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.

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

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

Related Reading:
Cashing Out OFP
Translating OFP

Anyway, it’s fun to continue testing the model, so let’s head back in time to assess one of Doug Melvin’s iconic moves. The Brewers’ previous President and GM famously went all-in on July 7, 2008 by trading for one of the very best arms in the game, and perhaps the best available trade asset in the MLB at that moment. To that point, franchise ace Ben Sheets had heroically paced a beleaguered pitching rotation with 96 K / 26 BB / 12 HR in 117.0 IP and 11 of 17 quality starts (including a shutout and two additional complete games). Given Sabathia’s monstrous second half for Milwaukee, where the southpaw almost seemed to will the Brewers to the playoffs, it’s easy to forget that Sheets was one of the elite pitchers that season (4.81 WARP, 3.37 DRA, and 0.3236 Post-Tunnel Break, good for twelfth best among MLB pitchers with 1000 pitchpairs); his efforts to win while pitching through a torn elbow ligament also cost him millions on the impending free agency market. On July 7, 2008, the Brewers were 3.5 games behind the division-leading Cubs, and they were outplaying a .513 Pythagorean Winning Percentage (based on Runs Scored and Runs Allowed). Something was going to give, but with Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun coming into their own, and Sheets’s free agency the first closing window for these Brewers, this was a great chance to improve the club.

For the day-of-trade analysis, I’ve priced out Michael Brantley as the PTBNL. Considering Taylor Green as PTBNL leads to different questions, although it is worth noting that neither Brantley nor Green made the Baseball Prospectus Top Prospects entering 2008. One could even argue that Green would have been priced similarly at this point and time. This model shows that in terms of Sabathia’s purest short-term value, Cleveland arguably undersold his OFP:

Once again, the tricky aspect of Benefit-Cost Analysis is considering the window through which one constructs value. If an analyst is inclined to depreciate Sabathia’s three-year-plus-2008-first-half performance, a second half with the southpaw does not look thrilling for the Brewers. Here, the ace might add a win to the club, although given their proximity to the playoff race on July 7, one win could add as much as $20 million or more in revenue to Milwaukee. On the other hand, an analyst using Sabathia’s immediate performance would conclude that the ace was just the type of asset suited to add several wins to the Brewers. Certainly, Sabathia was the type of asset worth surrendering top prospects from the Milwaukee system, especially given that the farm was already on a downward trajectory after graduating that classic young contending core.

Obviously, one can apply this analytical rigor to the prospect assessments as well. Despite a top ranking for Milwaukee, Baseball Prospectus recognized that defensive and contact shortcomings could sidetrack LaPorta’s power/discipline package. Nevertheless, even those risks gave LaPorta a strong price (and entering 2009, LaPorta was even ranked ahead of Carlos Santana in Cleveland’s system!). Even on the day of the trade, Cleveland returned a relatively risky prospect package for a proven ace like Sabathia; Brantley was the most advanced and seasoned prospect by that point, and even he did not grade into the top rankings of a middling Brewers system. Green might have even been viewed as a more interesting prospect gamble at that point; Rob Bryson was a depth arm with very little professional experience; and even for all his glamor, LaPorta had just reached his 100th professional game at the time of the trade. Zach Jackson was interesting insofar as he had a very high ceiling for a lefty depth arm, and perhaps his best case scenario would be bolstering a pitching staff losing its ace during a 37-51 first half (as a fun aside, Cleveland actually outplayed Milwaukee after the trade!).

Brewers fans could easily write off those prospects after Sabathia worked four consecutive quality starts to begin his tenure in Milwaukee, including a shutout and two additional complete games before the calendar even turned to August. When your team is the team that is trying to win MLB games, suddenly those risks look much steeper on those prospects, and the ceilings look less attainable. It may be an unjustifiable bias, but then again, there are many inputs, outputs, and interpretations necessary to run a Benefit-Cost Analysis. When the dust settled, Sabathia’s seven complete games (three shutouts!), 128 K / 25 BB / 6 HR, and 2.45 DRA drove a 4.5 WARP in the second half. Most importantly, Milwaukee actually made the playoffs, immediately paying out that prospect gamble with playoff revenue (which must be included in post hoc analysis).

The playoff revenue should not be underestimated: if one takes the harsh depreciation of Sabathia, and expected the trade to be a talent deficit for Milwaukee, the revenue (along with Sabathia’s WARP) covers the vast majority of any talent deficit in the trade. Adding in compensatory draft picks under the old, problematic draft-and-free-agency system made the trade look fantastic after one year:

It’s quite difficult to assess the value of a single draft pick. Historically, the Brewers had two strong picks to compensate for losing Sabathia. Yet, to say that the Brewers could potentially gain five wins from the 39th and 73rd picks does not seem quite right. Thus, in order to judge those compensatory picks, I steeply depreciated those picks against the odds that even the vast majority of 39th and 73rd picks fail to reach the MLB. Even this depreciated model makes those draft picks appear quite valuable. In addition to the production on the field and the playoff revenue, Milwaukee’s front office could reasonably gain an additional win in surplus through those compensatory picks. Given the short window and lack of prospect value leaps (or decline) for Cleveland to this point, the trade was swinging heavily in Milwaukee’s favor.

In hindsight, it’s easy to see Michael Brantley’s breakout as one of the factors that could potentially dig into the value Milwaukee received in the trade. However, it’s worth pushing back on this by noting that even after three-and-a-half years, the additional players involved in the Sabathia deal, as well as the Brewers’ compensatory picks, stalled. The Sabathia deal seemed to linger in the air of the front office, as Melvin clearly took the lesson to be a valuable one when he unloaded for Shaun Marcum and Zack Greinke to lead the 2011 and 2012 Brewers pitching staffs (both quite solid-to-great deals). Even Brantley appeared to be in a difficult position, failing to deliver defensively in centerfield, and not necessarily producing enough offense to offset that performance.

Even three-and-a-half years are not sufficient for assessing some trades.

As an aside, it’s interesting to question how a market rate deal for Sabathia could have worked out in Milwaukee, especially with an opt-out clause as signed in New York. Looking back at the three-years after Sabathia’s tenure in Milwaukee, one could argue that pumping that playoff revenue back into a huge deal with the southpaw could have been beneficial for the Brewers. This would obviously have completely changed the timeline for contending in Milwaukee, however, and probably would have netted a completely different set of supplemental deals for the franchise. Anyway, never forget that Sabathia produced 17.8 WARP during his first three years with the Yankees, serving as one of the most valuable free agent pitchers in history (those three years alone were worth nearly $125 million for New York’s Junior Circuit club).

Looking at the final tab, the Brewers received incredible short-term surplus from Sabathia. In fact, the lefty actually produced surplus that matched nearly 70 percent of his highest day-of-trade value estimate: thanks to Sabathia’s performance, the Brewers actually cashed out surplus in on-field wins, which should bar none be considered successful. Sabathia’s production (at his contract rate!) and playoff revenue shredded the depreciated surplus estimate of $13.4 million for the ace. If one wants to be particularly bold, prorating this surplus from Sabathia’s half season to a full campaign gives the Brewers quite a trade return in annual terms. Of course, Michael Brantley’s breakout for Cleveland more than makes up for Matt LaPorta’s bust (and really, the non-return of Jackson and Bryson to boot), and technically, one could argue that Milwaukee’s failure to maximize those supplemental draft picks in 2009 ate into some of Sabathia’s value.

56 percent of Brantley’s total value to Cleveland was produced in 2014. Let’s take a moment to appreciate the prescience of Cleveland’s extension offer to Brantley to avoid arbitration entering 2014. To that point, the outfielder claimed approximately 3.7 WARP on reserve contracts, providing relatively solid value to Cleveland. After moving to left field from center field, Brantley leapt from significantly below average FRAA to a serviceable 2.4 FRAA figure, bolstering that .271 TAv to drive a 2.5 WARP 2013 season. Depreciating that 2013 season against his previous performances, Brantley offered Cleveland approximately $22 million in surplus to the club entering arbitration for 2014, but the $17.5 million total value in 2013 perhaps added an exclamation point to that depreciated figure. Cleveland GM Chris Antonetti maximized every ounce of that surplus, handing it all to Brantley in a neatly wrapped four-year, $20.5 million deal with an additional signing bonus of $3.5 million and $1 million buyout on a 2018 option. Even with an injury-plagued 2016 and average 2015 campaign in the rearview, that huge .320 TAv, 20 HR / 20 SB 2014 season from Brantley pretty much completed the full extension.

With these positive figures, it must be emphasized that Brantley has the benefit of eight-and-a-half years from the day of the trade to reach this level of surplus for Cleveland; in this regard, the high monetary value produced must be prorated in much the same way Sabathia’s must be prorated, which leaves a lack of a satisfactory answer to the long-term-versus-short-term question in Benefit-Cost Analysis for MLB trades. It’s difficult to determine when and how teams succeed or fail in trades, especially given that short-term and long-term outlooks, not to mention specific teambuilding goals, can produce wildly fluctuating assessments. Nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine living in the universe where Sabathia was not a Brewers ace for those magical three months.

Related Reading
The New Professional Orthodoxy
MLPA Elitism and Minor League Pay

When the issue of the Brewers’ additional revenue surfaced earlier in the season, fans typically stated that the club could plug that money into a huge Latin American July 2 spending spree, improving minor league pay or resources, or other analytic or research and development projects. (With a couple of affiliate contracts expiring, it is also worth investigating the value of purchasing and controlling minor league clubs). Thanks to the prospect industry press, fans know that the Brewers did not spend very much in the International Free Agency season (perhaps finding “the new market inefficiency”?!?), although the club did spend the penalty-free maximum in June’s Rule 4 draft. Minor league spending, analytics spending, and research and development will unfortunately not make the press, given the typically opaque nature of MLB information sharing.

Now that the rebuild is coming along steadily, one might advocate for investments in corporate structure and front office positions, perhaps more than improved minor league pay or sinking capital into machines and other analytical production enterprises. There is a real sense that if the Brewers are going to successfully rebuild, the future values must come to fruition from the minors (hence necessitating improved minor league pay and conditions) and the club must produce good knowledge.

It remains to be seen if the current front office will successfully rebuild the club into a consistent contender. However, at the moment, one can use various tools to argue that the club has excelled at acquiring future value throughout the system. So, in this sense, the Brewers ownership board could be quite justified in investigating extensions and promotions for key front office members. As it stands, the Brewers feature a number of potential future GM candidates within their front office. Vice President, Amateur Scouting Ray Montgomery was already a GM candidate when the Brewers hired him into his current position; Vice President and Assistant General Manager Matt Arnold was also quite a sought after executive prior to coming to Milwaukee.

It is extremely early to ask such a question, but the Brewers do not have the market status to mistakenly undervalue front office talent: when should Milwaukee rekindle the President position (last held by Doug Melvin) and provide promotions for their braintrust?

One can expect fans to despise such an idea. Milwaukee is hardly three trading cycles into their rebuild, and the current staff has not proven they can build a winner. However, one can also argue that the rebuild is a “process;” in this sense, the process itself can be analyzed, including the extent to which each transaction either expands future value for the big league club, potential trades, or current performance value for the MLB club. There are multiple layers to this within the Brewers system. Furthermore, by the time the Brewers are on the cusp of contending, a couple of hiring cycles could pass, thereby opening the Brewers braintrust to new interviews and front offices eager to reward an analytical proponent with a shot at running their own organization.

The simple issue is whether the Brewers can afford to lose members of this team prior to contending (or on the cusp). If this front office has begun the process toward contending, and they are producing effective systems of knowledge, the Brewers arguably cannot afford to underprice this team of executives.

Unfortunately, executive compensation data are not as readily available as player compensation figures. This should not be surprising to the extent that the purpose of MLB front offices is to control information; while a strong labor structure benefits from freely available contract information, it is less apparent how a front office will benefit by advertising its compensation scheme. Front office members are also rewarded with additional aspects of professional prestige unavailable to MLB players (the most basic being that MLB players cannot receive a promotion via title and responsibilities). While data are scarce on Cot’s Contracts, FiveThirtyEight recently modeled front office analysis and professional development in several different directions. Suffice to say, analysts may be underpaid, too.

[Of course it is worth stating that if each of these three executives were promoted and signed to four year, $20 million contracts, they would each surpass Theo Epstein’s Cubs contract.]

Offering extensions and promotions could appear more palatable if one considers that (1) the salaries for top baseball executives have suddenly exploded, and (2) the Brewers will also have an additional $40-to-$60 million to stash in 2017. With this in mind, the Brewers could fortify their organization by improving minor league pay and investment, sinking a huge sum into the July 2 deadline (unless the new Collective Bargaining Agreement changes that process), and putting an elite executive compensation structure into place. Here, the Brewers can ensure that each aspect of their process, from labor to management to research apparatus, will be financed in a manner that creates incentive for success while also aggressively rewarding the first steps of the rebuild.

One of the benefits of using a statistic like Elo is that it places in hard-and-fast language the often tricky narratives of weighing franchises and eras against one another. Since each team is scaled against an average of 1500, and each team is readjusted toward the mean after each season, each franchise faces the same conditions of measurement throughout each season. Therefore, the strength of a given league can be measured by each team’s ascending, descending, or consistent performance, and the strength of a team’s opponents are built directly into each measurement (since each team can only be judged against the predictions for those games).

I am planning on working with some Elo Rating statistics here at BPMilwaukee, in order to reframe some of the debates about the club’s rebuilding path, and rebuilding paths in general. I am also interested in how Elo Ratings, over time, will correlate with team TAv, FRAA, DRA (or cFIP), and run differential performances. If there are divergences or similarities between these measurements, analysts will have additional tools at their disposal to judge each team within the context of its league. It will also be interesting to attempt to judge the strength of each league, again comparing that data with metrics like TAv and DRA.

The Expansion Blues
Elo assigns a rating of 1450 to each expansion team, which places those teams significantly below the league average threshold of 1500. The Brewers franchise received such a rating for their 1969 season in Seattle, and the Pilots did not disappoint with their expansion moniker. The Pilots closed their lone season with an Elo rating that fell to 1431, which pushed their rating “below expansion” performance. Once Bud Selig purchased the team and moved them to Milwaukee, the club ascended back to 1450, but they still could not reach that league average mark for several years. In fact, the team had to bottom out to 1436 once more before reaching the 1500 mark during their shockingly successful 1978 season.

Under the watch of Harry Dalton, the Brewers embarked on their best stretch of seasons. The 1980s Milwaukee Brewers were consistently better than average, as the glorious Wallbangers also gave way to quite a successful set of clubs to close the decade. Without the pressure or glory or heartbreaking memories of the playoffs, Brewers fans will not necessarily remember the late-1980s clubs for being as good as Harvey’s Wallbangers, but those late-1980s clubs were juuuust a bit behind the recognizably great Brewers squads. In fact, while the 1978-1983 Brewers posted an average Elo Rating of 1521.86 (25.7 Standard Deviation), the 1987-1993 Brewers posted an average Elo Rating of 1518.71 (22.4 Standard Deviation). The late-1980s to early-1990s Brewers arguably wasted one of the strongest standpoints in franchise history , even moreso than the recent competitive surge of 2008-2014 (1504.79 Elo Rating, 13.6 Standard Deviation).

Incidentally, the Brewers’ Elo rating progression aligns quite well with the stories told by their run differentials over the years. Here and there, one might note that the best run differentials mimic the best Elo Ratings, but the advantage of the Elo rating is that there are closing and opening stories to each decade that can add to the stark reality of runs scored and allowed. On average, both stats show that the 1970s were a bad decade for the Brewers, but the development of the strong 1978 and 1979 clubs results in a positive decade-closing Elo rating of 1538.

The recent Brewers teams echo their Elo Rating with their run differential development. The Brewers of the last six seasons largely hung around average (-64 run differential for the decade), and while their highpoint was good (+83 runs), it was not as “elite” as the best Milwaukee teams of either the 1980s or the 1990s. In this case, the rebuilding tenure of GM David Stearns has the clear goal of maintaining that standard consistency of sticking around .500, sure, and then transcending that into an extended run of significantly better than average Brewers clubs. If your instincts as a Brewers fan already told you that Milwaukee has not yet had such a run, the Elo Ratings will verify your intuition.

The Fall of Sal Bando

In terms of long-term GMs, the Brewers have three major GMs in their history. Elo Ratings undeniably uphold Harry Dalton, again reinforcing a common narrative (this one placing Dalton as best GM). Doug Melvin had a solid, if unspectacular, run that vindicates his ability to bring a team out of rebuilding while also reflecting the club’s inability to reach the next level under his watch. However upset one might be with Melvin’s era, his performance positively sparkles next to Sal Bando, who took the reins of the club at the close of its second strong era (roughly spanning the end of 1987 through 1992) and positively ran it back into expansion era mode.

Even if Bando’s overall Elo Rating is higher than Melvin’s, which is quite an interesting fact, there is no question that the trajectory of his administration is much more disappointing. Both Melvin and Dalton basically picked up baseball teams that were below expansion level in terms of outlook and performance, and turned them into contenders (Dalton) or consistently competitive teams (Melvin). On the other hand, Bando took over a club from the franchise’s best GM, and failed to build on a series of good seasons; Bando could not improve upon Dalton’s core, and therefore it is easy to attribute much of his success in Elo Ratings to the strength of Dalton’s clubs (Bando’s only above average Elo Ratings occurred in 1992 and the beginning of 1993; Melvin’s occurred in 2011-2012, after retooling from the rough 2009-2010 seasons). This may update a Brewers narrative: Milwaukee fans would rarely consider saying so, but Bando had a chance to build a dynasty decade, and drove the club in the opposite direction.

Brewers GM (Full Seasons), Previous GM Closing ELO, Exit ELO, Average, Standard Deviation, Four Best (+1500 seasons)

In a juicy factoid, current GM David Stearns took over a club that almost perfectly splits the middle between Dalton/Melvin’s average entry point (1456) and Sal Bando’s entry point (1522). In fact, Stearns picks up the Brewers at one of the strongest points of their franchise history (which is perhaps an indictment of the general inability to compete throughout franchise history). This Elo Rating is one of the first to contrast a common fan narrative, which is that the Brewers are in need of a thorough system rebuild. Even if this statement is true on the surface in some regard (i.e., that the Brewers need to acquire some new talent to compete), the club is swimming closer to “average” than the “expansion level” bottoming out.

Subsequently, this should vindicate several of Stearns’s moves, where one finds the GM searching for MLB-level second chance players and serviceable veterans than truly tankworthy replacement players. Milwaukee was not in the position to tank, and their front office made the proper decision not to tank. It’s some kind of poetic justice that the Brewers currently sit balanced between average and rock bottom, which effectively explains why fans can have such lively debates about the course of the franchise. Stearns truly has the opportunity to pitch the club in either direction; his competitive legacy (and subsequent Elo Rating) will arguably surge if Stearns is able to continually improve the club’s future contending prospects without tanking the big league club below expansion level. If he accomplishes this task, Stearns will have achieved a franchise first for Milwaukee.

Resources
Baseball Reference. Sports Reference, LLC., 2000-2016.

Boice, Jay. “How Our 2016 MLB Predictions Work.” FiveThirtyEight. ESPN Internet Ventures, 2016 (April 25, 2016). Accessed between June 20 and June 27, 2016.

Boice, Jay and Reuben Fischer-Baum. “The Complete History of the MLB.” FiveThirtyEight. ESPN Internet Ventures, 2016 (Updated June 26, 2016). Accessed between June 20 and June 27, 2016.

MLB Advanced Media, LP, 2016.

The Brewers are inarguably going through some sort of rebuild themselves. They’ve traded a number of their assets and acquired a number of young players. And this season, a number of their players have been swirling in trade rumors.

Some have henceforth started making comparisons between the Brewers and the Cubs. Stating that essentially the Brewers rebuild will take a long time because well, the Cubs rebuild took around 5 years.

well. yeah. it took the cubs five years to get to where they are and literally everything broke right. https://t.co/LslIOzISBB

— regular travis (@travis_mke) May 28, 2016

The problem with making this sort of comparison is manifold. Mainly, it assumes that the Cubs and Brewers were in the same place at the same time when they decided to undergo a rebuild. The problem with this assumption is you need to pinpoint when the Cubs started rebuilding in the first place. It’s easy to assume that the Cubs have been rebuilding for five years because the Cubs have been bad for five years. But there’s a difference between being unsuccessful in an attempt to compete, and being unsuccessful as a rebuilding team. That’s not to suggest that the Brewers are losing intentionally. It’s rather to suggest that they’re putting more emphasis on the future than they are to the present. The counterexample of this is the Diamondbacks, a team that is putting more emphasis on the present than they are on the future, even though they and the Brewers could finish with the same record.

In order to pinpoint when the Cubs rebuild started, I talked on the phone with Rian Watt, Editor in Chief of BP Wrigleyville. Watt told me that the Cubs rebuild had three stages. The first stage was in 2009 when Tom Ricketts bought the team. Then, in July of 2011, Jim Hendry was fired as general manager of the Cubs, opening the door for Theo Epstein to be hired in October of 2011. When I asked Watt if he thought the Cubs were rebuilding from 2010-2011, he said it was a “half-measured” rebuild. I don’t think anybody would then question that the Cubs underwent a full rebuild the following three years.

Watt is describing an evolutionary process. We often think of rebuilds as having a fixed start and end point, just like the beginning and end of a month. But rebuilds are rarely this simple, and the decision to undergo them doesn’t happen overnight. It’s also very difficult to pinpoint the exact moment the team in question started rebuilding.

The Brewers rebuild also didn’t happen overnight. After the 2013 season, when the Brewers had a disastrous 74 win season, many were clamoring for them to rebuild. However, the team still wanted to compete and signed Matt Garza to a 4 year $50-million-dollar deal, with an option for 2018. The hot start of 2014 also prevented the Brewers from rebuilding. In a natural course of things, maybe it would have been smarter for the Brewers to sell off some pieces, because even though the Brewers had a good first half, their team was still very flawed. That said, they didn’t; Milwaukee stayed the course and winded up missing the playoffs. The team finished with 82 wins, and you would have a hard time arguing that they weren’t trying to compete that year.

During the 2014-2015 offseason, the Brewers made some half-measured moves to rebuilding such as trading Yovani Gallardo to the Texas Rangers. This signaled that the Brewers were considering rebuilding but at the same time, were not ready to dive head first. The Brewers dove head first in the middle of 2015 when it was clear that the team wasn’t going to be competitive.

But in any case, both situations were different from the Cubs. In 2010-2011, the Cubs were a bad team, an old team, and they had one of the biggest payrolls in all of baseball. This hampered them from trading a number of their assets for any valuable return. In 2010 the Cubs had eight players making more than 10 million dollars. Thankfully for them, Derek Lee and Ted Lilly were coming off the books in 2011, but they still had to deal with the contracts of Carlos Zambrano, Aramis Ramirez, Kosuke Fukudome (remember that guy?), Alfonso Soriano — who was making 19 million per year until 2014, Carlos Silva, and Ryan Dempster. Their farm system was actually ranked highly in 2010, but a number of their prospects didn’t pan out. Baseball Prospectus had their farm system ranked 23 when Theo took over in 2011.

The Brewers obviously are in a much different situation. First, when they decided to fully rebuild last year, they only had two contracts that could hinder them. Garza’s contract is definitely one that the Brewers would like to get off the books and will expire in 2017. The other contract is that of Ryan Braun, and from Braun’s play this season, it sounds as though the Brewers would be able to move it if they so chose to.

Milwaukee’s opening day salaries actually went down from 104,237,000 in 2015 to 63,908,300 in 2016. This will allow the team to have a lot of flexibility spending wise when they deem it time to compete. This doesn’t even get into the fact that the Brewers also have a good farm system and a number of prospects in the high minors, which wasn’t the case with the Cubs. Between the time Doug Melvin stepped away and David Stearns stepped in, BaseballProspectus moved the Brewers farm system from 26 to a Top Ten ranking.

This isn’t to suggest that the Brewers rebuild will be more successful than the Cubs. A number of things went right for the Cubs, such as discovering Jake Arrieta, and drafting so immaculately.

There’s likely going to be a number of different problems and different obstacles that will behold the Brewers, compared to the Cubs situation, but that’s the point. The Brewers’ and the Cubs’ processes to rebuilding came about differently, and when they decided to rebuild, they were in two very different situations. They also have different front office members and different types of talent in the minor leagues. Assuming the Brewers rebuild will take a certain amount of years because the Cubs rebuild took a certain amount of years is foolish, and isn’t taking into account all of the context that is surrounding the decision-making process.

Breen also wrote about what a trade of this sort meant for the farm system, and that is the key to this follow-up. The Gomez trade brought back more than just Phillips. Domingo Santana, Josh Hader, and Adrian Houser each looked promising to close out 2015. But more important than the performances of those individual players was what this trade indicated about the future of the franchise: They recognized they weren’t likely to compete in 2015 or 2016, so they worked to stock the farm system with as much talent as possible.

Importantly, though, the Brewers have continued to deal players that would help them in 2016 in the interest of securing their future. The November trade of Francisco Rodriguez brought back Javier Betancourt; while Betancourt probably won’t hit enough to be a star, he is still in the minor leagues and is under team control for at least six years—which shows the Brewers are in fact thinking about their next legitimate window of contention instead of holding onto Rodriguez in the arguably-worthless hopes that he would anchor their bullpen for one more year.

The subsequent Adam Lind and Jason Rogers trades signaled a similar philosophy. One can quibble with the returns—none of the five players the Brewers acquired in the deals is a sure thing—but they all appear to be solid prospects and, most importantly, are under team control for a long time. Lind and Rogers would probably have helped the team win a few more games in 2016, but kudos to the organization for recognizing that there isn’t much of a difference between 70 wins and 75 wins and instead shooting for much better in 2017 and beyond.

Gomez would probably have been the Brewers’ best player in 2016. Were he combined with Ryan Braun, Jonathan Lucroy, and Lind, the Brewers could have had a competent offense that got them a few extra wins this coming year. However, the organization wisely decided that they would be better off maximizing those veterans’ trade value, and the Gomez trade was the first indicator that they recognized this.

One interesting side note to this storyline is how the same philosophy has spanned multiple general managers. Doug Melvin made the Gomez trade in what was actually a bit of a surprise—general managers often try to save their job by maximizing current wins at the expense of future success in a phenomenon known as a moral hazard. Melvin, though, made a move that had the organization’s best interests at heart rather than his own before announcing he would be stepping down just two weeks after the deal. Then, new general manager David Stearns stepped in and immediately continued the trend. If I had to speculate about Melvin’s motivations, I would assume that he knew he would be transitioning out of the GM role even before he made the public announcement. Perhaps he understood this was the best jumping off point to a new regime in Milwaukee. Melvin wasn’t concerned with trying to save his job.

Alternatively, though, we could view this as a mandate from ownership saying that it was time to build for the future. I have written previously that I believe Mark Attanasio is a fantastic owner, and so I would not be surprised if he decided that the team needed to move forward and he directed Melvin to do so even before the new front office structure could be put in place. Either way, the Gomez trade signaled that the Brewers’ leadership group recognized that continually fighting for a few extra wins was a suboptimal strategy and that the best way to build a winner was to look to the future.

The day after Stearns took over, our own J.P. Breen posted his analysis of the move at our parent site. The Brewers’ future had been up in the air for months after the firing of Ron Roenicke, the installation of Craig Counsell as manager, and the subsequent search for a general manager. The Brewers were connected to all kinds of candidates, ranging from traditional candidates more in the Melvin mold to the extreme youth-and-numbers candidate they eventually selected in Stearns.

As Breen wrote, Stearns’s selection finally put a direction to the Brewers future. “Recent interviews and overall practices in Houston hint at what the New York native could bring to Milwaukee.” Breen wrote. “He has spoken strongly in the past about prioritizing scouting in Asia and the Pacific Rim, something that has not traditionally happened in Milwaukee. Using all data (technological and human) available to shape development and decision-making processes has also come up multiple times in interviews.”

In October, here at BP Milwaukee, Breen expanded on the possibilities the injection of youth into the front office in the form of Stearns and his new assistant GM Matt Arnold, a 36-year-old who had previously worked in the Tampa Bay Rays organization. While the anti-statistics tendencies of the Brewers under Melvin were greatly exaggerated, there’s no question Stearns and his new-age staff are going to have a different ideological approach to building a baseball team than Melvin’s crew did.

The real question, Breen asserts, is not whether the Brewers can bring their organization up to speed on their use of data and technology. Rather, it’s what new ideas Stearns, Arnold, and the rest of the organization can bring to the table. “The real difference maker in Milwaukee will be discovering the next competitive advantage that no one has exploited, the next market inefficiency, if you will,” Breen writes. “Simply using mountains data on framing, spin rates, defensive efficiency, and the like to drive coaching methods and roster decisions won’t be enough.”

Unfortunately, it’s too early to make any real judgments about Stearns or his strategies. The Brewers have been making a bunch of moves this offseason, picking up prospects for veterans like Adam Lind and accruing young, fringe players like Jonathan Villar and Ramon Flores who will have their chance to play their ways into bigger roles. Stearns has really yet to make a major move, though — a trade of a high profile player like Jonathan Lucroy or Ryan Braun or a major free-agent deal — and it’s those moves that tend to tell us more about a GM.

Much of our coverage has focused on Stearns, his new approach, and the future of the Brewers. We didn’t talk much about Melvin and his work in building the Brewers up from a perennial loser to a team that reached the playoffs twice in four seasons. Melvin had his problems — specifically, a farm system that was all but devoid of talent. Between 2010 and 2012, as I wrote in the 2014 Baseball Prospectus Annual, the Brewers farm system produced just 5.0 WAR, 3.2 of which came from late-bloomer Mike Fiers.

But Melvin built successful teams through a shrewd ability to identify undervalued Major League players who could fit into the Milwaukee clubhouse and help teams compete. Seemingly minor pickups like Gabe Kapler, Chris Narveson, Casey McGehee, Nyjer Morgan, Jerry Hairston Jr., and John Axford, all acquired for minimal expenses, contributed in huge ways to the 2008 and 2011 playoff teams. This was one of Melvin’s great talents, the ability to find the diamond in the rough, the missing piece, and to integrate it seamlessly into a roster.

David Stearns has a lot of work to do in assembling the core of the next Brewers contender. The farm system is starting to fill up again, but it will need to keep growing in order to supply the Brewers with the players they need to consistently contend again. We can be sure Stearns has a detailed plan and approach. But he’ll also need to display some of that magic touch Melvin showed in assembling those final pieces to a playoff team. Hopefully, with Melvin sticking around to advise the young general manager, some of Melvin’s magic will rub off on Stearns.

The Brewers traded Francisco Rodriguez to the Detroit Tigers on Wednesday morning in return for infield prospect Javier Betancourt and a player to be named later.

It hasn’t always been a perfect fit, but the right-hander has remained in Milwaukee for several reasons:

(1) He’s long been adamant that he prefers to close ballgames. Because the Brewers have historically struggled to develop high-end arms in their farm system, Milwaukee hasn’t had a closer-in-waiting to justify parting ways with Rodriguez. His clearest path to the ninth inning has been with the blue and gold.

(2) Doug Melvin and the coaching staff trusted K-Rod as a positive clubhouse presence. The 33-year-old mentored young Latin American players and displayed a strong work ethic that his fellow relievers could model. Numerous stories can illustrate Rodriguez’s positive affect behind closed doors; however, a recent tweet from Elian Herrera perhaps best sums up his clubhouse value. Although many fans dislike the unquantifiable nature of “clubhouse presence,” I’ve come to appreciate the importance of positive role models for young players. And that’s not uncommon in life. As children and young professionals, we all have benefited from mentors, as we all naturally seek to mimic the successful. K-Rod served that role beautifully for the Brewers during his time in the organization.

(3) The small and familiar market of Milwaukee allowed Francisco Rodriguez to hide his horrific history of domestic abuse accusations. The story benefited from a benign neglect in the Brewers’ media market — something that came up from time to time when trade rumors surfaced, but rarely discussed because it didn’t attract eyeballs. After all, the vast majority of Brewers fans knew about it and either chose to disgruntedly tolerate it or willfully forget about it. Moving to a new (especially larger media market) always risked the possibility that such a story caught national headlines and became a scandal. That was never a risk in Milwaukee.

In the end, though, Rodriguez kept re-signing with the Brewers because Doug Melvin valued him. The club’s former general manager believed in the right-hander’s ability to adapt to declining stuff and believed in his underlying peripherals. That trust paid off in 2013 when the Brewers were able to trade K-Rod to Baltimore for Nick Delmonico — which seemed like a solid return at the time — and did so again in 2015 when he saved 38 game and compiled a spectacular 2.21 ERA. As the rest of us (myself included) saw a pitcher declining, Melvin saw a pitcher evolving. I covered this more in-depth at Baseball Prospectus a couple weeks ago.

This long-standing relationship is likely why K-Rod continuously ended up back in Milwaukee and why the organization failed to trade him this past summer. The veteran reliever was more valuable to the Brewers organization than he was to any other organization in baseball. He had more than on-the-field value to the club and didn’t have the same off-the-field detractions that he would elsewhere. It’s overwhelmingly likely that the Brewers never received an offer they considered to be worth more than the value Rodriguez already provided.

The restructuring of the Brewers’ front office and the complete transition to David Stearns altered the calculus in this equation. I opined earlier this week that Stearns wouldn’t have the same loyalty to Francisco Rodriguez and may not value his clubhouse presence as highly as Melvin, all of which would probably lead to an offseason trade. That came to fruition on Wednesday.

In return, Milwaukee received 20-year-old Javier Betancourt, a middle infielder who hit .263/.304/.336 with the Tigers’ High-A affiliate, the Lakeland Flying Tigers. On Wednesday (by coincidence, surely) Baseball Prospectus rated Betancourt as the eighth-best prospect in Detroit’s minor-league system. The Tigers may have the worst farm system in all of baseball — which means such a high ranking isn’t much of a compliment — but the Venezuelan native does have some tools that could eventually push him to The Show.

Betancourt is a high-floor prospect with a fairly well-defined ceiling. Despite showing some barrel control that could give him a league-average hit tool, he’ll offer next-to-nothing offensively. The power projects to be non-existent, and he won’t walk much. He’s someone who could hit .270-.275 with a .310-.320 OBP and fewer than five homers. That’s essentially what Scooter Gennett did for the big-league club in 2015, and he was barely a replacement-level player. What differentiates Betancourt, though, is the glove. He can pass at shortstop in short bursts and is an above-average defender at second base, making him a potentially useful utility infielder.

Such prospects are unexciting. He doesn’t break the top-20 in the Brewers’ minor-league system, for me, and will need a lot to go right if he’s going to be anything more than a glove-first bench player. In a trade that effectively dumps $9.5 million and frees up a 40-man roster spot, though, someone like Betancourt is a nifty return. It adds youth and versatility. It adds a lower-risk prospect in a minor-league system that is flush with high-end, volatile players. Moreover, it provides depth in the middle infield, which is an under-appreciated luxury in today’s game. In short, Betancourt shouldn’t be penciled into any future Brewers’ roster, but he represents good business. That’s always commendable.

More importantly, trading Francisco Rodriguez to Detroit signals that David Stearns has assumed full control of the Milwaukee Brewers. He’s a general manager with no connections to the veterans of the big-league club and few connections to the minor-league system, which means he doesn’t have any favorites. He’s not afraid or unwilling to trade someone. He’s open-minded and simply focused on positive baseball value and acquiring as many young players as possible in the franchise’s current transition.

This should be a strong hint that past reluctance to discuss Jonathan Lucroy, Ryan Braun, or Adam Lind with other clubs is no longer applicable. David Stearns is his own man with his own staff and his own philosophies. Doug Melvin remains connected to the club as an advisor, but I believe this K-Rod trade illustrates the extent of the relationship between the two front-office members. The former GM has no residual power. He won’t be a shadow that looms over the Stearns regime. He’s precisely what his title implies: an advisor.

I don’t think that Francisco Rodriguez’s departure can be construed as proof of a “full rebuild” or the beginning of a true “fire sale” — whatever connotation one wants to place on those words — as this is a move that should have been completed a half-dozen months ago. Stearns simply changed the valuation calculus. Perhaps this will also prove true for players like Lucroy and Braun. I’m not sure. What this trade does symbolize, though, is that David Stearns is unquestionably in control of the Milwaukee Brewers franchise, and that’s a huge positive for the fan base. Power struggles in baseball front offices never end well for the on-the-field product. And if there was any lingering concern about that in Milwaukee, I think this clearly snuffs out the flame.