Yes, Grandal or Realmuto would represent significant upgrades. But in the meantime, David Stearns, Craig Counsell, and the rest of the Brewers staff have been able to squeeze great value out of the current crop of time-shares and journeymen. Looking beyond the major league roster, catcher is a position full of surprising contributors up and down the organizational ladder. What follows is an overview of some of those contributors, as well as some brief notes on their outlook for the 2019 season and beyond. Upgrading would be nice; staying the course is probably fine, as well.

Major League Options

Player Name: Plate Appearances, Batting Average / On Base Percentage / Slugging Percentage, Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP)

Manny Piña; 337 PA, .252/.307/.395, 1.7 WARP
For the second year in a row, Piña handled the lion’s share of catching duties for Milwaukee. He continued to be a steady performer, offering tolerable offense and sturdy defense. His offensive production fell off some, relative to his breakout 2017 campaign, thanks to a slow start and a dip in Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP). Piña turned it on in the second half, hitting .295/.328/.429 after the break even as he lost playing time to immortal folk hero Erik Kratz.

With just over three years of service time on his major league clock, Piña is controllable for three more seasons through the arbitration process. He’ll be 34 by then, so it’s likely that someone else will have wrested away the bulk of available playing time behind the dish. Still, he handles a pitching staff well, and figures to get plenty of turns through the order in 2019 barring a major roster shakeup.

Erik Kratz; 219 PA, .236/.280/.355, 1.4 WARP
Erik Kratz came to the Brewers via a surprise trade with the Yankees, and wasted little time in endearing himself to fans and teammates alike. Though he didn’t bring much of a big league résumé into Milwaukee, he performed quite well in limited time, making up for his anemic offensive output with superlative glove work (11.1 Adjusted Fielding Runs Above Average in fewer than 500 defensive innings!).

Kratz elected free agency when he was removed from the Yankees’ 40-man roster prior to the 2018 season. He re-signed with New York before his trade to Milwaukee, but finished the year with fewer than six years of big league service time to his name. He can be controlled via arbitration for the 2019 season, though at age 39, he may have retirement (or a late career surge as a knuckle-balling reliever) on his mind. I’m not betting on a return, much as my heart hopes otherwise.

Stephen Vogt; Did Not Play in Majors (Shoulder Surgery)
All-around good guy Stephen Vogt was limited to 9 plate appearances for the Biloxi Shuckers in May before undergoing season-ending shoulder surgery. It was the second major shoulder operation of Vogt’s career; his big league future is in jeopardy. I’m not aware of any public information on his rehab, but Vogt could be controlled via arbitration in 2019 if he’s able to work his way back to the ball field.

For his career, Vogt is a .251/.310/.416 hitter, good for a strong .267 True Average (TAv). He’s below-average with the glove, though, and struggled to throw out base runners even before re-injuring his throwing arm. He’s well-loved among his teammates, but Vogt’s path back to the majors may be as a reserve first baseman or a DH.

Jacob Nottingham; 196 PA, .281/.347/.528 in Triple-A
Public opinion of Nottingham was fairly sour heading in to the year, and it’s not too difficult to see why: A .209/.326/.369 slash line in your second year of AA isn’t going to win over many casual fans. Biloxi is a run-suppressing environment, though, in a tough league for hitters. So that same ugly triple-slash translated to a barely-above-average.264 TAv. This year, with much better baseball-card stats courtesy of Colorado Springs, Nottingham’s TAv in the minors was all the way up to .282.

Expecting that kind of production in the big leagues, at least at first, is probably foolish. In his (very) limited time in Milwaukee, Nottingham compiled just 24 plate appearances and looked a tad over-matched at times, striking out on eight occasions. He also drew four walks, to his credit, and the sample size is far too small to be seriously examined. Most excitingly, Nottingham can seriously hurt a baseball when he finds one in his sweet spot, to the tune of 450+ feet. He’s made tremendous strides with the glove over the last few years, transforming himself into something approaching an average defensive catcher. Couple that with league-average-or-better offense at the position, and he still has the ability to produce sneaky value for the Brewers over the next six seasons. (Catchers in 2018 batted .232/.304/.372, so Nottingham doesn’t have to turn into Pudge Rodriguez to give the Brewers a boost.) I’m hoping he piles up a couple hundred big league plate appearances next season.

Jett Bandy; 216 PA, .292/.353/.510 in Triple-A
Bandy broke camp with the Brewers, but failed to impress. He hit .188/.268/.266 with shaky defense in 24 games before being removed from the roster and passed over on waivers. The 28-year-old came alive in Triple-A, but he’s reaching do-or-die status as a major league contributor. He’ll have to contend with at least two of the above names on the depth chart, and will likely struggle to find big league playing time should he remain in the Brewers organization. Still, he’s youngish enough and talented enough that he has a chance to shed his current quad-A label and become a solid backup with some pop.

Prospects and Depth

Christian Bethancourt; 418 PA, .297/.328/.506 in Triple-A
Brought in on a minor league pact, Bethancourt played very well in his return from the pitcher’s mound. He has soft hands behind the dish, and a good arm. He also hit a bit in Colorado Springs, with 20 home runs and a nifty .271 TAv. One knock on his offense: He gave away plenty of walks as a pitcher, but largely refuses them as a hitter.

Bethancourt was brought into the organization on a minor league pact. There will be plenty of plate appearances available for catchers in AAA next year, but it’s no guarantee that Bethancourt will be making the move to San Antonio along with the rest of the organization’s most advanced minor leaguers. Plenty of rebuilding clubs may take a roll of the dice on the former top prospect.

Dustin Houle and Max McDowell, Advanced A & Double-A
These two are the same age, and at about the same stage developmentally. Houle was drafted out of high school way back in 2011; McDowell followed from college in 2015.

Houle is a big-bodied catcher without a true carrying tool. He’s got a decent arm and is fairly strong, but the lack of a hit tool cramps his game power. He’s a nice organizational depth piece, but something very strange will have happened if he sees major league time in 2019.

McDowell has a bit more upside, with a strong throwing arm, decent athleticism, solid glove, and some untapped raw power. He flashed a nice bat in Wisconsin in 2016, but his hit tool hasn’t progressed much as he’s moved up the ladder. He’s got a chance to turn into a light-hitting backup at the highest level.

Mario Feliciano; 165 PA, .205/.282/.329 in Advanced A
2018 was basically a lost season for the 19-year-old, who battled back from an arm injury to play in 42 games for the Carolina Mudcats. He started slow in June, showed signs of life in July, then cratered in August. It was a disappointing year for a player who impressed in 2017 as one of the youngest prospects in the Midwest League. Ultimately, though, I see little reason to dampen long-term expectations. Catching at Class-Advanced A is an almost laughable challenge for a 19-year-old. He should return for another round in 2019, and I expect him to play pretty well. Keep in mind that the Carolina League is hard on hitters, so his stat line may not be all that impressive. The fact that he’ll be there at all, though, at 20 years old? Impressive. The defense could use some work, and he has plenty of time for that. Meanwhile, he could develop into a .270 hitter with a line-drive approach and average power.

Feliciano is currently playing in the Arizona Fall League to make up for some of his lost time this year. It’s not working, though: He’s only worked his way into two games, with one single in four at bats.

Payton Henry; 389 PA, .234/.327/.380 in Advanced A
Henry had a rough April and a tremendous May, followed by an acceptable June and July and a ghastly August and September. He’s a bat-first prospect with plus raw power, but he struck out in about 32 percent of his plate appearances. He needs to work on his receiving and his arm if he wants to stay behind the plate; he becomes a much less exciting prospect if he moves to first base or an outfield corner.

Worth Noting
Finally, backstops David Fry and Robie Rojas are due a mention here. Fry hit .315/.406/.563 while playing catcher, first base, and third base for the rookie league Helena Brewers. He drew 29 walks and struck out just 42 times in 261 plate appearances. Rojas, a 38th-round pick in 2017, spent plenty of time on the 7-day Disabled List and was relegated to the minor league taxi squad. He managed just 66 plate appearances on the year, including 13 at Triple-A, and hit surprisingly well in a (very small) 13-game sample in Carolina. All together, he had a line of .304/.409/.393.

Fry’s rookie league stats, while nice, are by and large worthless, and I have no idea what to make of Rojas at this point. But I’ll be curious to see what the organization does with both of these prospects in 2019.

Those narratives will undoubtedly carry into 2018 guided by the very same contradictions: Milwaukee will indeed be developing many young players at the MLB level (including Lewis Brinson, Josh Hader, Brett Phillips, and Brandon Woodruff), while the team also has several opportunities to improve with established players (either through trades involving their prospects, through free agency signings, or both).

To put it another way: GM David Stearns can take the roster in several directions, and certainly has the resources available to contend while continuing to develop some players.

One way to assess player value, and therefore roster needs, is to estimate the surplus value that each player (and their contractual situation) provides the team. Value is assumed to be production and scarcity, recognizing that a player is not simply valuable to a club based on production, but also based on cost and the general availability of that skill set within the MLB. Surplus is the difference provided between a player’s production and their contract, recognizing that these aspects can be double-counted (a team simultaneously receives a player’s production on the field and their production gauged against their contract). Based on these assumptions, I tracked the surplus value of the Brewers 40-man roster (as of October 20, 2017) by using harsh depreciation to reduce each player’s maximum value (recognizing that a player’s performance typically declines over time save for rare cases).

The following chart tracks changes in surplus entering 2017 to entering 2018, while also assigning an Overall Future Potential (OFP) role for each Brewers roster member:

What these surplus numbers can suggest, in the abstract, is the difference between “the number of the wins above replacement” a player will produce during their contract and the OFP a team might receive if they traded the player at this point in time (alternately, they might suggest a contract range; for example, if the Brewers offered Neil Walker a $30 million contract, they would likely retain some surplus value during that contract).

Using the extremely interesting and difficult case of Jonathan Villar to interpret this table, his 2016 campaign and contract control years still loom large enough to suggest that the Brewers should not move the infielder for cheap; but the shortstop-turned-bench/utility option does mean that Villar’s ultimate role is trending downward, meaning that if Milwaukee believes that role decline is real and will continue to materialize, moving Villar for less than his top value could offset the issues of rostering a declining role. This should outline the difficulty of making roster decisions: in the case of Villar, there is not necessarily a right answer.

I should add that surplus value is abstract in the sense that there is a point at which additional surplus does not provide a team transaction value. Scooter Gennett and Chris Carter should be the most specific examples of this phenomenon in recent Brewers memory, as both players retained solidly positive surplus value entering 2017, but were essentially unwanted on the trade market and therefore expendable for nothing. Following this example, a rule of thumb might be to expect any type of roster move once a player’s surplus value dips below $20 million (or, less than three wins above replacement). Looking at the table of the Brewers roster above, this fact should seem intuitive with many of the names on the list (for example, it is highly unlikely that the Brewers would be able to move a player like Andrew Susac or even Eric Thames for their maximal surplus value).

By averaging each player’s 2017, 2018, and OFP surplus value, and comparing that to their change in value over time, a rather intuitive 2018 roster emerges. In this case, I excluded each player with a Negative-50 percent change in value (ex., a 50 percent decline), which produced need at Catcher, Second Base, and Right-Handed Pitcher, with additional question marks about the Utility roles. This is a rather succinct picture of the actual needs for the 2018 Brewers, and it also shows that if a few key free agents are retained, or similar free agents from outside the organizational signed, the Brewers can assemble quite a good roster:

These tables need not force an analyst to rely on numbers alone in order to validate roster decisions. Compare the following descriptions of potential role upgrades for the 2018 Brewers with those players’ statistical trends, and find nearly 20 roster spots (on the 40-Man) that can be upgraded for 2018:

The benefit of this exercise is that additional roster functions can be analyzed, either through descriptive or analytical means. For example, one could compare some of the best Rule 5 Draft Roster Protection candidates with the players above in order to find the most salient moves for the future value of the organization. Via Brewerfan.net:

Once again, this should exhibit a rather intuitive process of evaluation. If the future value of a catcher such as Jacob Nottingham is better than either Stephen Vogt, Andrew Susac, or Jett Bandy (or all three players), it should not hurt to lose one of those players in order to roster Nottingham. Each of these catchers are good candidates for contractual non-tenders for this reason (and, indeed, catcher is a position that the Brewers can upgrade in terms of depth behind/alongside Manny Pina). Similarly, allowing Matt Garza to walk via free agency and rostering Marcos Diplan, Freddy Peralta, or Devin Williams in that place should improve the pitching surplus of the roster. Where it gets more interesting is considering a player like Mauricio Dubon, and whether he simply takes the spot of free agent Eric Sogard, or overtakes Villar or Hernan Perez.

Using these analytical approaches should validate the fact that the Brewers are in a unique position entering 2018. They are a good team, indeed, that also features many up-and-coming players to develop at the MLB level and many declining roles that can be replaced. Where surplus value becomes useful is targeting particular trades, or simply determining when a player should be released or non-tendered.

A player like Keon Broxton, Perez, Susac, or Vogt should demonstrate this difficult decision-making process, and perhaps cause fans to realign their expectations that these types of players can receive impactful trade returns to Milwaukee. Given the packed outfield for 2018, the Brewers could conceivably release a player like Broxton should trade partners refuse to bite with a 45-to-50 OFP / quality depth trade (matching Broxton’s $11.5M-to-$19.8M surplus), for the trouble is that Broxton’s expected role is indeed declining (and any particular trade partner will also know that). This should not simply be viewed as picking on Broxton, as the point exists for Vogt and several other players on the roster.

“Slingin’ Stearns” earned his nickname for wheeling-and-dealing on the trade market during his first offseason in Milwaukee, but that reputation has calmed over time (not surprisingly, as the club completed their rebuilding process). Stearns did not show any hesitation in aggressively using waiver claims and releases to define his 2016-2017 offseason, and now the GM’s reputation may be defined by how effectively he clears roster space for what’s next: refined future development and improved MLB roles to contend in 2018.

The 2017 season proved that these goals can align and coexist within the same roster, so there are no excuses for failing to improve this strategy by learning from the 2017 progression.

Photo Credit: Jim Young, USAToday Sports Images.

Related Reading:
Brewers Claim Vogt
Brewers Revolving Waiver Claims

If there was any doubt before, the Vogt claim certainly cements the fact that David Stearns, who I’ve affectionately called “the thrift-shop GM” in the past, has an affinity for this process, which essentially gives teams a free trial on somebody else’s flotsam. The David Stearns who runs a contender has a recognizable M.O. if you’ve been following the David Stearns who built that contender from the rubble. But the Vogt claim reflects a subtle shift in strategy from previous waiver moves, which tells us that the team is trying to compete in 2017.

Up until now, the Brewers’ waiver claims have shared a common thread of unseen, or unrealized, potential. Nick Franklin is a former top prospect who just turned 26 years old at the start of the season. Junior Guerra was a total lottery ticket that turned into a jackpot. Jhan Marinez and Rob Scahill weren’t good enough for someone else’s bullpen, but were young and promising, and, hey, Milwaukee had the roster space to stash ‘em. All of those pickups came with a potential payoff that was pretty big which is essential to consider when you’re building a contender from the ground up.

Stephen Vogt, however, is unlikely to appreciate in value. He’s a catcher in name, but he’s sorta crummy behind the plate. And by “he’s sorta crummy,” I mean “deployed regularly, he’ll actively cost your team a dozen or more runs per full season:”

But for the past three years, that’s just been the cost of doing business with Vogt’s bat. His career isolated power mark of .158 is borderline elite by catcher standards. His career True Average is .266, which is not great, but also not exactly mitigating the value of all that power. Vogt has been bad this year, but he’s also been a little bit unlucky (evidenced by a .242 BABIP versus his .276 career mark).

You’ve heard him referred to frequently in the past few days as “two-time All-Star Stephen Vogt,” and in light of that casual fans could be forgiven for assuming that we just inexplicably got a superstar for free. But that’s not the case. At his best, Vogt is a little bit better than replacement level. If a change of scenery is enough to kick him back to that level, the Brewers just upgraded their backup catcher spot. And if not, they can move on from Vogt in a couple of weeks, recall Jett Bandy from AAA, and forget this whole thing ever happened.

Vogt’s career ISO is a hair lower than Bandy’s (by .012) but his TAv, BB percentage, and K percentage are all significantly better. And as Jack Moore showed at BPMilwaukee earlier this week, Bandy has deteriorated from a top-tier backup to, well, a guy who needs something to change. Thankfully, the demotion seems to have energized Bandy, who launched a monster grand slam in his first game with the Sky Sox:

Jett Bandy grand slam HR in his 1st game with the #SkySox. pic.twitter.com/hmIRyEeAuR

— Brewers Prospects (@BrewerProspect) June 28, 2017

Vogt has played in just 477 Major League games, but he’s 32 years old and a catcher. For all we know, he could be finished. But if he’s not, and he’s an improvement over Bandy, that makes the Playoff Stretch Brewers just a little more capable of hanging with the Cubs and Cardinals. And, obviously, it gives the team a capable, three-deep depth chart behind the plate.

Andrew Susac, once thought to be the team’s catcher of the future, is off track at Colorado Springs. Susac is slashing just .190/.241/.410 and striking out a ghastly 32.8 percent of the time. If an injury were to sideline Manny Pina for any extended period of time, calling that up to the big-league level in the heart of a playoff race is simply not acceptable. Adding Vogt might seem targeted at Bandy, and there’s no doubt that getting him back on track is essential, but it’s also a buffer against Susac being forced into big-league duty before he can fix whatever’s wrong.

Like David Stearns’s prior waiver-wire gambles, this is a smart bet, made with a player that could provide a payoff on this particular roster. The big difference is the time frame of the move. Milwaukee’s front office, in claiming Vogt, has said, if tepidly, that winning in 2017 is a priority. It will be interesting to see how that mindset shapes the rest of the summer’s moves.

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.

• Eric Thames, nearly a handful of years removed from the MLB, previously a Korean Baseball Organization superstar, translated his overseas success into strong MLB value for the club’s $16 million gamble (1.9 WARP).

• Travis Shaw, a sometimes-platooned third baseman caught in a packed Red Sox infield, flashing his potential as a full-time player (1.4 WARP).

• Jimmy Nelson, a previously middling innings eater in the rotation, now two new pitches and mechanical changes deep into his career, showcasing a solid new look on the mound (1.1 WARP).

• Orlando Arcia, the club’s former top prospect from the 2015 Biloxi breakout, now materializing that fantastic glove on the MLB diamond as the bat develops (1.1 WARP).

• Manny Pina, a former Player To Be Named Later, emerging at the catcher position due to the prolonged absence of Andrew Susac and a gamble on his late 2016 “breakout” (1.1 WARP).

• Corey Knebel, a formerly hyped “high leverage relief” prospect acquired way back in the Yovani Gallardo trade, now receiving a chance to showcase that electric stuff under the microscope of the closer’s role (1.0 WARP).

I do not have one doubt in my mind that if BPMilwaukee, or anyone, really, ran a series of preseason articles claiming that this six-pack of players would lead the Brewers to the top of the division into June, that would have been dismissed as much worse than wishful thinking. Yet, here we are, a gang of unsung players and a couple of hyped prospects are leading the Brewers and creating fantastic value. These six players comprise half the club’s wins above replacement value.

Related Reading:
Cashing Out OFP
Bandy-Maldonado
Aging Braun

Yet, if one compares the current production and contractual status of the Brewers’ major contributors to the preseason surplus expectations, one can find that the expected leaders heading into the season have also been quite strong for the Brewers. Essentially, the vast majority of the expected leaders entering the season have continued to provide value for the roster while another set of depth players are surpassing their expected surplus and that surprising set of leaders paces the WARP rankings.

The following table showcases the Brewers’ current production, compared to their preseason depreciated surplus value. Depreciated surplus value calculates a player’s three-year production basis at 70 percent value, and then prorates that depreciated figure according to the player’s contractual situation. The goal is to project a player’s future production on a declining scale, rather than an optimistic scale. In order to project current value, I also created an expanded depreciated surplus metric, which calculates a player’s 2014-2017 production, basically expanding the three-year model to a 3.33 model. To compare depreciated and bullish models, I also simply projected a player’s value if they maintained peak 2017 performance for the remainder of their contractual reserve. Money is not figured into arbitration or league minimum (reserve) contracts, since those players ostensibly cost the club nothing to release (ex., arbitration eligible players can be non-tendered between seasons at no cost, and the cost of releasing a league minimum player is negligible). For players age-26 or younger, I added an Overall Future Potential (OFP) valuation (Thames has a preseason OFP valuation to express the inability of assessing his expected talent level).

Compare that ranking with the 2017 surplus value leaders entering the season; this is probably the group of players that fans and analysts reasonably would have expected to lead the club. Veteran Ryan Braun and newcomer Junior Guerra have not been bad, but both missed time with injury (0.8 WARP); Jonathan Villar and Zach Davies have struggled to varying degrees (although Davies’s Sunday start against the Dodgers was an exclamation point on the idea that the righty was heading the proper direction) (-0.6 WARP); Travis Shaw is materializing his surplus value and serving as one of the production leaders (1.4 WARP); and Carlos Torres, Hernan Perez, and Keon Broxton are generally serving as valuable depth (1.7 WARP).

Entering the season, this group of players represented $235.8 million in surplus value, which vaguely cashes out into 33-to-34 MLB wins (those wins can be long-term or short-term, obviously depending on when GM David Stearns decides to cash them out); adding the updated “extended depreciated surplus” metric results in $253.2 million in surplus value, or 36-to-37 wins. What is thrilling about this development is that this group of players averages 3.7 years of contractual reserve, meaning that the club has another chance to return many of these players to try and advance this roster once in another year. The actual depreciation of these roster assets has suspended for a year, and the value of these players to the organization is higher because they have improved as a group.

Surplus value is obviously quite an abstract and contentious measurement. First, one can define both scarcity (of a skillset, or service time, etc.) and production in many different ways. Even if one were settled on the idea that “value = production + scarcity,” questions about whether to depreciate a player’s expected production going forward, or to use a player’s maximal outlook, and every question inbetween, would render that equation of suspect meaning.

Even with this caveat in mind, I want to suggest that one of the reason the Brewers are successful in 2017 is that Stearns has capitalized on players that maximized their surplus value in short order. Basically, this group of players have largely staved off any immediate delivery of depreciation, which is thrilling for the roster core and the trade deadline. It would have been ridiculous to suggest that perhaps Jett Bandy could produce enough value to be flipped for a 50 Overall Future Potential (OFP) prospect by the deadline, and perhaps even more bullish to suggest that he would materialize as a long-term quality depth catching option. The same might go for Jacob Barnes or Domingo Santana or even Eric Thames (who would probably be very difficult to trade, in terms of finding a prospect partner that matches his divisive historical profile and approach to the game). This is one way to cash out the improved surplus scenario for the Brewers; but one can also simply say that Stearns has successfully assembled a gang of players that produced three-to-four additional wins in organizational value thus far.

In Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London (University of Chicago, 2006), Caitlin Zailoom presents an ethnography of commodity markets that demonstrates the embodiment of these markets, as well as the gendered, strategic, and technological standpoints that define commodity markets in space. While many understand the market truth of “buy low, sell high,” most do not dig any deeper than that truism into the strategic forms that materialize that mantra for shareholders. Zailoom demonstrates two specific strategies that allow commodity traders to maximize value: scalping and spreading. A “scalp” is a trade that seeks to immediately capitalize on an asset’s value, while a “spread” strategy focuses on taking offsetting short and long term positions to deliver profitable returns. Both of these strategies are applicable to Stearns and the Brewers front office for the trade season, which many fans are falsely equivocating into “win now” or “continue the rebuild” categories; rather, Stearns can move in several contrarian directions in order to maximize the Brewers’ current and future value.

Scalpers are a fascinating type. Zailoom writes, “local traders hope to profit from correctly predicting the movements of the market up or down and risk losing their own money in the process. They are speculators in the most pure sense — individuals making money purely on the changing prices of financial commodities. Although locals have a variety of trading strategies, most of them are known as ‘scalpers.’ Scalpers trade in and out of the market within seconds or minutes, profiting from small price fluctuations. Making hundreds of trades during the course of the day, the scalper never goes home owning contracts” (p. 62). Obviously, the metaphor of going home without owning contracts cannot apply to a baseball team, but the spirit of quickly capitalizing on moving prices might be applied to many of the players reserved on the Brewers roster. A “spread” strategy most certainly can be applied to baseball trading cycles: “A spreader takes opposing positions in each of two instruments, using the more stable contract to limit the loss potential of a position in the more volatile product” (Zailoom, p. 86). This type of strategy might be ascribed to the notion of “trading from depth,” which ostensibly means that the club is mitigating production volatility by “selling” a player from a position of strength (which therefore equals less organizational risk) in order to “buy” production for another area of the team (ostensibly shifting short-term risk to this acquisition).

A brief visualization, where ‘X’ are the Brewers, and the Brewers are trading with two partners in separate transactions (Team Y, Team Z) involving Overall Future Potential (prospects) and WARP (MLB players) that may be cashed out over an unknown period of time:

Stearns can essentially (1) hedge three-to-four surplus wins created with the MLB roster (basically keeping this as “cash in hand” or “organizational collateral”), (2) trade a “less valuable” MLB player while the iron is hot (a “scalp”), and (3) trade valuable prospects for a more valuable MLB player. This sequence might be the equivalent of flipping a player like Domingo Santana to an American League club (maximizing his offensive value and mitigating his defense), while also trading multiple prospects for a controllable starting pitcher. This is an extremely risky series of deals, but exogenous to the model are those three-to-four surplus wins that essentially mean Stearns really is playing with house money (a familiar theme here at BPMilwaukee).

Consider the Brewers’ current catching depth to demonstrate a scalp and spread. Given the injury status of Andrew Susac, and the relatively slow development of advanced prospect Jacob Nottingham, the position is not necessarily a true position of depth for the organization (especially given the physical toll of the position). Yet, there are other stateside prospect assets around the organization (from Dustin Houle to Mario Feliciano to Jose Sibrian) that could conceivably build a pool of prospects large enough to offset risk of short-term moves. Stearns could “scalp” the monstrous surplus gains of Jett Bandy, which would be about as short a turnaround as one could provide in baseball (ex., a trade in two consecutive “windows,” consecutive offseason to midseason windows). Pina, Susac, Nottingham, Houle, and waivers would provide the most immediate risk mitigation here, with low-ball prospects potentially providing the greatest long-term payout to this strategy for Milwaukee. A “spread” move could see the Brewers buy- and sell- in different directions, depending on available moves to maximize club surplus; it should not necessarily be surprising to see Stearns deal some prospects and also deal some MLB depth. Faced with a roster that has already added up to four wins in depreciated surplus value, and a farm system overflowing with prospects, Stearns can “cash” those four wins in a variety of ways.

Adding layers of deals, the Brewers can take “spread” positions across MLB and minor league levels. Perhaps this means using one deal to trade a flyball prospect (like Trey Supak)…

…and another deal to return a groundball prospect, while using additional deals to return MLB rotational and bullpen depth:

The point is not necessarily to dig into specific players here (really, nearly everyone except for a handful of players should have a transaction value for the organization). Rather, the point is to demonstrate that using embodied market strategies can help transcend the “win now” / “continue the rebuild” trade conundrum that is currently consuming Brewers fans and analysts. The Brewers need not do anything other than return maximal future surplus and present surplus with their MLB players and prospects. Thus may we enter “neverbuilding,” or “counterbuilding supreme”: with significant organizational collateral in hand (three-to-four additional surplus wins) Milwaukee has an opportunity to continue competing in 2017 while transcending the “win now” and “win never.”

Perhaps this trade is most interesting because two months into the season, the principal assets in the deal are substantially equal at the MLB level: Bandy claims 0.7 WARP entering play Wednesday evening, Maldonado a cool 1.0. This might be surprising to some, as there was reason to question the trade for Milwaukee at the time of the deal.

I took this line between the Baseball Prospectus Transaction Analysis and roster analysis at BPMilwaukee. For the TA, I pitched Maldonado as a potentially serviceable gamble for a starting catching job: “Last season across MLB there were 108 catchers and that group produced median marks of 146 plate appearances, a .237 True Average, and -0.3 Fielding Runs Above Average. By those standards, Maldonado looks like an intriguing gamble for the vacant starting position in Anaheim, thanks to his 3.9 FRAA and .245 TAv marks in Milwaukee.” On Bandy, I basically punted: “It’s easy to shake this one off as an inconsequential deal at the margins of the roster, and there are some arguments to be made that the Brewers could have maximized their catching value with Susac and Maldonado. However, if Milwaukee consistently makes these types of value plays in each area of the roster they’ll maximize the odds of eventually contending.” Despite this narrative, when I designed roster surplus analysis for the Brewers rebuilding and counterbuilding trades, there was little question that the Brewers failed to maximize Maldonado’s surplus (see table above), and the loyal readership has remembered:

I remember when @BPMilwaukee said what a bad trade that was for the Brewers. Another nice move by Stearns.

— craigneu (@craigneu) May 27, 2017

Since that point in time, Bandy has become a sensation and fan favorite especially thanks to his dynamic duo sensibilities created with Manny Pina (see Colin Anderle at BPMilwaukee: Manny and The Jett). Compared to Maldonado, Bandy still has much less of a track record, but he also provides the Brewers with a clearer sense of his present production value and the club has reserve and arbitration rights through 2021. So, I’m not making this up, using depreciated surplus to account for 2017 production value thus far and remaining future value, the only aspect separating Maldonado and Bandy (besides Drew Gagnon) in terms of surplus value is Maldonado’s small $1.7M contract; extracting cash from the situation makes Bandy and Maldonado perfectly even:

Since the day of the trade, in terms of pure WARP, Maldonado has delivered approximately 72 percent of that initial surplus to Anaheim, while Bandy has already materialized 86 percent of his surplus in Milwaukee; basically, Maldonado’s final arbitration year with the Angels will turn into a boon for that organization, and Bandy’s contract reserve years look less like a mundane fact and more like an organizational asset. For both teams, this deal is already a smashing success in terms of overall return and immediate return (this is important: great immediate return maximizes odds that either club could trade either player in the near future, as well as reassess bullish or bearish predictions of future performance). Both catchers would be worth approximately one 50 OFP (Overall Future Potential) prospect grade at the deadline.

What’s fascinating about sifting through the elements of Bandy’s and Maldonado’s respective performances is that they are almost completely different players. Bandy is a near-three true outcomes bat-first catcher, although it is worth mentioning that his defensive performance has stabilized behind the plate since the beginning of the season. Maldonado is a batting average heavy player at the plate, but the Angels arguably tolerate his shortcomings in the plate discipline department thanks to his exceptional framing and solid throwing performances. Maldonado has also faced significantly tougher opposition than Bandy thus far in 2017.

Zach Crizer featured the value of Maldonado’s framing performance for the Angels pitching staff at Baseball Prospectus a couple of weeks ago, concluding, “Obviously, the Angels would love to have both a good-framing catcher and a staff full of pitchers who can produce without walking a called-strike tightrope. But they don’t have those pitchers. They have a bunch of hurlers inordinately better off staying further from the middle of the plate, and a catcher who can help enact that strategy more successfully than just about anyone, apparently. This wasn’t an accident, either. You’ll recall the Angels went out of their way to trade Jett Bandy, a not-bad-but-not-great defensive catcher with more team control and more offensive upside, for Maldonado over the offseason. Call me crazy, but that sounds like they’re using pitch framing to their distinct advantage. And I bet it doesn’t end there.”

It’s a fool’s errand to be concerned about “winning trades.” One trade can take many different forms over many different years, and it’s pointless to simply stop with the day-of analysis or the post hoc analysis. Digging into game theory or welfare economics, one could even question the ideal of seeking equilibrium in trade analysis, using linear time assumptions for both parties, or assuming equal bargaining positions for both parties. Setting that aside: Right now, this moment in time, it’s fascinating to look at the Bandy-Maldonado swap because they basically offer almost perfectly similar surplus despite their contractual scenarios and game profiles. This should be a helpful demonstration about what makes one WARP: no single Win Above Replacement need be created equal, in fact it need not even be a family resemblance.

Milwaukee turned a $5.7M surplus gamble (and a potential half-a-win surplus hit) into approximately two future wins for the organization, while Anaheim turned what might have been one certain win into nearly two future wins. In terms of trade value, Bandy and Maldonado are matching punch for punch, which will only leave Brewers fans questioning whether they would rather have that supreme thump in the bottom of the batting order, or that beautiful strike zone framing for this upstart pitching staff. Returning to my original transaction analysis, finding an additional Win Above Replacement in each marginal roster deal is indeed what will help propel the Brewers to sustained contending seasons; both the Angels and the Brewers prove this is why you don’t slack off at the margins of the roster.

Milwaukee’s pitching staff is going to be a concern the rest of the season. If anything is going to bring this team crashing down after this fantastic start, it’s the club’s undeniably thin starting rotation. But so far, the Milwaukee Nine has had the most potent offense in the entire league. The Brewers lead the entire circuit with 65 home runs, and their 5.3 runs per game trails only Washington’s 5.8 in the National League. Milwaukee’s only chance at contending over a full season is for this offense to keep up this fantastic performance.

Is there any shot? The Brewers have had a few high-octane offense teams flame out in recent years, most notably in 2007 and 2014, and it would be understandable if Brewers fans were a bit gunshy about trusting this squad. But since we can already acknowledge that this is a season played with house money, a season where the Brewers had no business competing whatsoever according to every single prognosticator, I’m going to indulge myself. I believe in this offense, and here’s why:

1) This team is built to hit at Miller Park
Miller Park has small corner outfields, especially in right field, where the addition of the Beerpen created an extremely short porch for left-handed hitters to target. Over the previous three seasons, Miller Park has been among the top three most favorable parks for home runs from left-handed hitters, with a park factor of 120 or greater over all three seasons.

The two major additions the Brewers made to their offense this offseason, Travis Shaw and Eric Thames, are perfect for this ballpark. Because the walls are so tight, the kind of gap power that leads to doubles and triples isn’t as rewarded as the kind of raw power that can turn fly balls into home runs. With this team currently relying on left-handed power in a big way, as well as sluggers like Domingo Santana in there as well, it should come as no surprise that the Brewers are performing much better at home. They have hit 36 of those 65 homers at Miller Park and own a 63-point superior OPS at home.

The Brewers are still a decent offensive team on the road, where they own a .757 OPS, nine percent better than the league average in the split per Baseball Reference. But the fact that this club has players who are tailor made for the ballpark lends a bit more credence to their excellent play at Miller Park, and gives some reason to believe they can continue it.

2) The lineup has shown remarkable depth
Obviously, Eric Thames has been the story of the season, but the lineup’s success goes far beyond his monster performance. The Brewers have been below average at only two spots in the batting order this year: the leadoff spot, thanks to Jonathan Villar’s struggles, and the sixth spot, where no single player has taken more than 42 at-bats. Naturally, the Brewers have had the best production out of the second spot, where Eric Thames has powered a .289/.401/.620 line. But they’ve also gotten the fourth-best production out of the seventh spot, where Keon Broxton has powered a composite .302/.355/.553 line. And in the eighth spot, huge games from Eric Sogard and Jett Bandy combined with Orlando Arcia’s recent hot streak have produced an .810 OPS, eighth in the league and 98 points above the league average.

When the season first started, I was thinking this club might resemble some of the late 2000s Brewers teams that had extremely top heavy lineups revolving around Ryan Braun, Prince Fielder, and one or two other solid hitters. But that hasn’t proven to be the case. The Brewers have seven qualified hitters with at least a 110 OPS+, and even if a couple fall off the pace, this is still a lineup that won’t allow pitchers to let their guard down at any point.

3) Eric Thames and Ryan Braun are a dynamic duoIn 2011, Braun and Fielder finished with OPS+ marks of 166 and 164 respectively. This year, Thames owns a 185 OPS+, and Braun sits at a cool 143. Having a duo of such quality hitters back-to-back is such a boon for a lineup. Thames’s plate discipline provides RBI opportunities for Braun, and Braun’s power makes hitters afraid to put Thames on base. Additionally, the lefty-righty double punch of Thames and Braun sets up a gauntlet for opposing managers in the later innings. Even if the lefty specialist can retire Thames, Braun is waiting, one of the best hitters in the league against left-handed pitchers.

Braun has performed at this level before and has been excellent over the past couple of years. Thames, of course, remains a bit of a wild card. But he has always had tremendous power, and the changes that he has made in regards to his approach and his discipline appear substantial. Even if he doesn’t sustain this level, Thames should be a major power threat the rest of the year, and having to retire the duo of him and Braun four times a game will be a terrifying notion for opposing teams.

There is, of course, so much that can go wrong over the next four months. But for now, this Brewers club is an offensive juggernaut, and there are very real reasons for optimism going forward. By all means, Brewers fans should feel free to ride the wave as long as it lasts.

You see, a chump is a guy, certainly not a superstar, definitely not a long-term average player, maybe a one-time average player, but not really a replacement player in the forgettable sense, perhaps a good replacement player in the memorable sense, a guy sitting on the heap that just needs his chance; there is something memorable, poetic, and ultimately audacious about a chump. (Okay, after checking back, Craig Counsell was a 17.3 WARP player, definitely not a chump. Perhaps #1 in the Chump Hall of Fame?). A chump has no right! to do that, and there he went, making memorable baseball plays, contributing to a winner, or just generally going about the diamond with a spark that even some superstars cannot match. You see, a chump is playing for his chance, his job, his livelihood, and when he gets that chance and succeeds, it’s the best thing in baseball. Better than superstars. Better than hype prospects. A chump might have been a Player-To-Be-Named-Later (PTBNL) in not one but two trades during their respective career; a chump might have been passed up during a couple of waiver windows, only to return with a vengeance at a later date; a chump might have made their MLB debut at age-31 after having traveled across the globe in the singular quest to throw the best splitter in baseball for a time.

So Craig Counsell played 334 PA for the 2007 Brewers with a .222 Total Average (TAv) and 4.9 Fielding Runs Above Average, good for a sparkling 0.2 WARP during that campaign. Now, Counsell has inherited a team that’s even better than those McClungs and Rottinos, for this leader has his Hernans, Keons, Jetts, and Jacobs, among other notable guys. That does not even scratch the surface of other lovable replacement players, like Chase Anderson (who just keeps riding the negative WARP and is therefore not a chump) and Jimmy Nelson (who may be a chump for learning the split change), or system guys like Brent Suter. That does not even include the prospects learning their way, like Zach Davies and Orlando Arcia, both forging roles as serviceable MLB regulars. Like 2007, Ryan Braun is also around, and he’s still fantastic. Some things never change.

These Brewers are just an absurd gang of ragtaggers who just won’t quit. You like situational baseball? These Brewers advance runners at a solid rate, have one of the best productive out percentages in the 2017 NL, and also have one of the highest totals of pinch hits. Oh yeah they also strike out like it’s going out of style, draw some walks, and hit the ball over the fence. Their bullpen is driving the bulk of their pitching staff success despite the loud (and expensive) shortcomings of their closer. Like 2007, we’re playing 4.70+ R/G baseball again, but unlike 2007 these Brewers are not outplaying their run differential. Perhaps one could see the collapse of the 2007 Brewers coming as their early record outpaced their runs scored and runs allowed, but there’s no such luck for this 2017 crew….Pythagoras says they are a 25-18 club, a true top five team on the Senior Circuit.

How, you ask? How did the Brewers assemble this club?

First, they made a whole bunch of transactions that did not make sense on paper throughout the offseason. That’s right, by nearly any metric one could design, the Martin Maldonado trade did not look good. The Neftali Feliz signing was questionable even for a club that needed to spend money. Almost anyone could have picked apart their starting rotation, and hey the starting rotation is weak!, but here we are watching an above-average pitching staff thanks to a strong bullpen and Miller Park’s hitting paradise. I panned their offseason every chance I could because none of this made sense, and I couldn’t be happier to be wrong and enjoying this club…even though their moves did not look great on paper! Cognitive dissonance is the next market inefficiency.

Second, and I’ve selected a group of ten chumps to demonstrate this below, ten chumps worth approximately 6.3 of the Brewers’ 8.4 WARP entering Friday’s game, the Brewers are giving playing time to a group of extremely advanced minor league players that previously had relatively limited (or no) MLB pedigree. These are players that are almost all below 2.0 career WARP, and Eric Thames is the only one threatening 3.0 WARP thus far, and have lists of shortcomings and career detours that could fill the pages of articles galore (some have appeared on this very site!). Perhaps the most important aspect of the Brewers rebuild thus far is not the (boring) assemblage of prospects, but the continual answer to that question, “What if we let this guy play?” Incidentally, several of these players are appearing in peak-range seasons, which suggests that even if these players do not have long-term futures in Milwaukee, this might be the ideal spot on the normal curve where their skills overtake their weaknesses. These players have been adjusting and refining their respective games for years, and now have a chance to showcase their skills in regular MLB time. This is decidedly not the ideal “Next Championship Contending Core” idolized by the win-never cohort of Brewers rebuilding fans, but they are ironically the Next Contending Core if one follows the Runs Scored / Runs Allowed and strengths of this current cast.

An ode to chumps, ranked by Fantastic Chump Factor (FCF), a perfect companion to the 2017 Brewers Top 10 prospect list. The greatest FCF meets three Chump Factors:

An ode to chumps in 2017 is providing sensible win-now moves, at the right price, given the fact that this may be the best convergence of seasons for this uncanny group of grinders. This is the 2002 Angels for the Ivy League Analytics era, a perfect storm of nobodies ready to mash and dash any chance they get, a perfect collection of guys simultaneously having their best seasons. On a 162-game scale, the Brewers offense is on pace to score 95 runs more than an average NL/Miller Park club, and the pitching has swollen to a pace that would be 60 runs better than average (note: the current average run environment is scaled to a 79-win club in 2017 NL/Miller Park). Even if you are inclined to not believe in that park-inflated figure, the bats appear strong enough to turn an average team into a 90-win threshold club. This is all before any of the club’s next-wave prospects reach the MLB. It is impossible to ignore this start, even if it’s “not real,” even if it’s “not a part of the plan,” especially given the Brewers’ obscene stash of cash and prospects ready to maximize MLB wins.

I have previously written that the biggest mistake in the self-perpetuating myth of the rebuild is assuming that time is linear. Rebuilding time is not linear, and this 2017 club is delivering an entertaining exclamation point to that argument: this club could indeed have a chance to win more MLB games than the 2018, 2019, or 2020 Brewers, for this set of contingencies are perhaps more favorable and most pressure free. This instantiation of the Milwaukee Nine are your perfect club precisely through their imperfections, their agglomeration of “this shouldn’t be happening” at every molecular level. In economic development, a common teaching is that governments can’t pick winners, they can at best provide favorable circumstances to produce economic success. So too with MLB front offices: this is the winner that the Brewers are presented with, so now it is time to maximize the odds of winning. The beauty of the 2015-2016 rebuilding campaign is that the right moves during the 2017 season could further bolster this club’s competitive stature for the coming years; if time is not linear, the right moves could bend the probabilities slightly closer to Milwaukee’s favor.

In January of 2016, Baseball Prospectus released a whole slate of new, retroactively-calculated statistics to measure catcher performance. One of these was Framing Runs, which estimated how many runs were saved, or lost, by a catcher’s framing performance. Former Brewers superstar Jonathan Lucroy’s 43.5 Framing Runs in 2011 remains, to date, the highest number recorded in MLB history.

This year, Pina has been doing a fantastic Lucroy impression when Craig Counsell pencils him into the lineup. Statistically, only Yasmani Grandal and former Brewer Martin Maldonado have been better pitch-framers in April. In nine games, Pina has saved Milwaukee just shy of two runs total by turning borderline balls into borderline strikes.

Bandy, on the other hand, has not excelled at this part of the game. Out of 67 qualifying catchers, Bandy ranks 63rd in frame rate. He’s nearly canceled out Pina’s stellar defense, giving back 1.5 of those 1.9 runs saved when he dons the gear. Matt Wieters, who I cautioned against signing this past off-season in large part due to his subpar frame rate, ranks just ahead of Bandy’s pitch-framing game. And Bandy is only sharing the playing time; the other five catchers composing the bottom six for frame rate are all full-timers.

This is not a subtle difference in skills. This is the equivalent of Jonathan Villar vs. Prince Fielder in a discussion about base-stealing. Going by performance so far this season, there’s no question that Pina should be the starter, with Bandy spelling him 1-2 times a week. But, instead, the division of labor has been almost exactly 50/50. Why?

Well, one reason is that this stark contrast in defensive prowess is a relatively new development. Bandy’s framing statistics in the minor leagues indicate that he should be better at this than he’s shown so far:

Conversely, Pina has never been this skilled a pitch-framer before now:

In fact, over his pro career, Pina has been an inconsistent framer, but he’s been worse than he’s been good, on aggregate. Still, one can’t just assume that this flash of brilliance is just a fluke. Pina is a player who is capable of improving his game. For example, just look at how his offensive game has developed.

In 2010 and 2011, Pina was enough of a prospect to get a single sentence in each year’s BP Annual, and both years he was referred to as some form of “good field/no-hit.” From 2011-12, he saw exactly 16 below-replacement-level MLB at-bats for the Royals before disappearing for a multi-year banishment to AAA. Between the 2014 and 2015 seasons, however, the would-be career minor leaguer apparently changed something in a desperate attempt to reverse his fortunes. You’ll notice that his slugging percentage, isolated power, and true average each took a significant leap forward that season, and have held ever since:

Pina is the definition of “warning track power,” and even with the improvements he’s made offensively he’s unlikely to ever hit double-digit home runs at the Major League level. Statcast confirms this by telling us that, while Pina tends to hit the farther than average, he doesn’t really hit it much harder than average:

A look at the data on Fangraphs, who have tracked hard, medium, and soft contact ratios for years, sheds some light on this anomaly. Pina does not have home-run power, but he’s done a great job of maximizing what power he has by avoiding soft contact:

Despite his age, Pina has seen just 129 Major League plate appearances so far. As the book on him starts to get written, it’s entirely possible that this trend will start to correct itself, and Pina’s talent for avoiding bad contact will disappear.

If you believe in Pina’s unique skill set, and you think that he’s going to withstand the adjustments as pitchers learn how to make him work, it makes sense that he should get the majority of the playing time. He’s the better defender by a good margin, and Bandy’s high-octane bat makes him an elite backup. If you believe that Pina’s just getting lucky, especially if you feel that Bandy is capable of framing like he did in the minors, you’d feel that the opposite should be true. Bandy’s track record as a pro is far more encouraging, after all.

At the end of the day, for now the team is hedging their bets for now and giving each catcher a chance to assert their claim to the job. It’s awfully hard to argue against the success that this approach has brought so far.

This past weekend, though, after a long stretch of nothing broken up by the occasional bullpen signing, the Milwaukee hot stove showed some signs of life. Reports emerged linking them as a potential suitor for free-agent catcher Matt Wieters, formerly of the Baltimore Orioles. The pattern-literate will make note of the timing–last year, the Brewers’ biggest free-agency splash occurred in January, when they inked Chris Carter to a one-year deal.

Carter and Wieters are alike in that they’re both useful, but frustrating, veteran players who saw their free agency market come up well short of expectations. In Carter’s case, his offensive defense and tendency to swing and miss will always hold him back, even if his elite power and willingness to take ball four have consistently buoyed him to above replacement level. He’s not going to hurt you, but if you’re a good organization you can probably do better–especially a National League organization that can’t hide Carter as a designated hitter.

Wieters came up through the minor leagues as one of the most hyped prospects in recent memory. He was regarded as a premier defensive prospect all the way back to the 2007 draft, when the Orioles got him with the fifth overall pick. The 2008 season was his first full one as a professional, and he put up a heady offensive campaign too–a .335 True Average and .345/.453/.576 slash line at High-A Fredericksburg got him a promtion to AA Bowie, where he increased those numbers to .338 and .365/.466/.625. And on top of those eye-popping stat lines he was a switch-hitting catcher with elite defensive chops behind the plate. You couldn’t have lab-created a prospect who ticked off every elite-prospect box so neatly and so emphatically.

That being said, it’s hard to call Wieters’ Baltimore tenure a successful one, given the expectations that were placed on him from the outset. Other than the 2014 season, when he played 26 games before being shut down for Tommy John surgery, he hasn’t posted a True Average above .265 in the big leagues. His power production is top-tier for the position, but his durability is a concern and his defense has not been elite in many years. And as yet another tumbleweed drifts lazily across Wieters’ free agent market, one can’t help but speculate just how likely it is that front offices around the league will be just as tepid on Wieters come July.

When the big picture is taken into consideration, it would be pennywise but pound foolish for Milwaukee to bring him in as a mercenary catcher for the first half of 2017.

Because Wieters was a top-five pick who vaporized minor-league pitching with chilling efficiency upon his arrival in the professional ranks, his ensuing Major League career has been narrated as a bust. But is this label really fair? From 2010 through 2013, Wieters posted WARP totals of 2.5, 4.6, 3.3, and 2.1. That’s two years as an average MLB starting catcher, and two years solidly in the first division. He topped 20 home runs in the final three of those seasons too, establishing himself as a reliable power-hitting catcher.

And since then, Wieters has been more hard-luck than hard decline. His 2014 and 2015 seasons were both cut short by the Tommy John surgery, and his .265 BABIP in 2016 was both his second-lowest yet and a full 21 points lower than his career mark, indicating that he could be primed for a rebound if his luck just evens out. His power has eroded slightly from his 20-HR days, but he’s still better than par for the position.

Most importantly, from an offensive perspective, Wieters’ whiff rate stabilized in 2016. In 2015, it spiked at 23.8 percent–a curious development considering that, while rehabbing from elbow surgery, Wieters underwent LASIK surgery. Usually, hitters who get their vision corrected hit much better–this is, to my knowledge, the first case where the reverse happened. But he struck out 18.3 percent in 2016, which is almost perfectly in line with his career mark of 18.8 percent, so we can call that spike a fluke with confidence.

That being said, one legitimate issue that has caused Wieters to fall short of the hype is his less-than-stellar approach at the plate. While Wieters’ patience was hailed as he burned through the minor leagues, he’s posted walk rates of 7.3 percent, 9.4 percent, 8.7 percent, 10.1 percent, 7.4 percent, 5.4 percent, 7.4 percent, and 6.9 percent chronologically as a major leaguer. BrooksBaseball shows that Wieters has always had an unquenchable thirst for the high strike. Furthermore, when there’s a right-handed pitcher on the mound, and there usually is, Wieters is even more likely to flail away at pitches above the hitting zone.

We are 3,000-plus at-bats deep into Wieters’ career. It is the year 2017. You can rest assured that every single team in baseball knows this about Wieters, and that nearly every pitcher that has ever seen him in live action has been coached to attack him with letter-high fastballs and dare him to lay off, because the odds say he can’t. Even now, as a veteran, Wieters is simply unable to help himself when a pitcher climbs the ladder:

But Wieters’ tendency to defeat himself with the high swinging strike has always been an issue, and he pressed through it to post four good MLB seasons. He might never be a Hall of Famer, like he was supposed to be, but fantasy baseball players all know Wieters as one of the most dependable options at a premium position–you know, when he’s healthy. That hasn’t changed, and those skills will likely erode slowly as he ages.

His depreciation as a defensive catcher, however, should be far more alarming to the Brewers’ front office as they evaluate him and decide what their catcher position should look like in 2017.

The 2014 BP Annual praised Wieters as “an elite defender and game-caller,” but the numbers suggest that this has not been the case since we were all worrying about Mayan doomsday predictions. Wieters’ adjusted FRAA numbers from 2010-2012 were stellar–in total, he saved 49.3 runs behind the plate during that three-year stretch. But since then, he has actually been a below-average defensive catcher by the numbers.

Wieters’ poor framing skills are clearly doing a lot of the work in dragging him down, something that Travis Sawchik of Fangraphs made note of at the turn of the calendar. Jonathan Lucroy, the ultimate authority on defensive catching in Milwaukee, has long insisted that a low center of gravity is essential to framing the low strike. Wieters, who stands 6-foot-5, really struggles to get down and frame strikes along the bottom of the zone. His age, and his continually declining skills as a receiver, invite speculation that Wieters’ days as a catcher might be numbered. For a short-term suitor, that might not matter so much. But for a short-term suitor looking to turn a profit on their investment, like Milwaukee, it really does.

There is one argument in favor of bringing Wieters on board that is absolutely impossible to argue directly: that Wieters is a superior option as a starting catcher to any combination of Jett Bandy, Andrew Susac, and Manny Pina. Barring an unforseen and significant leap forward by one of the former two, Wieters would almost certainly be an improvement over Milwaukee’s current catching situation by several wins. However, the current front office doesn’t seem likely to fall into this trap–and you’d better believe it’s a trap.

We’ve established that Wieters is a catcher whose defensive skills have been fading for years now, and he hit the free agent market with just shy of 7,000 Major League innings on his knees. So, let’s say the Brewers sign him. Even assuming that everything goes right, and Wieters experiences an Aaron Hill-like revival in Milwaukee over the first half, these question marks will still be a concern to potential buyers. Like with Ryan Braun (and Carter last year), the Brewers could easily see Wieters exceed expectations–and still be treated like a lump of Kryptonite by the rest of the league.

Meanwhile, by his mere presence in the lineup, Wieters would be hindering the front office from their main goals at this stage of the game–talent evaluation and asset accumulation.

Neither Jett Bandy nor Andrew Susac has, to this point in their respective careers, outplayed Matt Wieters, and both of them lack anything resembling a track record at the Major League level. But they are both four years younger than Wieters, and both players are still on their rookie contracts. For Milwaukee and their svelte payroll, this is not an issue–they can afford Wieters–but in terms of marketability to other general managers, it plays a huge role–not everyone can, and that hurts his perceived value.

Bandy, acquired this winter for Martin Maldonado, has an even more self-defeating approach than Wieters. In 2014, at AA Arkansas, Bandy wallked 9.1 percent of the time. Throw out that lone data point, though, and he has never taken a base on balls more than 5.5 percent of the time in a professional career that began in 2011. Bandy’s “home runs, strikeouts, and no walks” offensive input is not without precedent in today’s game. In fact, when you compare the K percent, BB percent, and ISO of both players, he actually looks pretty similar to Salvador Perez of the Royals. Granted, he’s going to need breaking in–Bandy has never caught more than 94 games in a season, and never seen more than 365 plate appearances in a year. But his ratios stretched out to a full season of production look like 20-25 home runs with an average that won’t kill you, and that’s valuable behind the plate. Defensively, Bandy is nothing special, but does have the chance to be better than average–and his body has seen far less wear and tear than Matt Wieters has.

Susac, on the other hand, profiles as a similar Major Leaguer to Wieters in his prime, albeit with a little bit more swing and miss in his game. But he’s shown a similar combination of passable patience, above-average defense, and big power. Plus, he struck out less than 20 percent of the time at AAA for the Giants last season, so there’s hope that he can suppress his whiffs and further improve as an offensive player. Just two years ago, he was rated as the third-best prospect in the Giants’ system and there was speculation that he would inherit the job as the team pushed Buster Posey off to first base, but that did not happen. Still, Bret Sayre predicted back then that “Given a full complement of at-bats, Susac could hit .260 with 20 homers,” which is a good Matt Wieters season.

If the Brewers signed Wieters, these two potential assets would be relegated to fighting for a backup role and the scraps of at-bats that come with it, with the loser getting banished to AAA, where both players have already proven themselves competent enough for a promotion. Those at-bats might be converted more productively, but that’s not a guarantee–and even if they were, the long-term payoff would actually be worse, as Wieters is unlikely to fetch much in a trade and he’ll be well into his 30s by the time Milwaukee puts a competitive club on the field. Meanwhile, both Susac and Bandy would be still in their primes by the time the competitive window opens up.

Five years ago, taking a discount flier on a player like Wieters is exactly the kind of “smart move” that the Brewers’ front office would have pulled. Thankfully, the crew calling the shots today seems to have a better understanding of where and when to spend their cash.