While the series is over and done with and the team should be looking forward and planning for next season, there was one decision I wanted to revisit from Game Seven. Before the game, the pitcher usage had been fully mapped out, with contingencies built in based on what actually occurred once the game started. Thus, lifting Jhoulys Chacin for a pinch hitter in the bottom of the 2^nd inning with two outs and runners on second and third was not a surprise, nor is it a decision I feel qualified questioning. However, I think using Jonathan Schoop as the pinch hitter in that specific spot was a legitimate tactical error which contributed to the Game Seven loss.

Leverage Index is a stat which quantifies the importance of a situation in a game, where the average is 1.0 and the higher the number, the higher leverage the situation. That plate appearance had a leverage score of 1.86, making it the highest leverage plate appearance in the game for Milwaukee, yet Jonathan Schoop was the batter at the plate.

Up to that point, Schoop was 0-for-7 in the playoffs, including two pinch hitting appearances. Schoop’s performance since coming to Milwaukee had no hidden indicators that he was good selection for this spot. Other than running into a few balls, Schoop hadn’t hit in three months and spent October swinging at everything. Using Schoop didn’t even get Milwaukee the platoon advantage, so there was no old-school baseball rationale either.

Walker Buehler attacked Schoop with sinkers. He threw only nine sinkers in the game, and four were in this at-bat. Schoop only swung at two of the pitches, both of which were arguably balls, but he still grounded out the end the threat.

Domingo Santana would have been a better choice for the situation. Since his recall on September 1, Santana slashed .409 batting average /.458 on-base percentage /.909 slugging percentage in pinch hitting appearances during the regular season, and added another two hits and two walks in ten playoff pinch hit opportunities. Pinch hitting is an acquired skill and Santana had at least shown some knack for it in the past six weeks. He did get a pinch-hitting appearance with one out in the fifth inning, but the leverage index on that at bat was .97, almost exactly half of Schoop’s plate appearance.

With the aggressive use of the pitching staff, it’s slightly baffling as to why they held back their best pinch hitter and Curtis Granderson in favor of Schoop. None of them played in the field, so no defensive considerations seemed to play into the decisions, so it should have purely been the best hitter in that spot. You cannot save a better hitter for a higher leverage situation which may never come, and it didn’t in Game 7.

Jeremy Jeffress had a poor postseason, as I’ve unfortunately noted in the past two weeks. He allowed runs in three of his eight appearances and only had one game where he didn’t allow at least two baserunners. On Saturday entered the game in the 6^th inning with a runner on first and wound up giving up a backbreaking home run to Yasiel Puig which shot the Dodgers’ win expectancy up to ninety-one percent. In Jeffress’ 1 and 1/3 innings, he threw twenty pitches, none of which were splitters. It was only his third game this season where he threw at least twenty pitches and no splitters. All of those outings have occurred since September 10^th.

Starting in September, Jeffress drastically reduced his splitter usage. For the season, batters hit .209 against the pitch with only a .045 isolated slugging percentage, making it one of his most effective pitches. The splitter also had a seventeen percent whiff rate, on par with Jeffress’s curveball. However, those whiffs almost completely disappeared in September and October, with only one swing and miss on eighteen total splitters.

While it probably doesn’t fully explain Jeffress’s struggles, his pitch mix lost its balance when he stopped throwing the splitter and he started struggling. If it was a matter of feel, he has the whole offseason to regain confidence in the pitch or develop another weapon to induce swings and misses, because his results took a step back in October.

Christian Yelich had a tough postseason, but his struggles shouldn’t be a cause for concern for Brewers fans. First, the approach pitchers took against Yelich is not sustainable for a full season, unless they’re prepared to walk him at a rate comparable to Barry Bonds. Here’s the zone profile for Yelich for all of 2018:

Here’s Yelich’s zone profile during the playoffs:

While there was some effort to stick with the general plan to pitch him low and away, there’s a lot of blue in the strike zone and a lot of red bordering it. Pitchers spent three weeks staying away from Yelich, which makes sense after his second half of the season. However, pitchers will have to throw him more strikes in 2019. Yelich also maintained his plate discipline during the barrage of balls. He cut down on his swings on non-fastballs and also swung and missed less on breaking and offspeed pitches, while staying around his seasonal fastball whiff rate. By focusing on pitches in the zone, Yelich will lure pitchers back into throwing more strikes and he should pick up at the start of next season where he left off on October 1^st.

Unfortunately, there’s no new series to preview this week for the Brewers. While the result fell short of what fans were hoping for, it’s important to remember the ride to Game Seven and not focus on the NLCS loss itself. This was a fun team to follow all season and is poised to repeat its performance next season while also changing expectations on what a pitching staff should be in terms of usage and the best fits of skills in each role. The organization works as one unit and made an experiment like Travis Shaw: Major League Baseball Second Basement evolve from a sarcastic joke to a legitimate option by the end of the season. Remember the fun in getting to this point and start getting excited about what team will be put together this offseason.

P.S. They’re still not trading for/signing an ace.

Jeremy Jeffress has had an up and down playoffs. While he’s provided three scoreless outings, Jeffress has allowed fifteen baserunners in 5.7 innings and that has led to four runs scoring as he was on the mound. In a look at Jeffress last week, I noted that when he’s locked in, he’s looking to keep the ball down in an effort to induce groundballs and whiffs. In the first two NLCS games in Milwaukee, he did not succeed in keeping the ball low or out of the strike zone. While Jeffress is still hitting his favorite spot low and away, he’s leaving the ball up and in the zone entirely too much compared with the regular season. Batters have been able to lay off his low pitches because he’s leaving enough hittable pitches in the zone.

Against the Dodgers, Jeffress has only induced whiffs on his curveball, and his whiff rate on that pitch is slightly below his season average. Two percentage points isn’t particularly noteworthy, until one notices that he’s not getting any other whiffs. Expanding the sample to include the NLDS helps his curveball numbers, but the only other whiffs are against his fourseam fastball and also below his regular season whiff rate.

The veteran’s velocity is right around his season numbers, so there isn’t a dramatic drop off, nor is he overthrowing his pitches. However, he is seeing less movement overall. All of his pitches are moving less horizontally and are closer together now. Back in April, he had his largest spread, when his average curveball and sinker were eighteen inches apart. Vertically, the fourseam and curveball had a thirteen-inch difference. Because Jeffress isn’t hitting his spots, each of those ranges have narrowed and batters have less territory they need to worry about it. Game One of the NLDS didn’t scare Craig Counsell about inserting  Jeffress into high pressure situations, nor should it have based on his track record this season. However, with the plethora of options at his disposal and the little room for error nature of a best of seven series, it wouldn’t be surprising if there was an attempt to get Jeffress a lower leverage situation in Game Three or Four to get him back on track.

Dodgers pitchers have taken note of the Rockies’ approach to Christian Yelich and are not throwing him much to hit. After he had a 10.5 percent walk rate during the regular season, that number has skyrocketed to 37.5 percent in the playoffs. Pitchers are still avoiding the middle of the zone when throwing to Yelich and they seem content to throw him balls in an effort to make him chase bad pitches. To his credit, Yelich has not expanded his willingness to swing out of frustration. During the regular season, Yelich had been vulnerable to pitches away from him and while he didn’t miss those pitches often, he also didn’t hit them for much power. With the season he had, Yelich is the guy the opponents are going to fear and want to pitch around. By not swinging at bad pitches, Yelich has forced pitchers to make a choice: they can walk him or take a chance and throw it in the strike zone. Yelich’s approach will let him continue to accumulate walks and eventually he’s going to run into a few pitches and make the opposing team wish they had just walked him.

Corbin Burnes had a spectacular start to his postseason career. In two NLDS games, he pitches four innings and only allowed one baserunner while striking out five batters. Unfortunately, his last game was not quite as successful. Burnes is a fastball/slider pitcher, throwing the fastball for around sixty percent of his total pitches, and he’ll usually mix in a curveball. During Game 2, Burnes abandoned his curveball and threw his fewest sliders in a month. While he got swings on five of his eleven pitches, there were no swings and misses. Burnes had a whiff rate 32.1 percent during the regular season, which was 53^rd out of 442 pitcher who threw at least 570 pitches.

Burnes got whiffs on about a quarter of his sliders, but only threw two on Saturday. The speed on his slider was the lowest it had been since early September. It seems like he was having trouble locating his fastball. Burnes’s fourseasm fastball is generally located inside on his arm side or low and away. In a limited sample size, Burnes appeared to be all over the place with his fastball in Game Two and did not fool the Dodgers hitters. He rarely throws the pitch glove side and up, yet three fastballs ended up there, and he had threw well below the strike zone. It seemed like he focused on trying to get a feel for the fastball above trusting his arsenal.

Burnes will pitch in at least one of the games in Los Angeles and it will be interesting to see how he approaches the hitters. Ideally, the Burnes that kept the ball down against the Rockies and utilizes his breaking pitches to keep hitters off balance steps on the mound. When he gets those swings and misses, he can string together some scoreless innings for a team that is seeking to mix and match its way to a pennant.

Orlando Arcia has a hit in each playoff game he’s started and his streak extends to six games including the end of the regular season and his solo home run started the scoring in Game Two. The home run came on a first pitch cutter which caught enough of the bottom of the zone, in one of the areas in which Arcia demonstrated some power this year.

Arcia set a new standard for futility this year. His .268 OP was below his batting average last year. His .307 slugging percentage was below his OBP last year. The only position player with more than 100 plate appearances who had a lower OBP than Arcia was Eric Sogard.

Arcia’s hot streak began in September. While he’s not drawing many walks, his batting average since September 1 is above .300 and he’s slugging .443, which would be his MLB best by around forty points. He’s always been a whiffy hitter. Arcia swung and missed at 28.8 percent of the pitches he saw in 2018, which is around his career average of 27.5 percent. However, one area Arcia has cleaned up is his misses on pitches which most batters should hit. Before September 1, Arcia had huge holes in his swing almost everywhere. High and low and even belt high pitches could be missed. However, since September 1, Arcia is missing less, especially towards the middle of the zone, which are pitches any hitter should drive. The numbers bear out that he’s whiffing less on all types of pitches. Arcia doesn’t need to turn into Christian Yelich, but if he can bat eighth and get a hit a game, the Brewers will definitely take that offensive performance with his superlative defense. He isn’t likely to be a player who decides a series, but if he can be a player who puts some pressure on a pitcher facing the bottom half of the order, Arcia can provide a boost for the offense.

As the Brewers head west for three games in Los Angeles one point to monitor is the bullpen usage. While Craig Counsell goes into every game with a set plan in mind, emergencies do occur even in games which seem well at hand, such as the 8^th inning of Game 1. The 2-3-2 format will put a large amount of stress on Milwaukee’s pitching staff. I would guess that the pitching appearances have been scripted and written in pencil in advance of the publication of this article, any plan which relies on a large amount of players performing creates more opportunities for something to go wrong. Without an off day, there are no chances to reset the bullpen. Milwaukee can make it through these three games, but it feels like they’ll need some innings from their starters in at least one game so the bullpen gets a chance to rest. Jhoulys Chacin will start Game 3. He already had a five inning start in the NLDS and he led the staff with 5.5 innings pitched per start during the regular season. If Chacin can provide at least five innings tonight, he’ll put the Brewers in position to take at least one game in Los Angeles and guarantee that there will be at least one more game played in Miller Park this month.

The story of the Brewers’ remarkable winning streak that has carried them into the playoffs and now a League Championship Series matchup with the Dodgers has been the dominance and run-prevention of the bullpen. With a matchup looming against a much stronger team offensively than the Rockies (the Dodgers finished the season fifth in MLB in runs scored per game and first in True Average), not to mention a longer series and therefore more outs to “get,” it’s fair to ask how sustainable the heavy bullpen usage looks to be for the rest of the postseason.

Usage
Inning limits seem to be an inexact science at best, given what we know publicly.  There may be a slight effect in terms of injury prevention when drastic inning increases are managed by teams. But beyond injuries, suffice it to say that given the toll pitching takes on the human body (with the caveat that every pitcher is different), generally pitchers approaching substantial workload increases are more likely to fatigue. This makes sense on an intuitive level.

Among likely Brewers to make the NLCS roster as non-starting “out getters,” most of the pitchers seem to be in relatively good shape with regard to their innings in the previous season and well within their career highs, with a maximum of 14 games left in the season. Knebel, Burnes, and Woodruff in particular are encouraging in terms of how many innings they may have left over last year’s totals. Freddy Peralta has already pitched over 20 innings more than his 2017 season and might be managed more carefully, especially if the Brewers see him as a starter moving forward.

The real danger zone may be with Jeremy Jeffress, who, despite sitting out a few games to manage minor injuries toward the end of the season, is 11 innings above what he pitched last year. That may not or may not be a factor moving forward, but it is [checks math] a higher workload. As such, there could be fewer opportunities for Jeffress to cover multiple innings. Combined with his recent minor injuries that made him unavailable in Game 163, and his performance so far in October, it’s worth keeping an eye on the next area of the pitching staff to consider for the aggressive bullpenning Brewers.

Fatigue
This is where there is a small area of concern for Jeffress’ availability moving forward to the degree he has been used so far this season.

Source: BrooksBaseball.net

The one-mile per hour difference on Jeffress’ four-seam fastball might not be anything, and in fact comes with a major caveat of a sample size of just 15 times that he’s thrown it in October. But coupled with the recent minor injuries and increased workload, it certainly stands out among the other Brewer relievers, who are mostly throwing harder in October than they have in the season overall.

As a unit it seems like the Brewer bullpen isn’t suffering from any fatigue just yet in October. Somewhat unbelievably, Josh Hader is actually up two ticks on his fastball, and the young and promising duo of Burnes and “secret weapon” Woodruff are also up pretty significantly. Basically, if Craig Counsell is looking just at in-game performance or the metrics that might imply fatigue among his relievers, there’s seemingly little to raise a red flag.

Schedule
This is where the bullpen strategy gets a little tricky. During a 7-game series, how will the Brewers manage their run-prevention strength with also needing to cover more innings overall?

Playing a strictly “bullpen game” as the Brewers did in Game 1 of the Division Series is still workable but may be a bit more difficult to pull off when there are just simply more outs to cover. For example, if after Jhoulys Chacin and Wade Miley pitch Games One and Two, and Counsell decides to bullpen Game Three, he could find himself without Woodruff and Burnes for games Four and Five, leaving a shorthanded staff presumably with Gio Gonzalez and/or Zach Davies toeing the rubber to start Game Four. Perhaps a Game One bullpen game is in the cards again, as it would allow the Brewers to put their best pitcher, Johnny Wholestaff, up against Clayton Kershaw, and then have Chacin go for Game Two. That would allow the bullpen to get some extra rest for the travel off-day to Los Angeles before Game Three.

My head hurts.

At any rate, there are more decisions to consider in a longer series that has 3 games in a row, and it will also likely limit the number of relievers the Brewers are willing to burn for multiple innings at a time.

The bullpen overall looks to be in good shape given their usage so far in the season and at least by velocity, there doesn’t seem to be much drop off in production, either. The Brewers will, however, need some kind of help from their bats or a third starter especially in the middle 3 games of the series in Los Angeles if they want to maximize meaningful innings for their best run-preventing weapon.

Jeremy Jeffress struggled in his Game One appearance. The Rockies started the inning with three singles, then an Orlando Arcia error allowed a fourth straight runner to reach base before Jeffress settled down and recorded the next three outs. Looking at his pitch plot, he spent too much time in the strike zone.

About sixty percent of Jeffress’ pitches are sinkers or curveballs. His approach is to keep the ball low, either inducing swings on balls below the zone or living in the bottom third, extending from the middle to wide of the zone. The intent is even more pronounced when the sinker and curveball are isolated. Whether due to playoff jitters or just poor placement, Jeffress threw two sinkers that caught much more of the plate than he intended.

The playoffs are a heightened atmosphere where each mistake is magnified and takes on an outsized importance, but as his subsequent two scoreless appearances showed, this was one bad outing and there doesn’t seem to be a flaw that could come back to haunt Jeffress. His fourseam fastball velocity was slower than in any outing since April, but it ticked back up in Game Two and Three, and none of his other pitches showed any decrease in speed. There seemed to be some loss of horizontal movement, but the two pitches with the biggest drops were his sinker and curveball, which also rely on vertical movement for their deception. The sinker moved more than ever, while the curveball did suffer some loss in vertical movement.

Even taking into consideration his unexplained medical absence from the NL Central tiebreaker game, I think that there’s not much cause for concern with Jeffress. The team immediately inserted back into high pressure situations and he’ll continue to contribute as a back end member of the bullpen.

One of the major storylines coming into the series centered on how the Brewers would handle Trevor Story. Single season numbers against a team are too small of a sample size to be regarded as having any type of predictive value, but Story’s .333 batting average /.387 on-base percentage /1.222 slugging percentage slash line, which included seven home runs in seven games, worried some fans and pundits and became a talking point after the Rockies won the Wild Card Game.

It turned out that no one needed to worry, the Brewers executed their plan perfectly. They planned to keep the ball out of the strike zone and dare him not to swing. During the regular season, Story swung at thirty-two percent of the pitches he faced out of the strike zone. That number went up in the NLDS. The Brewers kept the ball low and away. The approach was best exemplified by his at-bat against Jeremy Jeffress in Game 1. Jeffress had run into some trouble and Story came to the batter’s box with runners on first and second with two outs and a chance to win the game with a hit. Jeffress threw three curveballs, none of which were particularly close to the strike zone, and Story waved at all three pitches.

Story finished the series 2-for-12 with six strike outs and one of his hits came in the bottom of the ninth in Game 3 when the series had already been decided. This pitching staff can lock down any batter in the league and will be up for the challenge of whichever team emerges from the other side of the National League bracket.

Josh Hader made fifty-five appearances during the regular season. He pitched on one or no days’ rest for sixteen of those outings. How often Hader will be used will continue to be a sub-plot throughout the postseason run.

Hader pitched four times last week, including the tiebreaker game. If the gloves are off, it was inevitable that he would need to pitch on back to back days, which he hadn’t done since August. After throwing 1 and 1/3 innings in Game One, Hader was used in a high leverage situation in Game Two to get Milwaukee out of an inning with a runner on third base and two outs. His spot in the lineup came up in the next half inning and Jonathan Schoop pinch hit for him, so Hader only threw twenty-two pitches in the two appearances. He exceeded that number in more than half of his 2018 games.

Hader added another seven pitches in Game Three and by finishing the series so quickly, he’ll get some extra time off. The middle of the NLCS includes three games in three days and it is unlikely that the Brewers can avoid using him in at least two of those games. The Brewers will need to hope that their regular season usage plan for Hader will keep him fresh for these important games.

The Brewers finished in the top 10 in MLB in baserunning runs. The area where they far outpaced all of baseball was opportunities to advance on wild pitches, passed balls and balks. Milwaukee is an aggressive team on the base paths; they were top four in stolen base opportunities. There is value in putting pressure on opposing pitchers and defenses and giving them something real to worry about when a batter reaches base. However, the team could use this next week to tighten up their running game. There were a few baserunning gaffes against the Rockies. The competition will level up in this next round and beyond, and Milwaukee cannot give away outs on the base paths from ill-advised advancements.

Jesús Aguilar struggled against the Rockies. He hit 1-11 with a walk a home run and four strikeouts. Aguilar started to scuffle in the second half, when he slashed .245/.324/.436, well below his first half line of  .298/.373/.621. As the year went on, Aguilar’s absurd numbers against fastballs went down, but his power against non-fastballs completely fell off a cliff.

Through the first two games, Colorado pitchers made sure to attack Aguilar low and away, which has been a season-long focus for pitchers. They also noticed the numbers in the above chart and gave him fewer fastballs to hit. For the season, he faced around sixty percent fastballs and never dipped below fifty five percent for a month. Fewer than half the pitches he faced in the NLDS were fastballs. The best news for Aguilar coming out of the series is that his home run came off a curveball. To get pitchers to respect him again, he probably needs to start laying off those pitches as much as possible. The effect of pitchers going low and away is even more pronounced when fastballs are stripped out of the zone plot. Aguilar can’t dramatically improve his pitch recognition on the fly, but even something like taking any pitch that appears like it’ll go below his belt will help him out because right now decent breaking balls are giving him fits and it’s creating a hole in the lineup.

Christian Yelich collected two walks in each game of the series. His regular season walk rate was 10.5 percent, but in the NLDS it approached fifty percent. In his second at bat of Game One, Yelich hit a home run off a poorly placed changeup. Pitchers had some success with changeups against Yelich in 2018, but all of them were inside or low; otherwise, Yelich had a good chance of hitting it far. After that, Rockies pitchers had their own plan to avoid getting hurt by Yelich.

While pitchers generally looked to get inside on him or keep the ball low, Colorado was all over the place, so long as the pitch wasn’t in the middle of the zone. They seemed content to make Yelich chase bad pitches, or take a walk. He also saw more fastballs than in any other month in the 2018 season. To Yelich’s credit, he was willing to take the walks. Pitchers have had more comfort pitching this way to Yelich because Lorenzo Cain has struggled at the plate. He went 1-12 with two walks; Games 1 and 2 was only the second time he went hitless in two straight playoff games. If Cain can get on base, pitchers may feel more pressure to give Yelich pitches in or closer to the strike zone. If they don’t, then it gives Ryan Braun the opportunity to hit with more men on base.

With Atlanta’s escape against the Dodgers last night, there’s a Game Four in that series (today, Monday, October 8). Brewers fans will want the series extended to a Game Five to ensure another cross-country trip for their eventual opponent. According to Baseball Prospectus’ adjusted standings, the Dodgers are the best team in the league and they’ve played like the superior team against the Braves so far, but this is why the games are played on the field.

Last night (August 17th, 2018) was an absolute travesty as Craig Counsell allowed Jordan Lyles, who is bad and has a career 5.35 ERA, to pitch multiple innings in a one run game. In his second inning of work after the offense managed to claw their way back to a single run deficit, Lyles would load the bases on a single, a hit batsman, and a walk. Kolten Wong would cash in with a 2-run double, and the game was essentially over.

Leaving in Lyles to face the heart of the order was questionable to begin with, but once Jose Martinez singled it was almost certainly time to go get him. Once he plunked Dejong it was definitely time to go get him. Once he walked Jedd Gyorko alarm bells should have been going off in the Brewer dugout.

I’ve had several discussions about win probability in this game, with several people citing the fact that the Brewers were likely to lose the game anyway in defense of the idea that a good pitcher should not be wasted. I find this idea preposterous for a few reasons. First of all, if a club can get to the top of the 9th inning down by a run, they have roughly a 15 percent chance (about ⅙) to come back and tie the game, and about an 11 percent chance of winning outright. That’s a longshot, but it’s hardly hopeless, and teams routinely rally from one run deficits. Bud Norris is hardly a “lights out” closer. If you give your opponent a 3-run lead your odds plummet to between 2 percent and 3 percent, or 1/50. Wong is a left-handed hitter with substantial platoon splits, and retiring him without allowing a run would have boosted the team’s odds from hopeless to pretty good. Outcomes with a 10 percent to 15 percent chance of occurring happen all the time. But even if you didn’t want to use Hader, surely Dan Jennings, a lefty who hadn’t pitched since August 15th,  would have been a better option than Lyles who, for his career, allows an .822 OPS to lefties.

Punting on a game that the Brewers will win 1/9 of the time is inexcusable at this point in the season, and doubly so when you consider that a win by the Cardinals draws them a game closer to the wild card spot. The Brewers didn’t just flit away an 11 percent chance at a win, they also flitted away an 11 percent chance at causing the Cardinals to suffer a loss. And what did they gain by having one of their worst relievers pitch an extra inning?

Not much. Jeremy Jeffress, who is perfectly capable of pitching on back to back days, hasn’t pitched since the 15th. He joins Dan Jennings, who can seemingly pitch every day if you want him to. Hader hasn’t pitched in a week, last facing the Braves for two innings and 29 pitches on August 11th. Oh, and Corbin Burnes also hasn’t pitched since the 15th. If you are so very concerned about the game on August 18th, even if the team used Hader on the 17th, they would still have at least three quality relievers on at least three days rest. If you can’t manage a close game with such a well-rested bullpen, you frankly don’t deserve to be a manager.

Given the stakes, given the fact that everything was doubled by virtue of the opponent, and given the fact that no good relief pitchers had pitched in forever, there was no reason to let Wong put the Brewers yesterday. The race is close and if Counsell was managing reliever useage for the stretch run, it would be nice if someone would alert him that we have arrived at the stretch run. Hader and Jeffress are on pace to pitch 76 and 73 innings respectively. This is not an onerous amount, and given that much of Hader’s work actually took place in April, it’s more likely that he pitches under 70 innings for the year than over 80. By restricting him to games with leads, they’ve cost themselves wins while saving him for games that never occur. It’s likely at this point in the season, that those will cost them a playoff spot. 

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.

Currently, the Brewers have four Top 100 pitchers:

Enjoy the Google Sharing spreadsheet link here, complete with an explanation of the worksheets:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_a3EUnZTxZMkMBdPllLRoG_eprlTjU7UYrjDRhvE4m4/edit?usp=sharing

While you enjoy this spreadsheet, BPMilwaukee is hiring a Freelance Writer for a paid position, beginning August 1, 2018. This is a fantastic opportunity for college student seeking journalism experience without a heavy workload requirement, or a for a fan writer looking to work on Baseball Prospectus statistics. The position requires preferred use of Baseball Prospectus statistics in analysis, but Brewers fandom is not required. Writer will have free reign over article topics, with preference given to writers applying to cover baseball labor, history of baseball, and organizational-structural aspects of the game.

Please submit a brief statement of interest to BPMilwaukee [at] gmail [dot] com, including a link or pasted text writing sample of work, by Tuesday, July 10 at Noon. No attachments, please.

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

Last night in Pittsburgh, Jeffress worked four outs. During the outing, the righty allowed one of two inherited runners to score, and also allowed one run of his own to cross the plate. Otherwise, he also struck out three batters, and thanks to a Brewers offense that scored some runs, Jeffress easily worked within his margin of error to help convert his twelfth lead of the season into a win (Jeffress has three saves and nine holds; last night was his ninth hold). But it is worth emphasizing that for any perception that Jeffress is in the midst of a rough stretch (five of six inherited runners scored in June), the righty is still maintaining the strengths of his profile. For example, Jeffress has allowed three groundballs for every two flyballs, while also striking out 35 percent of batters faced; it’s no wonder that the relief ace has allowed only one run of his own over this stretch.

All of this is a brief analysis of appreciation for one of the very best relievers in baseball, the member of yet another iconic Brewers bullpen duo (the previous being with southpaw Will Smith). Jeffress’s recent stretch demonstrates that even though one could perceive that the strong bullpen is “regressing,” by point of fact the underlying performance remains strong and the bullpen, if anything, has faltered from “phenomenal” to “merely great.”

Photo Credit: Charles LeClaire, USA Today Sports Images

Even after the acquisitions of Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich, Domingo Santana still figured to be a key player on the team moving forward. Santana broke out last year in his age-24 season, with career highs in TAv (.306), OBP (.371), home runs (30) and pretty much every other positive offensive number.

Unfortunately, Santana’s April performance has left a lot to be desired. His TAv has plummeted to .243, his OBP. is down to .327 and most damningly, he hasn’t hit a home run. Looking at his plate discipline stats, nothing is terribly out of line when compared with 2017. He’s facing slight fewer pitches in the strike zone, he’s swinging slightly more, and he’s making less contact, none of which are great signs, but we’re looking at differences of 2 percentage points each way. Here are perhaps more worrying numbers:

His increased swing rate has solely come on pitches outside of the strike zone. He’s making less contact on strikes and more contact on would-be balls, and he’s swinging and missing more than ever. Santana’s 35 percent swinging strike rate is 21^st overall amongst MLB hitters who have faced at least 250 pitches (a rough proxy for qualified batters at this stage).

Taking up the contact issue, when Santana is striking the ball, he’s not hitting it well. He’s hitting ground balls in more than half of his at-bats, which is not productive for someone with his offensive profile. When he’s not hitting grounders, Santana is popping up at a higher rate this year compared with 2017. He’s also not hitting line drives.

This is likely a blip on the road to another successful season, but Santana needs to work to pick up his production. Tightening up his batting eye and not pressing and swinging at pitches outside the zone will give him more hittable pitches. Right now pitchers are feeding him a steady diet of pitches low and generally away. Those aren’t pitches he’s been successful against in the past. If he can force some more throws higher in the zone, hopefully he can start driving the ball again.

Jeremy Jeffress pitched in Friday’s game, getting two outs, one via strike out and allowing no runs. Jeffress has now allowed a run in only one of his fifteen appearances, comprising fourteen total innings. This year, he’s made a change to his arsenal. He started toying with a splitter back in 2015, but didn’t really start using it until last year, with his usage increasing throughout the season. Jeffress has kept throwing the splitter for more than 20 percent of his pitches, generally at the expense of his sinker. Specifically, the split has become his go to pitch when ahead in the count and/or when the batter has two strikes. Before he became a Brewer (again) last July 31, the sinker and curveball were used most often in those situations.

Jeffress has never been a big strikeout pitcher, which has limited his ceiling both in terms of advanced metrics and ability to get out of jams in late innings, since he can’t rely on striking out hitters at will. However, his strikeout rate has ticked up, due in part to the splitter. He gets more whiffs on the pitch than any other pitch he throws. As of now, he’s been doing a good job of throwing the pitch enough for strikes, so batters need to swing. If he continues to develop more of a feel for the pitch and can consistently bury it low, then he may take another step forward and become an elite late inning option.

After the weekend sweep, the Brewers need to lick their wounds and bounce back. Luckily, they’re going to Cincinnati to play the Reds for three games. Unfortunately, Eric Thames can’t be activated in time to make the trip with the team. It’s a short trip as the Brewers will immediately return home to play the Pittsburgh Pirates, who just swept the Cardinals to take the division lead.

Photo Credit: Patrick Gorski, USA Today Sports Images