1.491
Holy Eric Thames. The ex-KBO slugger has not lost a single step in his transition back to the big leagues. The number above is his OPS through 53 plate appearances. He leads the league in WARP and fWAR for position players. He leads the league in home runs. He has been everything the Brewers have hoped him to be and more. Oh, and he’s only making four million dollars this year.

Now, there is no way Thames will keep up this pace. It is likely more realistic to expect him to halve his OPS than keep it over 1.000. But it’s encouraging nonetheless. If he were to suffer a season ending injury tomorrow he would have already deemed his four million dollar contract a bargain due to his 1.4 WARP. The Brewers will gladly take that.

26.9 Percent
The Brewers struck out more than any team in baseball history in 2016. Their 26.9 percent strikeout rate through 15 games would shatter the previous record of 25.5 percent, which was a tie between the 2013 Astros and last season’s Brewers. Yet, the Brewers are not even the league leader. That dubious title would go to the Tampa Bay Rays, who are sporting a 28.6 percent strikeout rate. The game is changing and strikeouts are becoming more accepted in exchange for more power, but it has to be a cause for some concern that the team is striking out so much. If and when the Brewers go through a dry spell in terms of scoring runs, look for the high strikeout rate to be the main culprit.

1.88
The number above was the combined ERA between Neftali Feliz, Jacob Barnes, Corey Knebel, Carlos Torres, Jared Hughes, and Jhan Marinez in 43 2/3 innings from the group (entering play Wednesday). This is an incredibly encouraging sign for a bullpen that was expected to be a weakness for the team according to PECOTA and many experts. If this group can keep up a similar pace, these relief arms make for easy trade deadline chips. Then again, if they continue as one of the most success full bullpens in baseball, it hard to believe the Brewers will be too far away from competing for a wild card spot.

9.74
Zach Davies’s DRA through three starts is 9.74. Once again, only three starts, but it isn’t what anyone would want from Davies, who was heralded as the next Kyle Hendricks all off-season. His FIP is 4.84, which is less than a run worse than his career average. One could jump to the conclusion that this bad stretch is entirely BABIP and strength of competition driven (Rockies and Cubs at home, and the up-start Reds on the road), but there are a few troubling trends in Davies’ line. First, he has walked five batters per nine innings. Davies’s groundball rate has fallen to 42 percent, continuing a career long trend of a transformation into a fly-ball pitcher, and his strikeout rate fallen back under 7 percent as it was in 2015. These three starts against stiff competition aren’t any reason to lose faith in Davies, fantasy players might look to buy stock in him at his low point. He is someone to keep an eye on in the Brewers rotation.

25
The Brewers hit 25 home runs as a team through their first 15 games, and they added two more on Wednesday thanks to Jett Bandy and Travis Shaw. Most of the thanks goes to Eric Thames and Ryan Braun, who have combined for 12 home runs, but ten different Brewers have already homered just 15 games into the season. Only seven teams have hit more than 40 home runs in the month of April, all of them coming since 2002. The Brewers are well on their way to approaching that 40 home run mark for the month. It’s pretty amazing the power this team is flashing even after trading Khris Davis and then getting rid of Chris Carter last offseason. It makes you wonder what kind of damage the Brewers could do with a DH spot.

Related Reading:
Camp Prospects
Independent League Signings
A Bullpen for 2017

One of the best parts about spring training is that many ballparks have PITCHf/x technology, which means that Brooks Baseball begins updating some player cards with data. This is a great chance to get an actual idea about what depth prospects throw, even taking the data with gigantic grains of salt (for example, there are relatively few pitches tracked during spring, which leaves open several debates about calibration and significance). Nevertheless, this is a tasty dish even with that giant grain of salt, so let’s take a chance to see what members of the Brewers bullpen camp are throwing.

Many of these arms are featured in previous BPMilwaukee spring stories, which only goes to show that we love our prospects here and hope they grab that big league cash. Among the most interesting minor leaguers are the aforementioned Kohlscheen and Espino, along with newly converted southpaw Nick Ramirez, and some surprises like Preston Gainey. Unfortunately, no 2017 data are yet available for Jon Olczak, Aaron Wilkerson, or even Tim Dillard.

The Brewers signed many minor league contracts during the 2016-2017 offseason, and in the wake of the Junior Guerra success story, it seemed as though GM David Stearns was looking to expand on the age-discrepancy-market. Several “non-prospects” thus joined camp, including Andrew Barbosa. The 6’8″ lefty does not have a fastball to match his size, which leads one to wonder if that 87-88 MPH riding fastball is surprising and deceptive coming from such a large frame. In the Eastern League in 2016, the southpaw struck out 36 of 154 batters faced during seven starts, leading a 3.50 Deserved Runs Average (DRA). Barbosa’s main question mark may be a flyball tendency.

Although it’s easy to focus on the new signings, Milwaukee also has a couple of aging “non-prospects” within their own system that have intriguing statistical performances. Stephen Kohlscheen is entering his second year in the Brewers organization, and will be working a level removed from the MLB during his age-28 season. The 6’6″ righty is currently working a fastball-slider combo of the bread-and-butter variety; the fastball is rising, and the slider’s vertical and horizontal movement is relatively short. Perhaps Kohlscheen will join Jacob Barnes as a true fastball-slider, meat-and-potatoes reliever. The 32.8 percent strike out rate, 3.94 K/BB, 2.26 DRA, and are worth another look.

Nick Ramirez’s story is by now well-known in spring camp, as the stalling first baseman shifted back to the mound to reclaim a previous college pitching role. Ramirez is now the best kind of longshot story as a player who will throw his first professional pitch at age-27. Thus far the PITCHf/x looks nice for the southpaw, who is flashing a lot of break on his fastball while also working on three off-speed offerings. Make no mistake about it, Ramirez has a long way to go to prove that he can retire professional batters, but as a left-handed pitcher he will undoubtedly receive as many chances as he needs to prove his strengths from the mound.

Among the competitors that saw time in the 2016 Brewers bullpen, the spring training stuff already looks like last year’s stuff. This is arguably a good thing, as it means that Jacob Barnes, Jhan Marinez, and Corey Knebel are ready to take the next step to preserve close ballgames in Milwaukee. Barnes has the most fascinating fastball/slider combination, so much so that I’d actually suggest describing his PITCHf/x mix as “cutter-screwball.” Looking at Barnes’s delivery and stuff, there does not appear to be a lot of room for deception, but yet the “fastball” nearly moves glove-side, which is very rare for right-handed pitchers (even rising fastballs usually have armside run). As a result of the unorthodox fastball, Barnes’s slider has more armside break compared to the fastball, which effectively makes it a screwball in practice. Barnes is so much fun to watch because he’s quite a throwback reliever, so Brewers fans must enjoy this hard, no-nonsense arsenal while it’s still around.

What’s striking about the Marinez, Knebel, and Barnes trio is that each reliever works in a completely different range. Marinez is a true sinker reliever, while Knebel throws a riding-running fastball, and Barnes has his little cutter. Meanwhile, Knebel changes it up with a huge curveball, while Barnes uses a much tighter arsenal in his cutter-screwball approach. Marinez also uses a slider, but his variation is quite different than Barnes’s; Marinez throws a much more traditional slider insofar as the pitch breaks approximately five inches gloveside (i.e., “away” from righty bats) from his fastball.

Finally, it’s interesting to see readings on Josh Hader’s fastball, as well as a much quieter delivery from the southpaw. Certainly, Hader is not rushing up that true-70 southpaw heat that he flashed during a short Arizona Fall League stint in 2015. Yet, if the lefty still works in the mid-90s, but a quieter delivery allows him to regain command and repeat his change up, that’s quiet a strong delivery if it allows Hader to stick as a starter. Less “exciting” and more “repetition” with a broader arsenal for Hader should be music to Brewers fans’ ears.

There’s a lot to watch in spring training, including PITCHf/x statistics, so enjoy March while you can: this is a great chance to get a look at depth prospects, and also associate some “stuff” measurements with minor league statistics later in the season.

Missing from the changes, however, was any adjustment to the game’s antiquated waiver system, which has existed in its current form, more or less, for over a century. While this might not be optimal for baseball, for Brewers fans this is a blessing greater than the sum of the rest of the CBA combined.

Over the past year, David Stearns has been one of the most active general managers in all of baseball in dumpster diving the waiver wire.

While this hasn’t really paid dividends yet, it’s a good, risk-free strategy to maximize the talent on your 40-man roster. Though Milwaukee left several valuable pieces unprotected for December’s Rule 5 draft, and even lost young pitcher Miguel Diaz to San Diego via the Twins, it’s not as if David Stearns is letting the 40th spot on the roster go to waste. In fact, it is quite the opposite.

Fantasy baseball players reading this will need no introduction to the concepts of “stashing” and “streaming.” Neither one is a recent development in the game. “Stashing” refers to keeping a player with upside, but no real value in the present day, buried on your bench. “Streaming” is when you add a player you don’t intend to keep long-term, such as a starting pitcher on the day they start. Power-hitting outfielder Adam Walker is the latest example of Stearns’ shameless streaming strategy.

The Brewers claimed Milwaukee native Walker off of waivers from the Twins on November 18th. For two weeks, he remained on the team’s 40-man roster. Then, on December 2nd, the day after the new CBA failed to fix the waiver system, the Brewers waived Walker to clear out his roster spot. The Baltimore Orioles claimed Walker, ending his Brewers career before it began. But if they hadn’t, Milwaukee would have managed to successfully stash Walker in their minor-league system indefinitely. This is what the Twins tried to do two weeks prior and, somehow, they would have no claim to the player they’ve developed in their minor league system over the past four years.

If you’re marveling at how wildly unfair this system is, well, you’re not alone. But it doesn’t seem that fixing this is a priority for the players’ union at the moment, so the Brewers will continue to use it to their advantage.

Last year, Milwaukee found a small diamond in the rough through waiver trolling. They claimed reliever Jhan Marinez from the Rays in May, and worked out a trade for him after the claim. Marinez threw 58.7 innings for the club, pitching to a .267 True Average, 4.71 DRA, and 52 percent groundball rate. Marinez is a useful bullpen piece, utilizing a sinker and slider as his two primary pitches to induce ground balls and weak contact. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. With Tyler Thornburg exported to Boston, Marinez could even emerge as a dark horse candidate to close for the 2017 Brewers. Originally, he was supposed to be a claim-and-designate candidate, but injuries in the bullpen around that time spared him from the chopping block long enough for him to establish himself. Marinez struck out 15 of 36 batters he faced in the month of May, and at that point it was pretty hard to justify sending him down.

Marinez was never sent down after the Brewers claimed him, but Rob Scahill was a true example of how streaming works. The Pirates designated him for assignment, opening him up to waivers, on July 3rd. Nine days later, the Brewers claimed him and optioned him to Colorado Springs. Later on, Scahill came up to Milwaukee for a late-season trial, where he would post a sterling 1.04 WHIP in 18.3 innings. In Scahill’s case, too, the Brewers managed to pilfer a player from the division rival Pirates at zero cost.

The way the system works, a player whose contract doesn’t have any minor league options remaining must clear waivers in order to be sent down from the Major League club. A club can also waive a player with options remaining, such as Walker. There are no rules governing how long the claiming team must keep a claimed player on the roster, however, and all it costs a team to do this is a reset of their place in the waivers order. If you’re trying to sneak claims right back down to the minors, this doesn’t faze you. You need a player to clear waivers through every other team anyways! And if you’re working under the assumption that waiver claims are basically low-odds lottery tickets that you can get for free, simple logic would follow that you want as many of them as you can.

For what it’s worth, the odds of finding anything more than marginally useful through this system isn’t great. But the Milwaukee farm system is already stocked with more than a few potential stars, meaning waivers is just a way to fill in the cracks free of charge. The 40th man on the 40-man roster is not a future superstar, and it could be argued that the most useful thing you can do with that spot is turn it into a tool with which to generate spare parts that cost nothing.

Prior to that terrible August baseball, the Brewers showed an extended stretch of solid play. This stretch may need to be revisited depending on how the September string plays out, but thus far one can analyze a bizarre string of 80 games where Milwaukee flirted with true .500 baseball. You know it by heart: Junior Guerra made his singular starting pitching debut, Zach Davies attacked batters, Jimmy Nelson outplayed his peripheral performance, and guys like Hernan Perez and Keon Broxton were at various stages of acquiring their 2016 sealegs. In one sense, a rebuilding club that plays well for 80 games is a non-story; in the “regression to the mean” discussion, baseball is tough enough that even a bad team might be expected to come back to average over the course of such a long season.

From May 1 through July 31, the Brewers went 39-41, thanks to a 328 RS / 337 RA differential. That run differential shows that the club was near “true .500 talent” for three months, and also that the club was winning thanks to the strength of their pitching. By now everyone knows that the club could not keep up that pace because Stearns traded Jonathan Lucroy, Aaron Hill, Jeremy Jeffress, and Will Smith prior to the deadline (but in a hilarious twist, the Brewers are climbing back, now 15-21 since the deadline thanks to their surge).

Compiling a National League average run environment for May through July from Baseball Reference, and adjusting it for Miller Park, one finds that the almost-.500 Brewers bats were approximately 18 runs below average. Extrapolate that for a full season, and….well, you get the picture. The offense performed poorly, but what is interesting is that some of those performances were simply bad timing from players that had other good months in 2016:

In the small sample size world, it is worth remembering that the pennant race itself is nothing but creating and manipulating circumstances for success (or luck), so it absolutely matters that some of these players were better during other months of the season. They just happened to have their respective solid Aprils or Augusts when the pitching staff was getting shelled. Thankfully, the club happens to be rebuilding, so something like Keon Broxton’s explosion takes on a different note (one can then judge Broxton’s performance and future value); maybe the story of Broxton’s organic development preordained July struggles to yield late season success. It is especially interesting to see the ebb and flow of the great seasons produced by Jonathan Villar and Ryan Braun, both players that the Brewers can reserve well into their next competitive cycle and employ as part of that contending core.

Thankfully, the pitching staff excelled during May, June, and July, performing at a rate approximately 15 runs better than Miller Park and the National League. Notably, while Guerra, Davies, and Nelson had a great stretch, the rotation itself was not great across the board. Chase Anderson and Matt Garza countered some of the benefits provided by the three leaders, although those three leading starters ensured that the Brewers would have a chance to win on most days of the week.

The bullpen is immensely more interesting, in terms of future roster assets, from this three month set. Carlos Torres and Tyler Thornburg will both be under salary arbitration control for 2017, and both pitchers could sustain roles in a serviceable (or better) ‘pen.

Among the Brewers’ controllable arms, the club reserves Jacob Barnes, Jhan Marinez, and Michael Blazek. Blazek has seen a return of some previous command issues, but he has also fought injuries throughout the year. Barnes and Marinez have quietly worked in the background, and both righties have some intriguing traits that are worth a longer look. Coupled with Corey Knebel’s late season surge (3.65 DRA, 0.4 WARP), or even that of Rob Scahill (4.38 DRA, 0.1 WARP), it is not difficult to see a relatively deep set of relief arms ready for the 2017 campaign. This set looks even deeper when one considers the next batch of 40-man roster protections, waiver claims, or offseason acquisitions.

The most obvious response to this type of analysis will be that 80 games hardly matters in the grand scheme of things, especially when the club bookended that performance with 23-36 ball (good for a 63-win pace). Yet, those teams were not necessarily the same as the May-through-July unit, especially not in April (which featured an almost completely different cast of players). As a rebuilding GM, Stearns has effectively rotated options onto the roster while making quick decisions on some players, too; instead of hanging on to some early season flops (because, who cares if a rebuilding club wins?), Stearns adjusted the roster, made new acquisitions, and arguably found more future value because of those moves.

Now, one can look at this string of play, perhaps even considering it next to a strong September (if that continues to materialize), with an eye toward improving the roster in 2017. As I have written all year, at some point the Brewers will need to decide to keep good players to maximize current performance and future value; by making quick roster decisions and fielding some genuinely competitive players throughout the season, Stearns has already proven that the Brewers’ strategy to put the best possible rebuilding team together can pay future dividends.

Best Play: Matt Garza struggled, Ariel Miranda did pretty well, yada yada yada, Tom Wilhelmsen came on in the ninth. The score at the time was 6-3 Mariners, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Keon Broxton greeted him with a solo home run, his second of the day, which trimmed the deficit to 6-4. Hernan Perez followed up a Ryan Braun strikeout with a double to deep center, bringing Chris Carter to the plate. With a full count, the slugger turned on a fastball and managed to squeak it over the outfield wall in right-center.

Carter’s two-run blast (+.358) tied the game at 6-6 and gave the Brewers a 44.5 percent win probability, their highest odds since the third inning. Three batters later, Scooter Gennett would bring home Domingo Santana, pumping the team’s chances up to 87.3 percent. It was a stunning comeback, considering the Brewers headed into the ninth with just a 2.8 percent chance of winning. Chalk it up to Wilhelmsen being terrible — and Milwaukee capitalizing.

In his first year with the Brewers, Carter has seen his bat ebb and flow, as it’s done in the past. He’s gotten hot again in August, though, with a .250/.377/.500 line heading into Sunday’s action. Will that production cool off heading into September? Yeah, probably. But if it doesn’t — if Carter closes out 2016 on a high note — he could become a hot commodity on the offseason trade block. Not bad, for a low-cost January free agency signing.

Worst Play: Tyler Thornburg had entered in the bottom of the eighth, retiring the side in order, so he would be the pitcher of record after the offense’s heroics. Since he needed just 11 pitches to record those three outs, Craig Counsell wisely decided to leave Thornburg in. The choice didn’t look wise initially, however, as Ketel Marte worked the count to 3-2 before leading off the bottom of the ninth with a single to left.

Marte’s single (-.132), representing the tying run, brought Milwaukee’s chances down to 68.7 percent. He’d later advance to second base on a wild pitch, bringing Seattle 90 feet closer to a counter-comeback. Prior to the errant pitch, though, Thornburg would retire Nori Aoki and Shawn O’Malley; two pitches later, he’d induce a flyout off the bat of Robinson Cano to seal the victory.

Now that Jeremy Jeffress and Will Smith have gone to those big contenders in the sky, the Brewers have real uncertainty at closer. Or they would  have real uncertainty at closer, were it not for Thornburg’s breakout this season. The kind of reliever that can pile up 30 pitches to end a six-game skid is the kind of reliever you construct your future bullpen around. While there are no guarantees with ninth-inning guys — remember the implosions of John Axford and Jim Henderson — Thornburg has done as well as anyone, and he stands a good shot of keeping this up.

Trend to Watch: The Brewers wouldn’t have had the chance to come back if the bullpen had imploded like Garza did. Thankfully, Jhan Marinez excelled in his regular role as the stopper, facing the minimum seven batters across 2.3 innings. My colleague Travis Sarandos and I have each written about the righty, but I think we’ve both glossed over what might be his defining attribute: a high ground ball rate. Of the seven balls in play against him Sunday, just two went into the air; he’s kept the ball on the ground an even 50.0 percent of the time this season, per FanGraphs.

Strangely, Marinez hasn’t attacked the bottom part of the zone, as most ground ballers do. Many of his pitches have leaked up, in fact:

Despite this, he still manages to get a ton of grounders, and mostly on those pitches he deigns to throw low. We saw this on Sunday as well — although many of Marinez’s offerings traveled into the upper regions of the zone, the ones in the lower areas stayed on the ground when put in play. For some reason, hitters just can’t take advantage of those high pitches.

Milwaukee has a sizable gap between its infield and outfield defenses. The club’s .764 ground ball defensive efficiency is the eighth-best in baseball, while it ranks in the bottom half of the majors in efficiency on fly balls, line drives, and popups. Presumably with this in mind, Brewers pitchers have garnered grounders at a decent clip — their 45.8 percent ground ball rate, by FG’s calculation, puts them 12th in baseball. Marinez has topped that, which seems to have benefited him. Even as his strikeout and walk rates have regressed, the continued presence of ground balls has granted him some level of dependability.

Up Next: The Brew Crew heads home for 10 contests, starting with three against the Rockies. Jimmy Nelson, Chase Anderson, and Zach Davies will square off versus Chad Bettis, Jon Gray, and Tyler Anderson, respectively. After that, it’s all NL Central for the next month (seriously, August 25 to September 25). Let’s hope that Carter, Thornburg, and Marinez make these next few duels more watchable than the first six-and-8/9 games of this road trip.

Over the past year, the Milwaukee Brewers’ front office has been plenty good–but they’ve gotten awfully lucky, too.

The quickest way to jump-start a rebuilding process is finding value in players cast off by other teams. In taking something you got, essentially, for free and turning it into something useful. Over the past year, the Brewers have tried to do this repeatedly. Not all of their efforts have worked out–Ramon Flores, Keon Broxton, and Alex Presley have combined for negative one WARP, Will Middlebrooks is whiffing at a 40 percent clip since finally making the big club, and Garin Cecchini hasn’t even looked good by AAA ballplayer standards, and with the artificial stat inflation for hitters inherent in Colorado Springs. But for each of these failures, which cost nothing, the front office has made a number of great calls.

Honorable Mention: Sean Nolin, RP and Rymer Liriano, OF

Once one of Toronto’s top prospects, Nolin is probably best-known as one of the pieces who was sent to Oakland in the ill-fated Josh Donaldson trade. When the A’s traded for Khris Davis this winter, they waived Nolin from their 40-man roster to make room for him–and the Brewers pounced, effectively adding him to the return package.

In Spring Training, Nolin suffered a partially torn UCL, and seemed doomed to Tommy John surgery. But with a partial tear, sometimes the ligament can heal naturally. The Brewers had him reevaluated in May, and decided that things were progressing enough to where surgery wasn’t necessary. If things continue progressing, he could see a couple of September innings. But Nolin’s medical past is far from spotless–a groin injury in 2014 ended his season and caused him to miss part of 2015 as well–and the franchise doesn’t need his immediate contributions, so the prudent course of action might just be to wait for 2017.

Rymer Liriano was struck in the face with a pitch in Spring Training, fracturing several bones, and is expected to miss the entire season. If that hadn’t happened, there’s an outside shot that he’s close to the top of this list thanks to the opportunity created by Domingo Santana’s injury-riddled first half. But on the bright side, he’s working his way back from the traumatic injury.

Update on #Brewers OF Rymer Liriano, hit in face by pitch in spring training: Still working toward getting back on field for baseball work.

— Tom (@Haudricourt) June 25, 2016

For both Nolin and Liriano, the best way to describe this season is “to be continued.” They’ve both got the talent to contribute to the big-league club, and could do so as soon as 2017.

T-5. Jhan Marinez (.4 WARP)

“Jhan Marinez struggled through another Triple-A season plagued by injury, ineffectiveness, gopher balls and the same lack of command that keeps him from leveraging his upper-90s heat and wipeout slider into a major-league bullpen gig; if he ever learns how to pitch, look out.”

That’s the BP Annual, on Marinez, back in 2014. Since then, he has gone unmentioned twice. But a funny thing happened in those two years–Marinez learned how to pitch. During his prospect days, Marinez was known just as much for his live arm–his heat touches 98 on the radar gun–as his complete inability to control it. He regularly posted walk rates north of 6.0, culminating in a 10.3 walks per nine nightmare at AAA Toledo in 2014 that won him a demotion to AA. There, he cut his walks to 4.5 per nine, and that ratio has continued trickling downward ever since.

Still, the Tampa Bay Rays designated the out-of-options Marinez for assignment in May, and the Brewers acquired him for nothing more than cash as a result. And since then, Marinez has been an undeniably effective part of the bullpen. He’s walking just 3.9 batters per inning, striking out 10.08, and posting a 2.60 ERA. All in all, Marinez has been worth four-tenths of a win–and that’s despite the fact that opponents are hitting .380 off of him on balls in play.

As a prospect, Marinez featured two pitches–a high-octane fastball and an inconsistent slider. Today, both of those pitches are complementary to his sinker, which he throws over half the time:

Clearly, Jhan Marinez learned how to pitch–and the Brewers are the beneficiaries. Marinez also qualifies as a sneaky name to watch for fantasy baseball purposes, too–if Milwaukee goes sell-happy and unloads both Jeremy Jeffress and Will Smith in the next few days, Marinez has classic closer stuff.

T-5. Carlos Torres (.4 WARP)

The Mets signed Torres to a minor-league contract in 2013, and turned the cutter into his primary pitch. That year, he was worth 1.2 wins. In 2014, that number fell to .5. Last year, he was .2 wins worse than replacement level, as his strikeout and hit rates each hit a career high. The Brewers gambled that last year was a fluke, and that he could be a cheap way to make the bullpen a touch better. They’ve been rewarded with .4 wins, Torres’s highest K-rate in the Majors, and a 2.90 ERA. Jeremy Jeffress and Will Smith get all the press, and Jhan Marinez has the electric stuff, but Torres has evolved into the steady, reliable piece who ensures that the former two can be traded and the bullpen will still be pretty good.

This year, Torres has taken his “cutter as the primary pitch” approach to a whole other level. It’s actually interesting to watch the evolution–as time progresses, Torres goes from throwing the cutter as a second pitch, to a first offering with a plurality in the high-40 percent range, to a first offering used just north of 50 percent of the time. This year, Torres’ arsenal has evolved even further, and he’s thrown the cutter over 75 percent of the time since May:

T-5. Chris Carter (.4 WARP)

On August 7, 2012, I made a simple transaction in one of my dynasty leagues. I don’t even remember who I dropped, to tell you the truth–but I called up Chris Carter from my protected minor leaguers. I tell you this because that was four years ago, and Carter is still on that team’s roster–which is quite remarkable in a high-activity 14-team league. Chris Carter threads the needle of a very specific kind of ballplayer: he’s valuable enough to employ, but not valuable enough to sell.

I can’t pretend that I don’t get it. At times, Carter can be a very, very frustrating player to root for. I’d say the most accurate way to summarize his game would be “extreme risk and reward.” When Carter is locked in, he can carry your team–this April, he put up an OPS of .922 to nicely acclimate himself to his new hometown fans. But when he can’t find his stroke, he turns into a black hole in the middle of your lineup–like this July, when he’s struck out 39 percent of the time and his OPS has cratered to .688. He’s a part-time superstar, but he’s not the type who has outrageous platoon splits so you can’t really tell which Carter is coming to the ballpark on any given night.

At ten million a year, or more, Carter would be a disappointment. But the Brewers are paying him between $2.5 and $3 million this year, depending on performance-based incentives. The value of one Win Above Replacement varies somewhere between $5 million and $8 million, depending on who you ask, and Carter put up .4 WARP in his worst season as a full-time regular, 2015. It was a no-lose proposition, especially since the team had jettisoned both ends of their first-base platoon in the prior month.

Having put up .4 WARP to this point in 2016, Carter has already provided value commensurate with his contract. But it’s worth noting that a year ago, Carter swooned hard in July with a slash line of .109/.176/.304–then neutralized that with a .333/.400/.822 September. More than any player on this list, Carter’s position is far from locked in.

Three years ago, John Sickels of MinorLeagueBall made an absurd prediction that Carter would make an All-Star Team and be an MVP candidate. In fairness, he admitted in the title of the piece that it was an absurd prediction and, like most insane predictions, it didn’t come true. But it speaks to the level of raw talent that Carter has, even if he’s incapable of harnessing it for more than a month or two at a time. In his mid-20s, it was easy to see him putting it all together for a whole year–now, I’d say that’s wishful thinking. But for the cost of less than half a win, he’s been a good value at first base for a team in transition. And if you’re going to take a long-shot gamble on someone, you always want to bet on someone with at least one elite skill.

4. Kirk Nieuwenhuis (.7 WARP)

The Brewers have gotten exactly what they expected from Nieuwenhuis: a smattering of home runs and steals, good plate patience, acceptable defense, and an average that flirts with the Mendoza line. Last year, Nieuwenhuis accumulated .6 wins in 117 plate appearances. This year, he’s been worth .7 in 266. He’s not a black hole, but he’s not all that helpful, either. On the bright side: it’s not like Keon Broxton, Ramon Flores, or Shane Peterson would have done anything more useful. By the time the Brewers are a contender, Brett Phillips will be roaming center field, and Nieuwenhuis will be pinch-hitting and making the occasional spot start, which seems like a good eventual role for him.

For the low-low cost of a waiver claim, the Brewers acquired a player who brings some things to the table, and whose biggest weaknesses can be mitigated in an eventual part-time role. He combines power and speed, and he’s posted better FRAA marks while playing the corner positions than in center–even though he’s capable of playing all three positions. And his struggles to make contact have a pretty easy explanation, too:

The 2015 BP Annual noted that “Nieuwenhuis’ approach is basically to attack any fastball in the zone, take all breaking pitches, and occasionally look stupid on changeups he thought were fastballs.” The pitch-type breakdown of his career supports this. Against overmatched rookies still refining their secondary and tertiary offerings, he can rake–and these are the players he should get his at-bats against in the long run. But pitchers who are pitchers, rather than just throwers, effortlessly turn Nieuwenhuis to pudding.

Still, it remains to be said that a player who can put fastballs over the fence, steal bases, and play three outfield positions is a valuable commodity in the big leagues. Nieuwenhuis might not be too impressive as an everyday centerfielder, but he’s still a worthwhile piece that cost nothing to acquire.

3. Aaron Hill

Aaron Wilkerson and Wendell Rijo are hardly a king’s ransom in prospects, but they’re both intriguing young players–and all the Brewers had to do was take on some salary for about three months to make it happen.

For what it matters, before the Red Sox traded for him, Hill was worth 1.8 wins to the 2016 Brewers. The Brewers’ $6.5 million of his salary is roughly what a single win would be worth in free agency. So for those keeping score at home, the deal was a win on four different fronts–Hill provided value beyond what the team paid him, the team got a better minor-league asset by taking on Hill, he provided value to the rebuilding effort beyond even what the WAR column can quantify, and then Hill was successfully flipped for something that will have value beyond this off-season. Making scrappy moves like that is how you turn a bottom-feeder into a dynasty.

2. Junior Guerra

Look, if you were skeptical of Guerra at first, I don’t blame you. But we’re fifteen games in, and Guerra has been worth 2.1 PWARP thus far. That’s half a season’s worth of starts–if you stretch it out to a full 30, the 4.2 PWARP would have been the 19th-best mark in all of baseball last season. Brewers fans calling him an “ace” might not be all that far off–the 19th-best pitcher in baseball would qualify as a “fringe ace,” the type of guy who could be the #1 on a middle-of-the-pack team, or the #2 on a championship contender, or the #3 on the best pitching staff in the league.

I wrote earlier this season about why pitchF/X data shows that Guerra is not a flash in the pan. But since then, two further developments have solidified my belief that Guerra will have a successful career in his thirties.

The first development happened in late June. Guerra took the mound against the Los Angeles Dodgers on the 16th and turned in his worst start of 2016: the Dodgers chased him in the sixth inning with five runs to his name and just four strikeouts under his belt. Since Scott Kazmir was similarly off point, the Brewers won an 8-6 slugfest, but that was owed more to the offensive fireworks of Chris Carter and Jonathan Villar than Guerra’s work. Less than two weeks later, Guerra drew the Dodgers as his assignment once again–and he altered his game plan in the gutsiest way imaginable. He all but cut his best pitch out of rotation. Guerra threw 109 pitches in shutting out the Dodgers over eight masterful innings, and only two of those pitches were splitters. It was a true pitching gem–Guerra’s 18-pitch first inning was the most laborious frame he suffered through, and he carved apart the Dodgers like a hot knife through butter. I have no idea what Guerra saw in the Dodgers during that first game, but I’m beyond impressed with the adjustment he made. Eliminating your “out” pitch against a team that just hit you hard is the kind of crazy tactic that you only use when you’re dead sure you spotted a weakness. That Guerra is capable of this kind of gamesmanship is encouraging, to say the least.

Guerra’s second adjustment came at the All-Star Break. In the first half, he threw a four-seam fastball and slider in addition to his signature splitter. But in the nine days between his last first-half start against St. Louis, and his first second-half start in Pittsburgh, Guerra had the time to add a secret weapon to his arsenal:

Ironically, it was adding a sinker to the mix that inevitably doomed the career of Wily Peralta, but we have to remember here–every ballplayer is different. And thus far, the sinker experiment has worked. Guerra fanned six in six innings against the Pirates in his first start of the half, then outdueled the far-more-expensive Jon Lester in his second try before the bullpen blew the game.

The sinker is an ideal pitch for Guerra to add to his arsenal, as it serves as a perfect blend of his best two incumbent options–the fastball and the splitter. Guerra’s sinker is indistinguishable from his fastball until it drops:

Guerra has a new weapon in his arsenal, but more importantly, he’s shown that he can adapt on the fly at the big-league level. That’s very big, and it’s very good if you’re a Brewers fan.

1. Jonathan Villar

Okay, maybe we’re cheating here by some people’s definitions. Villar wasn’t technically “free”–to pry him from the Astros cost Milwaukee a minor-league pitcher named Cy Sneed. But I would counter that Sneed was not, nor did he ever show any indication that he would turn into, an “asset.” He might not have been “nothing,” but he also held no tangible value.

The 25-year-old Villar hadn’t put up great numbers in three partial seasons with Houston, but his power/speed combination at a position of scarcity made him a valuable asset. Still, with names like Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa entrenched into the lineup, and even Luis Valbuena and Marwin Gonzalez winning favor over Villar, there was no real place for him in Houston. Last year, at this point in time, Villar was playing minor-league ball.

Two pieces of information from before the Villar trade are worth noting. First, he got back to the big leagues when rosters expanded in September and went 8-for-25 with three steals in limited action, while striking out just twice. Second, Brewers’ GM David Stearns was working in Houston’s front office while Villar was playing for Houston’s farm system last year. Publicly-available advanced analytics for minor-league players are still pretty spotty, but there’s no doubt that Houston’s modern-thinking front office is tracking everything on every player in that system. Stearns was one of the few people in baseball with the ability to accurately tell if Villar had made the kinds of structural changes that could turn him into an offensive weapon.

Villar wasted no time making his presence felt in Milwaukee. Though the Brewers pitched Wily Peralta on opening day, and therefore got beaten into a pulp, he took Madison Bumgarner deep in his second at-bat:

And since then, he hasn’t slowed down. Villar’s .297/.379/.437 slash line, paired with a league-leading 36 stolen bases, makes him the prototypical leadoff hitter, and the peripherals back it up, too. Villar’s 2015 and 2016 contact rates are significantly higher than the two years prior. The implication we can take from this is that, sometime during his minor-league exodus, he made some type of mechanical tweak that resulted in not just more contact:

but better quality contact, too:

Detractors will point to Villar’s .400 BABIP as an unsustainable mark. But just how unsustainable is it? Villar’s 57 percent groundball rate should, in theory, be killing his BABIP–only he’s also put up a silly 11.3 percent infield hit rate. Coming up through the minors, Billy Hamilton’s track-star speed was supposed to revolutionize the leadoff position–today, as it turns out, Villar is doing it instead. The Brewers gambled that, at just 25 years old, the rough edges of his game could be refined down, and it’s a gamble that has paid off with a genuine star–Villar’s 3.0 WARP places him snugly between Jonathan Lucroy (3.1) and Ryan Braun (2.9). It goes to show you that, even in the age of advanced analytics, one team’s trash can be another team’s cornerstone.

Related Reading
Jhan Marinez: Stuff & Results

One name in the bullpen that even casual Brewers fans might not be familiar with, given his usage, is human white flag Jhan (pronounced Yahn) Marinez. If you’re not familiar with the name, that’s probably because his appearances come after most people have stopped watching. Milwaukee is 3-15 in games Marinez appears in, and the Brewers were trailing by four or more runs in 11 of his 18 appearances (and had leads of that size in two more). 84% of the batters he has faced with Milwaukee this season have been in low leverage situations. That kind of usage pattern suggests a poorly performing mop-up guy and forces upon the Brewers fan psyche horrifying flashbacks to Wei-Chung Wang in 2014.

Yet Marinez has been one of the most effective pitchers on Milwaukee’s staff this season. His 3.63 DRA is the fourth-lowest on the team, better than Junior Guerra and Jeremy Jeffress. His PWARP of 0.4 is fifth, ahead of every starter except Guerra and Zach Davies. He has a stellar 24.6 percent strikeout rate that pairs well with an acceptable 9.5 percent walk rate. His 2.59 ERA (including 3.2 innings with Tampa Bay) this season places him squarely in the top quarter of relievers, all while suffering the effects of a .380 BABIP in front of one of the league’s worst defenses.

Why, then, is he being utilized in such a manner? I’m going to do something I don’t really like doing when I write for you fine folks and tell you that try as I might, I couldn’t find the answer. He hasn’t proven incapable of handling pressure: he’s one for one in hold opportunities, having successfully navigated choppy waters in his only chance to do so. In just his second game with Milwaukee, Marinez’s number was called to protect a one-run lead after Wily Peralta put runners on second and third with one out. He struck out Reid Brignac (look, he is a major league baseball player, it counts) and coaxed a fly out from Nick Markakis to keep the score 3-2. He has actually performed better in mid- and high leverage situations this season, though we’re of course forced to concede small sample size bias. In 18 batters faced, he has a 44.4 percent strikeout rate, an 8.0 K/BB ratio, and he’s held opponents to a .532 OPS.

The 27-year-old owns a mid-90s heater that he pairs with a slider that sits around 83-88. The latter is the out pitch: 25 of his 37 strikeouts have come via the slider, and opposing batters have just five hits off of it. He’s an erstwhile top prospect who appeared in the Futures Game in 2011, and though he debuted in 2010 he remains a rookie, having entered the season with just six major league innings. Milwaukee is Marinez’s sixth team, having been acquired in exchange for cash from the Rays after they designated him for assignment after three solid appearances. He appears now to be the winner of David Stearns’s game of musical chairs that was conducted throughout the season’s first month, having replaced Michael Kirkman, who replaced Sam Freeman, and so on.

The knock against Marinez throughout his career has been problems with control. He was jettisoned from the Tigers organization in 2014 after putting up a 21 percent walk rate in 18 innings with Triple-A Toledo. He surrendered a free pass 13.6 percent of the time during his minor league career. So far this season, however, he’s figured that out: he’s right around the major league average with a 56.8 percent first pitch strike rate, and while his percentage of balls in the zone is slightly lower than average, he’s generating an above average swing rate on those pitches.

Marinez’s two-pitch arsenal and his occasional bouts of wildness likely limit his potential role to that of a solid middle reliever, but that’s not how to Brewers are using him. Instead, he’s been relegated to “last man in the bullpen” status. As we head into the trade deadline weekend, Milwaukee is expected to make plenty of moves, and a number of pitchers in their bullpen are drawing big interest. Should there be movement, Marinez’s role must increase, and who knows? Maybe this time next year, it’ll be his name that the Rosenthals and Cotillos of the world are constantly tweeting.

Top Play (WPA): Entering the game, Brewers starter Jimmy Nelson boasted a difference of approximately nine runs between his DRA (-4) and actual runs prevented (+5. Both figures compared to Miller Park / 2016 National League). Basically, what this means is that given the context of his batted balls allowed, strike outs / walks / home runs, and other contextual aspects of each game, Nelson’s actual runs prevented (or, ERA if you prefer that stat) were highly beyond his expected output. Unfortunately for the Brewers righty, the Giants provided a sharp course correction, dropping Nelson’s actual runs prevented total by seven (!!!) runs in one start. What this means in the context of the Brewers rotation is that Nelson entered the start roughly comparable to Junior Guerra in value, and left it ahead of only Chase Anderson (who is trending upward according to DRA).

Of course, the idea of deserved runs was highly tested yesterday, as one could hardly argue that Milwaukee was playing defense of any kind. Nelson contributed to this cause in the third inning, when his own throwing error turned a one-out, man-on-second situation into a two-men-on, no-outs situation (+6% WPA for San Francisco). This was not yet the Giants’ top play, as Buster Posey’s two-run single would give the Champions-to-be 83% odds of winning (+10% WPA for San Francisco). The damage was irreparable, as Posey’s hit opened a four-run frame.

Worst Play (Brewers): Milwaukee valiantly tried to mount a comeback, or at least Jonathan Villar did, immediately thereafter. Villar lead off the fourth inning with a walk, dropping the Giants’ odds of winning for 89% to 86% (every uprising has to start somewhere!). Unfortunately, Scooter Gennett followed that walk with a strike out (-3%), and Jonathan Lucroy added one of his own (-2%). These creeping plays may have seemed unimportant at the time, but they preceded another four run barrage in the bottom half of the fourth. By the time the Brewers mounted their lone run, it didn’t even dent the Giants’ 99% WPA (ouch).

Bottom Play (WPA): This is one of those strange games where things were so out of hand so early that the bottom play hardly appears of consequence to the proceedings. But I am contractually obligated to inform you that Johnny Cueto’s flyout in the bottom of the second inning, with runners on second and third and two outs, set the Giants’ winning odds back 6% (to 50%!). Martin Maldonado, Alex Presley, and Jimmy Nelson couldn’t answer that fateful 0-0 score with a rally of their own in the top of the third.

Trend to Watch: Brewers fans have long awaited the return of Will Smith to the bullpen, which immediately improves the scouting (and performance) profile and potential for the high leverage bullpen. Manager Craig Counsell can shimmy Smith somewhere between Jeremy Jeffress and Tyler Thornburg, giving the Brewers one more lockdown option when the game is on the line. Even with Smith’s tough DRA start (4.54 in his first games of the season), it’s still easy to be “high” on the southpaw.

Smith’s arrival shifted some bullpen questions from high leverage positions to the fringes of the relief corps, but recent arrivals Jacob Barnes and Jhan Marinez have done as much as they possibly can to delay skepticism. Barnes himself is impossible to dislike with his pure-1980s relief profile (hard fastball / short slider), which is updated for the velocity standards of today’s game (yesterday the slider-first righty went 95+ / 87+ on average, but Barnes can rush that slider up into the 90s).

Try not to go bananas for Rock’s Chuck Crim reference (!!!):

BPMilwaukee’s Ryan Romano profiled Jhan Marinez’s stuff and results, which raises some potential question marks or areas of analysis to determine that righty’s future roles.

Questions aside, Marinez worked a solid mop-up role (placing aside an inherited runner scored) despite recording zero strike outs (he also didn’t walk anyone, or allow any homers). Marinez’s seven outs went 4 GB: 2 FB: 1 LD, which may be promising given the fact that the righty overwhelmingly went with his fastballs yesterday (27 fast ones to 5 sliders). The groundballs were nearly distributed evenly between fastball and slider selections, according to Brooks Baseball’s classifications.

Fans and analysts may not find themselves pumping hype about relievers like Marinez and Barnes, but thus far their DRA profiles hint that these righties could potentially serve as slightly above average relief options. They will have time to show whether one can dream big on their scouting profiles and peripheral performances in the manner of a Smith or Jeffress, but even if that high-end potential never appears, these arms can provide strong value for a bullpen. An elite bullpen must have strong high leverage performances, but it can also be defined by above average depth options. So if you’re looking for something to cheer for during a rebuilding year, focus on guys like Barnes and Marinez (to name just two examples).

Up Next: When Milwaukee faced the Mets at Miller Park, that series began a wicked stretch of 26 games against Senior Circuit contenders (taking the Brewers straight from early June into the All-Star break). Our beloved Nine fared admirably against the Mets, and they also played the Giants close for two games (even if they squandered both opportunities to win. Boo!). This masochistic tour continues in Chavez Ravine tonight, as the Brewers face off against southpaw Scott Kazmir. Milwaukee sends ageless wonder Junior Guerra to the mound.

The series continues with Zach Davies / Julio Urias, Chase Anderson / Mike Bolsinger, Matt Garza / Kenta Maeda lined up as MLB.com probables. I can’t be the only person that notices the interesting pair-off of recent MLB system graduates (Davies, Urias), rotational depth acquisitions (Anderson, Bolsinger), and injury-riddled veterans (Garza, Maeda). If you’ve got the fortitude to stay up past your bedtime, this series offers a fascinating set of matching narratives to the diehard baseball fan.

But wait! Hasn’t Marinez dominated this season? Since coming to the Brewers, he’s struck out 34.2 percent of opposing batters and walked 7.9 percent. He’s notched a 52 percent ground ball rate, preventing hitters from squaring the ball up. Add it all up, and you get his 2.89 ERA and 3.02 FIP, which are the numbers of a top-notch reliever. Does this mean he’s broken out? Might he have finally put it all together?

Let’s put aside the fact that Marinez has pitched a mere 7.1 innings in Milwaukee, making his strikeout and walk rates unreliable. He hasn’t done much to deserve them, especially the former. According to Baseball-Reference, he’s thrown a swinging strike for 11.1 percent of his pitches as a Brewer, on top of a called-strike rate of 18.7 percent. Compared to major-league averages of 10.9 and 17.3 percent, respectively, those don’t stand out all that much. Marinez has pitched well enough, sure, but he hasn’t deserved his gaudy numbers.

Make no mistake, Marinez throws three solid pitches. His four-seam/sinker combination can be dangerous, and along with a slider, his arsenal has the capacity to make him great. He just hasn’t gotten there yet, and each of his three offerings has had separate problems. He’ll need to overcome these woes to make the leap.

Marinez’s sinker has served as his primary pitch since he came to Milwaukee. He never threw the pitch before this May, according to Brooks Baseball, and no one else seems to have noticed. Regardless, it’s certainly a formidable weapon — out of 95 relievers with at least 50 such pitches, Marinez’s sinker ranks 13th with an average velocity of 95.7 mph. Yet it hasn’t gone for as many ground balls as he’d like, slotting in at 63rd with a 56 percent grounder rate.

Perhaps because he’s still tinkering with it, Marinez’s sinker moves very unconventionally — it has a mere 2.5 inches of drop, one of the lowest marks in that sample. That leads to the biggest problem with the sinker: It hasn’t really…sunk.  See for yourself:

This is a pretty bizarre trend, as you might expect. Per Baseball Savant (which labels the pitch a two-seamer), Marinez has thrown only 43.1 percent of these in the lower part of the zone*. That puts him in the bottom fourth of the majors. If he remains unable to target the correct area of the strike zone with his primary pitch, Marinez will continue to hold it back.

*This is defined as sections 7, 8, 9, 13, and 14.

Now, high heaters do lead to one positive thing — whiffs. And indeed, Marinez’s sinker ranks 17th in the 95-man sample with a 10.1 percent whiff rate. His offering has nevertheless underperformed, partially because of its quirky movement and partially because of his poor command.

The four-seam fastball, which Marinez has relegated to second place as a Brewer, has a pretty similar story. It possesses blazing velocity — traveling, on average, 95.8 mph this season — and it’s used that to rack up called strikes in 23.3 percent of its appearances. Its 6.1 percent whiff rate lags considerably behind that, however, as does its 44 percent ground ball rate.

Here, too, the problems go back to command. Marinez’s four-seamer has leaked into the upper parts of the zone pretty frequently, and he’s grooved it a few times as well:

Here, the problems aren’t as severe as they are with the sinker. Marinez gets respectable movement on the four-seamer, and he has a better idea of where it’ll land. With that said, the sinker has become his primary pitch, making its deficiencies stand out even more. Unless he returns to the two-pitch mix he relied upon before 2016, the four-seamer’s relative quality won’t have an especially big impact.

With the slider, things get a little bit worse. Marinez’s slider seems solid; he’s thrown it at an average velocity of 85.9 mph, which appears to be an elite velocity. But appearances can deceive. For the 121 relievers with at least 50 sliders thrown in 2016, the average velocity is 84.8 mph — not far off from Marinez’s mark, which places only 43rd. The days when a mid-80s slider would bowl over opposing hitters are over, especially for relief pitchers.

Nor does Marinez’s slider have the movement to make up for this. (Starting to see a trend?) Its 1.0-inch run is the 22nd-worst among those 121 hurlers, and its 2.9 inches of drop rank eighth from the bottom. Consequently, it’s posted a swinging strike rate of just 16.9 percent, in line with the average mark of 16.8 percent. A power slider without a whole ton of relative power, and without much bite, hasn’t done Marinez any favors.

Why haven’t these problems sunk Marinez to this point? In the minor leagues, hitters aren’t nearly as disciplined. They’ll chase pitches with velocity, regardless of how little they move, and the placement doesn’t make as much of a difference. Marinez can retire these hitters, either on a strikeout or a groundout; that success doesn’t carry over to the Show, though. For him to spit in the face of TINSTAAPP, he’ll need to build on his 86 cFIP, which will require better command and more movement. Absent that, well, he’ll go down with the Bradleys of the world — as another talent who got away.

All data as of Tuesday, June 7.