At this point, though, we have collectively made it past the dreaded winter months and sit on the precipice of regular-season baseball. People have renewed their subscription (either purposely or otherwise) to MLBtv. Better yet, pitchers and catchers have reported, and spring training games are underway. Some of those games are on television. Otherwise, the familiar sounds of baseball emanate from the radio.

This ultimately signals one of the most exciting times of the year – at least for baseball fans. As far as the Milwaukee Brewers are concerned, interest in the club may never be higher than it will be on opening day. The team is projected by experts and computer systems to be one of the worst in baseball; therefore, as the season progresses and the expected losses pile up, it will be difficult for even the biggest fans to keep more than a passing interest in the team.

Interest in a specific team can be a difficult thing to measure. I, therefore, looked at Google trends to see how often people searched “Milwaukee Brewers” on the search engine. The numbers, as defined by Google, represent the level of search interest in the term specified, but it is in relation to the highest point, which is known as the 100 interest score. To risk being redundant, it is a relational measure, rather than simply spitting out raw counted data. This will help get a sense of general interest. It’s not a perfect way to measure a fanbase’s level of interest, to be sure, but it’s a start.

Since 2004, the term Milwaukee Brewers was most often searched on Google in April. In fact, it was the month that generated the most interest in eight of the eleven seasons since Google has tracked interest. Which makes intuitive sense. Opening day typically occurs in April, or very late March. For Brewers fans, the excitement of a new season is generally stronger than any other moment in the baseball season — largely because the Brewers don’t often make the playoffs. This makes the team less interesting during the month of October.

With all of that said, the month that, by far, showed the most interest was October 2011.

This shouldn’t be overly surprising (though one would be excused for thinking the 2008 season may have ranked highest). Not only was the Brewers 2011 season the most successful during that time frame, but it was one of the best in franchise history. The Brewers achieved 96 wins that season, a franchise record, and reached the National League Championship Series. The interest trends on Google only rises as the season progresses, reaching an apex in October during the playoffs.

Yes, as mentioned above, there was increased interest in the Brewers 2008 campaign as well — especially in September as the team frantically scrambled toward its first playoff birth since 1982. The problem is that the 2008 team quickly got eliminated from the playoffs by a superior Phillies team, which ended up winning the World Series that year, which left very little time for the interest level to accumulate throughout the month of October in 2008. The Brewers didn’t play long enough into the postseason.

What’s even more interesting is that in 2008 the peak interest in the franchise occurred in July. Typically, this wouldn’t create more buzz than a playoff birth, but on July 7, 2008, the Brewers pulled off a blockbuster trade and acquired ace CC Sabathia for prospects Matt LaPorta, Michael Brantley, Zach Jackson, and Rob Bryson. This forced the baseball community to treat the Milwaukee Brewers as a serious contender in the National League. For the first time in many years, the team was finally signalling that they had an opportunity to go for it.

In 2011, though, the seminal moment in recent Brewers’ history occurred. The Brewers won the NLDS against the Arizona Diamondbacks by a single run in extra innings. The final game of the series probably generated the most interest for Brewers supporters, not to mention general baseball fans who wanted to pull for the traditional underdog.

The fifth and final game of the series was tightly contested, as the Diamondbacks rallied in the ninth to tie the game and send the series into extras. The tenth inning of the series yielded the most exciting moment for Brewers fans when, of all people, Nyjer Morgan knocked an RBI-single up middle, which scored Carlos Gomez to walk off the NLDS division series.

The Brewers then moved on to the NLCS, where the team faced the dreaded St. Louis Cardinals. Unfortunately for Milwaukee, the magical ride ended when they were defeated by the Cardinals. It ended one of the most exciting and interesting times in the franchise’s history, one that is even captured in something as simple as raw “search engine” data.

BONUS INTERACTIVE GRAPH [CLICK HERE]

This graph illustrates interest in the Brewers in a more geographical sense. Wisconsin is obviously the state that shows the highest interest in searching the term “Milwaukee Brewers.” The city that showed the most internet interest, however, might surprise you. It wasn’t the city of Milwaukee itself, which is probably the case for a lot of non-baseball reasons, but this graph paints an intriguing picture of what Brewers fandom looks like around the club’s hometown.

Reports suggest that Weaver’s fastball averaged at 79 mph and never passed 81 mph in his most recent start. Considering the rise in fastball velocity throughout Major League Baseball over the past few years, that number is staggeringly low. Here’s a visual representation of how Weaver’s fastball velocity relates to the rest of the league:

From 2007 to 2015, the average fastball velocity across the league has increased from 91.64 to 93 mph. Jered Weaver’s fastball, on the other hand, has decreased from 89.8 mph in 2007 to just 84.3 mph last year. What’s even more interesting is that Weaver’s fastball from 2010 to 2013 went down by an average of 1 mph per year. From 2013 to 2014 it plateaued a bit, and then last year it took a nosedive by 3 mph. Barring injury, that’s pretty insane. And now, reports suggest that his fastball is regularly clocking in at 79 mph.

If any minor-league pitcher was caught throwing 80 mph, he’d quickly be labeled a non-prospect. If a collegiate pitcher threw 80 mph and didn’t have an obscenely weird arm slot, he wouldn’t get a lot of scouting attention for the MLB Draft. If a prep pitcher was throwing 80 mph in high-school games or showcases, he wouldn’t even get a second look from big-league clubs.

Hell, when I played baseball, I’m pretty sure I played against people who threw 80 mph. We didn’t have any radar guns, so I might be mistaken. You know what, I’m probably mistaken. Scratch that, I’m definitely mistaken, but my god, 79 mph!

Granted, it’s just the start of spring training. Weaver’s fastball is so slow that it probably has an arc, but there’s still a chance it picks up velocity. With that said, once pitcher’s start to lose velocity, they don’t tend to get it back, especially as they’re getting older. What’s even more surprising about Weaver’s fastball is that since the PITCHfx era, there hasn’t been a right-handed pitcher that’s thrown that softly at Weaver’s age (32).

Sure, there are some outliers and exceptions. Chad Bradford perhaps being the most notable one, who in 2007 and 2008 threw 81 mph on average, but Bradford threw underhand. Then there’s Tim Wakefield and R.A. Dickey, but they’re knuckleball pitchers and they were both older than Weaver when they threw in the big leagues. Finally, we have Livan Hernandez, who never threw very hard. Even at the age of 32, he only threw 85 mph. Weaver clocked in at 84 mph, but Hernandez was able to keep that velocity until he was 37 years old. If the spring-training velocity readings hold, then Weaver will truly be an anomaly.

The next questions to answer are the following: Has Weaver’s loss in velocity affected his performance? Will it affect his performance going forward?

For most of his career, the answer can be described as no. Or, at least, he’s been able to provide above-average performance despite his slow fastball. One of the reasons he has been able to produce is that he simply doesn’t throw it very often. Since the 2012 season, he hasn’t thrown his fastball more than 30 percent of the time.

But, at some point, common sense suggests that his velocity drop is going to have an affect on his overall performance, and last year may have been the tipping point. Never before had Weaver had a below average DRA, but last year, with his 3 MPH drop he did. And unfortunately for Weaver, his fastball got crushed last year. There simply aren’t many major-league pitchers who have had success throwing that slowly. Maybe Weaver is the ultimate outlier. Maybe he’s the anomaly. But I think, at this point, we shouldn’t expect Weaver to be anything more than a back-of-the-rotation starter, and he’d probably be lucky to be that.

Another note from the above graph: Trevor Hoffman’s 2009 season with the Milwaukee Brewers. It’s something that I have discussed briefly in the past. The interesting part about this information, though, is that no pitcher since the PITCHfx era has had as much success as Trevor Hoffman while throwing that slowly.

There’s a very good chance Hoffman will make it into the Hall of Fame. He’ll probably go in as a San Diego Padre, which is reasonable as he played sixteen of his eighteen seasons in the big leagues with that franchise. But what most people probably don’t know is that arguably his best season came with the Brewers. His 31.8 DRA- was never better than that season, and it still stands as the greatest DRA- in Brewers history. Hoffman was a closer, though, so obviously that gave him a bit of an advantage over the franchise’s starting pitchers.

It’s hard to say exactly what changed for Hoffman. The most notable element was that hitters weren’t making contact with his pitches outside the strike zone (48.8 percent contact rate outside the zone). Hoffman also started throwing more pitches middle-down and off the plate. However, hitters simply didn’t swing at many of Hoffman’s pitches outside the zone. With that said, Hoffman benefited from a very low BABIP at .228, a high strand rate (82.6 percent) and a low HR/FB ratio (3.1 percent). The right-hander had a reputation for inducing weak contact for most of his career, given his trademark changeup, which is evidenced by his .263 career BABIP. He probably benefited from some luck, but in only 54 innings pitched, that’s not unreasonable.

The Brewers, as an organization, also haven’t benefitted from many flame-throwers, at least not since the 2007 season.

They rank as the 25th team in velocity since that point, and since 2007, they’ve only had 11 pitchers who have had an average fastball of more than 95 mph and none who have averaged more than 97 mph. What makes this worse is that teams such as the Red Sox and Blue Jays have their data skewed because they’ve had knuckleball pitchers on their staffs. If I excluded Tim Wakefield and R.A. Dickey from the data, then Milwaukee would find themselves in 27th place.

Velocity isn’t the only measure of success. Pitchers who throw hard aren’t destined for greatness. But, it definitely helps, and having many pitchers who throw hard in the big leagues won’t hurt. Just take a look at the Mets — practically all of their young starters throw hard, and they have one of the most highly regarded pitching staffs in Major League Baseball.

In the end, as the Brewers move forward with their rebuild, it will be interesting to see whether they increase they’re attention on pitchers who throw hard, as it has clearly been a challenge for the organization thus far.

BONUS INTERACTIVE DATA: Brewers Velocity, Age, and Performance 2007-2015

It’s an interesting trade because, in all probability, the Brewers primarily wanted to acquire two of the three players they received in the trade. They targeted Anderson in the hope that he can become an adequate back-of-the-rotation starter or a usable swingman in the bullpen. It’s hard to think of a 28-year-old pitcher as still having time to tap into his full potential, but as has been discussed here before, Anderson still has an outside chance of doing that. Then there’s Isan Diaz who’s quite an intriguing prospect. Diaz performed poorly in his first season in professional baseball but produced a “herculean” slash line (.360/436/.640) in 2015.

Then there’s Aaron Hill, who the Brewers, more than likely, begrudgingly accepted in the deal. The Diamondbacks sent $6.5 million to Milwaukee in the deal to offset much of Hill’s contract, but ultimately the Brew Crew decided it was best to shell out $5.5 million in order to obtain Diaz and Anderson. One could argue that David Stearns secretly hopes Hill bounces back so he can flip him for a middling prospect this summer; however, this portion of the deal was solely about Arizona’s willingness to part with a high-end prospect in order to offload an unfriendly contract.

With that said, Hill has had a very intriguing career. As a prospect Hill, John Sickels described him as a well-rounded player who could tap into some home run potential while playing solid defense at either second or third base.

Hill, throughout his career, did all of those things, but at different and inconsistent points. He had two very good seasons and one great season. But what’s interesting about Hill is that those seasons occurred sporadically. In fact, none of those very good performances came in back-to-back years. They were always followed with at least one season of a precipitous decline in performance. In essence, there was a lot of year-to-year variance in Hill’s performance.

From 2005 to 2015 the league standard deviation of BWARP has been 1.91 BWARP (if I include pitchers, so BWARP & PWARP, the standard deviation lessens to 1.74). Hill’s BWARP standard deviation is 2.25. To be clear, standard deviation is a measure of variability, so the lower the number the less variability. The 11-year veteran has been far more volatile than the average big leaguer.

Hill’s best year came in his first full season with Arizona (2012), where he produced 6.8 BWARP. That season, however, followed two very poor seasons including the worst season of his career, in 2011, where he was below replacement level. In that year, Hill didn’t do anything well. He didn’t hit for average, he didn’t get on base, he didn’t hit for power, his defense was subpar, and his base running was average at best. Suuddenly, that all changed. Hill found his hitting stroke again in 2012, slugging .522 – a career high – and producing the best defensive season of his career. He also compiled the best on-base percentage of his career, which culminated in more than a seven BWARP increase from his 2011 season.

From 2005 to 2015, only six players had a bigger increase in year-to-year BWARP, and only one of those players (Aubrey Huff) was below replacement level in the previous season. Interestingly enough, the biggest increase from year-to-year BWARP between that time was Bryce Harper’s 2014 season to 2015 season, which had a 9.3 jump in BWARP.

But the most fascinating aspect of Hill is that after the first three seasons of his career he became a very different hitter. While scouts suggested that Hill had some power potential hidden in his bat, that didn’t come to fruition until his third season in the big leagues, where he hit 17 home runs. It was the first time Hill hit more than ten in a season.

The following season (2008) was mostly a forgotten one for Hill. He dealt with concussion issues all year and only played 55 games. What people don’t talk about, though, is that Hill started doing something very different. For the first three years of his career Hill wasn’t known as a fly-ball hitter, predominantly keeping the baseball on the ground. In 2008, Hill had a ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio of 0.74. Since that season, Hill has transformed into more of a fly-ball hitter and only had one season since 2008 where he hit more grounders than fly balls.

This change in approach played huge dividends in 2009 when Hill hit a career-high 36 home runs and had an ISO of .213. The approach, however, did cause a slight drop in BABIP, but if you’re hitting 36 bombs, then you can probably cope with the slight BABIP drop. Perhaps the approach went to Hill’s head, however, as he took it to an extreme in 2010, with a 0.65 ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio. This inevitably played a major factor in Hill’s .196 BABIP, as grounders usually help in having a higher BABIP. This caused Hill to have one of his famous drop-offs in overall performance.   

At least Hill’s fly balls still went over the fence in 2010. He finished the season with 26 homers and a 10.8 percent home-run-to-fly-ball ratio. In 2011, Hill tried to rectify his approach at the plate, with a .87 ground-ball-to-fly-ball ratio, but he didn’t hit anything hard and his home run to fly ball ratio plummeted to 4.2 percent. Hill also dealt with a hamstring injury, which admittedly may have played a factor in his poor season and his altered approach.

That next season Hill was traded to the Diamondbacks. The change in scenery and ballpark may have spawned his 2012 season, as it was the best of his career. Hill had a more balanced approach at the plate and had the best defensive season of his career. Since then, Hill’s performance has declined at almost every level. He’s striking out more and walking less. His BABIP keeps dropping even though he’s hitting more grounders than fly balls. In 2015, his BABIP was at .253 and hadn’t been that low since his 2010 season.

Hill will be 34 when the year starts and is probably washed up. While his career has had a ton of variance, it’s unlikely that he’ll produce another great season. Sure, the Brewers can hope that he figure’s things out again, but none of his stats seem to be trending in the right direction. At this point, Hill is probably just a placeholder, clinging on to his last years as a professional baseball player before another young and talented prospect climbs through the ranks.

The problem with this method is that one can choose any random year and make it say whatever. For example, looking at three-year “peaks” will be different from the data of four-year “peaks” or five-year “peaks” and so on. The problem in identifying which player had the greatest “peak” is identifying what “peak” means or, more helpfully, what it should be telling us.

We don’t often think of a player’s peak as being the greatest single season of all time. It’s a range of years, an average performance within set parameters. But taking a literal definition would suggest that “peak” is the highest or greatest point in a player’s career. Even if a player, let’s call him X, had a better three-year peak (by WARP measures) than player Y, it doesn’t actually mean that player X had a greater peak. If player Y, for example, had a better single-season WARP than any season compared to player X, then technically that player had a greater peak, according to the more literal definition. With that said, it would also mean that player Y didn’t have as long of a peak as player X.

The word peak isn’t typically thought of in terms of height and length, but maybe we should start doing that. Some players may have reached huge heights, even if it was for a brief amount of time, while some achieved a more sustained peak throughout their careers. Both are legitimate uses of the term.

When it comes to the Brewers, though, this type of discussion seems to be superfluous. Looking at the Brewers BWARPs and PWARPs, it’s pretty clear that Robin Yount had the greatest peak in Brewers history, no matter how one cares to define what they mean by peak. (Min 100 PA and min 50 IP, which is why you don’t see Molitor’s 1984 season.)

Even if one chooses to cherry pick the data, it would be very hard to make the case for anybody else.

Paul Molitor, another Brewers great, is a little more of a question mark. Molitor didn’t enjoy the same kind of career that Yount did, at least with the Brewers. He finished with a higher total WARP than Yount, but if one compares the years in which they both played for the Brewers, Yount clearly had the better career with the Brew Crew.

That said, a number of the Brewers’ players reached loftier heights. Molitor’s best season with Milwaukee came in 1989, when he amassed a 7.37 BWARP. That mark, however, was surpassed by Ted Higuera’s 1988 season, Ben Oglivie’s 1980 season, George Scott’s 1973 season, and most recently, Jonathan Lucroy’s 2014 season. Fun fact: Lucroy’s 2014 season was the second best in Brewers history, meaning that only Robin Yount performed better in a single season than Lucroy while in a Brewers uniform.

On the other hand, very few Brewers had more success over a longer period of time than Molitor. From 1985 to 1992, Molitor compiled an average BWARP of 5.09 and never had a season where his BWARP went below three, which for a seven-year stretch is amazing. Unfortunately, during the time Molitor played, we didn’t have the same type of statistical information we have today. With that said, one can look at Molitor’s BB% and K%. They show that Molitor possessed a great eye at the plate. In a number of seasons, Molitor had more walks than strikeouts, which would be a rare feat in today’s game. He coupled that with above-average power, making him arguably the second-best player in Brewers history.

As for Robin Yount, there’s probably little argument to be made about his greatness or even where he ranks in Brewers history. That is to say, it would be hard to argue that he isn’t the greatest player to ever put on a Brewers uniform. His peak can also be discussed outside the realm of the Brewers universe, though.

After making his major-league debut at the tender age of 18, Yount kept improving until he reached his peak in 1982, producing one of the all-time great seasons with a 9.96 BWARP. Yount was an above-average defensive shortstop at the time, but what separated that season from the rest was his ability to hit for power. In 1982, Yount hit 29 bombs and finished with a .247 ISO, which was the best mark of his career. Oh, and I almost forgot, that season Yount was not only a good defensive shortstop who hit for a lot of power, but he also rarely struck out with an 8.9 percent strikeout rate — a combination that would have any talent evaluator from any era salivating.

The discussion on what peak means, however, can be had with the Albert Pujols and Barry Bonds cases. While Bonds was a greater player for a longer period of time, he never reached the same heights that Pujols did. Since 1971, Pujols’ 2009 season stands alone. While there’s no argument to be made as to who was the better player, if we ignore PEDs, there’s still a viable discussion as to who had the better so-called peak.

If you are completely turned off by the PEDs, then one can talk about Mike Trout and Bryce Harper. Harper didn’t belong in the same conversation as Trout before last season. Yet, in 2015 Harper produced one of the greatest seasons of all time, even better than Trout’s 2015 season, which BWARP ranks as the best of his career. Conversely, it’s entirely possible, even likely, that Harper will never reach these levels again. Maybe going forward Harper will simply be a six-win player, which is nothing shameful, obviously, that’s a perennial all-star. And let’s say that Trout continues his historic excellence for a few more years. Then Trout’s peak will have been longer than Harper’s peak, but will never have reached Harper’s height.

It’s probably better to talk about peaks in terms of lengths and heights. I think these definitions serve as a better representation of the statements one is trying to communicate, most of the time. Simply suggesting a player had a better peak because he had the better three-year span, alone, is problematic. Therefore, in order to be less arbitrary, it would be better to have a more consistent description of the said peak — such as describing its height and length. This still can leave some arbitrary factor. Maybe, it would be best to simply go with the literal definition, but it’s often less fun and enriching to have those sorts of discussions.

In essence, the Brewers are trading anyone who will garner them young and controllable assets, mainly in the form of prospects. In the Khris Davis move, the Brewers acquired young catcher Jacob Nottingham and right-handed pitcher Bubba Derby. This spurred a narrative that the acquisition of Nottingham meant Jonathan Lucroy is guaranteed to be traded. The narrative is false, as Lucroy was likely going to be traded even without Nottingham. But his acquisition is important for the Brewers in that they potentially have acquired their catcher of the future, the one who will eventually replace Lucroy. The trade also means that the next big chip to fall should be Lucroy.

The Brewers’ backstop struggled last year, more than any other season in his past, which will make him a little more difficult and complicated to trade. With that being said, even though Lucroy struggled and has some very concerning performance trends, he still has one of the team-friendliest contracts in baseball, which will increase his value on the trade market.

Now, Lucroy’s contract is team-friendly because he, comparatively, isn’t making a lot of money. In the 2011/2012 offseason, Lucroy signed a five-year contract worth $11 million with a club option for 2017. That’s ridiculously low for any non-league-minimum player, and those numbers don’t even consider Lucroy’s production.

Therefore, these on-the-field numbers don’t tell the full story. They don’t describe just how team-friendly Lucroy’s contract is or in which year the Brewers experienced the biggest bargain for their buck. For example, if he performs at a below-replacement-level rate, then the contract isn’t all that team-friendly. Instead, Lucroy would just be another body on the bench. But, if he performs well, then the contract becomes very beneficial to the team, which is what has happened throughout his tenure in Milwaukee.

In order to find out, how team-friendly Lucroy’s contract was and which years the Brewers benefitted most from it, I looked at the relationship between his yearly salary with his BWARP. I then did the same thing for every player from now until 1991. The reason is that I got the players salary from USA Today’s salary database. Keep in mind that these salaries are only for opening day players. That’s why, for example, you won’t see Lucroy’s 2010 season in the following graphic. That season Lucroy joined the team in midstream. I also included pitchers PWARP so that I could compare Lucroy to the pitchers as well.

(Please see the interactive version of the workbook here: https://public.tableau.com/profile/julien1554#!/vizhome/PlayerYearlySalaryWARP1991-2015/Sheet1)

The biggest and most obvious observation to be made is that in 2015 Lucroy wasn’t as big of a bargain as he has been in years past. This is not to suggest that Lucroy’s contract became an albatross in 2015, but rather that he wasn’t ridiculously valuable to the same degree as he was from 2011-2014. The 2014 campaign was when the Brewers were able to mostly benefit from the player’s team-friendly contract. Not only was Lucroy cheap, but he was one of the most valuable players in the game. In fact, the only three players in Major League Baseball to have a better BWARP than Lucroy in 2014 were Mike Trout, Giancarlo Stanton, and Buster Posey. Good company.

Now, looking at the information from 1991-2015 can be misleading, mainly because contracts have increased dramatically over that time frame. Therefore, to give one a better look at how valuable Lucroy truly was, it’s best to look at the data from 2011-2015.

This makes Lucroy’s contract look even better. In 2014, Lucroy produced 7.85 BWARP, while only making a little more than $2 million. During that time frame (2011-2015), players have produced more BWARP & PWARP while making less than Lucroy only three times. Two of those seasons were by Mike Trout and one by Buster Posey. Plus, by shifting the data from 1991-2015 to 2011-2015, the shape of the image changes (as can be seen in the interactive version of the workbook). It’s obviously a lot thinner on the sides and at the lower portion of the graph. Meaning that as the years have progressed, players have been making more and more money annually. (This can be seen in an even clearer way by reducing the years in the opposite direction, going from 2015 to 1991, and you can see that the data has completely changed. In fact, in 1991, not a single player made more than $5 million annually.) Making Lucroy’s current contract plus production look like even more of an outlier, especially his 2014 season, which can only be described as one of the biggest bargains in modern times.

That being said, Lucroy’s 2014 season might be the biggest bargain in Brewers history. If one goes to the team section and types in “MIL” there will be a number of values that pop up. For simplicity’s sake, simply select the “MIL” tab. The others would include players that played on multiple teams that same season. If you wish to include all the players that played for Milwaukee during those years, then select all the tabs. In any case, with the years still at 2011-2015, one can clearly see that Lucroy is in a league of his own. The only player that even approaches him is Jean Segura’s 2013 season, where Segura made just under $500k and produced 5.5 BWARP. Even by including every season, for the Brewers, Lucroy’s 2014 season is still the biggest outlier, when considering the production with his salary.

There’s still a lot to unpack from this visual and the information within it. For example, one can look at Kyle Lohse and Matt Garza to see how bad those contracts were for the Brewers. Or, perhaps, looking at Ryan Howard who can be found at the top left of the graph.

This information also does not give one a perfect ranking of Lucroy’s team-friendly contract. It rather shows the relationship between the salary and WARP. But, it does give one a sense of the situation. The lower down and to the right-hand side of the graph the player is, the more team-friendly the deal. The more the player is on the top left-hand side of the graph, the worse the contract.

In practically every year Lucroy is in the lower right-hand side of the graph. And, for the Brewers side, it would be difficult to argue that it’s not the friendliest contract since 1991. There’s a very good chance this will be Lucroy’s last season in a Brewers uniform, and he’ll definitely be remembered for a number of things. But, one that should not be forgotten is his level of production while playing under a contract that vastly undervalued him.

Is this the golden age for the shortstop position? The quick answer is no. Perhaps the better answer to this question, though, is not yet. There’s a very good reason as to why a number of baseball folks can’t stop talking about the position. In other words, there’s a very good reason why I’m posing this question in the first place. It doesn’t seem utterly crazy, and that’s notable in itself.

THE SHORTSTOP POSITION

This past season saw the promotion of Francisco Lindor, Carlos Correa, Corey Seager, and Addison Russell — all of whom have been on top-prospect lists in recent years, and all of whom had very strong rookie performances. Yet, the insane part is that there are more coming. In Baseball Prospectus’ newly released Top-101 prospects, 19 of them were shortstops, including the number-one overall prospect.

BP’s own Christopher Crawford asked some scouts in the industry if they got it right. Were there too many shortstops? It’s obviously difficult to determine if this is true, and probably only time will have the answer, but as Crawford said, this exercise helped illustrate that the position is in tremendous shape.

At just 20 years old, Carlos Correa became the youngest rookie shortstop to have produced this much BWARP, and Cal Ripken is the only rookie 21-year-old to have produced more BWARP than Francisco Lindor. Corey Seager ranks sixth in this category (rookie 21-year-old shortstop BWARP), which in general might not sound very impressive, but he was able to achieve this feat in just 113 plate appearances, which is much lower than his counterparts. Even more impressive is that Alex Rodriguez is the only shortstop to produce more BWARP as a 20-year-old than Carlos Correa.

Plus, to reinforce the notion that this rookie class might be headed for true greatness, it’s one of the youngest rookie classes to have produced this much value.

In fact, the only rookie shortstop class to have produced more average BWARP was in 2007, but they had an average age of 24.7 while this rookie class had an average age of 22.5.

I, therefore, wanted to see how this rookie shortstop class performed compared to other rookie classes and compared to the other positions. This time, I looked at the average rookie BWARP by position. Keep in mind there’s a minimum of 100 plate appearances.

While dubbing this the year of the shortstop might be a mistake, it would not be unreasonable to dub this the year of the rookie shortstop. On average, rookie shortstops produced a 1.77 BWARP in 2015, which was a better mark than any other position this past year. As mentioned before, the only year that had a better average BWARP, for the shortstop position was 2007, and they were barely better at 1.78, plus they were older.

In total, the 2015 shortstop average BWARP ranks 15th. (That is, the 2015 rookie shortstop average positional BWARP compared to all other rookie positions yearly including every single season from 1971-2015.)

Now, a lot still can go wrong. Shortstops could get injured, and, if we’re being honest, probably will get injured. Some may experience prolonged struggles as they adjust to the majors, and some should probably be expected to regress. With that being said, the amount of young and talented shortstops is unprecedented. Plus, more quality young shortstops are coming from the minors. Orlando Arcia is likely to make his debut next season, and with the trade of Jean Segura, the Brewers have opened the door for his ascension. The Nationals, on the other hand, are biding their time with Danny Espinosa at shortstop and should see Trea Turner return to the majors in 2016. Which would mean, that two top-20 prospects who are shortstops should make another added impact at the position. And that’s not even getting into the possible best minor-league shortstop out there — one scout told Christopher Crawford that J.P. Crawford was the best shortstop in the minors. His ETA is scheduled for 2017 — therefore, we might not see him in the majors this year — but it means that quality prospects are going to keep coming year after year, and that’s even more reason for people to be bold about the position.

THE BREWERS SIDE

It probably won’t shock anyone but, for the Brewers, the position that had the highest rookie contribution in 2015 was right field (the position of Domingo Santana, even though he did play games in center field).

The best rookie positional performance for the Brewers was, once again unsurprisingly, in 1992. Pat Listach has already been written about on this site by Seth Victor, chronicling his debut and his subsequent quick downfall. (Data from 1992-1997).

As Victor mentions, Listach was hurt by his knee troubles, which probably hindered his ability to play quality defense.

Listach had better-than-average offensive numbers, but he was never a great hitter. He had a decent ability to get on base, but never hit for much power and sported an unsustainable .366 BABIP in his rookie year. He was also a good baserunner, producing a 7.2 BRR and stealing 54 bases. Instead, it was his ability to play excellent defence that separated him from his peers. The knee troubles, then, undoubtedly played a factor in his quick drop off. Defense does decline quicker than other skills, but the drop off was so drastic that it would be foolish to assume that there weren’t other factors at play.

Nevertheless, Listach’s tale might be a sober reminder that even though some rookies succeed in their rookie seasons, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they will go on to have great and fruitful careers.

But most of Listach’s value came from his glove and even in his rookie season he was 24 years old. These young and talented shortstops in Major League Baseball are not only younger, but seem to be better hitters — meaning that they probably will have more sustained success, as defense typically declines earlier than offense, and the defensive metrics tend to take longer to stabilize. Even though some of the rookie shortstops might regress, then, it’s entirely reasonable to expect this rookie class to keep getting better in the years to come. Thus, in the not too distant future, we might truly be experiencing the Age of the Shortstop.

Thanks to Rob McQuown for research assistance. 

THE ROOKIE PITCHERS

Having a quality, young pitching rotation is one of the most valuable elements of baseball roster construction. The Mets serve as the current gold standard. For most of the season, their offense was subpar. At times, it could have been described as abysmal (that is until they caught fire, of course), and yet, they were able to make the playoffs and reach the World Series on the backs of their young pitching staff.

This isn’t to further emphasize the false notion of “Pitching Wins Championships,” but rather to accentuate the principle that being young and talented has a lot of value — especially when that young talent is in the starting rotation. Relievers seem to be all the rage this offseason, but lest we forget that starting pitchers are still one of the most valuable assets in all of baseball.

But, this year, while a lot has been made of the great rookie hitters, not a lot has been written on the great rookie pitchers. So the next question to ask is, why not?

Well, perhaps the hitting class was simply so talented that it overshadowed the pitching class. With gifted players such as Bryant, Schwarber, Correa, Sano, and others, it’s hard to blame people for focusing so much on the position players. With that being said, there were still some terrific rookie pitchers in 2015. Just take a look at right-hander Noah Syndergaard, who burst onto the scene with his glowing blond hair and his overpowering fastball. Boston southpaw Eduardo Rodriguez experienced his struggles but was still one of the most effective pitchers in the Red Sox rotation. Lance McCullers also made a big jump from Double-A to the bigs and yet was sill able to baffle hitters for the Astros with his great curveball.

Whilst some rookie pitchers performed more than adequately, though, this class wasn’t without its dolts. Michael Lorenzen was allowed to pitch more than 100 innings this past year, and that proved to be more harm than good for the Reds as he finished with a -1.9 PWARP. Eddie Butler and Mike Foltynewicz, both top prospects in their own rights, struggled mightily in 2015, providing negative value to their teams.

Therefore, while this rookie pitching class had some positive performances, it was nowhere near as productive as the hitting class. Here is how it ranks proportionally as compared to the overall pitching PWARP. (Basically, the methodology is the same as last week’s: I looked at the percentage of PWARP rookie pitchers produced compared to the rest of the pitchers. I put a 50-inning pitch limit in order to include rookie relievers. The data, this time, goes back to 1969. The reason I didn’t go this far back for the hitting class was that there were a few inaccurate FRAA data points for the positional class in the years 1969 and 1970.

It’s pretty clear that, unlike the positional rookie class, this wasn’t the greatest pitching rookie class we’ve ever seen. However, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a quality class.

Since 1969, on average 11 percent of the PWARP has been produced by rookie pitchers. This past year a total of 12 percent of the PWARP was compiled by rookie pitchers. But this might be underselling the 2015 class just slightly. In 47 year’s worth of data, this rookie class ranks 15th. It’s not as impressive as the greatest class of all time, but it’s still a good representation of quality. It also presents a one-percentage gain from the previous year. Thus, while everyone was going crazy over rookies not being ready for the majors, the rookie pitching class performed just as good as it usually does at 11 percent of the PWARP.

The greatest year for rookie pitchers was, interestingly enough, not that long ago. It occurred in 2006. The year pitchers such as Justin Verlander, Cole Hamels, Jon Lester, Jarred Weaver, Matt Cain, and others made their big-league debuts.

THE BREWERS SIDE

As I’ve mentioned before, the tale of league-wide rookies and the Milwaukee Brewers is a stark contrast. While the league’s hitters overshadowed the rookie pitchers, the Brewers hitters provided just about zero value to the team, while the Brewers rookie pitchers provided a significant amount of value.

For this, I also added the DRA- values. The methodology was, as usual, the same. The only difference was that I reversed the DRA- axis so that lower is higher. (The higher the dot is on the y-axis, the lower the DRA-.)

On average, Brewers rookie pitchers have made up 17 percent of the total PWARP. In 2015, rookie pitchers produced 38 percent of the total PWARP. It’s the fifth-best performance, on a proportional basis in Brewers history. And, impressively enough, this amount of production was produced by only three pitchers, Corey Knebel, Michael Blazek, and Taylor Jungmann.

Looking at the information through the DRA- lens, the 2015 class had the second best DRA- in Brewers history. While Knebel did provide some positive production, most of the impact was produced by Jungmann and Blazek.

For rookies, Blazek had the lowest DRA- in Brewers history, with a minimum of 50 innings pitched. He was also able to accumulate a 1.4 PWARP in only 55 innings pitched. While Jugmann, who had a good rookie season in his own right, produced basically the same PWARP (1.6) with more than double the innings pitched (119).

The best performance by Brewers rookie pitchers was, perhaps, the 1995 season, where rookie pitchers combined for an outstanding 70 percent of the total PWARP. The Brewers didn’t have the best season finishing with a 65-79 record, which left them in fourth place in their division. Their Pythagorean win-loss record, however, suggested that they should have finished closer to a .500 record with a 71-73 record.

The average PWARP, on the other hand, does tell a different story. It shows that the 1985 season was actually the best in Brewers history. That year, however, Ted Higuera was the only pitcher to make his debut, and he lit up the competition, finishing with a 3.95 PWARP, which is the best mark in Brewers history.

The 2015 pitching class wasn’t the greatest of all-time. It wasn’t the second-greatest of all-time, nor did it make it in the top-ten for that matter. But it doesn’t mean one should look down on it with cynical eyes. The class was still better than most, and while it won’t go down in the pantheon of memorable rookie classes, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t look back and appreciate the bright spots it provided — solid contributors that could linger and have a significant impact on the years to come.

Stuff

We saw earlier that Nelson took the cake in terms of velocity, while Pena’s movement paced the team. On the other end of the spectrum, there was no such divide — one pitch had both the lowest velocity z-score and the lowest total movement z-score:

For a curveball, below-average vertical movement isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since the average such pitch already moves negative. Indeed, the fact that Fiers led all starters in curveball drop last season would seem to work in his favor.

Of course, all the dive in the world won’t count for anything if the pitch has no velocity. Only Jered Weaver, Mark Buehrle, and Julio Teheran threw their curveballs slower in 2015, and it showed. Fiers’s curve went for strikes just 43.0 percent of the time in Milwaukee, and when he put it in the zone, hitters such as Tyler Moore made him pay:

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Those kinds of dingers made Fiers’s curve worth -1.61 runs below average on a rate basis. The Brewers will miss Fiers overall in 2016, but I for one am glad that his curveball will stay with the Astros.

Run Values

Interestingly enough, though, Fiers’s curve didn’t finish last when it came to Linear Weights. Another starter, who remains on the team, held that distinction:

Peralta’s 2015 regression fell squarely on the shoulders of his sinker, which traveled nearly a mile and a half slower than it did in 2014. That meant the pitch often resulted in this sort of treatment, courtesy here of Curtis Granderson:

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But a run value alone doesn’t really do Peralta justice. For his case, we’ll look at something else.

TAv

Using the same samples from the velocity and whiff rate z-scores, I found the average and standard deviation for each pitch’s resulting TAv. These created TAv z-scores, to better reflect how hard batters hit an offering. They certainly clobbered Peralta’s heater:

How bad was this? The next-worst pitch, Tyler Cravy’s four-seamer, had a TAv 1.75 standard deviations over the mean. Only Vidal Nuno and Sean O’Sullivan allowed opponents to abuse them more than this. Let’s throw in another GIF of this atrocity, for good measure:

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I discussed Peralta’s meltdown in December, noting that the movement of his pitches actually improved in 2015. Let’s hope for his sake that he regains his velocity, because if he doesn’t, the 2016 campaign will bring more of the same kind of pain.

Whiffs

When it comes to swinging strikes, things get complicated. Unlike Fiers’s curveball and Peralta’s four-seamer, this pitch actually held its own in 2015:

Blazek didn’t earn many whiffs with the curveball, yet it still gave him 1.99 runs above an average pitch (per 100 appearances). That’s because it accrued its strikes a different way:

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Matt Carpenter and his fellow batters took the curveball for a called strike 30.7 percent of the time, an incredible amount. An exercise like this has limits, as Blazek demonstrates — no one metric can really capture all the value of a pitch.

That isn’t to say, however, that Peralta’s four-seamer didn’t struggle, or that Fiers performed well with his curveball. We can pretty conclusively deem one of those two the worst Brewers pitch of 2015. Hopefully, 2016 will bring more pitches like the ones we saw on Thursday (although, if the team continues this rebuild, we won’t witness great pitching for a few years).

Click here for a complete spreadsheet of all 39 pitches.

If you watched baseball this year, or even paid attention to it, you probably knew at some point that this rookie class was something special. The emergence of so many young and talented players captivated the mainstream baseball media numerous times. The first stud to reach the big leagues was probably Kris Bryant, who had his picturesque swing and awesome power. Then, there was Carlos Correa, who showed an unbelievable ability to thrive at the plate while playing a quality shortstop.

It’s highly probable that a rookie had an impact on the way that you watched the 2015 season. One probably got your heart pumping and caused your mind to wonder what heights the rookie will reach in his career. Yes, this was truly a great rookie class, but the natural question to ask is just how great?

THE POSITION PLAYERS

A lot has already been written on the subject, and more will surely be written on the subject, in the attempt to quantify the greatness of this class.

Ben Lindbergh wrote about how many top prospects were making the majors. He even mentioned that “we should pause to savor the moment.” Hopefully, you heeded Lindbergh’s advice this past season. For Brewers fans, maybe it was with Taylor Jungmann or Michael Blazek; maybe it was Domingo Santana that intrigued you. Or maybe, it was a player on another team that demanded your attention. It seems logical to assume that not every year will have this sort of influx of rookie talent, and the 2015 class might even define the league for years to come.

A few weeks back, I looked at the performance of top prospects in baseball, looking at how their value during the year in which they were named on a BP Top-100 list. The evidence was pretty simple: the 2015 season was the year top prospects performed the best between 2007-2015.

Today, I’m going to analyze something different. I’m going to look at how great this 2015 rookie class was in historical context. This sort of analysis has already been done before; therefore, I wanted to look at the performance on a proportional basis and not simply look at the average or overall values. This basically means that I’m going to look at the percentage of WARP rookies contributed to the overall WARP.

I think this is a better way of looking at the situation, primarily because, while looking at this information on an overall basis might be nice, it could simply mean that the overall league is getting better as a whole. In other words, that there is more WARP. Mainly, this will allow us to see how much of the league wide contribution was thanks to rookies.

First, I looked at the position players, with a minimum of 100 plate appearances. I also included the overall rookie BWARP and the overall league BWARP, which the graphs can be found at the bottom of the visualization.

It’s pretty clear what the main graph is showing. On a proportional basis, the 2015 rookies made the greatest impact on the league. This past season, rookie hitters contributed to 13 percent of the total BWARP, which is better than any season since 1971. It also showed to be one of the biggest leaps in impact for rookies.

In 2014, all the rage seemed to center on the underperformance of rookies. Every day someone seemed to discuss the notion that it’s harder than ever to play in the majors and that the leap to the majors has never been more difficult. In fact, Alex Speier wrote a piece on this very notion. That, idea, however, was disproven to a certain extent by Ben Lindbergh. He said, “Although the trajectory is worth watching, we’re left without any proof that the leap from Triple-A to the majors is tougher than it has been at various points in the not-so-distant past.” Mainly, Lindbergh acknowledged that people felt this way due to recency effect or recency bias. It does seem to have gotten harder over the past few years to play in the majors, but if one looks at the more long-term effect, then the problem doesn’t appear to be more severe.

This winter no one seems to be talking about this issue. In fact, I haven’t been able to find a single article written on the subject. One of the biggest reasons people were worrying last season about rookie performances were due to the rookie trends in performance, but as can be seen above, that concern seems to have resolved itself in a pretty distinctive manner. In fact, the 2015 rookie class performance was 104 percent better than the previous year’s rookie class! That discrepancy in performance was the second highest since 1971. The only year that had a bigger leap in performance was from 1994 to 1995, which saw a 124 percentage change. The main reason for that was that 1994 was a shortened season due to the lockout, which gave fewer rookie’s a chance to make an impact in the majors.

That being said, if we look at the information on a per average basis, the 1987 and 2006 seasons had better performances. The 2015 campaign had an average BWARP of 0.89 while 2006 had a 0.9 BWARP and 1987 had 0.95 BWARP. These aren’t huge differences, but if one chooses to look at the information through that lens, the 2015 season isn’t exactly the best we’ve seen since 1971.

THE BREWERS SIDE

The tale of the rookie is quite different for the Brewers. I’ve already discussed, to a certain extent (and I will discuss it further in the next post), their rookie pitching is where their strength lied.

For position players, it was quite an ugly scene. The concept was still the same, however, as I looked at the Brewers’ positional rookie performance in proportion to the overall Brewers positional players. Here are the numbers, in which I’ve added the average TAv — so we won’t simply be looking at the overall BWARP. (Keep in mind, that in general an average TAv is considered to be .260).

You might be wondering where is the 2015 value? Well, the Brewers rookie hitters only represented 0.0007 percent of the total Brewers BWARP. They also weren’t a very productive rookie class with the bat averaging a .239 TAv, which is well below average.

Hernan Perez was the main culprit hurting the production. He produced a -1.0 BWARP for the season. With that being said, the Brewers didn’t have any star prospects come up and make an impact in 2015. At least not for a long enough time. Domingo Santana might very well go on to be a very productive hitter throughout his career, but he simply didn’t get enough opportunities with the Brewers to make a significant impact. He was also hurt defensively when he was stuck defensively in center field, as he finished the season with a -4.7 FRAA, which served to counteract most of his offensive output. It’s very possible, however, that next season he flourishes in a corner spot if the Brewers can finally find a suitable trade partner for Khris Davis.

The best year, in proportion for the Brewers rookies, was 1984. That, however, was mainly because the team as a whole sucked. The team went 67 and 94 and finished last in the AL East. That season, the Brewers hitters only produced 8.44 BWARP, which is the second worst in Brewers history. (It can be seen in the “Brewers BWARP 1971-2015” graph.)

Therefore, the average BWARP in this situation will probably give one a better perspective. That graph shows the best season for Brewers rookies was in 1992, which saw the rookie performance of Pat Listach, who arguably had the greatest rookie performance in Brewers history finishing with a 5.3 BWARP.

We so often talk about greatness and what it means, how important and difficult it is to find. But we don’t always seem to notice it when it’s present, when it’s happening right in front of us. It’s often by underselling the excellence of Mike Trout, LeBron James, Peyton Manning, or whomever. We always try and cling to the notion that the past was better, that the past was somehow better than the present. But, for this hitting rookie class, maybe the past wasn’t better (if it was, it was barely better). At the end of the day this positional rookie class was one for the ages, and hopefully, it’s something will remember about the 2015 season.

Thanks to the great Rob McQuown for research assistance.

Beyond that, pitchers make a better target for sabermetricians, as we can quantify so many elements of their game. Thanks to PITCHf/x, we can now look at pitch usage, velocity, movement, release points, locations — and, most importantly, individual result breakdowns for each offering. This can lead us down any number of analytic rabbit holes, which is where our story begins.

Because we still have a few weeks until baseball returns, I’ve decided to pass the time by constructing arbitrary “best-of” lists. Most of them wouldn’t appeal to any sane person, but I feel that many fans of the Brew Crew would like to know the answer to this question. Of the many pitches we had the pleasure of viewing last season, which stood out above the rest? A question that broad doesn’t have one right answer, but it’s an entertaining exercise regardless.

To accomplish it, I looked at pitches that appeared at least 200 times, isolating myself to those that occurred when the player was in Milwaukee. (In other words, this won’t include Mike Fiers’s time in Houston or Jonathan Broxton’s work for St. Louis.) This gave me a sample of 39 pitches to work with:

Whose quiver contained the deadliest arrow? Well, we can look at the issue a few different ways, each of which has its own merit. I’ll run through them all, with fun GIFs and full explanations, then return with a final summary.

Stuff

When evaluating the quality of a pitcher, we can focus, broadly speaking, on two things: the process (think cFIP) or the results (think DRA). The same general logic applies to the pitches themselves. We’ll begin with a few metrics that will tell us how well the pitches theoretically should have performed in 2015; from there, we’ll then move to the measures of how well they actually performed.

For a pitch to blow away the opponent, it generally has to have either velocity or movement. We’ll thus begin our journey with these two categories. For this, I used the BP PITCHf/x leaderboards to find pitchers (separating starters and relievers) with 200 of each pitch type in 2015. I then found the average and standard deviations of each sample, from which I constructed velocity, horizontal movement, and vertical movement z-scores for all 39 offerings.

The pitch with the most power behind it might seem familiar:

Nelson’s curveball, which ranked above Sonny Gray and Jacob deGrom in terms of velocity, left hitters such as Aramis Ramirez guessing:

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For movement, I took the sum of vertical and horizontal z-scores, to get a rough measure of overall bite. Although the top offering here might not be your first guess, it certainly deserved its spot:

Pena’s four-seam fastball didn’t have much heat, but man, could it dance. Watch how it rises and tails away from Kyle Schwarber:

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Nelson saw more action than Pena did in 2015, which may explain why his curveball feels more familiar. Still, each of these offerings stood out in its own regard. As the Brewers experiment with their rotation in 2016, we’ll probably see a lot more of both the heater and the curve.

Run Values

With that said, velocity and movement alone don’t make a pitch. A better line of thinking would look at the actual production of a pitch, and for that, we have a unique metric.

Pitch Type Linear Weights measure the count changes by each pitch, as well as the result when the offering ends a plate appearance, and expresses it as runs above or below average. This metric generally achieves its goal, and its selection for top Brewers pitch (on a per-100 pitch scale) probably wouldn’t get too much blowback:

Rodriguez won this contest by a wide margin — Michael Blazek’s curveball came in second, at 1.99 runs above average. Darin Ruf would probably agree with that verdict:

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This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since Rodriguez’s cambio made his 2015 resurrection possible. In fact, the changeup was worth more (by this metric) on a rate basis than any other pitch, of any kind, in all of baseball. Taking note of that a few months back, Mark Simon crowned it the best pitch in the majors. Sadly, K-Rod will pitch in Detroit this season, so this changeup will no longer work in Milwaukee’s favor.

Whiff rate

But we shouldn’t stop there, because Linear Weights aren’t perfect. Aside from the fact that they don’t necessarily reflect true talent (which we’ll discuss in due time), they treat all changes of count the same way. In the eyes of Linear Weights, a swinging strike to begin an at-bat is the same as a foul ball, since each puts the pitcher ahead 0-1. That doesn’t testify to the quality of the offering, though — whiffs are clearly better than fouls, meaning the best pitches will usually maximize the former.

For that reason, we’ll move to swinging-strike rate. Here, it’s important to take into account the different baselines, as each pitch fools hitters to different extents. To level the playing field, I created some more z-scores, using the averages and standard deviations of the whiff rates from the aforementioned velocity samples. As with the Linear Weights, the winner here won’t shock anyone:

Here, too, the leader dominated the competition: The runner-up — Neal Cott’s cutter and its 15.7 percent whiff rate— only topped the mean by 1.24 standard deviations. Based on this hilarious A.J. Pierzynski swing, I can’t argue with that:

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I covered Smith’s transcendent slider back in June, and although Smith himself faded a bit down the stretch, this pitch didn’t miss a beat. Unlike Rodriguez, Smith should stick around, so this glorious breaking ball will continue dominating for the Brewers.

In the end, Nelson’s curveball, Pena’s four-seamer, Rodriguez’s changeup, and Smith’s slider disrupted plenty of hitters last year. These standout offerings gave us something to look forward to in an otherwise dismal campaign. (On that note: Later in the week, I’ll use this methodology to find the worst Brewers pitches of the 2015 season. Until then, we’ll simply have these masterpieces to keep us warm.)