Most Brewers fans would scoff at the notion that Milwaukee could rebuild their club under similar ideologies or structures as one of baseball’s largest television markets, for the common note would be that the Dodgers always have larger margins of error given the fact that they can simply sign any player they please to overcome any failed acquisitions. The Dodgers do have an embarrassment of riches, but focusing too much on that fact will miss that their most valuable batter was originally signed as a minor league free agent (Justin Turner); their third most valuable batter was another minor league free agent (Max Muncy); their best homegrown batter in 2018 was drafted in the fourth round (Cody Bellinger); and Chris Taylor and Enrique Hernandez were both acquired via relatively lateral trades (the former involving a stalled Top 100 prospect, the latter thrown-in with the payroll clearing Dee Gordon / Dan Haren trade). The pitching side of things for the Dodgers is less scrappy, but Walker Buehler (24th overall pick); Alex Wood (three-team salary-clearing, counterbuilding deal); Ross Stripling (5th round); and Kenley Jansen (amateur free agent, converted catcher) each serve as extremely valuable (2.0 WARP+) arms that were “off-market” acquisitions. Like the Brewers, the Dodgers have received ample value from players preceding their current front office reign, which also shows the importance of integrating talent, independently assessing talent, and avoiding a “my guys” approach.

In short, the Dodgers are effectively doing the things that small market front offices should do well, and then mastering the big market move as well. That they were able to rebuild their front office without faltering at the big league level should be a model for MLB teams regardless of market size (for example, designing the types of decision trees and strategic models that were praised during Friedman and Zaidi’s first offseason need not be restricted to large markets).

Luckily, if teams working in television markets smaller than Los Angeles were eyeing the Dodgers’ rebuilding efforts but balking at their feasibility, that Behemoth’s League Championship Series foe happens to have designed another blueprint for rebuilding while remaining relatively competitive. Certainly, no one would call a 73-win 2016 Brewers campaign a “tank” effort, as that win total is typically within one standard deviation of a .500 record. As former BPMilwaukee Editor J.P. Breen puts so well, to the Brewers’ credit, they began rebuilding before the cupboards were bare; as one will recall, Milwaukee revamped their draft approach for the late Bruce Seid’s final draft in 2014, and was experiencing something of a system resurgence in 2015 prior to any open rebuilding efforts (as many diehard Brewers fans will debate, some believe a “soft” rebuild can be dated back to the Yovani Gallardo trade, which netted current high leverage reliever Corey Knebel and Top 10 prospect contender (and 40-man roster member) Marcos Diplan).

Brewers: just 1.4 fWAR from pre-FA homegrown players this year. Subtract them entirely, they’d still be a playoff-caliber team. Despite bottom-third payroll. Competitors: Cardinals 18.9, Cubs 17.1, Pirates 13.3, Reds 4.3. David Stearns is the best GM in the game.

— NEIFI Analytics (@NEIFIco) September 18, 2018

Recently, NEIFI Analytics recognized David Stearns for assembling a roster with very little “true homegrown talent,” a point that was picked up by Curt Hogg and J.R. Radcliffe at JSOnline. First, one will be tempted to simply emphasize that the Brewers have been “lucky,” so yes, let’s get that out of the way and agree that good circumstances are key for a contending run (especially for a small market). Now, let’s revel in the extremely simple way that David Stearns assembled the Brewers without tanking: Stearns (and his able Front Office team) recognized that cheap talent need not solely originate from the draft, which categorically allowed him to toss aside the idea that the Brewers needed to assemble multiple high draft picks (and their relatively long development cycles) in order to rebuild the organization. (This is such a crucial point that it should be consistently parsed and analyzed throughout the offseason!) Instead, Stearns recognized that there is much freely available talent in the MLB, and many of those players simply need places to play.

In case you’re hoping to point out that the rebuild afforded Milwaukee the luxury to allow a gang of “flyer”, longshot future value plays to develop on the diamond, it is worth emphasizing that Stearns did not throw aside this strategy even while the Brewers were contending. Witness the 2017-2018 offseason, when the Brewers were following a missed postseason bid with minor league free agency deals (and subsequent roster spots) to players like Wade Miley; reliever J.J. Hoover; first baseman Ji-Man Choi; utilityman Nick Franklin; and later, waiver, Player To Be Named Later, or cash transactions involving Erik Kratz, Dan Jennings, Tyler Saladino, and Brad Miller. It’s easy to cite the major success stories in Milwaukee, such as Junior Guerra, Jesus Aguilar, Hernan Perez, and even Oliver Drake (yes, Oliver Drake), but digging into the everyday moves by Stearns and company reveals that this group wins from the top-down simply by not leaving any stone unturned, and constantly seeking to add value at the margins of the roster. With moves like this, it’s not difficult to dream up a 2019 season-opening rotation that features RHP Jake Thompson and Jordan Lyles; Milwaukee’s front office designed a system for recognizing talent through any means of acquisition, and then consistently and constantly implemented, refined, and revised that approach. (To understand how special this is, imagine how easy it would have been for the Brewers to rush out and beat one-year deals to Lance Lynn, or spend their available revenue on Jake Arrieta, as opposed to Wade Miley, to sell a contending team to a fanbase.) One can expect that Stearns and company have learned their lessons, and hopefully for Brewers faithful, they are also refining those lessons into an aggressive and smart 2018-2019 offseason strategy.

So the tank is dead. Rebuilding is dead. Let us simply return to player development cycles, which are long, long, full of variance, and subject to pricing errors.

Long live competitive baseball, now exemplified by the television behemoth Dodgers, strong market Cardinals, and the tiny Milwaukee Brewers. What is crucial to takeaway here is that both of these organizations designed a specific system for success, and carefully implemented that system with transactions that fit their specification and systemic goals. This is not simply to say that every team must follow these molds, but rather that the molds for contending in the MLB are plentiful. In the absence of those molds, the Brewers and Dodgers have at the very least demonstrated the embarrassment of riches that is freely available in the murky depths of MLB transaction wires, should one choose to look. At the very least, the Brewers and Dodgers give an opportunity to every MLB club to evaluate their player development and strategy supply chain systems, for every team has deep draft picks, every team has a chance at the waiver wires, and every team has a chance at minor league free agents. This message might be loudly received in San Francisco and New York (Mets), where rebuilding efforts could justifiably be underway given new front office searches; but one can also hope that clubs like Cincinnati, Miami, and San Diego pay attention as well.

This post was edited to remove a duplicate table entry.

At the time that he was hired, it seemed like as though the Brewers were many years away from consistent contention. Even the optimistic fan would have pointed to 2019 or so as the year in which the Brewers may start to make some noise. Stearns has exceeded expectations by any measure.

But because baseball is a sport perfect for speculative thought exercises, I asked the following question: What if he didn’t?

What would have happened if Stearns settled into his desk on the morning of September 20, 2015, took stock of the team and its farm system, and said, “You know what? Let’s just ride it out and see what happens.”

In the alternate universe you are about to enter, every Stearns trade is gone. He just never even picks up the phone. The free agent signings and waiver claims, for the sake of this exercise, remain. (In the Bizarro universe, his nickname is Waivin’ Dave.)

We’ll also assume that the performances of all players involved in the Bizarro universe would be comparable to their real-world counterparts, aside from some minor park adjustments, perhaps. Why this particular set of rules? ‘Cuz.

The first order of business: Undoing every trade the Brewers made after handing the franchise reins to David Stearns.

Trades Undone:

November 18, 2015 – Traded RHP Francisco Rodriguez to the Detroit Tigers for MiLB IF Javier Betancourt and C Manny Piña
November 19, 2015 – Traded MiLB RHP Cy Sneed to the Astros for 2B Jonathan Villar
November 20, 2015 – Traded IF Luis Sardiñas to the Mariners for OF/1B Ramon Flores
December 9, 2015 – Traded IB Adam Lind to the Mariners for MiLB RHPs Carlos Herrera, Daniel Missaki, and Freddy Peralta
December 17, 2015 – Traded 1B Jason Rogers to the Pirates for MiLB RHP Trey Supak and OF Keon Broxton
January 30, 2016 – Traded 2B/SS Jean Segura and MiLB RHP Tyler Wagner to the Diamondbacks for MiLB 2B/SS Isan Diaz, RHP Chase Anderson, and IF Aaron Hill
February 12, 2016 – Traded OF/DH Khris Davis to the Athletics for MiLB RHP Bubba Derby and MiLB C Jacob Nottingham
July 7, 2016 – Traded IF Aaron Hill to the Red Sox for MiLB IF Wendell Rijo and MiLB RHP Aaron Wilkerson
August 1, 2016 – Traded RHP Jeremy Jeffress and C Jonathan Lucroy to the Rangers for MiLBers Lewis Brinson (OF), Luis Ortiz (RHP), and Ryan Cordell (OF)
August 1, 2016 – Traded LHP Will Smith to the Giants for C Andrew Susac and MiLB RHP Phil Bickford
December 6, 2016 – Traded RHP Tyler Thornburg to the Red Sox for 3B Travis Shaw, MiLB SS/2B Mauricio Dubon, MiLB RHP Josh Pennington, MiLB SS Yeison Coca
December 13, 2016 – Traded C Martin Maldonado and MiLB RHP Drew Gagnon to the Angels for C Jett Bandy
April 13, 2017 – Traded RHP Damien Magnifico to the Orioles for RHP Oliver Drake
June 30, 2017 – Traded IF/OF Nick Franklin to the Angels for cash
July 13, 2017 – Traded 1B Garrett Cooper to the Yankees for LHP Tyler Webb
July 26, 2017 – Traded OF Ryan Cordell to the White Sox for RHP Anthony Swarzak
July 31, 2017 – Traded RHP Tayler Scott to the Rangers for RHP Jeremy Jeffress
August 12, 2017 – Traded RHP Eric Hanhold to the Mets for 2B Neil Walker
January 25, 2018 – Traded OF Lewis Brinson and MiLBers Isan Diaz (SS/2B), Monte Harrison (OF), and Jordan Yamamoto (RHP) to the Marlins for OF Christian Yelich
February 2, 2018 – Traded C Andrew Susac to the Orioles for cash
May 25, 2018 – Traded MiLB IF Wendell Rijo to the Yankees for C Erik Kratz
June 10, 2018 – Traded 1B/OF Ji-Man Choi to the Rays for IF Brad Miller and cash
July 26, 2018 – Traded MiLB LHP Kodi Medeiros and MiLB RHP Wilber Perez to the White Sox for RHP Joakim Soria and cash
July 27, 2018 – Traded RHP Jorge López and OF Brett Phillips to the Royals for 3B Mike Moustakas
July 31, 2018 – Traded 2B Jonathan Villar, MiLB RHP Luis Ortiz, and MiLB IF Jean Carmona to the Orioles for 2B Jonathan Schoop
August 31, 2018 – Traded MiLB RHP Johan Dominguez and MiLB IF/OF Bryan Connell to the White Sox for LHP Xavier Cedeño
August 31, 2018 – Traded MiLB C/1B KJ Harrison and MiLB IF Gilbert Lara to the Nationals for LHP Gio González and international bonus slot money
August 31, 2018 – Traded MiLB OF Demi Orimoloye to the Blue Jays for OF Curtis Granderson

Total Players Retained: Francisco Rodriguez (Controlled through 2017 with a club option), Cy Sneed (minors), Luis Sardiñas (Batted .111 for Baltimore in 8 2018 games), Adam Lind (Free Agent after 2016), Jason Rogers (Has spent time in NPB and indie ball), Jean Segura (FA 2019), Tyler Wagner (minors), Khris Davis (48 HR, FA 2020), Aaron Hill (FA after season), Jeremy Jeffress, Jonathan Lucroy (FA 2018), Will Smith (FA 2020), Tyler Thornburg (FA 2020), Martin Maldonado (FA 2019), Drew Gagnon (5.25 ERA in 12 IP for the Mets in 2018), Damien Magnifico (minors), Nick Franklin (re-signed), Garrett Cooper (60-Day DL for Marlins), Tayler Scott (minors), Eric Hanhold (7.71 ERA in 3 games with Mets), Monte Harrison (minors), Jordan Yamamoto (minors), Ji-Man Choi (10 HR in 221 PA), Kodi Medeiros (minors), Wilber Perez (minors), Jorge López (combined 5.03 ERA), Brett Phillips (great defense, 41.7 K%), Jean Carmona (minors), Johan Dominguez (minors), Bryan Connell (minors), KJ Harrison (minors), Gilbert Lara (minors), Demi Orimoloye (minors)

Total Players Never Acquired: Javier Betancourt, Manny Piña, Jonathan Villar, Ramon Flores, Carlos Herrera, Daniel Missaki, Freddy Peralta, Trey Supak, Keon Broxton, Isan Diaz, Chase Anderson, Aaron Hill, Bubba Derby, Jacob Nottingham, Wendell Rijo, Aaron Wilkerson, Lewis Brinson, Ryan Cordell, Luis Ortiz, Andrew Susac, Phil Bickford, Travis Shaw, Mauricio Dubon, Josh Pennington, Yeison Coca, Jett Bandy, Oliver Drake, Tyler Webb, Anthony Swarzak, Neil Walker, Christian Yelich, Erik Kratz, Brad Miller, Joakim Soria, Mike Moustakas, Jonathan Schoop, Xavier Cedeño, Gio González, Curtis Granderson

The first thing that stands out in all of this is the sheer volume of major transactions occurring for the Brewers in a relatively short period of time. Stearns has acquired more major league contributors than he’s given up, a further testament to the rapidity of his rebuild, but both lists are startlingly long. The man’s been busy.

The second thing is that, hey, a few good players around the league were Brewers in the not-too-distant past. A few of those players would still be under team control. Which brings us to…

2018 Bizarro Brewers Starting Lineup & Depth Chart

1. Lorenzo Cain (CF)
2. Jean Segura (2B)
3. Ryan Braun (RF)
4. Khris Davis (LF)
5. Jesus Aguilar (3B)
6. Eric Thames (1B)
7. Martin Maldonado (C)
8. Orlando Arcia (SS)
9. Pitcher

Depth
Left Field: Khris Davis, Ryan Braun, Domingo Santana, Ji-Man Choi

Center Field: Lorenzo Cain, Brett Phillips

Right Field: Ryan Braun, Domingo Santana, Brett Phillips

First Base: Eric Thames, Ji-Man Choi, Garrett Cooper

Second Base: Jean Segura, Hernán Pérez

Shortstop: Orlando Arcia, Jean Segura, Hernán Pérez

Third Base: Jesus Aguilar, Hernán Pérez, Garrett Cooper

Catcher: Martin Maldonado, Christian Bethancourt

Starting Rotation: Jhoulys Chacín, Zach Davies, Wade Miley, Junior Guerra, Brent Suter, Brandon Woodruff, Corbin Burnes, Jorge López, Adrian Houser, Tyler Wagner

Bullpen: Josh Hader, Jeremy Jeffress, Corey Knebel, Will Smith, Dan Jennings, Jacob Barnes, Tyler Thornburg, Taylor Williams, Matt Albers, Jordan Lyles, Quintin Torres-Costa, Nick Ramirez

DL: Jimmy Nelson, Stephen Vogt

What emerges is a surprisingly decent group, albeit one that would lose several key players to free agency following both the 2018 and 2019 seasons. Onto the head-to-head.

Pitching Staff
The absence of Chase Anderson and Freddy Peralta thins the crop of starting pitchers, but would also pave the way for Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes to pick up some meaningful starts. Meanwhile, the bullpen still looks strong. Real Brewers pitchers combined for approximately 18 Pitcher Wins Above Replacement Player (PWARP) in 2018, placing them right in the middle of the league. The Bizarro Brewers pretty much measure up. Overall, the Brewers shed a total of 1.1 PWARP, mostly thanks to Gio González and Joakim Soria, but add that 1.1 back through Will Smith. It’s difficult to say how the Bizarro rotation would have fared, with inexperienced arms like Woodruff and Burnes assuming more important roles. But the pitching, on its face, seems to be more or less a wash.
Advantage: Even

Defense
Behind those pitchers, the defense would be a bit of a mess. Despite a strong presence up the middle (Maldonado, Arcia, Segura, and Cain), the corners look leaky, with third base threatening to approach 2007-Ryan-Braun levels of futility, and Khris Davis battling The Creature in left. Ryan Braun in right wouldn’t be too pretty, either. So while manager Craig Counsell could count on those big bats to create a lead, he’d likely yank them out of the game in the seventh or eighth inning in favor of Hernán Pérez, Brett Phillips, and Domingo Santana. Not the most comfortable system, but one that could work.
Advantage: Real Brewers

Offense
Real Brewers hitters had a terrific year, and come out on top of the Bizarro Brewers pretty handily. Christian Yelich and Travis Shaw combined for approximately 12.0 Batter Wins Above Replacement Player (BWARP) in 2018, handily beating the 7.3 BWARP compiled by Jean Segura and Khris Davis. Bizarro catcher Martin Maldonado contributes less than one BWARP-win behind the plate against Many Piña’s 1.5, and Christian Bethancourt isn’t a likely bet to replace the 1.4 BWARP accumulated by Erik Kratz. Jesus Aguilar’s value would be diminished at third base, and it’s tough to say how Thames and Choi would have responded to increased playing time.
Advantage: Real Brewers

Dingers
It’s close, but assuming they all get a full season of playing time, I’ll take the combined output of Davis-Aguilar-Thames-Braun over Yelich-Aguilar-Shaw-Braun. Playing in Miller Park, Khrush could have eclipsed Prince Fielder’s team record of 50 home runs in 2007.
Advantage: Bizarro Brewers

Final Thoughts
2018 is probably the best chance for the Bizarro Brewers to make the playoffs, as they stand to lose Martin Maldonado and Jean Segura (who never signed that extension in the Bizarro universe) to free agency after the season. They could always shell out for Daniel Murphy or DJ LeMahieu and patch their catching situation with Kurt Suzuki or Wilson Ramos, but that’s not exactly the Brewers’ style, plus they’ll lose Khris Davis, Will Smith, Jhoulys Chacín, and Tyler Thornburg the next year (with Braun and Thames not far behind).

Squint a little bit (and imagine a few lucky breaks going their way), and it’s not impossible to think that the Bizarro squad could have pushed for a Wild Card spot this season. But it’s also not hard to see that the Real Brewers are a stronger team right now, and will be a stronger team for years to come.

Which reminds me: Postseason baseball is here. Go Crew!

Yet, there are many shortcomings with the 2018 Brewers, for all their strengths. The difficulty with quantifying the shortcomings for this team, however, is that they are not strategic shortcomings. In 2018, the shortcomings of the roster are shortcomings borne of development cycles and the long paths necessary to build extended MLB success from young players, or players seeking to establish their respective careers. The former category suits both Domingo Santana and Orlando Arcia, and to a lesser extent Jorge Lopez, Brandon Woodruff, and Zach Davies; the latter category suits players like Manny Pina, and to a lesser extent Brent Suter. These players challenge the long-term development goals of the Brewer given the extremely successful start to the 2018 season, but it is not an overstatement to write that each of these reserve-controlled contracts are significant assets to the Brewers organization and crucial for future success to the degree that they can build consistent MLB roles. This difficult development scenario is compounded when one realizes that pitching prospects Freddy Peralta and Corbin Burnes could also factor into second half plans for the Brewers, as well as depth position players like Jacob Nottingham and Brett Phillips.

Looking back on 2017, it’s easy to see that the Brewers could have solved their midseason shortcomings in a transactional manner. The club did not even need to make an impact starting pitching move, but could have used waiver claims or depth trades to bolster a rotation that was hit with midseason injuries and wearing thin (much more thin than the 2018 rotation, by the way). With the success of youngsters in 2017, their roster concerns were not development-oriented. Looking forward to the finish line in 2018, it is much more difficult to simply fix a transactional ideology to the Milwaukee roster issues. Simply stated, the Brewers need to prove their ability to help young players through adjustments at the MLB level, which is applicable to both Santana and Arcia. Both Arcia and Santana are crucial members of our beloved Milwaukee Nine despite their diverse scouting roles and tools. But this development decree also extends to the refinement of roles for Lopez and Woodruff in the pitching staff, as well as questions about clearing space for Peralta and Nottingham, let alone Burnes and Phillips. The Brewers can bolster their midseason 2018 club by doubling down on their player development approach at the MLB level, and giving players the space to make adjustments at the MLB level.

Related to this question about the Brewers’ ability to develop young players at the MLB level, it is worth asking whether a “rebuilding effort” was necessary to create this Brewers team. Or rather, are the Brewers succeeding “but for” their rebuilding efforts by previous President Doug Melvin and GM Stearns? Here’s a look at top Milwaukee players by WARP and acquisition:

What is fascinating about the 2018 Brewers is that despite the “branding” of the so-called rebuilding effort, a “rebuild” is hardly stamped on this team. 5.6 WARP of the team leaders could have been acquired by nearly any MLB team, through a purchase (i.e., a trade for cash) or MLB free agency. 0.7 WARP belongs to the MLB amateur draft, meaning that there is no high draft pick from a rebuilding season boosting this club (a la the “classic” scorched earth Cubs and Astros efforts); it’s even debatable whether one could call Corey Ray (picked Fifth overall) and Keston Hiura (picked Ninth overall) true “rebuilding” draft picks (in other words, a team does not “tank” to draft fifth overall). At best, one might argue that the Brewers’ 2016 record helped them gain favorable position to land Jesus Aguilar, allowing Milwaukee’s front office to build their #TeamDepth strengths.

The trades on this list are most interesting, though; the trades by both Melvin and Stearns form a spectrum ranging from “rebuilding” to “organizational depth” to “extended win-now,” and everything in-between.

• The move to acquire Josh Hader was most certainly a “rebuilding” move, by which I mean that Melvin traded away MLB contracts for minor league prospects.

• The move to acquire Christian Yelich was most certainly the opposite of a rebuilding move, as Stearns traded away four minor league prospects for an MLB contract, but it’s not quite a “win now” move as Yelich’s age and contract keep that window open for years. Yet in another sense this trade could certainly not have happened without rebuilding efforts, as acquisitions involving Lewis Brinson and Isan Diaz were necessary to eventually land Yelich.

• Meanwhile, the Tyler Thornburg – Travis Shaw transaction is arguably a textbook “counterbuilding” move in which Milwaukee and Boston swapped positions of MLB surplus (or, lack of need); it was not a classic rebuilding move, as Shaw was acquired to become the starting MLB 3B. That Boston somehow also included prospects in the deal is icing on the cake.

• Finally, the latest Jeremy Jeffress acquisition was a classic organizational depth trade.

Were these 10 players the ones you expected to lead the Brewers to contend for the 2018 NL Central crown? (I gather it’s an interesting mix of “Yes” and “No,” but I personally find this list endlessly fascinating. #YouCantPredictBaseball).

But are these WARP leaders truly the fruits of a rebuilding effort? One could argue that rebuilding should not have a transactional form, as I’m using the term, but instead should denote a phase in a club’s development cycle (a “spatial” form). In this regard, acquisitions like Eric Thames or Travis Shaw may not have technically been rebuilding moves, but they would have been less likely to occur by a true win-now club on a contending cycle since they required a certain “space to play” and “room to fail,” or room to find an MLB role. (This is the spatial role of rebuilding that many have argued is a valuable aspect of the MLB development cycle.) The same could be said about the MLB development of Jacob Barnes, or even, inexplicably, the development of Jesus Aguilar. Yet, in this regard, these spaces of rebuilding were rather shallow, as key development players like Pina, Santana, and even Chase Anderson and Jonathan Villar have struggled since their major breakthroughs. This is not a criticism of the players, for development cycles are long and each of these players could find success in their next turn. For example, Villar is already coming around for the 2018 Brewers, for instance, completely silencing the need for a 2B trade, while Chase Anderson is ironing out mechanical issues and potentially rebounding.

Following the spatial definition of rebuilding, then, one can completely reverse course and argue that the Brewers have mess less incentive to make large trades in 2018 than they did in 2017.

• The 2017 club ironically may have featured players have simultaneous peak years, or at least peak role surges: Jimmy Nelson (now injured), Chase Anderson (now mechanically repaired?), Orlando Arcia (needs to adjust), and Domingo Santana (needs to adjust) were worth 15.1 WARP in 2017, a production level that will almost certainly not return in 2018 (they are currently valued at -0.7 WARP [!!!]). The Brewers are never guaranteed to have that combination of elite defense, strong offensive production, and top rotation pitching again from this quartet, not in the same year. Even if each of these players settles into regular MLB roles, they may have reached peak production last year.

• (A counterargument could be made that given the Brewers’ production of Lorenzo Cain, Christian Yelich, Travis Shaw, Josh Hader, and Jeremy Jeffress, the 2018 window features at least five performances that may not occur again. I believe these roles are different than those of Nelson and Anderson, or even Arcia and Santana. Yelich, Cain, and even Jeffress have more established MLB success, and their time horizons with the club arguable improve the chances that this type of success could occur again. In fact, someone like Yelich could even improve. One could also argue that the Brewers should not waste this opportunity to win with an elite bullpen; I am much more sympathetic to that position.)

• So, it’s worth questioning whether more urgency for a roster-improving transaction was necessary in 2017 than 2018, when the club is already succeeding and can take a chance at continuing the development cycle with each of these players, or other organizational depth roles.

• Following the spatial definition of rebuilding, in which a rebuilding club is one that allows players the room to develop at the MLB level regardless of consequence, 2018 could serve as a strange competitive window season in which the club is justified in turning their gaze to the long-term: how important is it for the 2019, 2020, 2021 Brewers, etc., for Arcia and Santana to get right at the MLB level? Can they both be “rehabbed” at Triple-A Colorado Springs? Is it worth Milwaukee disrupting potential MLB rotational introductions to their trio of Woodruff, Peralta, and Burnes? If those pitchers have true MLB rotation roles, they are going to have to be introduced to the staff at some point during this current five-year contending window.

What is exciting about these Brewers, more than the winning, is that they remain an unexpected work in progress where suddenly every strength gained from 2015-2017, every lesson learned from 2015-2017, can be repurposed for the future. Contending teams need not stick to rigid transactional regimes; they can make trades to gamble on Travis Shaw, or free agency signings to gamble on Eric Thames, and still compete for the playoffs. Rebuilding teams need not bottom out, for there can be as much value in simply using roster space to gamble on Jonathan Villar, Junior Guerra, or Manny Pina, even compared to a top draft pick (for it is questionable whether an MLB team can truly forge useful developmental spaces while attempting to field a roster worthy of the first two or three draft picks).

Boiling this lesson down, it may seem like a radical departure from my previous criticisms, but the logic of the 2018 roster remains the same: open those developmental spaces for the organizational players struggling to correct their careers and build roles for 2019 and onward while this well-designed #TeamDepth contends onward. If they execute it correctly, these Brewers have an opportunity to exist entirely outside of win-now and rebuilding cycles.

Photo Credit: Bill Streicher, USA Today Sports Images

Related:
Depth Beats Attrition
Trust the Rotation
Aces Do Not Exist
How to Turn One Hader into Two and a Half Chris Sales

Teams are eager to rely on their bullpens more frequently, and at 5.18 IP/GS for his starters, manager Craig Counsell is about as eager as anyone to turn away from the third time through the order as a starter.

If you’re new to baseball analytics, one of the best possible strategies to learn is the starting pitcher’s “times facing a batting order.” The table above demonstrates On-Base-Percentage plus Slugging-Percentage each time through the order for National League starting pitchers. This may seem like a trivial aspect of the game, but if you read the new midseason scouting reports emerging on your favorite arms, or even look into 2018 MLB Draft scouting reports, chances are you’ll see a line like “without a third pitch, a role in the bullpen could be most likely.” What you’re reading, in nearly any variation of this line, is the strategic idea that in order to beat MLB batters a third time through the order, a starting pitcher is going to need additional pitches to cross-up batters and make adjustments as the game deepens. Milwaukee left-hander Warren Spahn is classically attributed with the quote, “pitchers need two pitches, one they’re looking for and one to cross them up,” but even here Spahn was not quite right; a pitcher needs as many pitches as are necessary to adjust to their designated role. I imagine that if you’re Warren Spahn (perhaps much like Ben Sheets or Clayton Kershaw), life is rather easy with mostly two pitches; if you’re Dave Bush or Victor Santos or Zach Davies or pretty much anyone of the other 300+ starters that work in the MLB, life with only two pitches would probably be miserable.

But perhaps the stats speak on their own: last year, the average NL batter the first time through the order was Cory Spangenberg. By the third time through the order, the average NL batter was Christian Yelich. In order to keep batters closer to the Cory Spangenberg level of production, having command of that third pitch (with a quality “stuff” grade, too) will get the scouts ready to slap that “#3 SP” Overall Future Potential grade.

Manager Craig Counsell was handed a group of supposedly below average-to-horrendous starting pitchers according to most Brewers fans, but as most fans could have surmised from the 2017 squad, pitching was the strength of the organization. And indeed, pitching has continued to serve as the strength of the 2018 club, although statistics like Deserved Run Average suggest that the club may be due for some regression to the mean (in terms of preventing runs). But what was most important about the 2017-2018 offseason was that GM David Stearns built a pitching system, and Counsell’s eagerness to pull starters at just the right time has indeed reflected a machine-oriented approach to pitching. Setting aside the injured Zach Davies and the mechanics-ironing Chase Anderson, the 2018 Brewers starting rotation is lead by Chacin (4 Runs Prevented in 69.0 IP), Brent Suter (2 Runs Prevented in 63.3 IP), and Junior Guerra (approximately 9 Runs Prevented in 60.3 IP after Tuesday night). Counsell has pulled these pitchers early almost uniformly; the Table below compares each pitcher’s last major workload as a starting pitcher to their 2018 workload, in terms of facing a batting order multiple times:

This is what managing with an elite bullpen can do for someone: pretty much every night of the week, Counsell can give each starting pitcher the same workload. In contrast to the narrative of burned out bullpens, which Kyle Lesniewski has also studied at Brew Crew Ball, it is worth arguing that Counsell is providing starting pitchers with a clearer definition of a workload. In fact, the old saying for starting pitchers to “go as deep as you can into the game” is rather problematic; if your stuff isn’t there, you’re probably done after 100 pitches and five (or fewer innings), which will be offset by the great 7.0-to-8.0 IP evenings, or complete games. Counsell and the Brewers are almost giving their starting pitchers better role certainty than any “traditional” starting pitcher has ever had (at least in the last 30 years): “give me your best 16 outs.” This is how you turn Guerra, Chacin, and Suter in a 15 Runs Prevented machine, which is one hell of a low rotation, by the way, and exactly the type of performance that turns a low rotation into an entity that offsets the lack of a so-called “Ace” at the top.

Has it worked? The Table below demonstrates that while there are some hiccups along the way, this Big Three low rotation has indeed improved in at least one area of the game, and in some cases the third time through the batting order is receiving grand benefits. These stats are even before Guerra’s course correction at Cleveland:

What is notable about minimizing a pitcher’s times through the batting order is that they can theoretically readjust their plan of attack. Someone like Guerra or Chacin no longer has to think about establishing his best stuff and figuring out what he’s going to do 100 pitches later; Suter might not ever have been expected to go that deep into ballgames, but even the Raptor-esque southpaw can arguably find some benefit in his ballgame by understanding that he needs to go 16 outs. Looking through Brooks Baseball pitching logs, it is arguably the case that what Counsell (and presumably Stearns, coaching staff, and the Front Office in this case) is doing is indeed turning each of these guys into….let’s call them “really, really long relievers who start the game”:

• According to Brooks Baseball, compared to his full season in 2016, Junior Guerra cut his splitter and slider usage (both below 15 percent!) while increasing his secondary running fastball (which Guerra selected approximately 23 percent of the time entering Tuesday night). As a result, Guerra is getting more whiffs on both of his fastballs as a group, and improving his slider whiffs without yielding too much value from his splitter. He’s also improving his pop-ups, suggesting batters are getting weak contact even though they are facing his fastball more frequently (presumably making Guerra more “predictable”).

• As covered by Andrew Salzman in the latest Weekend Recap at BPMilwaukee, Brent Suter is becoming a fastballl-first pitcher. The southpaw is firing what appears to be a near-cutting, rising fastball (think Jacob Barnes) two-thirds of his offerings, with good results in terms of improving swings-and-misses.

• By contrast, Chacin is much more of his previous self, with the caveat that he’s working his slider slightly more frequently than in 2017 while moving away from his primary fastball a bit. His outcomes with these pitches are rather similar as well, which suggests that even if the Brewers are deploying Chacin in a manner that is more systematic and potentially more radical, he is not deviating from what got him through a very successful 2017 campaign, earning him his excellent contract.

Milwaukee is receiving much deserved praise for their bullpen, which was expertly curated by David Stearns during his first two seasons with the club. Now the rewards are visible during what could become one of the most important seasons in franchise history, returning the club to their first extending contending window in quite some time. But it is worth emphasizing that Stearns was correct in assembling a starting pitching staff that could complement the relief staff, and together with the efficient fielders, the arms are a Runs Prevented machine. None of these moves were terribly difficult to make, either, which means that the most thrilling part of this series of moves is that they can be repeated in future seasons: Junior Guerra was Stearns’s very first acquisition, Brent Suter was a deep draft pick during the Doug Melvin era that was freed into a stunning big league role, and Jhoulys Chacin was a proven veteran signed off the margins of an underwhelming free agency class that nevertheless yielded some surprising contracts elsewhere. This is what systematic baseball can look like in Milwaukee, and it involves neither being “cheap” (Chacin signed a decent guaranteed deal) nor “dogmatic” about acquisition style (waivers, free agency, and draft are represented here). Most importantly for the prospect arms, both hyped (Corbin Burnes and Luis Ortiz) and unassuming (Freddy Peralta and others), the Brewers front office is gleefully demonstrated that nobody needs aces any longer. Bring your two best pitches for 16 outs, and let’s get on with it!

Photo Credit: David Richard, USA Today Sports Images

Resources:
Baseball Reference. Player Pitching Splits, NL Pitching Splits, 2016-2018 [CSV].

#Brewers pic.twitter.com/OuDHl9DHBv

— Mike Bischoff (@mpbMKE) April 14, 2018

GM David Stearns acquired Oliver Drake without fanfare on April 14, 2017, in a cash transaction with the Baltimore Orioles. The deal essentially completed the Damien Magnifico designation for assignment, as Magnifico was traded to the Orioles for future considerations on April 13, 2017. Drake served as a reverse-Left Handed specialist for the Milwaukee bullpen, as the righty’s splitter-oriented approach allowed him to neutralize lefty bats in the middle of the game. The righty was essentially average in terms of runs prevented for the Brewers, and his 4.64 DRA and 98.8 DRA- both support that fact. One of the benefits of having an average reliever in this role is that Drake is cost-controlled and under club reserve until 2022; despite having worked in the MLB since 2015, Drake’s MLB roster time has been minimal enough to delay arbitration until the 2020 season (according to Cot’s Contracts).

Of course, after Stearns’s acquisition of Junior Guerra, or his waiver wire flirtation with Blake Parker and Steve Geltz, Brewers fans should suspect that Oliver Drake is viewed as more than an “average middle reliever” for the Milwaukee bullpen. In this aspect, Drake is a classic “Stearns” pitcher in multiple ways: he crosses the “Junior Guerra” requirement with a solid split finger fastballs, and he crosses the “Chase Anderson” requirement with a funky, big over-the-top delivery (in fact, Drake’s delivery is so Stearnsian that in future years, analysts will be comparing other Stearns acquisitions to Drake). Finally, Drake also serves a huge function for what is emerging as a great bullpen (through 2017 and now 2018, as well): he’s a quiet break-out candidate that has the luxury of working in the middle innings where no one will notice. In a bullpen full of closers, he’s a potential situational ace-in-waiting, if just a few more things go right.

On Monday night, the problem with Drake against the Reds was that the splitter simply was not working. Reds batters did not miss the pitch, instead slamming a single and two doubles off of what should be Drake’s retirement pitch. But, entering Monday, witness the arsenal shift for Drake. According to Brooks Baseball, here’s Drake in 2017:

Not only has the righty swapped his slider for a slower curveball, but he also has decreased the usage of his splitter:

It’s too early to tell with any certainty, but Drake has also changed his fastball, arguably spinning the pitch to work more as a true hard-rising pitch in 2018 than the offering with slightly more arm-side run in 2017. This shift is arguably very similar to Jacob Barnes’s fastball, which makes one wonder what type of alchemy the Brewers front office, Derek Johnson, and the bullpen crew have going on with their pitch selection work.

While Drake’s pitching line exhibited strike zone command issues (in terms of walks allowed), the righty’s new pitch mix was a wonder for yielding whiffs and groundballs entering Monday. Here’s how Drake worked in 2017:

Now, his new arrangement of pitches produces the following results:

Perhaps the new spinning fastball explains Drake’s command issues somewhat, and it will be worth watching what the righty does with the pitch from here out. But the curve and split are combining to produce more groundballs than his old slider-splitter arsenal, and the splitter is also yielding more whiffs under this current workload. Thus, the walks need to improve for Drake, but on the periphery, the righty reliever is suddenly working more groundballs and strike outs out of his approach.

There are many reasons to cheer for Oliver Drake. At best, fans ought not to treat him with scorn, as his roster spot is certainly deserved based on his 2017 performance, as well as for speculative reasons based on his arsenal adjustment and pitching profile for 2018. Drake is a David Stearns arm, and his pitching profile almost perfectly exemplifies what the Brewers are trying to do with their “pitching system.” In a league where teams are lauded by fans for acquiring low-risk, low-cost pitchers and transforming their roles within a specific analytic system, Oliver Drake should become a Brewers fan favorite: this is what a systemic arm looks like for the new, pitching-focused Brewers.

Photo Credit: Joe Camporeale, USA Today Sports Images

What is particularly interesting about the Brewers’ overall franchise valuation leap, which sees the club crack the $1 billion mark, is that Forbes viewed the club as one of the most dramatic one-year franchise value changes in MLB:

The progression of estimated operating income over the last four years appears to be consistent with Forbes‘ assessment of the Brewers as one of the largest growing franchises in the MLB:

Additionally, Rob Mains scrutinized the Forbes analysis at Baseball Prospectus, adding long-term analytics such as Compound Average Growth Rate. In Mains’s estimation, the Brewers leap from their standing as a bottom third organization (in terms of overall franchise value) into the solid middle tier of the league in terms of their consistent annual return. Mains estimates that Attanasio’s group could have spent approximately $16 million in additional revenue each year of ownership and still maintained an 8 percent return on investment. Coming from a 1,055-1,064 (.498) tenure as owner one wonders whether $224 million could have found a useful place in Brewers blue.

Rebuilding as Capital Expansion
While most Brewers fans view the rebuilding efforts of the club as a baseball operation, leaving debates to the details of whether or not the club should have “tanked” or whether they went far enough in stripping down the MLB roster, the rebuilding efforts can also be viewed as a capital expansion for the club. Witness the Miller Park renovations entering 2017, the 2017 purchase of the Carolina Mudcats (and alleged rumors about further minor league ownership talks), and the upgrade of their Arizona facilities as three key examples of capital expansion for the ownership group. What is most interesting about these purchases and renovations is that they need not represent uses of the operating revenue listed above; through the magic of debt finance, the Brewers can leverage their position of financial strength and arrange partnerships or loans (or both) that allow them to continue their stream of fantastic revenue flows and increase those flows (by adding minor league teams, improved facilities, and better concessions at Miller Park).

It is worth questioning how Forbes considered these elements of the club in assessing franchise value. Given the Brewers’ control of the Carolina Mudcats (and presumably more routes to depreciation and other financial benefits) and additional streams of revenue in Arizona and Milwaukee alike, the growth figures already exhibited by the club could be on the “low end” of the club’s valuation. Would anyone be surprised if Mark Attanasio and his ownership group sold the Brewers for $1.3 billion or more? The Miami Marlins were able to fetch a 28 percent increase over their Forbes valuation in an awful financial situation, which leaves one wonder whether even a $1.3 billion price is low for the Brewers.

The rebuild is an unmitigated success for Mark Attanasio’s ownership group. Since GM David Stearns did go quite far in stripping the club’s roster, the Brewers have opened a five year contention window with precious few guaranteed contracts on the books. According to Cot’s Contracts, the highest collection of guaranteed contracts that Milwaukee is obligated to pay from 2019-2023 is around $66 million (entering next season). Granted, a set of contract extensions (10 years / $200 million for Orlando Arcia, please!) signed during the 2018 season could increase the long-term contractual burden for Milwaukee, but the point is, it is not a necessity. Stearns has shown an ability to shrewdly acquire low cost talent (Manny Pina, Jonathan Villar, Keon Broxton, Oliver Drake, Junior Guerra, even [arguably] Chase Anderson), and a preference for turning “big” money into smaller money even when it’s not necessary to improve the club (witness the Jett Bandy for Martin Maldonado trade). It would be interesting to know the extent to which Attanasio and Stearns discuss the financials of the team; one wonders whether Stearns is an explicit member of the Attanasio ownership expansion efforts, or an unwitting participant (in which case I certainly hope Stearns asks for his fair cut, soon). Perhaps the former case explains why Stearns’s contract details were never released.

Where does Attanasio go from here? It is difficult to argue that Attanasio needs to spend simply for the sake of spending. For one, even in this offseason’s depressed market, there were some highly praised players that signed poor contracts (see Lance Lynn, whose $19 million three-year surplus value turned into a one-year, $12 million contract, or Alex Cobb, who spun $14 million surplus value into a $57 million contract). It is difficult to argue that either pitcher would have markedly improved the Brewers for their given prices. Contrary to popular belief, both are bad contracts. In terms of the big contracts handed to Yu Darvish and Jake Arrieta, one can question their strengths, but it cannot be argued that the Brewers did not have room to sign either ace; Milwaukee’s opening day payroll of $91 million is currently operating at approximately 75 percent of their realistic payroll ceiling. Of course, the Brewers ownership group has no mandate to spend money on the field, certainly not under the Manfred regime.

Additionally, there’s a legitimate sense that so long as the MLB operates without true revenue sharing across markets (a la the National Football League), a club like Milwaukee is arguably better off with a flexible payroll. Given that even the Brewers’ strongest realistic 2018 payroll was two or three elite contracts below the MLB luxury tax threshold, there is no way that Milwaukee can seriously maintain a set of high roller commitments like their closest division rival to the south. In fact, if the Brewers maxed out their realistic payroll between $115 to $120 million in 2018, twenty MLB teams would still have higher opening day payrolls; adding in MLB Advanced Media Revenue and assuming a wild $140 to $150 million figure would barely crack the top ten. The reality is that anyone complaining that Brewers ownership is uncommitted to winning because of their low payroll would have the same material facts even if the Brewers paid their highest realistic payroll entering the season.

In a strange way, $91 million feels just right for this club, and not simply because that figure represents a 15 percent increase over the 2017 year-end payroll.

The Brewers are stuck in a strange place as an organization. Financially, Milwaukee is as solvent and successful as ever, positioning the team as a true “grower” within the MLB. Yet, even given the robust MLB revenue landscape, the Brewers are working with relative scraps. Still, it is difficult to see the club undergo a rebuilding process and endure losing seasons while racking up fantastic operating revenue positions, expanding capital spending, and continuing to spend below their most realistic payroll ceiling. There is no happy middle ground here for the Brewers: they scrapped an MLB roster to shift labor costs away from the big league roster and toward the minor league rosters, which also effectively drained revenue from the players and tilted it toward ownership. But, that’s what ownership does, and even within this environment, Attanasio cannot claim to have a *rich* club. One can only hope that this swirling set of circumstances for the small-but-growing franchise corresponds with winning on the field.

Photo Credit: Benny Sieu, USA Today Sports Images

Previous:
Cashing Out OFP 2 (Midseason 2017)

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Theory

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

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

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

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

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

Photo Credit: Richard Jackson, USAToday Sports Images

Travis Sawchik, at the time a Pirates beat writer, documented Huntington’s redesign of Pirates baseball operations in (fantastic and highly recommended) Big Data Baseball. One of the successes of Huntington’s regime was the early use of pitch framing and PITCHf/x data, which arguably allowed the club to flourish with (then) counter-industry signings of Russell Martin and Francisco Liriano. Sawchik also demonstrated that Huntington’s efforts to redesign the Pirates system required aspects of the organization to be built from scratch; in this sense, Huntington did not necessarily “rebuild” the Pirates so much as “build” the organization. This perspective must be kept in mind in assessing Pittsburgh’s performance, for it took the Huntington Pirates five years to fully compete in the NL Central. The 2011 and 2012 seasons featured glimmers of competitive ball before the club fell back, leaving the 2013 Pirates to fully unveil the successes of the front office.

Even with this perspective in mind, it is worth questioning the comprehensive success of the Pirates front office. For after a five year build and three consecutive contending seasons, Pittsburgh fell back to earth with two consecutive losing seasons. 2017 will indeed be another losing year for the Pirates, as the 83-loss club can only reach 79 wins (should they win out); they are on pace to win approximately 73, which is quite a fall from 79 wins in 2016. What is especially interesting about 2016 and 2017 is that the club demonstrated early season success, only to fall back, much like 2011 and 2012. At the 2016 All-Star Break, the 46-43 Pirates might not have been expected to catch the Chicago Cubs in the NL Central, but the club was within two games of the final Wild Card spot. In 2017, a July surge, including a sweep of the Brewers, brought the Pirates within two games of the division lead.

The midseason swoon has become something of a trend for the Pirates, who for better or worse largely eschew notable deadline deals under Huntington’s watch. This seeming disfavor of midseason trade markets (or, seemingly, trade markets in general) defines Huntington’s ballclubs with the long gaze of prospect player development cycles. After building the Pirates system from scratch, Huntington sticks with “his” guys, leaving Pittsburgh generally flush with a deep prospect system, but also held to the volatile fluctuations of player development cycles. A look at the 2013 Baseball Prospectus Pirates Top 10 prospects will showcase this phenomenon:

Jameson Taillon, due to injuries, appeared on six consecutive Top 10 lists as one of the Pirates’ very best prospects. Tyler Glasnow has appeared within the top three prospects since 2014, seeing his Baseball Prospectus role assessments fluctuate from average to high rotation grades, and everywhere in between, befitting his command issues and also his potential impact. Josh Bell has fluctuated between the system’s midrange and top tier since 2012 before graduating into an impact MLB role. This same game can be played with players like Alen Hanson, Jose Tabata, and others. By sticking with their talent, the Pirates have a fascinating sort of inertia, where their system consistently ranked within the Top 10 among MLB organizations since 2012 without necessarily maximizing that surplus into MLB wins through development, graduation, and trades. The biggest lesson here being that should you desire to stick with prospects, the player development cycle is not a consistent or easily discernible pattern.

This inertia can also be reflected in the Pirates midseason transaction log since 2011, as the club has almost systematically refused the notable deadline deal to bolster their clubs. For better or worse, the Pirates exemplify a team that trusts their own system, which produces benefits such as strong reclamation moves (JA Happ, A.J. Burnett, and Jason Grilli, among others, represent this strength). Interestingly enough, the 2016 Pirates exhibited the club’s busiest midseason during the club’s competitive run of seasons, but this was a type of rebuilding / counterbuilding formula to realign the club. Here, a fantastic move such as the Mark Melancon and Francisco Liriano demonstrated that perhaps the Huntington front office was more comfortable using midseason deadline moves to restock for the future rather than pay for an MLB upgrade to reach the playoffs. It’s difficult to argue with this set of moves in one sense, as Felipe Rivero (2.1 WARP) and Ivan Nova (1.5 WARP) became two of the 2017 Pirates key contributors.

It is difficult to draw a set of lessons from one club to another, given the asymmetrical distribution of resources, human capital (in the form of both players and front office personnel), ownership disposition, risk aversion, and information. For the reason, the Brewers rebuilding effort cannot truly be compared to any other club’s efforts; the Milwaukee rebuild will not be the Cubs or Astros build, the Cardinals restructuring, or the big data Pirates reconstruction. Even with this caveat in mind, it is worth questioning MLB results, and finding front office traits that may either be replicated or avoided.

The Pirates build is interesting for two key reasons. First, it is worth asking what type of MLB results constitute a successful building effort. Pittsburgh endured five seasons building up to their contending 2013-2015 seasons, and then the club ran into the 2013 Cardinals, 2014 Giants, and 2015 Cubs. It is difficult to look at 280 cumulative wins from those seasons and say that success hinges on eight total games (three Wild Card games and the 2013 NL Division Series), but it is equally difficult to simply state that one can be pleased with a club’s process (they do not hand out Pennants for Process). Perhaps one can judge the lack of staying power for these Pirates, and weigh the losing campaigns in 2016 and 2017 against that competitive era. Here the lesson for the Brewers is one clear question; would this stated rebuilding effort be worthwhile for three consecutive Wild Cards and one LDS? Or, alternately, one stretch of 280 wins over three seasons?

Second, the Pirates demonstrate a type of directionless flow that could serve as an intriguing model for MLB small market clubs. As much as many GMs would arguably not want to replicate the Pirates’ transaction aversion, and certainly caution against fully hanging MLB successes on the ebb and flow of player development cycles, here the Pirates sit with a gang of players age-25 or younger that are at least interesting at the MLB level. These players include Josh Bell, Adam Frazier, Gregory Polanco, Chad Kuhl, Trevor Williams, Jameson Taillon, and Tyler Glasnow. Ace Gerrit Cole is finishing his age-26 campaign. For this reason, it is difficult to say whether the Pirates are indeed entering a downturn (and hence, their two year losing stretch will be prolonged), or whether the club is simply between development cycles (and perhaps their 2018 club will be expected to improve). One can squint through that gang of players, add in Andrew McCutchen and top prospect Austin Meadows, and see fantastic building blocks for 2018 contention. Here the lesson for the Brewers is that it would not be absurd to contend in 2018 while saying, “the Brewers ran into the 2018 Pirates” much like the 2015 Pirates ran into the Cubs.

With the latter argument in mind, it remains worthwhile to ask how long Huntington will remain in charge of these Pirates, for the final question will be how GM cycles can be assessed. If player development cycles are long, volatile, and tricky to assess, surely GM cycles are doubly so. The 2018 NL Central will be interesting precisely because the Pirates will rest with the Brewers in this neverbuilding no man’s land, for GM David Stearns has already assembled a Brewers roster that successfully confounds any labeling as “rebuilding” or “contending.” One only needs to ask, then, what a successful regime looks like for Stearns.

Photo Credit: Charles LeClaire, USAToday Sports Images

Related Reading:
Scalp / Spread Strategies
Bandy-Maldonado

Here, following the offseason treatment, I am including major deals from July 2015 (the arguable start of “Rebuilding”) through the present day, meaning that these moves are not entirely Stearns’s trades. Indeed, the Zach Davies / Gerardo Parra trade and the Carlos Gomez & Mike Fiers return remain two reasons that the Brewers did not need to “tank” and design a “scorched earth” rebuild that completely reconstructed the organization. Coupled with draft signings by the late Bruce Seid (such as Jacob Barnes and [soon] Brandon Woodruff), as well as graduated top prospects like Orlando Arcia, and superstar Ryan Braun, the “rebuilding” Brewers have remained competitive due to several different talent streams entering, remaining, and graduating through the system.

Trade Surplus Depreciated WARP & OFP Summary:

As a reminder, I will be following the historical model of Overall Future Potential (OFP) production drawn from the history of MLB performances. Scaled for prospect risk, here’s how those prospect levels can be valuated, with 50 OFP being an “average” MLB player:

Last check-in, here’s how the Brewers’ trades looked. Given Zach Davies’s quick ascent to the MLB, I forgot to add him in this list, so his trade will be featured below.

Following this set of deals, it should be interesting to note that while the Brewers system prospects have had ups and downs, the players traded away have exhibited true depreciation within one year. This should demonstrate one benefit of using a depreciation model to assess future player value, which is the model I have been working with throughout the offseason; players do depreciate in terms of production. Jonathan Lucroy, Jeremy Jeffress, Gerardo Parra, Carlos Gomez, Mike Fiers, Adam Lind, and Jason Rogers all demonstrate this, and it should be noted they demonstrate this without completely crashing their value in the meantime (especially in the case of Lucroy). Khris Davis is perhaps the worst counterexample, as Stearns almost certainly sold low on the slugger, who also deserves credit for making adjustments and shifting his approach in Oakland.

A few quick notes:

• The Lucroy-Jeffress and Gomez-Fiers deals shifted value for completely different reasons. The former relies fully (thus far) on problematic performances by the players the Brewers traded away, while the latter is improving in value both due to struggles by Gomez and Fiers and improvements by Domingo Santana. The Gomez-Fiers deal remains one of the strongest deals to build the Brewers system, even with Josh Hader’s recent struggles, and Brett Phillips’s graduation solidifies at least the 45 OFP grade (which is not nothing), while the ceiling remains to be seen.

• Hidden in the middle of this table is the Francisco Rodriguez trade, which was one of Stearns’s worst trades on the day it occurred. But thankfully, trades are not solely graded on the day-of, and post hoc analysis loves Manny Pina’s development into (at least) a split time catcher at the MLB level. K-Rod has not been terrible, for what it’s worth, but when that contract winds down to its last year the surplus value really depends on short-term production rather than longterm outlook. This hurts the K-Rod score as much as it hurts Lucroy’s assessment in Texas.

• Let it be stated that the Khris Davis trade return was solid (if not spectacular) on the day-of. But it’s great to be reminded that prospect stock can depreciate, too. Fortunately, scouting reports suggest that Jacob Nottingham can remain behind the plate, answering one previous question. But if that power (and bat) does not come around, it may not matter as much; it is getting more appropriate to highlight, say, the 40-45 end of Nottingham’s grade (still means he reaches the MLB) than the 55 end that helped him reach Oakland’s Top 10. Of course, remember that Manny Pina was probably a 40-45 grade minor leaguer when Milwaukee acquired him, so…you know the rest.

• I believe there could be some reason to reassess prospects like Freddy Peralta or Ryan Cordell, who I would rate as valuable depth options for the system. However, for the purposes of this exercise, there is not necessarily enough non-statistical information to fully develop a new scouting grade. So perhaps a few prospects in this table deserve an asterisk next to their grade.

Turning from the “earlier” trades to the 2017 offseason, one can see how Stearns developed the surprising 2017 contender. It is interesting to note that for the offseason coverage of the club, so many of us (myself included) completely failed to properly price the GM’s immediate value for these trades.

For example, Mauricio Dubon was never (and probably will not be) the prime value of the Thornburg deal. What makes the Thornburg deal so amazing is that, given Thornburg’s career development, a straight-up Dubon-for-Thornburg deal would have been solid. Yet, Stearns did not stop there; the GM managed to return not just Dubon, but also a legitimate MLB asset in Travis Shaw, as well as two total lottery tickets (exemplified in Yusion Coca, the Player-To-Be-Named-Later who completed this deal). This trade should continue to “give” to the organization, whether it is in the form of Josh Pennington or Coco being included in a future trade (they are sufficiently far from the MLB to be traded once more), or Dubon working in a utility role or second-tier MLB starting role.

A quick word: These numbers are indeed abstract! The Brewers claim approximately $472.2 million in depreciated surplus value from these trades, which roughly translates to 67 WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player) within the system. These 67 WARP could be maximized and turned into 87 market-rate WARP, they could remain steady over time, or they could further depreciate to 49 WARP. These figures are abstract, of course, because they incorporate risk into the system, and can be cashed out any which way; if Stearns cashes out 87 WARP within the next two years, the Brewers will have quite a competitive team; if these players remain merely competitive or decline further, it will be questioned whether more trades were necessary. The players could continue to depreciate, and many could fail to reach the MLB (if they are prospects). Stearns can cash out surplus through trades or development. So these numbers should not necessarily be interpreted to apply to any timeframe; that’s up to the GM to determine.

Since I’ve already focused specifically on the Jett Bandy-Martin Maldonado deal recently, I will not dive deeper into that deal except to emphasize the importance of post hoc trade analysis. Returning to a trade after the fact, with the proper tools, is not simply “using hindsight,” but rather healthy Benefit-Cost Analysis. Moreover, returning to a trade after the fact, with the proper tools, is an opportunity to potentially sharpen those analytical tools in order to provide better day-of trade analysis. But of course, the Bandy trade is not yet complete, nor are most of these deals, really. So, by returning to these trades with analytical methods over time, one can come to understand organizational value as a malleable entity that is never truly solidified at one point in time. This is arguably yet another reason to oppose “rebuilding,” or to opposing “winning now,” or any extreme organizational strategy; it is also possible to never build an organization, or to build an organization through contrarian means (as Stearns is doing). There should be no reason for an MLB club to fail to simultaneously build for the present and future, save for a lack of creativity.

The solution isn’t as simple as just “hire people with more diverse backgrounds.” Teams are hiring people with Stearns’ and Hazen’s pedigrees because Ivy League economics backgrounds have proven beneficial in running major league teams. Dave Stewart—and his more traditional “baseball background”—made a number of puzzling decisions that seemed to be based on a misunderstanding of how to properly value assets. Hazen is unlikely to have the same problem, as we have already seen him make a relatively shrewd trade when dealing Jean Segura, and general managers with similar backgrounds seem to have similar ideas for valuing future assets.

But this likely isn’t the only way to win, and there are real disadvantages to pursuing this economics-based approach. First, the last decade or so has seen a strong discrediting of certain intangibles (leadership, chemistry, work ethic) that were seen as valuable and positive for the entirety of baseball history. This shift in valuation is probably correct! We almost certainly are more correctly valuing players in 2017 than we were in 1997. But there are also likely some intangibles that do provide value, such as a catcher’s ability to call a game (not to be confused with his pitch-framing) or veterans teaching rookies how to be professional. These are situational and fluid, and they depend on the specific personal interactions between people, so they are difficult to measure. Psychology also matters; as we learn more about human behavior, additional information about how to properly value professional athletes becomes available.

The second issue is less related to competitive balance and more related to the commodification of labor that is pervading society. Economics is one way of valuing players, but, when taken to its extremes, can lead to dehumanizing the athletes. One way of countering this is having multiple viewpoints in the room, and “room” here means both the physical room that decisions are made in as well as the metaphorical room that baseball front office executives exist in. When everyone is valuing players the same way—in this case, using economic theories—it becomes an arms race as teams try to become the best at this methodology. For this generation, it has manifested itself as teams trying to get every drop of value from every cost-controlled player.

As I mentioned above, though, there is a big problem with just saying “hire different people.” Teams are trying to win, and this has proven the most effective way of building a winning team. Cost-controlled assets are valuable because having quality young players allows teams to go out and sign veteran free agents to fill in gaps while still maintaining a reasonable payroll. This is a proven strategy, and it is why teams are pursuing front offices with this philosophy. But the background of these types of executives does not lend itself to diversity, and in that baseball does have a problem.

The most practical way for baseball to address this problem is by promoting diversity early and taking steps to get more diverse candidates into entry level positions. MLB has recognized the diversity issue on the field, and its creation of RBI (“Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities”) was a step in the right direction. RBI’s effectiveness can be debated, but it was a concrete step towards a more diverse workforce. A similar program for front offices would be valuable.

When field-to-front office was a more common pathway, promoting diversity on the field could have been enough. But with the rise in Ivy League executives, a more diverse player pool does not guarantee more diverse front offices. According to a study done by UCF at the beginning of the 2016 season, the player pool was about 60 percent white, but there were just four non-white general managers. And Dave Stewart, one of those non-white GMs, was just fired and replaced with Mike Hazen. Thus, something else must be done.

I would suggest that teams do a better job of providing opportunities for people of different backgrounds. A more inclusive outreach program to get young women and people of color into entry-level management jobs is sorely needed, as that is where qualified candidates would come from. If this economics-based valuation of players is truly the best way to maximize talent and build winning teams, then having diverse backgrounds is still useful because it provides different viewpoints. There is no ideal formula that teams will be able to access by reducing inefficiencies to zero; this is not simply a race to become the most efficient. These are still baseball teams and management groups made up of people, and having different viewpoints is valuable here, just as it is in other business and personal settings.

One of the problems that baseball faces—and this is an issue that has been written about before—is that the best way to start your baseball career is by getting an internship with a team. However, these are usually unpaid, and only people from certain socioeconomic backgrounds have the luxury of pursuing those. In fact, this idea was explicitly stated by Braves’ GM John Coppolella in an offseason twitter chat. He specifically told young people not to worry about getting paid.

Look for internships. Don’t worry about the money. Work hard & don’t have expectations beyond being part of a team. Assume nothing. https://t.co/7bUe1QhRZU

— Atlanta Braves (@Braves) December 15, 2016

Some people can do this, but not everyone can, and people who graduate with economics degrees from Ivy League universities are disproportionately in the former category. It is worth noting that Coppolella himself told a story about eating out of trash cans when he was getting paid $18,000 per year, so it wasn’t as if he was living off of a trust fund. But some people cannot afford even that, and MLB needs to do a better job of reaching out to people in those situations. The game would be better with more viewpoints represented, but the current system does not provide any path or incentive for change.