really hard when he made contact, but he just didn’t make contact enough for it to matter. In his case, his inability to adjust was probably both what made his exit velocity so high and his success rate so low.

Carter appears to be suffering from the same fate, and the problem here is that this is an issue with his strategy at the plate. Approaches can and do change; there are plenty of examples of players developing patience as they get older and are forced to adapt. However, Carter is already 29 years old, so there simply isn’t a lot of time for him to do anything drastic. Players undoubtedly get stuck in their ways, particularly when they have been successful for so much of their lives, so the longer Carter goes into his career without changing, the less likely it is to happen at any point.

Most worryingly for Carter, at some point in the near future he will begin to lose bat speed. For someone with such a low contact rate to begin with, he simply can’t afford to miss hittable pitches or lose some of his power.

To this point, Carter has remained a powerful hitter. His .265 ISO is slightly higher than his career mark of .241, and his .485 SLG is about sixty points higher than it was last year. But power drops as bat speed declines and players get older—see Pujols, Albert, who is posting the lowest ISO of his career—so Carter is running out of time.

2016 began on an encouraging note for Carter, and maybe he can return to that form, whether it be with the Brewers (either late this year or next year) or with another club in 2017. However, he needs to show that he can change his approach and be more selective, or he simply won’t be playable. His negative defensive value hinders him greatly in this respect, and if he doesn’t hit, he won’t be a big leaguer for much longer.

There’s no reason for the Brewers to make any changes at this point of this season, but it would not surprise me if they non-tender Carter this offseason. It would provide some lineup flexibility—whether it be to move one of their outfielders to first base or to sign someone else—and Carter simply hasn’t performed as the club would have hoped. It was an excellent chance to take, but it simply hasn’t paid off given his performance to date.

Top Play (WPA): The top play of this game happened in the 5th inning. Villar was the leadoff hitter and he started off the inning by grounding out to second base. The next batter was the seemingly rejuvenated Scooter Gennett. After struggling and coming off of his early season injury, Gennett has recaptured his early season success; Gennett singled on a line drive to center.

The next batter was Hernan Perez, who has shown an increase in his power hitting this year. On the first pitch of the at-bat, Perez hit an up-and-away ball to the opposite field for a two-run home run.

This gave the Brewers a 2-1 lead.

Bottom Play (WPA): The worst play of the game came in the third inning, when the Brewers were down 1-0, and were up at the plate. Jimmy Nelson led off the inning, and he was actually able to work a leadoff walk.

It is important to note that newly acquired Jarred Cosart was pitching for the Padres. He was having some command issues, as this was his third walk of the game.

Villar was the next batter, and he struck out swinging. However, Gennett followed with another walk, Cosart’s fourth in just 2.3 innings pitched. And would you have it, Perez was the next batter. Perez isn’t known for being the most patient hitter, but he as well was able to work a walk. Perez loaded the bases with one out for Chris Carter, one of the most patient hitters in the game.

But, this is the worst play of the game for a reason. Carter uncritically swung at the first pitch of the at-bat and grounded into an inning-ending double play that ended the threat.

Nelson’s Struggles: The reason the Brewers lost this game was two-fold. First, the Brewers weren’t able to take advantage of a wild Cosart. Cosart has struggled with his walk rates all year evident by his 8.61 BB/9 in the majors this year. Even in the minors, Cosart’s walk rates weren’t great. In Triple-A Cosart’s BB/9 was 4.44. The Brewers are also one of the more patient teams in the league. Therefore, this seemed like a match made in heaven, but alas the Brewers were unable to capitalize in key situations.

The other reason was Jimmy Nelson’s poor start. Nelson struggled from the get go as the Padres got off to an early 1-0 lead after the first inning. It was clear that Nelson didn’t have his good stuff, struggling with his walks, and the location of his pitches, Nelson gave 6 earned runs in just four innings pitched. He walked four hitters only struck out four and gave up 8 hits.

Early on in the game, the broadcast team talked about Nelson’s good ERA and how his 6-9 (at the time) win-loss record was not indicative of his season. Nelson’s ERA is currently at 3.74, but this ERA is misleading.

The problem is that all of Nelson’s peripherals tell a different story of a different pitcher, FIP: 4.79, xFIP: 4.76, DRA: 4.69, cFIP 106.

While ERA tells a story, it rarely tells the full story. It tells us how a pitcher is preventing his runs, runs that weren’t allowed by errors. But, as we know, the pitcher isn’t the only agent in control of preventing these runs. There’s the defense, the catcher, temperature, luck, and more.

But, Nelson’s season can be explained quite easily. Nelson, this year, has a 4.44 RA9. RA9 does not include errors, and this stat is much more in line with his peripherals. Basically, this means that Nelson has benefitted greatly from runs that have scored, but that weren’t earned to him because a defender made an “error” (leading to a low ERA). Now, we know that errors are a bad stat that doesn’t accurately represent the impact of the defense, which is why ERA is a very problematic stat.

The other differences can be explained rather simply: Nelson’s strikeouts are down, his walks are up, and so are his home runs. The are all troubling signs.

It’s understandable to want Nelson to be a mid-tier starter, but the reality is that Nelson is more of a #5 starter than he is a #3.

Coming Up Next: The Brewers will be in action again tomorrow at 10:10 PM ET. Once again they will be facing off against the Padres. Zach Davies will get the nod. He’s easily been the Brewers second best starter after Guerra. The biggest difference separating them, however, has been the home runs. Davies’ HR/9 is at 1.03 while Guerra’s stands at .78. Home runs have been a problem for Davies all year, but maybe he starts rectifying that this game.

Best Play: In a tight contest where no one scored more than once per inning, the final run would make the biggest difference. When Chris Carter stepped in with two outs in the bottom of the fifth, Francisco Liriano had retired five of the last six batters he’d faced (and the one batter who reached would head back to the dugout soon thereafter). Unperturbed, Carter launched a 2-1 changeup to deep center field, where — for the second time in the game — Andrew McCutchen could only turn around and watch.

Carter’s dinger (+.117) improved Milwaukee’s chances of winning from 67.8 to 78.9 percent. After Corey Knebel kicked off the sixth inning with a strikeout of McCutchen, those odds rose above 80 percent, where they would remain for the rest of the game.

In each of his first two plate appearances on Sunday, Carter earned a free pass; that output improved his seasonal line to .217/.305/.481, giving him a .278 TAv over his 407 plate appearances. The Brewers haven’t heard much on the trade market about Carter, and perhaps that’s for the best — if he can keep this up and finish the season on a high note, he’ll have more trade value heading into the winter. At 29, Carter may not stick around for the next Milwaukee contender, but he can indirectly contribute to it.

Worst Play: After cruising through the first four innings — he threw only 62 pitches, on which he allowed a run on three hits and a walk — Matt Garza ran into some trouble in the fifth. Jordy Mercer led off with a single, and Eric Fryer tapped a full-count grounder to third that escalated things further. Hernan Perez fielded the ball cleanly, then booted the throw to first, putting runners on the corners with no one out.

Perez’s error (-.116) cost the Brewers, as these things tend to do. Heading into the inning, the home team had a 75.4 percent chance of winning; that dipped to 58.9 percent once Mercer and Fryer reached. Luckily, Garza would let just one run score, sandwiching two strikeouts around an RBI groundout. From there, Carter and the bullpen took over.

Perez had already given the Brewers a run in the first inning, when he scored from first after a botched throw from Fryer. (No, really, check it out.) Even so, such a performance in the field won’t fly for a borderline player, especially one who’s probably due for some regression with the bat. Perez now has five errors on the year, along with a neat 0.0 FRAA; with Jake Elmore waiting in the wings, Perez won’t see as much action with play like this.

Trend to Watch: Is Knebel back? After a superb rookie year in which he posted a 3.22 ERA and 2.97 DRA over 50.1 frames, Knebel struggled to start the season. He sat out the first two months because of an oblique strain, and his return was shaky — in 4.1 June innings, he gave up six walks and permitted four runs to score. That performance punched his ticket to Triple A, where he showed enough improvement for another cup of coffee.

And following that roller coaster ride, he finally seems to have settled in. Knebel struck out all three hitters he faced on Sunday; in the 5.0 innings he’s accumulated since his callup, he’s notched one walk and nine punchouts. A change in pitch selection has accompanied the shift in results — Knebel has overpowered hitter with heat:

11 of the 14 pitches Knebel threw on Sunday — including all three third strikes — were four-seam fastballs. In addition to the increased quantity, Knebel has added some quality to his fastballs, throwing them for a whiff 15.1 percent of the time since his call-up. That pitch alone may not save Knebel; unless he improves it to the level of Aroldis Chapman, he’ll need to perfect his curveball. A few extra heaters can only help, though, and if Knebel sustains this, he’ll slot in as the setup man down the stretch.

Up Next: The Brewers head out west for a three-game duel with the Padres. Jimmy Nelson, Zach Davies, and Junior Guerra will face Jarred Cosart, Luis Perdomo, and Edwin Jackson, respectively. Let’s hope that Carter keeps mashing the ball, Perez starts flashing his glove, and Knebel…leaves hitters thrashing at his heat? (In retrospect, I have a lot of respect for that Dr. Seuss guy.) To August we go!