Jhoulys Chacin turned in two performances that made him the star performer of the week. He started both Brewers wins, pitching thirteen scoreless innings by allowing seven hits and two walks, while striking out thirteen batters. Chacin has pitched 151 innings over twenty-six starts, both staff leading numbers. He’s the only Brewers starter who has pitched at least seven innings more than twice. With that quantity has also come quality; amongst the top seven Brewers in games started, Chacin has the best DRA at 4.56.

On Sunday, Chacin threw thirty six sliders, more than any other pitch. That 43.9 percent usage rate is right around his season number of 41.8 percent, which is a career high for him. Cardinals batters swung at twenty of the sliders, the highest rate of swings on the pitch since mid-July. This year batters have swung and missed on 14.2 percent of his sliders, but Chacin induced only three whiffs on Sunday, which would explain his low strikeout total.

Since Chacin started emphasizing the slider in 2017, he’s getting more horizontal movement on it. Batters have struggled against the slider and it’s been his best pitch by batter results in 2018. Part of the success lies in that Chacin has been willing to throw the pitch in any count. Other than on the first pitch and two strikes against left handed hitters, Chacin throws the slider with the same frequency in all counts, with a higher usage when he faces righties.

Chacin manipulates the ball in different ways depending on the handedness of the batter. Against right handed hitters, Chacin is looking to locate low and away.  That’s the area where righties are most likely to swing and miss. When they do make contact, then they aren’t doing much damage to the pitch. He still uses the pitch low and inside to left handed hitters, but Chacin also is willing to elevate the ball and keep it more on his arm side. Batters do whiff at the pitch in these new locations, perhaps because they think they’re going to get one of his fastballs.

With the way the season has developed, the Brewers are currently in desperate need of quality bulk innings. Jhoulys Chacin may not stack up against other teams’ aces, but that’s not necessary for the team to win games. If Chacin can continue to pitch beyond the sixth inning and avoid blowup starts, then he’ll allow Craig Counsell to reset the bullpen and rest key arms so they’re fresh for when the other starters need to be pulled after five innings. That opportunity to not use all of the team’s top bullpen arms is a hidden value not found in DRA, but which is essential for the team not to burn out down the stretch.

Eric Thames pinch hit for Chacin during Sunday’s game and drew a walk. Thames has struggled mightily in August, striking out in more than half of his plate appearances this month, with two home runs comprising two thirds of his hits during that time span. Sunday was actually his first game this month in which he appeared and didn’t strike out.

Pitchers have adjusted against Thames and right now he seems lost at the plate. Before July 31 he was seeing just under sixty percent fastballs. While pitchers were focused on throwing the ball away from him, he also got some low and inside pitches, which he could turn on. Thames is now seeing less than fifty percent fastballs and pitchers have been more precise with their locating. Almost everything is away right now and Thames has been helpless and whiffing on pitches all over the place. On all non-fastballs, Thames has doubled his swing and miss rates.

Thames has a .294 True Average (TAv) on the season, but that modest dip masks his decline in plate discipline. His swing rate has jumped from 42.9 percent in 2017 up to 48.4 percent this season, which is in line with his swing numbers before his exile from the big leagues. Alarmingly, his swing rate on pitches out of the strike zone have also approached his early career numbers. He’s swung at 32.1 percent of pitches out of the strike zone.

Even with more swings, he’s running a career low contact rate (66.6 percent), resulting in a career high whiff rate (33.4 percent). Unsurprisingly, his strikeout rate has increased four percentage points to 33.8 percent and his walk rate has declined four percentage points to 9.2 percent.

Thames has lost his plate discipline and approach, and with his subpar defense, he’s unplayable until he controls the strike zone again. The first step is recognizing the steady diet of breaking pitches and starting to lay off them. Pitchers are feeding him junk because he’s going to swing at it. Pinch hitting with runners on base is a good option for him, because pitchers may be less likely to throw breaking balls in those instances. Otherwise, if he can force pitchers to throw fastballs, then he can start to climb out of this hole and become a valuable contributor again.

Milwaukee will spend the week at home. The Reds and Pirates each come to town for three game series. We’re not at must win games right now, but the Brewers need to take care of business this week and win both series. After a rough start to the season, Cincinnati has played better baseball of late. Cincinnati’s rotation has a team DRA of 5.12, so this series is an opportunity to get the bats going again. The Pirates briefly flirted with the playoff race but have fallen back in August and currently sit 5.5 games out of a Wild Card spot. They have one of the lowest strikeout rates in the league, so it’s fair to expect the defense will get a workout in that series.

Then, near the end of the first half, they slowly started to undo all of the good they’d done earlier; it is now an open question as to whether they truly are intelligently managed, or if they just happened to luck into a winning strategy without realizing it was a winning strategy.

We have all of these great stats for baseball players because baseball is mostly a series of easily quantifiable individual acts, but there are certain interlocking parts on defense and in the bullpen. If you muck with any of those, you can drastically change your fortunes. It all started innocently enough on May 9th. May 9th was the day the Corey Knebel was activated from the disabled list, and when that happened it completely changed how Craig Counsell used his stable of relievers for the worse.

The best way to demonstrate this is in Counsell’s use of Josh Hader. Hader had been used as a multi-inning fireman through all of April and most of May. Through May 25th, Hader made 18 total appearances, and in 12 of those appearances he pitched between two and three innings. He only made an appearance of one inning or less on three occasions. On May 21st, Knebel resumed a proper “closer” role, entering in the 9th inning to finish games in his next four appearances, and finishing the job three times. After Knebel became the closer, Hader’s usage plummeted.

After May 25th, Hader would only pitch more than one and two-thirds inning once, in a 3-inning appearance against the Twins on July 3rd. Hader made 13 appearances after May 25th, and lasted one inning or less in 7 of them. It’s fine to be careful with Hader as he’s a unique weapon when healthy, but this hardly seems like being careful. The ideal use of Hader probably looks like the early season version, with multi-inning appearances followed by one or two days of rest. This run of shorter appearances with one over-long appearance, seems bad.

It might not have been quite so bad had Matt Albers stayed healthy. Albers has been quietly excellent, and having him around with Jeremy Jeffress and Hader makes the bullpen mostly idiot-proof. But Albers last pitched on June 11th, and without him, things have fallen apart. Craig Counsell’s refusal to use Hader in games where the Brewers trail, even by small margins, has severely limited his use. Worse still, Counsell’s willingness to go to the weak part of the bullpen when they trail resulted in big innings for bad pitchers. Dan Jennings is ok, but he’s just OK, and his 3.76 Earned Run Average (ERA) and 1.325 Walks and Hits per Innings Pitched (WHIP) don’t warrant having been used more than the outstanding Jeffress, but that is exactly what has happened. Jacob Barnes has thrown 37 innings with a WHIP of 1.568. Mike Zagurski actually pitched innings. And, of course, Knebel’s automatic entry into save situations with a 4.53 FIP and 3.93 DRA isn’t exactly helping either.

Counsell, in many ways, has reverted to making the decisions of an average manager, except it’s almost worse as he’s put the typical constraints of a closer on his best fireman as well.

The Starters
 
The Brewers can’t afford to run a stupid bullpen, because their starters are a powder keg of dynamite sitting on a pile of twigs and oil-soaked rags inside of a magnifying glass factory. If you read Baseball Prospectus regularly you probably already know about DRA (Deserved Run Average) but if you don’t, DRA attempts to get to the true value of a pitcher by controlling for the factors outside of a pitcher’s control. It adjusts for things like the ballpark a pitcher pitches in, the quality of the catcher, the defense, the weather, the altitude, and a host of other issues. I consider DRA to be mostly a “front office stat” in that it’s most useful if you want to take a pitcher from some other environment, and stick him into yours. If a pitcher on your favorite team is bad and DRA says he should be good, from a fan perspective, it doesn’t really matter that his DRA is good. The results were bad, and that’s what counts.

In this case, I think it actually should matter to fans. The first thing you should know is that the DRA of every Brewer starter is terrifying. Zach Davies has a 5.71 DRA. Wade Miley has a 5.43 DRA. Junior Guerra has a 5.13 DRA.  Those are bad numbers, and with one exception, every Brewer starter’s ERA is drastically lower than their DRA.

Suter is close, but according to DRA, much of the success of pitchers like Chacin, Anderson, Guerra, and Miley is due to “other factors.” Unfortunately, the Brewers have removed many of those “other factors” from the team of late. One of the big other factors is the defense of Orlando Arcia.

Arcia has struggled with the bat all season, and there’s nothing wrong with sending him on a trip to Colorado Springs to get right. However, Arcia has now been effectively gone for about a month given his lack of regular playing time in late June before he was sent down on July first, and while Arcia’s bat has been awful, losing him comes with a real cost on defense. Arcia’s 3.7 Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA) is second only to Lorenzo Cain, and he accumulated that number in far fewer attempts. On a per play basis, Arcia is likely the best Brewer defensive player, and I suspect almost all defensive metrics understate his true value. The Brewers are on the high end in terms of teams who employ the shift, and Arcia’s greatness in the field allows the team wide latitude in positioning their lesser defenders. If Nate Orf is playing shortstop, it’s much more difficult to commit extra infielders to the right side, knowing that any hits to the left will be hopeless. Orf, Tyler Saladino, and Brad Miller aren’t in the same league as Arcia defensively, and while Saladino has had a nice offense surge lately, they are not good enough offensively to compensate for the lack of Arcia’s glove.

Simultaneously, the Brewers have attempted to get more offense into the lineup by playing Eric Thames in the outfield. When the Brewers have Cain, Christian Yelich, and Ryan Braun/Domingo Santana/anyone else, they have an outstanding defensive outfield, but with Cain missing some time lately, and Thames playing more frequently, the outfield defense has suffered at the same time the infield defense is suffering. The Brewers have taken everything that was working earlier, fundamentally misunderstood why it was working, and turned it on its head. The smidgen of extra offense they may have created simply isn’t worth it.

 
What Should They Do?
 
If the Brewers plan to roll with this pitching staff, the first thing they should do is call up Arcia, and commit to living with whatever issues he may have offensively. More than anything, they need to go back to leaning on their strengths. During the All-Star game it was discovered that Josh Hader wrote several racist, homophobic, and misogynistic tweets when he was in high school seven years ago. He has apologized, will undergo sensitivity training for whatever that’s worth, and will not be suspended, but from a baseball perspective, it will be interesting to see if the constant boos and heckling he is likely to encounter for the foreseeable future will render him less effective. He was already showing some signs of mortality before the incident, and if this compounds whatever physical issues he may have been experiencing, it could destroy the team’s chances.

If Hader can no longer be relied on, it’s imperative that they do the next best thing and use Jeremy Jeffress as they did early season Hader, and if Corbin Burnes can help fill the gap, so much the better.

Monkeying with internal personnel has hurt the team more than it has helped, and Milwaukee could stand to acquire at least one more bat, and if possible, a high-strikeout starter. Having an actual good pitcher who can go deep into games and limit balls in play would have a cascade effect on the bullpen by allowing them more rest, while also boosting the offense. If the pitcher is not as reliant on the defense, the team can afford to sacrifice some defense with moves like having Thames in the outfield.

The Brewers could also address the offense more directly by acquiring a bat, preferably at the catcher position. With Manny Machado off the market, improving on offense at shortstop is likely a fools’ game at this point, but the catchers are still awful, and an upgrade would do a world of good. They could also potentially upgrade at 2nd base as Jonathan Villar has been a disappointment, and it would not be surprising to see the team acquire Brian Dozier from the Twins. Whatever moves they make, they need to bolster their strengths, not replace a major strength in one area with a comparatively minor upgrade in another.

When Knebel was out, the baseball universe taught the Brewers several good lessons about how baseball could, and should be played. As soon as their closer came back they reverted to every old bad habit that they could, and while they clearly understand their own weaknesses on offense, they don’t seem to grasp the trade-offs that can accompany fixing those issues. Hopefully the return of Albers takes care of the bullpen. Hopefully Arcia’s recent success at AAA gets him back to the big leagues in short order. Hopefully the players play their way into their proper roles. I had all of the confidence in the world in Counsell to make this all happen earlier, but that confidence has mostly eroded. Here’s to hope and dumb, stupid luck.

In 2018, though, Thames seems to be flying relatively under the radar.  He has not had the insane month to catapult himself into the news, but he has been a better player thus far in 2018 than he was last year.  His .327 True Average (TAv) in 2018 is twenty-three points better than his 2017 mark, and Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA) has him as a better defender this year as well.  These improvements have him on pace to be a more valuable player in 2018 (1.6 WARP through 46 games) than he was in 2017 (2.6 WARP in 138 games).

However, at this point in the season, I believe it is time to point out that Thames remains a good and productive player.  We are approaching the trade deadline, so people are getting interested in what holes might need to be filled.  The juiciest rumors surround the middle infield, as the Orlando Arcia/Jonathan Villar plan from Opening Day has not worked out as hoped.  But to get a player of value, the Brewers will have to give up a player (or players) of value, and first base is now a position of strength.

Jesus Aguilar has obviously drawn all the attention, as he is a Final Vote candidate for the All Star Game.  He took the starting first base spot when Thames was hurt and has not relinquished it, as Thames has been relegated to the outfield since his return from the DL.  But Thames has been good this year, and he deserves to still be considered a valuable player.

Thames has not matched the absurd 1.276 On-Base Percentage plus Slugging Percentage (OPS) he put up in April 2017 at any point this year, but he also has avoided the lows that he hit during the middle of last season.  This consistency has helped him post the .327 TAv mentioned above, and that number is impressive.  It ranks fifth among all first basemen with at least 100 plate appearances, and his missed time because of injury is holding him back in the WARP rankings as well.  Thames has played only 46 games, as compared to Aguilar’s 80 and Freddie Freeman and Paul Goldschmidt’s 89, and he has slightly less than half the WARP (1.6 compared to 3.9 for Freeman, 3.5 for Aguilar, and 3.3 for Goldschmidt).

Now, durability is a skill, so handwaving Thames’s missed time is a mistake.  But when he is on the field, Thames has been as good a hitter as any of the top first basemen.  In fact, he has gotten even better in some key areas this season, as his TAv suggests.

Thames has improved both his contact rate (fewer whiffs per swing) and his exit velocity, indicating that he is better at choosing which pitches to swing at.  The result is that he is making better contact.  Not shockingly, that has boosted his power numbers.

Thames’s 2018 batting average and on-base percentage resemble his marks from last year.  His batting average is basically the same (.248 compared to .247), and his OBP has even dropped a little (.343 down from .359).  But he has been a better hitter because he is driving the ball more authoritatively.  His Isolating Slugging (ISO) is at .324, which is up significantly from the .271 mark he posted last season.  I still believe it is unclear whether or to what extent exit velocity is predictive, but the trend certainly seems positive: Thames is hitting the ball harder this year, so he is generating more power and is thus a more valuable hitter.

Since going to Korea, Thames has reinvented himself.  He remains a fantastic reclamation story and someone who is easy to root for, but his on-field success should not be overshadowed.  Assuming Aguilar returns to not-All-Star levels of offensive performance, Thames will be a key part of the stretch run.  If his improvements this year are as real and sustainable as they appear to be, the Brewers will have two good options at first base as they try to stave off the Cubs.

Photo Credit: Jeff Hanisch, USA Today Sports Images

Baseball Prospectus: Milwaukee Brewers Team Audit

Make no mistake about it, Brewers fans and analysts, this is a trap. It’s so easy to polish off phenomenal expectations at a time like this, and rejoice that the Brewers get to play an apparently easier stretch of schedule entering the break. But the team is experiencing some injuries of attrition in the field, just as the offense has finally produced a stretch of 30 games averaging better than 2018 NL / Miller Park runs scored (more on that later). The rotation has done a fantastic job, as has the elite bullpen, which are only getting attention due to a couple of recent blow-ups and blown leads….mostly occurring in games where the batters still cannot get it together.

So in honor of this schedule, which is certainly a trap, let’s have some fun with 21 statistics that are neither here, there, nor anywhere for what will certainly Attrition Central for #TeamDepth. If the Brewers can escape this stretch of play with a 9-12 record, that’s probably correction enough for the run differentials and a sign that the war of attrition did not go terribly wrong.

Ten
Ryan Braun is having a somewhat tough year balancing some new fielding assignments, relatively part time play, nagging injuries once again, and hard-hit batted balls with relatively bad luck. But it’s not all bad for the face of the franchise: in 9.7 percent of his plate appearances, Braun has hit for extra bases (12 doubles, one triple, and eight home runs). By comparison, the average National League bat hits for extra bases in approximately 7.6 percent of plate appearances.

Twelve
For the season, much has been made of the Brewers batters’ ten shutouts. In fact, this is quite an important number for Milwaukee batters, as the total Runs Scored “zero” has appeared more frequently than all but one run total: two runs.

For the 2018 campaign, the Brewers have scored two runs more frequently than any other outcome by the offense. What’s worse is that this number is not really accompanied by very good run totals, either; five runs is very nice, and it’s good to see that number tied with “0” for second place, but after that both of “3” and “1” are below average run totals.

Sixteen
For all the criticisms that Brewers baserunners have faced for their aggressive style over the years, it seems that the exceptional baserunning performance of Milwaukee has mostly escaped fan consciousness. Undoubtedly this is due in part to the fact that the Brewers are not scoring runs at an average clip. But, according to Baseball Prospectus Baserunning Runs, the Brewers are the third best team in the MLB in terms of baserunning production. Translating this to stolen bases, Lorenzo Cain leads the team with 16 steals in 19 attempts, ahead of Jonathan Villar (10 / 12), Christian Yelich (9 / 10) and Ryan Braun (7 / 9). In fact, Milwaukee is the second best team in the National League in terms of stolen bases (58 of 71 attempts). Run, run, run!

Twenty
Only the New York Mets have attempted fewer sacrifice bunt attempts than the Brewers in 2018. Milwaukee has attempted 20 bunts thus far, with successful sacrifices 14 times; this is good for a success rate that is higher than the league average. Ironically, for the lack of runs scored, Milwaukee is not only a great base running team, but they are also posting average or better situational hitting statistics according to Baseball Reference. This occurs across categories: sacrifice bunts, productive outs, baserunners scored, and advancing baserunners (with less than two outs at third base and zero outs at second base). The problem for the Brewers is simply that they do not get enough batters on base frequently enough…

Thirteen
….and when the Brewers do get baserunners on, their tendency to hit ground balls results in the highest percentage of ground ball double plays in the National League (13 percent of GIDP opportunities). This is notably worse than the NL average of double plays produced in ten percent of opportunities. So much for strike outs being a bad thing!

Four
One wonders if the defensive flexibility of the ballclub might actually explain some of the troubles the club has in terms of scoring runs…the Brewers only have four players with more than 50 starts at one position (Lorenzo Cain and Travis Shaw lead as the most regular regulars with 70 starts, followed by Villar (55) and Arcia (53) in the middle infield). Jesus Aguilar does not even have 50 starts at first base this year; Christian Yelich’s most regular position is left field…for 32 games, and catcher and right field have also been impacted in the games started department (probably due to the respective performances of Manny Pina and Domingo Santana more than strategy).

I was certainly in the camp that expected defensive flexibility to be a strength for these Brewers, and I certainly do not think it is a downright liability given the performance of the fielders. But given the performance of the offense, I think it is worth questioning whether flexible defensive roles have an impact on batting performance for these players.

Nine
Why are the Brewers pitchers so good? Their groundball percentage is fading to the middle of the pack, minimizing their ability to produce double plays as well. However, Milwaukee arms excel at limiting fly balls, and their 9.46 percent pop-up rate is the best in the MLB according to Baseball Prospectus.

Five
For all the rumblings about the Brewers relief pitching hitting their regression to the mean, it’s worth noting that the pitchers are not terribly far above average in some stats to begin with. For instance, the Brewers rank fifth in the National League with 32 percent of their Inherited Runners Scored, despite inheriting fewer runners than the league average (100 versus 106 for the typical NL team). This is an indication of how the club is quite good with inherited runners scored, but not necessarily perched atop the league.

4.3 at 23
It’s too bad that the Brewers pitchers are not yielding more ground balls, because Orlando Arcia remains one of the best shortstops in baseball despite his lack of playing time. Arcia has the fewest games played of any SS in the Top 10 for Fielding Runs Above Average. Yet, the 23-year old glove-first fielder ranks sixth in FRAA with his 4.3 mark. Another statistic worth remembering: at 23, Arcia is tied for Carlos Correa as the youngest elite defensive shortstop, and among shortstops with at least 60 games only Ahmed Rosario of the Mets is younger (but he’s nowhere near as good defensively). If you like more straightforward statistics, according to Baseball Reference Arcia remains one of the very best MLB shortstops with 10 Defensive Runs Saved; only Freddy Galvis and Addison Russell are better in the NL.

Second Best at .336
Jesus Aguilar is having a fantastic season, boasting a .336 True Average (TAv) and 1.4 FRAA. That offensive performance is second only to Freddie Freeman among first basemen with 60 or more games played.

One
For their fantastic pitching staff, the Brewers only have one player in the top ten percent of all MLB, in terms of Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP). That player is lefty high leverage reliever Josh Hader, ranked as 40th (!) with 1.54 WARP. No full-time reliever ranks higher, and only one pitcher better than Hader is younger (Jack Flaherty).

Ten
Many Brewers fans are suggesting that the club needs an ace in their pitching rotation. When I host chats on BPMilwaukee Twitter (@BPMilwaukee), the most common questions since the off season typically concern the quality of the MLB rotation. Throwing out the extremely advanced stats, let’s look at games started and ERA+ (a contextual assessment of Earned Runs Average). Here we are, half way through the season, and only ten clubs have at least three starters with 10 GS and an ERA at or above league average: the Red Sox, Cubs, Cleveland, Tigers, Astros, Angels, Mets, Cardinals, Nationals, and Brewers.

Seventeen / 40 Percent
If you’re interested in an ace, though, using the colloquial definition of someone who can lead a rotation in terms of performance and starts, who would be better than Jhoulys Chacin? Sorting all MLB starting pitchers by games started and ERA+, Chacin meets the strongest definition of good performance in a heavy workload.

Of course, including advanced contextual statistics, it is worth questioning whether the club will see some course correction from the starting pitchers. Here, Junior Guerra’s 4.69 DRA is the best among Brewers starters with at least 60 innings pitched. That’s good for 71st in the MLB. Yet, once Guerra is working between the lines, his splitter remains one of the best in the game at inducing swings-and-misses; thus far Guerra is yielding nearly 40 percent whiffs-per-swing on the split (only slightly lagging his 2016 performance that put that pitch on the map).

Thirteen / Forty-Three
Overall, the Brewers pitching rotation forms quite a strong unit: the club’s starting pitchers have 13 Runs Prevented as a group. This performance helps the team maximize a phenomenal bullpen, as the Brewers can frequently keep the game close. With a bullpen that has prevented 43 runs, the starting pitchers are often handing close games to relief pitchers that are ready to help convert those games into wins.

Six
When is a better than average offense not really that good? Over the last 30 games for the Brewers, it turns out! Those big ticket runs totals against Philadelphia have gone a long way toward improving Milwaukee’s season long offensive figures….

….but for all that, over the last 30 games the most frequently Runs Scored total for the Brewers has declined from the season leading 2 RS. Twenty percent of the Brewers’ games since they returned from Minnesota have ended with 1 RS for Milwaukee. If you missed seeing 2 RS, do not worry, for that remained the second most frequent run total over that time.

Seventeenth in Right
Domingo Santana is a tough player to figure out right now. If someone had told Brewers fans that the right fielder would have -2.6 FRAA roughly halfway through the season, most would have expected that he would be in the running for one of the most valuable right fielders in the MLB. Alas, in True Average (TAv), Santana’s mark of .259 (i.e., roughly league average) ranks 17th of 24 MLB RF with 60 or more games played.

Fourteen
Perhaps Lorenzo Cain is able to produce so many stolen bases in part because he’s on first base so frequently: the Brewers Center Fielder is drawing walks in 13.8 percent of his plate appearances!

Nineteen (Two)
Without park adjustment, across the 2018 MLB the Brewers’ offense currently ranks 19th in terms of Runs Scored. Their pitching staff currently ranks 2nd in terms of Runs Allowed.

Photo Credit: Jeff Hanisch, USA Today Sports Images

Corey Knebel gave up what turned out to be the Phillies’ winning run in Sunday’s loss. He started the inning throwing three fastballs to Odubel Herrera and the last one caught too much of the plate. That was the fourth home run Knebel has allowed this season. His home runs per nine innings have more than doubled when compared with last year, which has fueled his DRA spike from 2.91 to 4.05. However, Knebel’s walk rate remains virtually unchanged and he’s giving up one less hit per nine innings this season.

The season long numbers paint a contradictory picture where it’s not clear whether Knebel has been the same pitcher as his dominant 2017. Looking only at Knebel since his injury return, he looks to be almost at the same level. Ignoring his three appearances to start the season reduces an already limited sample size for a late inning reliever, but it’s fair to assume he was not fully healthy, so those numbers aren’t indicative of his true performance level.

By 2017, Knebel had whittled his pitches down to a fourseam fastball and curveball. He used the fastball on 72 percent of his pitches and threw the curveball the rest of the time.  The fastball had an average velocity of 97.8 mph with a maximum speed of 100.4 mph. His curveball was slightly slower with an average of 81.0 mph and a maximum velocity of 84.4. Since Knebel returned from the disabled list, his average and maximum velocity readings are right in line with his numbers from last year.

There has been a noticeable difference on his fastball movement. The pitch is too frequently in the strike zone, which helps to explain why his zone rate is at a career high (51.3 percent). The ball isn’t moving horizontally as much as it did in 2017. Whereas last year, the fastball was generally higher in the zone and stayed more towards his arm side, the pitch hasn’t found the same locations since Knebel returned from the disabled list. There’s also less vertical movement on the pitch, which is affecting his whiff rate.

Knebel gets more of his whiffs on those high fastballs, both this year and last, but as mentioned above, he’s not getting the fastball in the same spots as last year. One potential cause is his release. Both horizontally and vertically the ball is leaving his hand at a different point, which is enough to effect pitch location, even if his velocity is the same.

Last year, Corey Knebel was one of the best pitchers in baseball according to DRA. He hasn’t quite reached those heights this year, with his fastball as the most likely culprit. If he could slightly raise his release point, he may get back to the same level. However, there’s likely something fluky about his increased home runs. He’s never given them up at this rate, and simple regression over the next three months should bring that more in line with his career numbers, which would also lower his DRA. With the performance of the bullpen, the team doesn’t need peak Knebel to make it through the season, but if he can return to that performance, there’s even more margin of error for the starters.

Eric Thames had a huge game on Sunday, hitting two home runs, his first extra base hits since returning to the team on Tuesday. His first home run came off an Aaron Nola two seam fastball which was right over the plate. Thames hit his second home run off a Hector Neris fastball in the bottom of the ninth inning, That pitch was at around the same height, but even more over the plate.

One can hope that the home runs showed that Thames is over his thumb injury and ready to tap into his prodigious power, because he struggled in his first few games since his activation from the disabled list. Over the last week, Thames has swung at almost every pitch that wasn’t outside and away, whiffing on everything low. Before he got hurt, Thames had a more balanced plan of attack, with a willingness to cover the whole strike zone. With that approach, he could get a hit anywhere in the zone, even if most of his power came from pitches on the inner half of the plate.

Thames still has one more hurdle to overcome before he’s truly back to form: he needs to stop whiffing on so many non-fastballs. This has been a recurring issue for Thames. When he can get his bat on those pitches or lay off, he has success; otherwise, pitchers can eat him up. Last week, pitchers ate him up as he swung and missed at 32 percent of the breaking pitches he faced and 60 percent of the offspeed pitches. Each of those are unsustainable rate for any kind of success and well off his April numbers. On Sunday, Thames saw six non-fastballs. He swung at three of the pitches and didn’t miss any of them. That counts as progress.

Milwaukee will play within the division all week. They open a three-game series tonight in Pittsburgh. The Pirates have fallen off after a fast start. They’re 9-19 over the last thirty-one days, falling to fourth place in the division. Milwaukee then returns home for four games with the Cardinals, who beat the Cubs on Sunday night to salvage a dismal week which saw them lose home series to both the Cubs and the Padres.

Photo Credit: Benny Sieu, USA Today Sports Images

The first Deserved Run Average (DRA) statistics are available for the 2018 season, although they should be published with a grain of salt because the corresponding Run Elements are not yet posted on Baseball Prospectus. As always, the statistic was improved over the offseason, and a new article about the improvements is forthcoming at Baseball Prospectus (keep your eyes out for it, probably next week). In the mean time, as the U.S. Census says, let’s Compare With Caution!

So, obviously since DRA are available, it’s time to cue the time honored #WhyDoesDRAHateMyTeam? twice over, as both the Brewers and Cubs probable starters for this series have….suspect underlying performances thus far:

In the full extent of the Brewers pitching staff, the recent pitching surge that is basically keeping the club on a Playoff Contending pace can be called into question by both DRA and contextual Fielding Independent Pitching (cFIP) statistics. Below is a table of Runs Prevented estimates, using (1) Baseball Reference three-year park factors for Miller Park, (2) Deserved Run Average, and (3) cFIP averages scaled to the aforementioned park environment. For more on Runs Prevented, read this.

Milwaukee’s pitching staff is still expected to prevent runs at an above average rate for the season (probably a +14 RA season), but that’s quite a long distance from their current exceptional performance. What’s going on? Well, the early inefficiencies in the field have been nicely wrapped up, and now the Brewers couple one of the top ground ball pitching staffs in the MLB with one of the most efficient ground ball defenses in the MLB. In fact, only Cleveland is better thus far. In many ways, this should not be surprising, as one could have surmised that the offseason pitching acquisitions were largely designed to feed ground balls to an excellent ground ball defense. So here we are: Milwaukee is in an odd place for underlying run elements, as the pitching staff on the whole is not expected to be a strike out machine, and Miller Park will likely encourage walks and home runs from opposing bats. Given these elements, one might expect that the Brewers outperforming their peripheral numbers will be a story all year.

Entering Chicago, what is especially exciting is that the Brewers bats are heating up. One might readily attribute that performance to the return of Christian Yelich to the Brewers batting order, in order to form a killer 1-2 punch with Lorenzo Cain. Indeed, according to Baseball Reference the Brewers boast average lead off production (including the all-important .333 On Base Percentage [OBP]), and notably better than average production from the second spot (118 OPS+, including .342 OBP). But, the remainder of the Brewers order is starting to thaw out, which is allowing the club to produce runs throughout the batting order. These production types range from singles machine Jonathan Villar to mashers like Travis Shaw and Eric Thames.

Thus far, a few question marks remain across the diamond, specifically regarding right fielder Domingo Santana. Despite concerns about a lack of playing time for Santana after the Brewers acquired Cain and Yelich, the right fielder has played in 23 of the club’s 25 games thus far, essentially working as a starter (Santana has the third most PA among position players). But, Santana has yet to get going, basically producing at the same level as Orlando Arcia without the prime defensive position and production (Arcia at least has 2.3 Fielding Runs Above Average to his name, and serves a crucial function as one of the ground ball efficiency fielders for the Brewers infield). Arcia can be hidden at the bottom of the batting order for time immemorial so long as the glove continues to stick; to that end, Baseball Prospectus ranks Arcia as the third best fielding short stop in the MLB thus far in 2018 (after ranking fourth best in 2017). Santana remains one of the worst right fielders in baseball, which is fine when the bat carries the profile; one wonders with Jesus Aguilar smoking the ball around the ballpark whether the Brewers will continue to employ Braun / Cain / Yelich outfielders for the time being.

Entering Wrigley Field, the Brewers have their work cut out for them. The club is playing great baseball, even with the caveat that they’re playing poor teams. But that’s always a catch-22 for MLB clubs: if good teams fail to beat the bad teams, fans rail against them (“The Brewers play down to their competition!”), but if good teams whip bad teams, fans move to some other narrative (“The Brewers can beat bad teams but can they beat good teams?”). So, the excellent Brewers pitching staff squares off against the phenomenal Cubs bats, a true strength-versus-strength match-up. Milwaukee arms will attempt to coax Cubs bats to keep the ball on the ground and hopefully get some help from a Chicago that has yet to thaw out in 2018. Meanwhile, the scuffling Cubs arms are nowhere as good as many expected thus far, and they face a Brewers offense that is finally participating throughout the batting order. It’s never to early to begin testing assumptions, but it’s worth remembering that very little hangs on this series, save for the underrated good guys taking on the Evil Empire.

Photo Credit: Denny Medley, USA Today Sports Images

On Saturday, Jesus Aguilar put together one of the most memorable at-bats in recent Brewers history. Leading off the top of the 9^th inning a tie game against Junichi Tazawa, Aguilar had a thirteen pitch at-bat, which ended with a walk off home run.

Aguilar fell into an 0-2 count, but he managed to fight back and get himself into a situation where he got a great pitch to hit. Tazawa is a three pitch pitcher, using his four seam fastball a little more than 50 percent of the time and using a curveball and splitter to put batters off balance. However, there are patterns to his pitch selection. If Tazawa is going to throw a curveball, it’s likely to be the first pitch of the at-bat, which he did here. Afterwards, the threat of the curve diminishes. Tazawa did not return to the curveball in this at-bat, even though he placed it for a strike to start Aguilar off. The next twelve pitches of the at bat were fastballs and splitters, with one throwaway slider thrown for good measure.

While he hasn’t had as many starts as his performance would warrant, Aguilar’s plate discipline stats have moved in a positive direction this year. He’s making contact on 78.69 percent of his swings, which would be a career high and more than a 10 percentage point jump from 2017. In addition, his swinging strike rate has plunged to 21.31 percent from 33.06 percent in 2017. Those traits were on full display during this at-bat. After he looked at that first pitch strike, Aguilar had to swing nine times to keep himself alive, and he only whiffed once, on the second pitch to go down 0-2. Aguilar swung at a few pitches outside the zone, in particular that fifth pitch slider which he probably wasn’t expecting to see, but he fouled off so many pitches that he forced Tazawa back into the zone.

After ten pitches, Tazawa went to his fastball and decided to sink or swing with his best pitch. He threw two fastballs belt high, over the middle of the plate. Aguilar fouled the first one off. When he saw that pitch again, well. Aguilar knows how to handle a fastball in that location.

Before only registering a pinch-hit appearance on Sunday, Eric Thames had one hit in every game of the winning streak. Thames will never be a high average hitter, but he’s currently running a .344 TAv, and smashing the ball when he makes contact as evidenced by his 4^th place ranking in MLB in Barrels per plate appearance, as per Statcast.  This season Thames has increased his swing rate from last year, while staying below his rate in his previous unsuccessful MLB stint. He’s also decreased his whiff rate on breaking and offspeed pitches, which is important because pitchers have finally corrected themselves and started throwing those pitches more often.

However, right now Thames is hitting everything in the strike zone and isn’t showing any obvious weakness on pitches he can’t handle outside of curveballs. Last year, there was a clear plan of attack to throw away from Thames because he would chase. So far in 2018, Thames hasn’t shown an obvious hole on outside pitches, though he is whiffing more on pitches high in the zone. That’s an area where he wants the ball though, because it goes far when he connects there. This slightly more disciplined version of Thames is a better hitter than last year, even if he isn’t quite at his April 2017 destroyer of worlds apex.

The Brewers hit the road again this week. Their first stop will be Kansas City for a two-game series with the Royals. It’ll be the team’s first visit to Kauffman Stadium since 2015. The Royals just split a four-game series with the Tigers and currently have the third worst run differential in the American League. Afterwards, the Brewers will travel north to face the third place Cubs in Chicago.

The Brewers entered the 8^th inning on Friday tied at two. Eric Thames opened the scoring with a solo home run, then five batters later Neil Walker hit a grand slam to start the avalanche. Walker looked at the first three pitches, then knocked a 99 mph fastball for the grand slam. That the home run came on a high velocity fourseam fastball would have been surprising to anyone who only looked at Walker’s season before the trade to Milwaukee.

As I noted at the time of the trade (shameless plug!), while Walker had shown some power against righties on pitches on outer part of the plate, his performance against fourseam fastballs had not been ideal. While it wasn’t a surprise that the grand slam was off an away pitch delivered by a righty, catching up to that kind of velocity certainly was.

Walker has seen a shift in his performance since coming to Milwaukee, and it’s been for the better. Specifically, it’s his performance against fourseam fastballs:

Before the trade, Walker was showing nothing against fourseamers, which was a drag on his batting line and overall performance. Since arriving in Milwaukee, his numbers have taken off. Part of the uptick may be explained by his usage. With the Mets, Walker was in the lineup every day, which has changed since the trade. Using pitches seen as a measuring tool, we can see the following numbers:

By effectively making Walker a platoon player, he’s turned in more value than he would if forced to face left handed pitchers. He’s also been helped by pitchers still thinking he’s the old Walker. Looking back to that at bat on Friday, Brian Ellington threw fourseam fastballs on three of the four pitches Walker saw. Pitchers as a whole are now throwing Walker more four seam fastballs now, as compared to before the trade. Normally, this would have been a good adjustment. Walker handled sinkers and more off speed stuff while flailing against velocity. Now Walker is catching up to those pitches, and until pitchers realize, he has the advantage.

Eric Thames homered in three straight games last week. Somehow it was only his third longest streak of games with a home run this season. Lingering injuries aside, one of the biggest red flags as Thames struggled was his increasing swing percentage. When he struggled in his initial go around MLB, Thames was swinging at about half the pitches he faced, a figure he started to approach over the summer. Interestingly, even though Thames swings and whiffs the most against offspeed pitches, he’s still seeing a lot of fastballs.

Thames’s numbers show some success in cutting down on his swings this month, and by rate stats, September has been his most productive month since April. As the playoff push continues, a productive Thames adds a powerful element to the Brewers lineup, and a potential ceiling that no one else can match.

Up Next: It feels like the Brewers have played Pittsburgh every week this season, but I checked the schedule, and only nineteen were scheduled, twelve of which have come in the second half. The season series concludes this week with three games at PNC Park. Milwaukee’s last trip to Pittsburgh was right after the All Star break when the Pirates swept the Brewers. After the trip to Pittsburgh, the Brewers return home for a four game series with the Cubs, which will could decide the division for the Cubs, or set up an exciting final week.

Photo Credit: Jeff Hanisch, USAToday Sports Images

I’m not entirely sure why that is, but I have a theory.  It’s a pretty good theory in that explains why they would be good early and bad late, not just one or the other. It’s a multi-part theory and there is some luck involved, but the main thing is that…

• The best Brewer hitters have big platoon splits.

Once recently in a chat, Keith Law called Travis Shaw a platoon player, which made me mad for 5 seconds, until I realized he has a point, and that point carries over to Thames as well. It’s especially telling that the Brewers are super weak in the 8th inning where managers are more willing to play match ups with pitchers as opposed to just using a closer. Shaw has an OPS of .937 (.312 TAv) against opposite side pitching while falling to .777 (.254 TAv) against same side. Thames has the biggest split on the team (outside of Stephen Vogt’s ridiculous .763 versus .220), dropping from .907 (.312 TAv) to .693 (.240 TAv) when he faces a lefty. The two best Brewer hitters become very ordinary when opposing managers play it smart.

Against right-handed pitching, Thames, Shaw, Sogard, and now Neil Walker are studs, and both Braun and Domingo Santana are still effective against same side pitching. Against left-handed pitching, especially late-in-game lefty specialists, it can get ugly for the Brewer southpaws. Platoon split issues affect every team, but rarely is the effect this dramatic with arguably two of the best three hitters on the team.

• Strikeouts and Home Runs

It is a Brewer beat writer cliche to bemoan the fact that the Brewers can only score via the home run. Hitting home runs isn’t a bad thing at all, but there is some truth to the one-dimensional nature of the Brewer attack, and it can bite them in a big way in certain circumstances. The Brewers are an extreme home run hitting team, tied for 6th in baseball with 1.44 per game.

At home, they are the National League’s most home run heavy team with 1.52 per game, but they have a fairly severe split as they average only 1.35 home runs per game away from Miller Park, 11th overall and 7th in the National League, and they have scored 24 more runs at home than away despite playing one more road game.

When the Brewers play a road game in a homer unfriendly park, as they did recently in San Francisco, they often have trouble scoring runs. Even though they won the series in Los Angeles’s hitter-unfriendly park, they only scored 7 total runs in doing so.

It’s a good thing the Brewers do hit home runs, because they don’t hit much of anything else. The Brewers strike out a ton. They have an incredible knack for swinging and not making any contact. Milwaukee is last in baseball with 9.82 strikeouts per game, one of only two teams over 9.5 strikeouts per game. The Pirates strike out only 7.31 times per game, with the Cubs and Cardinals are solidly in the eights. Strikeouts aren’t the worst thing in the world, but when you attain the Brewers’ level of futility it does have an affect on your ability to string hits together, and move runners over.  Against lesser starters, or even opposite side aces, the Brewers have been more than competent on offense, but against late-inning fire-ballers and platoon specialists, the home runs go down, the strikeouts go up, and you’re left with a completely impotent lineup.

There is a certain level of consistent production necessary to score runs without the aid of a home run. Teams need to be good enough at hitting (and walking) to allow good fortune to string a few together, but this simply never happens with the Brewers late in games. If the hits are too infrequent, the streaks will also be infrequent.

• The Fix

This is a tough problem because the practical solution to the platoon issue involves more frequent pinch-hitting for Shaw, Thames, and the lefties in general, and that can always come back to bite you later should the lineup turn over. The strikeout problem is simply endemic to team composition. It’s frustrating to see a team repeatedly jump out to leads only to give them up later and the fits and spurts of a home run heavy team can be maddening. Perhaps the best strategy, as the pitching has improved in the second half, isn’t to hit more later, but to defend more later. September call-ups are almost at hand, and while guys like Lewis Brinson (hurt, unfortunately) and Brett Phillips are still working on their hitting, they remains good-to-elite fielders. Spelling Santana or Braun (or both) in the late innings for defensive purposes could pay big dividends down the stretch, especially given that the Brewers don’t score runs late anyway. The high-level Brewer prospects are almost all good defensive players, and this could very well be the perfect use for them.

Sometimes it makes sense to turn into the skid.

Photo Credit: Isiah J. Downing, USAToday Sports Images

It is indisputable that Thames’s season numbers are buoyed by his early season hot streak, but those games did happen and we cannot simply remove a player’s best month to determine what his true talent level is.  Instead, we must look at the season holistically.  Splits can be used to provide context, but the whole season occurred and so the whole season counts.

Thames’s best month was obviously April, but he also performed well in May (.791 OPS) and July (.886 OPS as of this writing).  Those numbers are not MVP-caliber, but they are certainly good enough to make him a starting-caliber first baseman, which the Brewers have sorely lacked in recent years.  The most concerning trend is the lack of power, as he has hit just twelve home runs in the last three months (albeit while missing a few games).  A high OBP, twenty-homer player, which Thames would be roughly on pace for if he averaged four home runs per month for a full season, is still valuable.  Over the past ten years, first basemen with that general profile have been about league average.  For just over $5 million per year, the Brewers are getting a bargain.

Interestingly to me, though, Thames’ overall profile for the season doesn’t look all that different from his profile during his hot streak.  He certainly hit the ball harder at the beginning of the season, but not by an absurd amount.  His season-long average exit velocity is 87.5 mph, which puts him right around the middle of the league.  If we account for the fact that his mark is stabilizing at a slightly lower place than he was posting during April, he is still in such company as Kris Bryant and Evan Longoria.  Generally speaking, he continues to hit the ball hard enough to be a valuable contributor at the plate.

One possible red flag is that his whiff rate is rising.  This could be indicative of many things, and it is hard to know which exactly.  He could be seeing fewer hittable pitches, or he could be swinging at more pitches that are hard to hit.  It could also just be variance, although the steady upward trend suggests that is not the case.  We do know, however, that pitchers are not taking advantage of his continuing issues with offspeed pitches by feeding him more, and that could be because they have not yet recognized this trend or because they feel as if they don’t need to pitch to him differently than they would normally want to.

From a plate discipline perspective, there is an additional warning note as his walk rate has declined each month from 18 percent in April, 16 in May, 13 in June, and seven percent in July.  To continue to be a high-OBP player while swinging and missing as often as he does, he needs to walk enough to make up for his low batting average.

I am aware that this article has contained a lot of equivocations because Thames’s overall stat lines continue to be boosted by his absurdly hot April; after all, those numbers account for roughly one-quarter of his total performance.  However, I do believe that the relatively stable nature of these peripherals suggests that he should settle in as a valuable player.  Pitchers have not figured him out in anyway, as their pitch distribution to him has not changed.  Nor did he benefit in April from an inordinate amount of hard contact, as his rolling exit velocity has stayed roughly the same.  His whiff rate is concerning, but he is going to strike out a lot; his continued success appears dependent on his ability to control the strike zone and earn walks.

Thames is not the MVP candidate that he appeared to be through the first month, but that is acceptable; the Brewers are not paying him to be such.  Because he is also not a Quad-A type (which was certainly a possibility when the season began), he remains an excellent value.  Thames is certainly capable of being a contributing starter on a playoff team.

Photo Credit: Charles LeClaire, USAToday Sports Images