If you’re a Brewers fan you probably don’t need much convincing by those numbers, though. The struggles maintaining leads, high workloads, and the outright release this week of Neftali Feliz have probably convinced you enough.

A couple of factors work against the Brewers front office in terms of shopping the market for relievers, however. The cost of elite relief arms is possibly at a an all-time high, as the team is surely aware from its acquisitions in exchange for Tyler Thornburg, Jeremy Jeffress, and others. And even if the Brewers turn their attention from selling to buying, there is still a question of selling (potential) future value for possibly a one-game wild card series.

While I won’t argue for one approach or another here, I do think that David Stearns has made his priorities pretty clear. In the Journal Sentinel last month, Stearns said,

“There’s no skipping steps, but that’s true whether it’s 2017 or 2020. We are never going to be an organization that skips steps. We’re always going to have to balance near term and long term. There are other organizations that have done that exceptionally well. We think we can walk that balance as well.”

Whether Stearns was talking about specific “other organizations” or not, his lineage from Cardinals GM John Mozeliak and Astros GM Jeff Luhnow suggests their path may be one the Brewers follow. It’s not often you hear about the Cardinals or the Astros selling off major young pieces for short-term help, and it’s one reason St. Louis has had consistent winning seasons.

So while it won’t please everyone following the first-place team in the Good Land, an all-in blockbuster move for an established closer probably isn’t happening, regardless of where the Brewers are on the win curve. With that in mind, there are intriguing arms that are likely available for less than the organization’s top prospects, or simply a player to be named later and/or cash considerations. And the Brewers, with the lowest payroll in baseball by some $10 million, should be able and willing to spend cash for any help they can get this season and beyond.

All that considered, here are a couple of arms that may offer the Brewers some good buy-low performance without sacrificing much in the way of future wins.

Francisco Rodriguez, Detroit RHP
Just kidding. But it did work twice before, so who knows?

Josh Osich, San Francisco LHP
I actually wrote just a couple of weeks ago that the lack of left-handers in the bullpen wasn’t that big of a detriment to the Brewers as a team, or at least as big of a concern as it was made out to be. But still, it’d be nice to have. Especially if you have a lefty sitting at 95.

On the surface, the 28-year old has a career 4.5 DRA and a 4.65 FIP. For his career, lefties are hitting just .174/.246/.292 against him. While he’s still young, the Giants have him pretty far down their depth chart, with Osich pitching 17.7 innings in mostly low-leverage situations even in a year where the team has struggled.

In those 17.7 innings, Osich has struck out better than a batter per inning and actually has a somewhat elevated BABIP over his career average, all adding up to a sub-3 FIP while facing almost an equal number of righties and lefties.

He appears to be throwing a career-high in fastballs, and why not when you touch 98 from the left side? That may be making his changeup more effective, too, as he’s generating a career high in whiffs from his changeup that sits 11 miles per hour slower than his fastball:

Osich would make the perfect type of Stearns addition, in that he’s a win-now and win-later type of move. That’s obviously no secret to the Giants, either, who do a pretty good job of growing their own talent internally as it is, and may not be ready to part with a young player with an intriguing upside.

Chris Smith, Toronto RHP
You want available? How about a 35-year old right hand reliever that’s in AAA? There isn’t as much exciting upside to talk about as there is with a fireballing 28 year-old lefty, but for his career Smith hasn’t shown much in the way of extreme platoon splits and could be a league-average reliever for almost free, which isn’t worthless.

But maybe there’s some intriguing upside here, as the wily veteran struck out 10.6 batters per 9 innings and allowed a .225 TAv and a respectable 3.38 FIP in a very limited 24.2 innings pitched for Oakland last year.  It could be worth a shot to give him some low-leverage innings and see if he can provide a boost over what the Brewers have produced so far, or at least save some innings off the arms of younger prospects called up to the bullpen.

Knebel, Barnes, Hughes, and Drake all currently hold better DRAs than Smith’s PECOTA preseason projection of 4.85, which doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence, but it is an upgrade to the bullpen depth beyond those four over what the Brewers have put out so far.

Looking at the bargain options from teams out of contention, you could do worse than Chris Smith. And, as an added bonus he’ll know his way to Miller Park, as he previously pitched for the Brewers in 2010!

With teams getting smarter all the time, and perhaps teams cautious of trading with David Stearns with the excess value he’s added to the club so far, it’s going to be awfully hard for the Brewers to get something for nothing, which is obvious enough. That shouldn’t stop them from opening the checkbook and employing the “quality in quantity” strategy of bullpen acquisition, even if it’s for some long shots that they just hope stick on the fly in the big leagues.

Photo Credit: Kelley L. Cox, USAToday Sports Images

Related Reading:
Scalp / Spread Strategies
Bandy-Maldonado

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

Trade Surplus Depreciated WARP & OFP Summary:

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

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

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

A few quick notes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stuff

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

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

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

View post on imgur.com

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

Run Values

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

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

View post on imgur.com

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

TAv

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

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

View post on imgur.com

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

Whiffs

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

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

View post on imgur.com

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

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

Click here for a complete spreadsheet of all 39 pitches.

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

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

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

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

Stuff

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

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

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

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

View post on imgur.com

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

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

View post on imgur.com

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

Run Values

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

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

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

View post on imgur.com

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

Whiff rate

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

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

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

View post on imgur.com

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

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

The last time Milwaukee had a player on their roster who was eventually enshrined in Cooperstown was 1993: Robin Yount’s last season on the team. The other Hall of Famers who have played for the Brewers are Paul Molitor, Hank Aaron, Rollie Fingers and Don Sutton, all rostered during the 1970s and 1980s.

The last twenty years have not always been the best of times for Milwaukee, but there are a few players at whom we can look to see if they have a shot for election. For whittling purposes, I decided to use the Bill James Hall of Fame Monitor. While much more simplistic than Baseball Prospectus alumnus Jay Jaffe’s JAWS system, it’s a quick-and-dirty formula to determine how likely a player is to be elected. Roughly, if a player scores 100, there’s a good possibility of election, while a score over 130 makes it a virtual lock the player will be elected.

As far as I can tell, there are three active players with Hall of Fame Monitor scores over 100, who are or once were Brewers. Those three players are Ryan Braun (107), Francisco Rodriguez (117), and C.C. Sabathia (105). Due to Sabathia’s short, though memorable, time with the team, I’m electing to focus on K-Rod and Braun.

Rodriguez’s number was surprising. As a comparison, Clayton Kershaw also currently rates at 117. Rodriguez has the highest score of any active relief pitcher. I certainly don’t think of K-Rod as a Hall of Famer, but upon reflection, it’s also difficult to immediately dismiss him. The BBWA doesn’t seem to know what to do with relief pitchers (see the 50 percent difference in voting totals for Trevor Hoffman and Billy Wagner, solely due to saves totals), and if Rodriguez can reach some higher round numbers in terms of saves, voters will give him a long look.

Though he’s about to enter his 15th Major League season, Rodriguez will only be 34 years old. His contract with Detroit runs two more years, and PECOTA projects him for 44 saves and a mid-threes ERA during that timeframe. Those seem like conservative totals, but the projected 44 saves would put him at 430 for his career. Rodriguez would be 2nd all-time through his age-36 season, with only Lee Smith ahead of him at 434 career saves. At 36, Mariano Rivera had 413 career saves and Trevor Hoffman had 393.

Rodriguez would be an interesting case if he could make it to 500 saves. I think it’s probably best to compare Rodriguez to Hoffman since he doesn’t have a signature hook to get in for being “famous,” and it looks like Hoffman should be inducted within a year or two.

As of now, he compares favorably in ERA+ to Hoffman, with a 156 to Hoffman’s 141, but Rodriguez has yet to enter a real decline phase, which should hypothetically lower that number. He also would have a lower ERA by 0.18 runs, which may be a better point of comparison, considering voters more likely to vote in a closer may lean towards traditional stats.

One more stat on which to focus is Win Probability Added (WPA). WPA is a number which goes up or down for a pitcher depending on the outcome of an bat, and how it impacts the team’s likelihood of winning the game. Jay Jaffe has been using it to evaluate relievers, and it is a useful to try and find the true value that relievers add.

Unfortunately for Rodriguez, he doesn’t compare as favorably to Hoffman here. His current WPA is 26.2, well behind Hoffman’s 34.1, while also behind current enshrined relievers Goose Gossage, Hoyt Wilhelm, and Dennis Eckersley. (sourced: http://www.si.com/mlb/2015/12/18/jaws-2016-hall-of-fame-ballot-trevor-hoffman).

For some concluding thoughts on Rodriguez, his contract with the Tigers will set the stage for a potential induction. If he can stay strong and put up 30+ saves each year with a respectable ERA, then he’ll get another chance to close at age 37. His Hall of Fame Monitor score would also be 125 at that point. However, if he performs like a recent vintage Tigers closer and gets hurt or is ineffective, then he may not get another chance to close, ending a Cooperstown bid.

The other, more interesting, case is that of Ryan Braun. Next year will be his age-32 season, and his Hall of Fame Monitor score already has him as a good probability. Braun has won an MVP and a Rookie of the Year, plus he has a half dozen All-Star appearances, not to mention a nice bounce-back campaign in 2015, which bodes well for sustained success in his 30s.

Of course, to go through with this exercise, we have to throw the PED elephant out of the room. Even amongst writers who are willing to vote for players around whom swirls a cloud of suspicion, there’s a difference between players who seem suspicious due to whispers or hairy backs, and those who have been suspended. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are still on the ballot while Rafael Palmeiro fell off the ballot after three years after accumulating 3,000 hits and 500 home runs.

Braun’s contract ends in 2021, when he would be 37 years old. PECOTA sees a slight dip in his home run totals during that time, never hitting more than 23, but also remarkable consistency: his total never projects below 20. Those 129 home runs would put Braun at 384 for his career. The 400 home-run plateau is not a magic number for election (if those exist anymore), but if this silly season proves anything, it’s that round numbers still do count for some voters, and it would also add to his Hall of Fame Monitor score (10 more points).

PECOTA projections also give him 900 hits during this period, adding a bonus for getting above 2,300 for his career, and he’d be another season away from 2,500. Add another All-Star appearance or two, and by 2022, Braun would clear the 130 threshold, making him a “virtual cinch.”

When reviewing these numbers, it’s probably best to hedge both ways. First, because PECOTA is inherently conservative, so long as Braun remains healthy he’s a decent bet to outhit his projections, at least for the next few years. However, as much as Braun may outperform the next few years, it’s difficult to trust a projection for 2021 because so much can change between now and then. With the rising salary scale in baseball, Braun’s contract may be tradable before then, making the projection utterly useless.

One final note on Braun, if he does make it to 2,500+ hits, 400+ home runs, and doesn’t make a single All-Star Game, his Hall of Fame Monitor score would be 132, same as Robin Yount. Suspension aside, it’s interesting to see the likely similarity in their scores, though I think most would not regard Braun as in the same category as Yount, unless he hangs on to reach the 3,000 hit milestone. WARP tends to agree, Yount accumulated 83.4 during his career, while Braun, if he meets his projections through 2021 would have 54.7, a significant difference. As the electorate changes and traditional stats dominate less of the conversation regarding Hall of Fame enshrinement, that difference will likely mean something, and he can’t make it up unless he has a serious late career resurgence — which would bring the PED elephant back into the room and would likely also doom his candidacy.

Among those moving parts, Darren O’Day has re-signed with the Orioles, Ken Giles has been traded, and Aroldis Chapman will likely not be traded. In short, the relief market has settled. Almost completely, in fact. Even the Chad Qualls and Steve Cisheks of the world have found homes.

As they say, hindsight is 20/20, but let’s re-visit some things now that the Giles trade has happened. For a reliever who has thrown fewer than 120 career innings — although they may be elite innings — and a shortstop prospect in rookie-ball, the Phillies acquired Mark Appel, Vincent Velasquez, Brett Oberholtzer, Thomas Eshelman, and Harold Arauz. That’s a lot. As a refresher, K-Rod got the Brewers a 20-year-old prospect in High-A.

In no world would I compare Rodriguez and Giles. Giles was a 1.9 WARP reliever last season and is under team control until 2021. K-Rod, though worth 1.7 WARP last season, is eight years Giles’ senior and probably due for some regression. But why have the costs for relief changed so abruptly? And why is the cost for premium talent so different than the cost for good-to-great talent?

Here’s one theory: General managers still believe in the ‘proven closer.’ Let’s take a look at the differences between Giles and Carson Smith. Smith got 13 saves last season and won his team 1.7 games. Giles locked down two more games but all of his saves came on or after July 28th, the date Jonathan Papelbon left for Washington. Giles had been groomed as a closer as far back as 2012, where Smith started earning saves in the minors in 2012, as well. So wait. What’s the difference between Giles and Smith?

One could point to the fact that Giles’ 2014 campaign was also very effective, though it definitely didn’t help him build a ‘proven closer’ section on his résumé. Smith and Roenis Elias netted the Seattle Mariners lefty Wade Miley and a 25-year-old relief prospect named Jonathan Aro. While Miley was actually quite good last season at 2.5 WARP, that price is decidedly less than the package Giles got the Phillies.

Furthermore, the Red Sox have actually already felt the difference between inflated and deflated relief costs when they traded two top-100 prospects for Craig Kimbrel. Kimbrel’s sustainability as a closer has been something to behold over the past five seasons. However, last season he was worth 1.2 WARP. It is absolutely conceivable that not only Giles but also Smith have better seasons than Kimbrel.

So here’s another theory: We, as baseball fans, overvalue prospects. While I think this is generally true, I’m not sure if it applies here. There is a conceivable scenario in which the Astros didn’t need to acquire Giles and could have got similar value out of Appel or Velasquez in the bullpen. Of course, this may seem like a waste of a resource (because they could hypothetically start).

However, there’s really no plausible way that a team can simultaneously make a trade like that for Giles while also having the opinion that converting a starter into a reliever would be a ‘waste’ of an asset. That is to say, while you or I may think converting a pitcher that is capable of starting into a reliever is diminishing returns, Jeff Luhnow may not share this perspective. So, the only plausible answer is that the Astros know Giles can be excellent, and know their window of contention is opening. After all, pitching prospects are kind of expendable when your rotation looks like Houston’s

For the first two season of his deal, Lohse faired quite well. He accumulated a 2.1 WARP in 2013 and a 1.8 WARP in 2014. Lohse is also a well-established FIP-beater. While FIP is generally a useful stat when trying to isolate a pitcher’s true skill set, there are some hurlers who consistently out produce their FIP numbers. Chris Young and Johnny Cueto, two current free agents, come to mind in this department. Matt Cain was another until his arm functionally fell off. These types of pitchers will typically compile consistently low BABIPs. The idea is that they are able to consistently produce weak contact. Chris Young is able to do this by creating a lot of infield pop flies from pitching high in the zone and using his extreme length to his advantage on the mound.

For Lohse, though, all that changed this year. He couldn’t keep his on-field run prevention below his FIP, creating one of the worst seasons of his career, if not the worst. It was also his worst season with Milwaukee. In fact, it was one of the worst pitching performances in Brewers history. Lohse, who represented consistent solid performance for much of his Brewers career, suddenly became an albatross.

So now, let’s put Lohse’s 2015 performance into Brewers historical context. For some refreshing, Colin Anderle also did this to a certain extent. He asked the question as to whether Lohse was the worst opening day starter in Brewers history. In short, the answer was no. While Lohse’s 2015 performance was bad for Brewers opening day starters, it was not historically terrible. Instead, that title was given to Mark Knudson, who finished the 1991 campaign with an 8.64 DRA in 35 innings pitched. This to say, for the following study don’t expect Lohse to have the worst pitching season in Brewers history, but adding some historical perspective will give us a chance to appreciate just how bad it was.

The visual bellow will incorporate three parts. The main being the PWARP of the pitcher, which is on the Y-axis. Therefore, the lower down the circle the worse the pitcher performed that year, and the higher up the circle the better the pitcher performed that year. The color is dependent of the DRA-. In DRA- lower is better, or, in this case, green is better. The greener the color, the better the DRA- the redder the color the worse the DRA-. Finally, innings pitched is determined by the size of the circle, minimum of 50 innings pitched.

Since the Brewers became a franchise in 1969, with the inception of the Seattle Pilots, a total of 453 pitchers have pitched at least 50 innings in a single season for the organization. A total of 103 pitchers have posted a negative PWARP during that time, and as one can tell from the graph, Kyle Lohse’s 2015 performance was one of them. This isn’t surprising as Lohse’s struggles in 2015 have been well-documented. What you perhaps did not know is that Lohse had the 15th worst PWARP season in Brewers history at -1.07. Lohse’s DRA- only ranked 42nd worse in Brewers history, but since Lohse pitched a healthy amount of innings (as can be seen with the size of his circle), he ended up raking up the 15th worst PWARP in Brewers history.

Kyle Lohse, though, evidently wasn’t the worst — thankfully for him. That undesirable award goes to Jose Cabrera in 2002 (he’s the small red dot at the bottom middle of the graph). Cabrera was acquired by the Brew Crew before the 2002 season from Atlanta. The Brewers were mired in a prolonged rebuilding phase — they were coming off ten-straight losing seasons — but the trade and the use of Cabrera still signaled flaws in their analysis. Cabrera was coming off a year where he achieved an ERA of 2.88 but throughout his career Cabrera always posted sub-par FIP numbers. Let’s not even get into his DRA numbers. He displayed a poor ability to strikeout hitters while giving away too many walks. In some ways, if Cabrera was a pitcher in today’s age, he probably wouldn’t have gotten the same opportunity. The biggest bugaboo for the Brewers was that they let him start 11 games when he had never started a single game prior to the 2002 season. They also let him pitch a career high in innings with 103.3. All these elements ended with him accumulating a -1.9 PWARP, the worst in any single Brewers season. It also was part of a culmination of factors which contributed to the worst Brewers season in their history, as they lost 106 games in 2002 — their only season with more than 100 losses.

On the brighter side, this visual also shows us the best single-season pitching performance in Brewers history. You see that big green circle at the middle top of the graph? That’s the 1988 season pitched by Ted Higuera. Higuera was purchased in 1983 from the Indios de Ciudad Juárez of the Mexican League. He made his Major League debut in 1985 at the age of 27 and proceeded to play his entire career for the Brewers.

Higuera was an instant success when joining the Brewers. The lefty always pitched more than 200 innings, limited home runs, and had low walk rates. In 1988, he put it all together, pitching his usual 200 innings (227.3 to be exact), producing a low walk rate, and compiling quality strikeout numbers. Mainly, though, it was his ability to limit hard contact that made him so successful. In 1988, he only allowed opponents to have a .214 TAv against him. This all culminated in his 7.53 PWARP, which is the best in Brewers history. Unfortunately, the vanguard for sabermetrics hadn’t arrived yet and Higuera. Even though he posted the second best PWARP of any pitcher in the Major Leagues that year, didn’t get any Cy Young considerations. He didn’t even make the All-Star team.

The biggest crime for that season though was that Roger Clemens finished 6th in Cy Young voting, losing out to Frank Viola. Clemens in 1988 finished with a 10.02 PWARP, which was by far the best in all of baseball and one of the greatest single-season pitching performances in Major League history. It was 2.49 PWARP better than Higuera who again finished in second in that department. Viola who won the Cy Young had a 6.35 PWARP, which isn’t even close to Clemens and is more than a full win under Higuera.

Unfortunately for Higuera, he would never again reach the heights of 1988. His career was then hampered by a slew of injuries, the main one being a torn rotator cuff in 1991. He missed all of the 1992 seasons, and only saw limited time in 1993 and 1994 where his performance declined significantly. The 1994 season proved to be his final season in the big leagues.

In the midst of my research, I noticed something interesting. Here are the 10 best single season DRA- in Brewers history (min 50 IP):

I’m sure by now you’ve noticed a few familiar names. Yes, Higuera’s 1988 season ranks third, which is amazing considering the number of innings he pitched. But, I’m talking about the Francisco Rodriguez’s 2015 DRA- at second place and Michael Blazek in seventh place. Rodriguez who was just traded to the Tigers for Javier Betancourt and a player to be named later, posted one of the best relief pitching years in Brewers history. Considering Rodriguez posted a couple of solid but not great seasons for the Brewers, it’s easy to overlook just how good Rodriguez was in 2015. He has lost a lot of velocity on his fastball, but his changeup is now as good as ever and he’s using it a ton. We don’t exactly think about Rodriguez with the likes of Kimbrel and Chapman, but in 2015 he posted a better DRA- than both pitchers and had a very similar PWARP to Chapman’s, which was notably better than Kimbrel.

As for Michael Blazek, I’ve already discussed how great his rookie season was. His 58 DRA- represents the greatest rookie relief pitching performance in Brewers history. It’s also just as good as Chapman’s DRA- and significantly better than Kimbrel’s 71 DRA-. Blazek also finished with a better PWARP than Kimbrel. cFIP does like Chapman and Kimbrel better going forward, with good reason. They’ve both been great for a while and they both throw a lot harder than Rodriguez and Blazek. That being said, for just 2015, both Blazek and Rodriguez were better than Kimbrel, and when it comes to Rodriguez, he produced an equivalent performance to Chapman’s. The biggest difference is that both Chapman and Kimbrel get all of the attention while Rodriguez and Blazek get pegged as solid relievers who had a good year. They are both solid reliever but, no, they didn’t have good years, they had great years.

In general, a lot of things go into a trade. All potential trade partners have to be explored, the loss of that particular player has to be justified by the return for both parties, one owner may have to agree to take on extra salary, and scouts and analytics departments have to agree on the cost-benefit analysis of taking on a new player and all they bring to the table. That means having previously scouted the players yourselves and having near-exhaustive knowledge of their tools.

What’s really interesting though is the timing of the deal. It’s not as if an absolute smorgasbord of closers are reportedly on the market. There’s Aroldis Chapman. Maybe Ken Giles, if you’d like to already grant him the closer’s title. That’s it. Craig Kimbrel has already been dealt. It should be noted that perhaps the fact that Kimbrel has already been traded tells us that although it seems so publicly, the closer market isn’t so thin. Or the overwhelming return for Kimbrel made it too good to pass up. We don’t know. Stearns—or any front office person—would know this much better than us outsiders.

I don’t have any insider information here, nor do I mean to pretend to. However, let’s move forward assuming the closer market is actually more saturated than previously thought. It’s not even that much of a stretch, considering the fact that Andrew Miller is also rumored to be on the market. Say that, hypothetically, a lot of teams expect Darren O’Day to close as well. Frankly, those are very believable scenarios. It wouldn’t be too difficult to imagine a couple more of your own hypothetical situations. Kudos, then, goes to Stearns for being able to get a non-zero return for K-Rod.

But still, why now?

If O’Day is expected to close, that saga will end soon enough—the reliever market is stagnating until he signs as a free agent. If Miller gets dealt, the Yankees would reportedly be looking for a massive return. Despite playing the same position, the difference in quality between Miller and Rodriguez means we’re probably looking at a different market of teams. Add to the mix that the Cincinnati Reds are actively shopping Chapman and reportedly want him dealt this offseason. It seems that we have a curious case for trading away a second-tier closer before other, bigger chips fall into place and teams get desperate.

After all, what did the Brewers have to lose by keeping Rodriguez while other aspects of the team are addressed first? In fact, there’s a case to be made that trading away Rodriguez right now is selling as low as you can on a player. Nick Lampe wrote a great article over at Beyond the Box Score where he broke down the differences between offseason and trade deadline deals. His conclusion, while tentative, was that “there does appear to be some evidence that teams pay a significantly higher price … to acquire marginal wins at the trade deadline.”

If that’s true, though, why would Kimbrel have garnered such a huge return during the offseason? As Ben Carsley over at BP Boston wrote, the Red Sox “gave up two–two!–top-100 prospect types and two more lottery tickets for a relief pitcher.” That’s a huge return, no matter if you buy the ‘proven closer’ narrative or not. Perhaps a shift is beginning in how contending teams acquire elite relief pitchers. When Jonathan Papelbon got traded mid-season, it was for a Double-A prospect who lacks upside. Of course, it’s worth noting that Papelbon is considered to be overpaid and has a slew of clubhouse issues attached to him.

Moving even further, perhaps Stearns believes that selling a closer mid-season will become harder now that the outcome of the Papelbon deal has happened. That is to say, Papelbon’s post-trade antics have given a bad name to closers with tempers everywhere. Rodriguez doesn’t have Papelbon’s track record, but at the same time, he’s been known to get into some altercations of his own. K-Rod is hypothetically one outburst away from being much more difficult to trade. Furthermore, Stearns could just want the right-hander not involved in anything come spring training. Perhaps K-Rod had even privately expressed concern for closing for a losing team. Who knows what is happening on the inside? Nonetheless, J.P. Breen did a great job of breaking down why Stearns would want to be rid of Rodriguez sooner rather than later.

With all of that being said, the offseason still seems like an odd time to trade a non-elite closer. Rodriguez is a ‘proven closer’ (someone still believes in that, right?) on a contract that is pretty team-friendly. With his current deal technically expiring at the end of the 2016 season (though it does have a $8 million team option for 2017), Rodriguez would be one of the optimal ‘rental relievers for a pennant race team at the trade deadline’ candidates. Furthermore, the return of the trade is fairly comparable to the Papelbon trade who gets paid quite a bit more than K-Rod.

New Brewers prospect Javier Betancourt could have upside, but although he is still quite young, his bat has already had trouble adjusting at the High-A level. Stearns and his front office could be really high on Betancourt, however, there’s a large chance that at the 2016 trade deadline—at the very least—a similar deal would still be available. It’s perfectly conceivable that a better deal could have even come up, too. According to one report from The Detroit News, Betancourt’s future value is only 45 (not an everyday player). That’s a far-cry from the Andrew Miller trade that took place during the 2014 season in which the Red Sox acquired a prospect with a future value of 60 in Eduardo Rodriguez. Certainly K-Rod and Miller aren’t fully comparable pieces, however, Miller did end up being a rental pitcher for the Orioles.

The fact is that the move is by no means a bad one for Stearns. A closer on a team that isn’t expected to win a lot of games is a strange asset to keep. It’s just a weird time to pull the trigger on such a mediocre return. Kimbrel just got traded for two top-100 prospects. Chapman is going to fetch a similar return for the Reds perhaps shortly. O’Day could sign a deal that only the Dodgers will afford. Giles has been linked in rumors to two or three high-level prospects. That makes K-Rod a really unique asset. He’s second-tier compared to these guys which could have made him appealing to a much broader array of teams. Everyone can afford a K-Rod, not everyone can afford a Kimbrel or an O’Day. All the first-tier players could have settled into their own teams and it wouldn’t have affected Rodriguez’s trade value one iota.

In the end, this trade will likely be a footnote in Stearns’ tenure as Brewers GM. It won’t matter if Betancourt pans out or not, getting rid of Rodriguez was a good move. However, for one of his first moves, the timing didn’t exactly show patient baseball acumen.

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.

The Brewers will also make a handful of promotions from the minors in September, though likely not immediately. The organization does not wish to interfere with Double-A Biloxi’s postseason run or deplete the ranks at Triple-A Colorado Springs; however, Zach Davies could eventually slide into the rotation and Luis Sardinas should see his fair share of playing time. Still, it’s unlikely that prized prospects Brett Phillips or Orlando Arcia get anything more than a token call-up, as they’d have to be added to the 40-man roster and don’t project to begin the 2016 season with the big-league club. That could leave the September call-up season a bit unfulfilling for many Brewers fans, who are desperate to glimpse the purported future of the franchise.

Attention could quickly turn to the winter trading season. Multiple media sources suggest that the Brewers will be active in the offseason, seeking to further build for a potential run at contention in as early as 2o17. In other words, fans should expect additional departures from the current major-league squad. The club is still unlikely to engage in a firesale — though the uncertainty at General Manager makes it difficult to say this with too much confidence — but multiple sources have indicated that Milwaukee would like to move another piece or two this winter.

Here are the five players that I consider to have the highest probability of being traded this offseason:

(1) SS Jean Segura

Although his trade value has fallen from its April and May levels, the 25-year-old shortstop still carries value and is most likely to be moved this winter. He’s failed to deliver consistency at the plate and has routinely slid back into bad habits as seasons progress; however, the Brewers should benefit from the overall paucity of talent at the shortstop position. Despite his struggles, Segura has the 14th-highest WARP in the majors. Guys like Alexei Ramirez (.240/.268/.345), Jimmy Rollins (.220/.274/.361), Marcus Semien (.252/.296/.391), Jordy Mercer (.243/.290/.313), Erick Aybar (.275/.310/.333), Alexi Amarista (.213/.265/.309), Starlin Castro (.242/.274/.317), J.J. Hardy (.222/.253/.315), and Didi Gregorius (.260/.306/.357) all have received at least 300 plate appearances. That isn’t the exhaustive list, either.

This comes on the heels of an offseason that saw Gregorius move to New York in a deal that included Shane Greene — pre-dumpster-fire version — and Robbie Ray. The 24-year-old Marcus Semien headlined the return for Jeff Samardizja over the winter. Hell, even Luis Sardinas (a potential utility infielder or second-division starter) was the core of the return for right-hander Yovani Gallardo. The idea that Jean Segura is not valuable or won’t have a market this winter seems off the mark, if one considers the most recent offseason.

Segura becomes expendable for several reasons: (1) it’s becoming less and less clear that he’s going to reach his offensive potential, which makes him, at best, a second-division shortstop; (2) Luis Sardinas hit .283/.321/.367 in Triple-A and should be able to handle the starting role for a season or two during a rebuilding stretch; (3) the future at the position is not Segura, but rather Orlando Arcia. These three factors should help convince the organization that he should be moved during the offseason. It wouldn’t be wise to expect a huge prospect package in return, though, unless the new GM brings a vastly different philosophy to the front office and wishes to put his stamp on the club. The Brewers have long prioritized players in the high minors or the majors, and with Melvin still in an advisory role and Attanasio still at the helm, it seems more likely that Milwaukee swaps Segura for a mid-tier young player in Double-A or Triple-A.

(2) OF Khris Davis

Davis clobbered 10 homers in the month of August, firmly asserting his ability to hit for power at the major-league level. He remains an unheralded offensive asset. His .276 TAv is above the league’s average, and his 112 wRC+ indicates that his production at the plate is 12 percent better than average. Davis owns a career 116 wRC+, too, so it’s hardly convincing to suggest that he’s only been decent over the past month. He’s a player with holes in his game; however, in an depressed offensive environment around Major League Baseball, players like Khris Davis carry more value than we’re perhaps predisposed to think.

He’s only 27 years old and won’t be arbitration eligible until the 2017 season. These things are attractive to both the Brewers and other major-league clubs, yet the presence of Domingo Santana should present the organization an opportunity to capitalize on Davis’s trade value without creating a black hole in left field. The front office can shop Davis to both NL and AL clubs with the comfort that they have a very similar player in the wings. Granted, Santana has more swing-and-miss issues than Davis and may experience some growing pains in his first full season, but he’s the one who best profiles to play left field for Milwaukee during their next competitive window.

(3) RHP Matt Garza

It’s no secret that Milwaukee desperately wants to unload the remaining two years of Garza’s four-year, $50M contract. With a 5.56 ERA over 24 starts, that won’t be an easy task, but expect the front office to explore a myriad of ways to move the right-hander this winter. Perhaps it will be a bad-contract swap, with a couple teams taking a chance on change-of-scenery candidates, or a big-market team like the Dodgers could offer a no-name prospect or two in return for simply eating the contract. More likely than not, though, the Brewers will hope that the 31-year-old can begin the 2016 on a high note and move him as quickly as possible.

Some of the underlying numbers suggest Garza could bounce back next year. He didn’t experience any velocity decrease and didn’t have any wild fluctuations in his ground-ball rate. His .317 BABIP is also roughly 30 points higher than his career average, which could mean that he’s due for positive regression. Of course, I’d also argue that Garza’s BABIP and home-run rates are at or near career highs because his command has been dreadful, causing him to issue too many free passes and get obliterated when missing inside the zone. As the offseason approaches, it’s likely that the Brewers’ front office and the fan base will focus on the positive rather than the negative, as they seek to paint the rosiest picture possible — and I find it hard to blame anyone for that.

(4) 1B Adam Lind

The Brewers haven’t had a quality first baseman since Prince Fielder departed following the 2011 season, and with no ready-made replacement in the farm system, it’s understandable why the organization has been hesitant to trade Lind. He’s hitting .282/.362/.470 with a 122 wRC+ and has been solid defensively. At only $8M in 2016, the 32-year-old slugger continues to be attractive to any small-market club, the Brewers notwithstanding.

Still, he’s an aging slugger with perennial back problems and only one year remaining on his contract. At least the St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates expressed interest over the summer, and more clubs could be in the market for an above-average first baseman over the winter. It’s unclear what the Brewers’ asking price has been or what it projects to be this offseason, but one figures that a two-win first baseman on a team-friendly contract should bring back a better return than what the Brewers had to pay prior to 2015 (Marco Estrada).

The question is whether Milwaukee has any desire to move Lind without any replacement lined up — and it should be noted that Jason Rogers doesn’t profile as an everyday option at first — remains to be seen. I am skeptical that the club would be willing to make such a move. As with all of this speculation, though, the uncertainty at General Manager makes such skepticism partially unfounded. Mostly, such an opinion is based off the presence of Mark Attanasio. His ultimate acquiescence of trading Mike Fiers alleviates my concerns a bit; however, the emergence of Taylor Jungmann as a legitimate major-league pitcher likely softened the blow and made him more receptive to such a move. Any trade of Adam Lind — barring any subsequent trade or free-agent signing — would mean Attanasio agreed to trade a cost-friendly player without any recognizable replacement in the wings. I’m not sure he has agreed to do that before as the Brewers’ owner and I’m not ready to assume he’ll do it now.

(5) RHP Francisco Rodriguez

This is complicated. Rodriguez is 33 years old and has at least $7.5 million guaranteed over the next two years — $5.5 million next year and a $2 million buy-out in 2017. He’s a highly productive reliever who has posted a 2.53 ERA with a 2.88 FIP. He has saved 31 games with only four “meltdowns” this season. He continues to transform himself as a pitcher, as he now throws his fastball just 45.9 percent of the time and has a 14.2 percent whiff rate, which is his highest mark since 2003. Although he prefers to close, the right-hander would be a quality addition to any bullpen, especially in an era in which organizations are beginning to assemble elite bullpens in an effort to lessen the negative impact of a mediocre starting rotation.

Despite all of this, K-Rod remains in Milwaukee. For four-consecutive offseasons, he has had the opportunity to sign with any major-league team, yet he’s ultimately returned to the state of Wisconsin. Part of this is surely tied to the fact that he’s always had a clear shot at the closer’s role with the Brewers, but that doesn’t seem to fully explain it. Plenty of teams across the majors have needed help in the ninth inning over the last four years. So why always Milwaukee? Part of this could be his history of domestic violence, something that has been somewhat of a non-issue — likely because the fan base has somewhat accepted, overlooked, or forgotten his history — but something that will absolutely rear its head in a new location, as members of the media would write their human-interest profiles over the winter.

It could also be that Milwaukee appreciates the way he works with their younger pitchers, as he’s a Spanish-speaking veteran who can help mentor younger Latin American pitchers in the ins and outs of big-league life. As the club promotes a greater number of young, homegrown arms, perhaps that carries greater weight with the organization. Yovani Gallardo could have carried out that role in previous years, but as he’s no longer with the club, it could be argued that K-Rod is one of the only veteran Spanish-speaking mentors the Brewers have on the roster. Although it’s unclear if that’s the ultimate reasoning, I could certainly understand the line of argument, as the behind-the-scenes portion of player development is often overlooked and poorly understood.

Whatever the reason, though, Francisco Rodriguez continues to don a Brewers uniform year after year. On paper, he appears to be an obvious trade candidate for the club. At this point, it’s clear that something unrelated to his performance, good or bad, is keeping him in Milwaukee.

[Note: To answer this question before it’s raised in the comment’s section, I do not consider it likely for Jonathan Lucroy to be traded this winter. The organization has repeatedly informed teams that he’s unavailable. A large reason for this probably has to do with his team-friendly contract and the club’s belief that they can push for contention as soon as 2017 — a time frame in which Lucroy could still be in position to add value to the club’s postseason chances. The pending GM change makes this a bit cloudier, to be fair, but with the information that we currently have available, it does not appear that Milwaukee has any intentions to trade Jonathan Lucroy prior to the 2016 season.]