Like the July deadline, David Stearns is giving Brewers fans transactions that can be viewed from many standpoints:

• Stearns is improving both key roles and marginal roles through both deadlines.

• Stearns is arguably stockpiling as much talent as is physically possible (within the constraints of the 40-man roster).

• The GM is dealing prospects with lofty Overall Future Potential (OFP).

• The GM is dealing ultimate roles that may be blocked (Brett Phillips), uncertain (Jorge Lopez), or years away from fruition (this can apply to everyone from Jean Carmona to Orimoloye, Lara, Connell, Dominguez, and Harrison).

• Stearns is looking toward potentially longer outlooks by acquiring several players with 2019 options or roster reserve rights.

This is a lot to take in, and frankly it’s made it difficult to write about the trade deadlines in one swift motion. For on the one hand, by estimating long term value of some of the roles traded away, it appears that Stearns truly did overpay in several deals in order to succeed within a short window. Yet, it’s not entirely clear that Stearns traded away anyone that was fitting into Milwaukee’s immediate window. It pains me to say this even with strong prospects like Brett Phillips, or serviceable roles like Jorge Lopez (one of my favorite pitchers in the system for a long time). As much as I love to use depreciated surplus value to assess trades, since it is a tool that attempts Benefit-Cost Analysis on players’ production and contract, Stearns is providing a clear template for critiquing moves outside of any WARP/$ framework.

Specifically, by moving clear MLB players from a small market club that ostensibly requires cost-controlled, easily reserved talent to win, Stearns’s deadline provides an excellent opportunity to survey the uneven landscape of player development. In this regard, it is worth noting that no trade can truly meet WARP/$ standards, because in the universe of player development a pitcher can add a new pitch or rework their mechanics, a batting can revise a timing mechanism or refine a swing, a player can fall under the influence of a new coach (for better or worse), or a player can simply experience a new environment in which opportunities shift. Information asymmetry is the landscape of player development, and thus MLB transactions, and in this regard no deal can ever reach equilibrium between parties, as both teams involved in a given trade will arguably be assessing players through different environments (this argument has hidden behind my work on depreciated surplus, but surfaced in a demonstration with the Brian McCann trade).

On Tuesday, another one of the prospects dealt away from Milwaukee acquired a true MLB floor as well, as the Baltimore Orioles selected the contract of RHP Luis Ortiz (traded away as the lead prospect in the Jonathan Schoop deal). Now, the “surefire” MLB players that one could have assessed from the July deadline deals are all in The Show (Brett Phillips and Jorge Lopez are in Kansas City, and Ortiz is now in Baltimore). I will not be focusing extensively on Phillips’s case here, as he is doing pretty much what could have been expected on the day of the trade: starting in center field (21 of 26 games) and right field (4 of 26 games). Lopez and Ortiz, however, offer completely asymmetrical development from the Brewers’ system, and this is worth investigating because the Brewers have what is justifiably regarded as a strong pitching program, due to their track record in 2017 and 2018 (yes, in 2018!), oft-praised coach (Derek Johnson), and their unorthodox pitching acquisitions that appear to follow very specific profiles (this applies to everyone from Oliver Drake to Chase Anderson and Zach Davies, among others). Answering questions about Lopez and Ortiz may help to address other bizarre roles in the 2018 pitching system, most notably involving Brandon Woodruff, Adrian Houser, and even (arguably) Corbin Burnes.

First, let’s establish two role discrepancies that may be the result of different organizational interpretations of information:

• Jorge Lopez has already started four games for the Kansas City Royals, boasting an 18 strike out / eight walk / two homer / 37 percent ground ball profile (4.86 Deserved Run Average). He has alternated good and bad starts thus far. However, the Brewers failed to use Lopez as a starter in 2018, instead employing Lopez as a successful member of the Triple-A shuttle team between Milwaukee and Colorado Springs; this mirrors Lopez’s 2018 minor league role (reliever) and follows his organizational shift to relief role in 2017. Despite what may be viewed as a spotty command profile and a lack of a deep pitching arsenal, the Royals promptly started Lopez and have him shifting sinker / riding fastball and slider offerings to “re-balance” his approach.

• Luis Ortiz battled some injuries and stamina concerns during his time in the Milwaukee organization, which spanned 44 games at Double-A Biloxi across parts of three seasons. Ortiz was mostly a starter in the Milwaukee organization, building his innings pitched total to career highs in three consecutive seasons; the righty is now at 99.7 innings and counting upon entering the MLB. Upon acquiring Ortiz, Baltimore assigned him directly to their Triple-A Norfolk club, and now are selecting his contract for a September showing. One might surmise this is to help boost his innings pitched total closer to 120.0 IP by season end, setting the youngster for a perfectly respectable workload floor for 2019.

Since I do not have additional, unpublished scouting information on Ortiz from his short time in the Baltimore organization (and there do not appear to be any updates from Norfolk), I am going to simply note that according to his minor league game data, there is no discernible statistic that demonstrates why the Orioles might recall the prospect. Alternately, there is equally no discernible argument as to why the Brewers did not view Ortiz as an immediate depth option to potentially bolster a contending pitching staff (and their aggressive handling of Freddy Peralta supports that question).

On Ortiz, the following table is from Baseball Reference CSV:

I would like to reject the “Orioles have nothing to lose” argument for recalling Ortiz, and I’d apply that same reasoning to the Royals, as well. For example, the Brewers apparently have everything to lose in 2018, and they entered the season with Jhoulys Chacin, Yovani Gallardo, and Wade Miley as their major pitching acquisitions for a year in which they probably suspected Jimmy Nelson would miss substantial time. The point being, “having something to lose” has not kept the Brewers from making unorthodox development moves and acquisitions, and that applies equally to starting Freddy Peralta ahead of top pitching prospect (and much clearer starting role) Corbin Burnes as it does to Chacin, Gallardo, and Miley. For goodness sake, the club just recently acquired veteran southpaw Gio Gonzalez, a starting pitcher by trade, and then mentioned that they might not use him as a starter. So, it is clear that “having something to lose” is no motivator for the Brewers to make “expected” or orthodox pitching moves; relative position in the standings should not explain these player development moves.

The flipside of this argument, I will add, is that this should not be taken as a “Derek Johnson is magic” argument, either. I do not believe that Brewers fans and analysts should fall back on that argument, because it basically substitutes a new type of devotional thinking about pitching development for previous orthodox thinking about pitching roles, and solely using a coach’s successful cases for transactional justification is a bad thing. Those of us relying on public knowledge will not understand or know any of Johnson’s potential “failures” in terms of mechanical or arsenal adjustments among Brewers pitching. Furthermore, this type of magical line of argument about Johnson’s skills could thus theoretically justify any pitching acquisition, which should be viewed as ridiculous on the face of it. For example, none of us should be rummaging the lowest DRA of 2018 simply to argue “x, y, and z should be Brewers targets because of Wade Miley and Derek Johnson,” and that’s not meant as a knock on either Johnson or Miley.

Jorge Lopez, on the other hand, has provided new data as a member of the Royals, and the righty is demonstrating a complete shift in his arsenal. Brewers fans will recall that Lopez used his big, tall frame to generate a fairly traditional rising fastball, curveball, change up arsenal. During Lopez’s time in Milwaukee in 2018, the Brooks Baseball classification system captured a “sinker,” which might also be called a riding / running fastball (although the vertical movement readings on the pitch hint that it may actually be a sinker). Lopez also introduced some variation of a slider:

Thus far in Kansas City, Lopez has reoriented this arsenal by reducing his “primary fastball” in favor of his sinker and slider. Along with these noticeable moves, Lopez is also ticking up his change and curve slightly.

Lopez has had two rough starts, but his most recent start against the Orioles was the best of his young career. In this start, perhaps Lopez cashed out the most extreme version of his arsenal adjustment, working sinker or slider for nearly 55 percent of his deliveries. Yet that curve still figures prominently at 21 percent of his overall selections, meaning that Lopez could also be called a sinker-curve guy.

This new arsenal is a fantastic look for Lopez, and it raises a difficult question that is worth asking, but must be asked in the proper critical mindset and organizational vantage point: when is a pitcher simply a new pitch, or a re-balancing of their arsenal, away from success? When is a pitcher simply in need of an opportunity? I hinted at this question following the July trade deadline, as the Brewers traded a pitcher who might be dismissed as “merely serviceable” at a time of increased need for quality depth due to injuries and ineffectiveness. Yet the Brewers did not give Lopez a start, nor did they keep him as a fixture in the bullpen, perhaps as a multi-inning guy. I don’t mean this as a criticism of the Brewers, however, because one could have reasonably asserted at the time that previously lofty goals of Lopez’s rotational Overall Future Potential were a thing of the past; here we are, though, with the tide potentially shifting within the Royals rotation.

The least satisfactory answer is that the Brewers simply missed on Ortiz and Lopez. Perhaps they were so cautious with Ortiz as to miss the potential upside (or even the current MLB floor!) in his profile. One could have said on deadline day that Luis Ortiz was maybe two or three years away from being a true impact, Number Two starter (if he were to reach his ceiling); perhaps that logic misses the value of how good a low rotation floor can be on many days in the MLB (cf. the 2018 Brewers, from Wade Miley to Freddy Peralta and, yes, even Junior Guerra most days). A more realistic answer, and perhaps the Lopez development supports this, is that maybe Milwaukee simply was not the place for these developments; even the acquisition of Jake Thompson and Jordan Lyles suggests that Stearns may have already found other development projects that better fit the organizational plan.

It is interesting to work with these unsatisfactory, vague conclusions while designing a framework for assessing Brandon Woodruff’s future with the organization, or even the potential future role for someone like Wade Miley:

• Is Miley a Brewers pitcher now, worth a contract extension and a trip back to the well, a celebration of a job well done and certainly a job worth tens of millions of dollars?

• Is Woodruff, about as bread-and-butter middle rotation starter / potential impact relief profile as one could ask for, a pitcher with a steady rotation or bullpen future in Milwaukee?

• With the continued development of Adrian Houser as a starting pitcher in the minor leagues, is Houser already poised to become the MLB starting role recovery for the Brewers that Jorge Lopez was not?

The trouble with these questions is that they could be answered in different ways for different organizations, but the benefit is that the Brewers currently reserve an crucial opportunity to learn from their recent transactions and maximize their development approach with each of these pitchers.

Photo Credit: Denny Medley, USA Today Sports Images

New Runs Prevented Workbook || Runs Prevented Primer

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KBQ19VcMZ4g7oW1jkGiYwxCadqjw3rYXkqN200f4lHc/edit?usp=sharing

This is not even some “to-be-expected” regression, as even if one wishes to look at Deserved Runs Average (DRA) throughout the season as a “true” measure of the Brewers talent (which should be cautioned), the Brewers would have been expected to allow anywhere between 23 and 30 fewer second half runs than they actually have allowed.

This is unforeseen and catastrophic.

The blame can be spread around to everyone, from the post-forearm injury Junior Guerra (10 IP, 9 runs on July 24 & 29), injured reliever Matt Albers (1.7 IP, 10 R), former? closer Corey Knebel (9.3 IP, 8 R entering Sunday), and even rookie rotation depth Freddy Peralta (19 IP, 17 R since the break). Worse yet, there is a sense of adding insult to injury, as newly acquired Joakim Soria hit the disabled list promptly after surrendering a grand slam home run in a devastating loss to San Diego, and quietly effective Taylor Williams hit the disabled list with an elbow injury. While fans will feel less sympathy for Matt Albers, who had a couple of different bouts of ineffectiveness surrounded by separate disabled list stints, the veteran righty was crucial to early season success (25 IP, 4 R through the end of May) and each day his injury status and effectiveness is not answered is a day that manager Craig Counsell must carefully ration Jeremy Jeffress and Josh Hader with little back-up. The same goes for Williams, and now Soria; while Jacob Barnes was previously an impact reliever and boasts solid peripherals and a 2.99 Deserved Run Average (DRA), his runs prevention performance in 2018 has not been to the level of that injured trio, and now it’s Barnes, Corbin Burnes, and Jordan Lyles trying to nail down the quietly effective support roles.

It’s as simple as this: the Brewers’ bullpen has two truly fantastic options in Jeffress and Hader, and those options will be great regardless of their surrounding cast. For the purposes of contending, however, this duo is amplified when Stearns’s excellent depth picks (Albers, Williams, even Corbin Burnes), closer (Knebel), and additional acquisitions (Soria) are performing well. Jeffress and Hader cannot do it themselves.

Injuries have also trimmed the rotation, as Brent Suter’s torn elbow ligament and Zach Davies’s back ailments have limited the Brewers’ effective rotational depth. Using Baseball Reference Three Year Park factors, both Suter and Davies combined for 18 Runs Prevented over 273 innings in 2017, offering excellent middle and replacement rotation depth. That level of impact depth performance will not be matched by the duo in 2018. Additionally, even if one could have argued that the club might not have expected Jimmy Nelson to return from his shoulder injury in 2018, having that materialize as a likely injury-scenario reality in 2018 is quite another ballgame. Consider this as Freddy Peralta meets a likely innings limit, Chase Anderson continues an uneven season, and Brandon Woodruff finds himself without a rotational role: #TeamDepth is now basically #TeamNecessity in terms of rotation building.

There’s no need to state it any other way: as much as one would like to criticize the Brewers pitching staff, and GM David Stearns for his failure to build a staff, the club is now to the point where injuries are diminishing even his strongest moves. The Soria trade looms loudest here, as the Brewers grabbed a legitimate high leverage, veteran reliever at the trade deadline and did not get six innings from his right arm before he hit the DL with a groin injury; Albers and Williams could be fan whipping posts when they were ineffective, but the Albers free agency deal looked like a brilliant low-cost gamble early in the season while Williams seemed poised to catapult himself into the high leverage workload discussion (Williams worked a 17.3 IP, 5 R stretch, Holding three leads, from June until the All Star Break).

Citing injuries to the pitching staff is not an “excuse” for the poor performance.

It would have been enough to deal with this group of recent injuries and setbacks, but the Brewers also simultaneously were gifted with a set of role reversions on the pitching staff. Corey Knebel’s descent from excellent closer in 2017 cost the Brewers a chance at a truly elite relief corps; according to Baseball Reference Three Year Park Factors, Knebel prevented nearly 25 runs in 2017. Even a 50 percent regression from that performance level would fit nicely with Jeffress and Hader, who have both been consistent Top 25 pitchers in the 2018 MLB. Add in the aforementioned struggles of Peralta, Barnes, and a bit of stalled usage from the shuttled Houser (he’s only worked two MLB appearances from July onward), and Counsell’s strategic options are looking much more thin while they are also being exasperated by some ineffective starts.

Beyond these role question marks, it is worth questioning the timing of the inclusion of Jorge Lopez in the Mike Moustakas trade. Since Lopez has served the season as an up-and-down member of the Triple-A / MLB “shuttle team” relief squad, discussions of the quality of Lopez’s performance were largely nonexistent at the trade deadline (I’m also guilty of this charge). But, it is worth emphasizing that as a back-roster depth strategy, the “shuttle team” prevented runs at a solid clip, especially when one considers the nature of this replacement role and the likely quality of other replacement pitchers to be acquired in their place.

In fact, these shuttle relievers combined to produce near-average aggregate performance for the Brewers, which leads one to question why Stearns traded Lopez and simultaneously decided to keep Brandon Woodruff at the Triple-A level to serve as replacement starting pitching depth. With Lopez in the Royals system and Woodruff now serving as starting pitching depth, the revolving door relief strategy is effectively dead at what could be the worst time of the season. Given that Woodruff boats a 3.55 DRA at the MLB level to accompany a 52 percent ground ball rate, while also demonstrating an average DRA at Colorado Springs with a consistent ground ball rate there, it is worth questioning why Stearns has not simply replaced Peralta with Woodruff (on the one hand) or simply promoted Woodruff to a steady MLB relief role (on the other hand). According to Brooks Baseball, the relief role is agreeing with Woodruff, who is throwing a sizzling 95-to-96 MPH fastball with more armside run than his 2017 variation, complete with steady change up and slider usage (both with more whiffs than in 2017, too).

This is not a bottomless pit (yet). That the Brewers remain the 12th best pitching staff in the MLB, within one standard deviation of the 10th spot, and sixth best pitching staff in the National League, should demonstrate just how good the club has been for most of the year. Indeed, this pitching staff has fallen off, and it’s important to underscore that it’s not simply “regression,” but a bad combination of regression, injuries, and strategic missteps at the worst possible time. But there could be a quick way out of this issue for the club:

• Get Zach Davies healthy, without any further setbacks, and use him to replace Freddy Peralta in the rotation.

• Develop an MLB role for Brandon Woodruff; preferably this would be a rotational role to spell another ineffective starter down the stretch (or add a sixth man for September), but even a well-defined one-inning bullpen role could be extremely helpful at the moment.

• Re-evaluate depth roles for Ariel Hernandez, Jordan Lyles, Alec Asher, and Aaron Wilkerson, and make any necessary waiver trades to boost the pitching staff. E.g., is Jordan Lyles the right arm to work in the shadow of the successful Triple-A shuttle crew? Is now the best time to make a potential long-term development play for Ariel Hernandez?

• Reconsider Adrian Houser’s shuttle role in favor of a regular one-inning role.

With the assumption that some combination of Soria, Albers, and Williams can get healthy for the stretch run, and that some of the “role regression” pitchers can make adjustments at the MLB level once again, this is a pitching staff that can improve quickly and regain its flexible frontier of roles and runs prevention that were celebrated in April and May. With Zach Davies healthy, a waiver trade acquisition (or two), and potentially prominent roles for two righties that can rush it up there (Woodruff and Houser), this pitching staff can rebound. Now we wait and watch.

Stearns just loudly answered that question this trade deadline.

What is fascinating about each of these trades is that they are fantastic in the sense of bolstering an MLB roster, in order to ensure that this stretch run features as few weaknesses as possible, while also potentially being over-pays in each case. Yet it should be stressed that these overpays are palatable for several reasons: the Brewers maintain a largely controllable roster that is also relatively inexpensive; the Brewers have a relatively large set of players that have been minor leaguers long enough to need potential 40-man roster protection entering 2019; and, perhaps most importantly, there is an incredible amount of role risk involved with each player. These trades should provide grounds for further analysis into when and how potential overpays are helpful to a team, and they should certainly provide further evidence that WARP/$ is not the sole determination of a trade’s potential value or impact.

Grading the System: 2016 || 2017

• Make no mistake about it, in terms of developing multiple quality pitches, command, and velocity, Luis Ortiz could potentially have the best pitching role for the Brewers system; there was a time, two years ago even, where it would not have been absurd for Ortiz to fight for a top tier pitching role in the prospect ranking cycle (and, really, it was not absurd). But Ortiz has been around forever in the advanced minors, it seems, without working full seasons. For example, the injury-fighting righty has 225 innings at Double-A without working 100 innings in a season, and with 68 innings at the 2018 deadline he could potentially miss 100 innings once again. If Ortiz can take his next step forward in the Orioles’ system, he is absolutely a more valuable asset, in terms of roster surplus, than Jonathan Schoop (and it is not close!!!), but that strong 60 Overall Future Potential (OFP) / 50 likely grade entering 2017 looks much more improbable. Ortiz is eligible for the Rule 5 draft for the 2019 season and almost certainly must be protected by the Orioles.

• Jean Carmona just made the jump stateside for the Brewers in 2018, and thus remains a full four levels away from the MLB. Additionally, Carmona might even be another year away from a clearly defined MLB potential role. In this regard, I do not envy the job of MLB scouts and analytics personnel, as it’s not entirely clear for me how I would price Carmona’s potential future value in terms of long-term systemic development.

• At BP Milwaukee, Kyle Lesniewski describe the roles and risks associated with both Kodi Medeiros and Wilber Perez. Medeiros could become an impact reliever at the MLB level, and it’s not unlikely that some observers still believe that he could start in some capacity, as there will always be hold outs for that sort of role. Given Medeiros’s delivery and command profile, however, as well as his fastball, Lesniewski outlines the difficulties that Medeiros may have for reaching even an impact reliever profile. Medeiros is eligible for the Rule 5 draft entering the 2019 season, and almost certainly must be protected by the White Sox, while Perez had yet to play stateside in the Brewers system.

• Finally, I already detailed the roles and surplus value for Brett Phillips and Jorge Lopez, so I will not go into too much detail here. However, I will add that of each of the prospects included in this midseason deals, Phillips is arguably the most likely to have MLB floor and ceiling roles that both surpass the value of the trade return (which is not a knock against Mike Moustakas, he simply might only be in Milwaukee for a couple of months). With a prospect such as Corey Ray coming on strong in Double-A Biloxi, not to mention the considerable development of Troy Stokes Jr. at the advanced level as well, Milwaukee cannot necessarily lose sleep over trading away a depth outfielder from their stacked group when they are fighting a close divisional deficit and leading the National League Wild Card race.

So, readers will witness a couple of recurring facts in these trades: the Brewers largely traded away players that must be protected for 2019 to avoid their loss via the Rule 5 draft, or players with little-to-no stateside development experience (and thus years to reach MLB), and/or players with roles that may be replicated within a year. One need not believe that a player like Stokes will surpass Phillips, in terms of overall ceiling, to see the value of the young prospect’s potential to fill an MLB depth position in 2019. Phillips himself may not have had an opportunity in 2019 to take such a role. The same logic might apply to Quintin Torres-Costa and Bubba Derby. This should not be construed to mean that these current system prospects are categorically better than Phillips / Medeiros / Lopez; in fact, I would have ranked each of that trio ahead of their potential 2019 depth replacements. But once again, since systemic development, contending windows, and player development cycles are now orbiting a club that is contending for consecutive seasons (and the foreseeable future, hopefully), if it costs system depth roles to improve MLB weaknesses, the Brewers have to eat the risk of losing those ceilings.

I like when MLB trades can simply be called good baseball moves. For all the rebuilding narratives in Baltimore, Kansas City, and Chicago, the White Sox, Royals, and Orioles front offices arguably made sensible trades with quality returns that both have long and short time horizons and development cycles. Milwaukee is working as a true contender without trading from their most elite potential prospect stash. This is good all around.

Stearns priced out these converging development cycles and adroitly moved the future role risk to address an offense that absolutely needed help for a serious contending run. Just the other day I wrote, “At worst, Travis Shaw has simply begun a potential shift over to the right side of the infield, where he might serve as a viable first base option for 2019 should the Brewers and Moustakas exercise his mutual option for 2019,” without thinking that a realistic move to first base for Shaw could occur as early as this week. Now, with Jonathan Schoop in the mix for second base and Jesus Aguilar slumping, Shaw becomes a strong side platoon option at 1B to form a serious infield unit:

This infield could open 2019 should Stearns consider keeping both Moustakas and Schoop, and now the talk can turn to development cycles once more. While the Brewers continue to season second baseman Keston Hiura at the most advanced levels of the minor leagues, Schoop basically serves as an upgrade over the Jonathan Villar gamble (gambling that he’ll return to his 2016 form), thus giving the Brewers a quality starting option while Hiura completes his minor league development. While Hiura’s bat is arguably ready for the MLB, and has been mentioned as a potential MLB option by Baseball Prospectus in their latest Top 50 list, the infielder may need more work in the field after missing significant fielding development time due to an extended elbow injury. Once Hiura is ready in 2019, a Schoop / Hiura mix simply extends the #TeamDepth mantra, and the same can arguably said for the remainder of the infield.

Entering 2018, the Brewers system took a step back in terms of organizational rankings, due to a series of developmental setbacks for key prospects, MLB graduations, and trades. I began to highlight this during last year’s “Grading the System” feature, but as one can never predict baseball, the development cycles and potential OFP assessments calibrated for Corey Ray, Keston Hiura answered a crucial risk question (can he play 2B?), and a veritable gang of pop-up pitchers continued to march upward in the system, potentially boosting and extending the no-name, depth-oriented pitching staff into 2019. Make no mistake about it, the system might continue to rank in the middle of the league in terms of overall quality, and the set of clear potential impact roles (true 60 OFP+ roles) may end with Keston Hiura and Corey Ray should Corbin Burnes exhaust his rookie standing through the end of 2018.

Yet, given the instant development of 2018 First Round draft pick Brice Turang, the Brewers could demonstrate that they indeed nabbed an Elite Prep prospect that fell due to prospect fatigue. Turang could quickly help to boost the top of the system as an MLB potential role falls into place. Moreover, given the Brewers’ expanded efforts in International signings, as well as the quality use of signing bonus allocations in each of the last two MLB drafts, the lower minors could continue to host a variety of players that suddenly surge onto the prospect scene. While this does not make the Brewers system different than many other MLB systems, it provides a road map to how the club can continue to develop talent while contending. One could argue that it’s absurd to suggest that the Brewers “rely” on someone like Turang falling in the MLB draft, but this is exactly the type of prospect perception and role foresight that the Brewers must have if they are going to succeed while drafting in the bottom half of each round.

Of course, the notable graduations from the system should not be undersold as well. Now there are so many starters, depth roles, and trades from the Brewers prospect stock that I added a new category this year:

Now, with these graduates in mind, what does a somewhat thinner, but still rather interesting Brewers system look like?

Prospect Key
Top 10 Consideration
Top 30 Consideration
[Just Interesting]

Of course, it is also worth emphasizing how the system has been….decimated in key areas. Given the quick development by advanced prospects acquired from the major 2015-2016 trades, as well as the huge trades entering 2018 and during the recent deadlines, the pool of potential impact prospects acquiring via trade has waned:

This is an important category to consider simply because Milwaukee demonstrated how adroit trades could quickly rebuild a system and reform an MLB roster. It will be worth watching to see if the Stearns continues to attempt to find Jonathan Villar and Keon Broxton types via trade now that the club is solidly contending. Of course, one could argue that Stearns is always trying to find this player (be it Oliver Drake, or Jesus Aguilar, or even Alec Asher), but that it simply the fact that these players will not always come via trade.

Thanks to the mechanical corrections, good health, and overall development of Corey Ray, as well as the surging role of Troy Stokes Jr., the development of draft prospects arguably has a better outlook entering 2019 than it did prior to 2018. Given the advancement of Corbin Burnes into a relief role, Brandon Woodruff and Taylor Williams into respective swingman and depth relief roles, and Brett Phillips into a fourth outfielder, it is clear that the Brewers front office is considering all possible role developments with each player (rather than following a cookie cutter model, or a model in which each prospect must immediately receive playing time in their clearest future role). It is arguable that this type of development strategy could maximize roles ranging from Stokes to Zack Brown, Jake Gatewood, and maybe even Lucas Erceg.

Meanwhile, Milwaukee signed a couple of additional potential impact International Amateur free agents this July, continuing an attempt to build up the low minors. Carlos Rodriguez and Larry Ernesto are already making some noise in the Dominican Summer League, while prospects like Jose Sibrian and Jesus Lujano have made the leap stateside.

Frankly, this Brewers system will not look as strong, in terms of potentially elite impacts roles, as the one that received ranking for 2018 at Baseball Prospectus. Yet, as new cycles of player development depth emerge in the low minors, and the Brewers continue their unique form of MLB roster construction (clearly using all 40 roster spots for MLB-adjacent roles and frequently shuffling those roles), Milwaukee could be an organizational well-suited to do more with less. For if 2017 fired the opening shot that the Brewers can contend simply based on giving high floor players a chance to work in the MLB, 2018 is advancing that ideal and carrying it to deeper logical, promotional, and transactional extensions.

Photo Credit: Gary A. Vasquez, USA Today Sports Images

Surplus Grade
At Baseball Prospectus Milwaukee, I have worked on a transactional Benefit-Cost Analysis system for assessing prospect-and-MLB trades. I use the term “Surplus” to denote the value of a player through trade, which includes the player’s on-field production plus their “scarcity” (which, in terms of MLB labor, translates into their contractual dollars plus control time). In the following table, I demonstrate one way of assessing surplus for these trades, which includes both options for Soria and Moustakas picked up for the 2019 season.

Recommended Background: Refining Surplus Pricing || Organizational Logic and Playoff Trades

It should be stressed that this is not viewed as a complete analysis of a transaction, but rather an analysis that paces current MLB player production and prospect roles against the history of MLB in order to assess their value; the hypothesis is that since MLB teams can (and do) trade prospects for MLB roles, a value metric can be found that places prospects and MLB players on the same scale.

Here’s how the trades look without options:

Any way one slices it, David Stearns is “going for it,” in terms of delivering trades that provide clear cut short-term MLB roster gains while surrendering long-term roster assets. On the face of it, Stearns has paid more than he is receiving; at worst, he paid a dollar to return one quarter. In the case of the Soria trade, the time horizons are acceptable, as it is unclear how quickly lefty Kodi Medeiros will reach the MLB (even from Double-A in 2018), let alone a relief role that sees the young southpaw form his tools into high leverage function (which would arguably be his highest realistic role); the same can be said for Perez, who has never played stateside ball and thus has a truly indeterminate role horizon.

In the case of the Moustakas trade, it’s tougher to make a case about role horizons, for both Phillips and Lopez have useful (if not flashy) roles for a 2018 contending ballclub and potentially better roles for the future. Phillips could morph into a multi-tool center fielder if his bat develops at the MLB level, but his defense, speed, and power remain strong enough that Phillips could also serve as a rare “impact Fourth Outfielder;” it’s impossible not to dream on Lopez’s fastball and curveball combo playing up as a reliever, and the MLB dream for the righty would be that if the command comes along he can scale relief roles from low- to high-leverage.

Related: What does the future hold for Jorge Lopez? || Medeiros & Perez 

It must be added that if it appears perplexing that the potential transactional surplus prices involved in the Moustakas do not equal one another, they need not. One can argue that from an organizational standpoint, reaching the playoffs is a push for additional revenue, as well as an operation that concerns on-field baseball production. At some point, Wins, Runs Scored, Runs Allowed, Overall Future Potential, etc., are turned into cash for an organization. In the case of the 2018 Brewers, these recent deals, especially the Moustakas trade, bolster the club’s Wild Card lead (currently up 2.5 games) and (dare I say it) give the club a better chance at competing with the division leading Lakeview Nine (the Cubs currently lead Milwaukee by 1.5 games for the National League Central crown). Once these playoff odds are bolstered, the organization can also price out their odds of playing deeper into the playoffs, and frankly, if the Brewers believe these types of deals can help their club reach the League Championship Series, it does not necessarily matter that their deadline deals were “too expensive.”

MLB Roster Profile
Thus far, it is clear that the Moustakas move accomplishes two key objectives for the MLB roster:

• First, the move improves an offense in need of consistent production by making it deeper through the addition of a solid prime-age veteran bat.

• Second, the move will test an efficient defense and organizational shifting philosophy by moving incumbent third baseman Travis Shaw to second base.

Moving Toward Contact
To the first point, Mike Moustakas developed into a solid, consistently better than average batter after his 2015 breakout. The left-handed bat is also a clear addition to the discipline-contact department for the Brewers offense, as Moustakas consistently strikes out at a better than average clip. Ostensibly, Moustakas adds power and contact to the batting order, and as many have noted, will test these traits in a ballpark that is much friendlier to left-handed batters than Kansas City’s park.

The following table includes Moustakas’s home run, walk, and strike out percentages, as well as his True Average (TAv) and Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA), which are advanced metrics that assess underlying offensive and defensive elements to express production (.260 is average for TAv, and 0 is average for FRAA).

While Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA) demonstrate some fluctuations in recent seasons for Moustakas, the third baseman performs at a consistently better than average rate with the glove as well as the bat, which should reduce some of the potential impact of the Brewers’ infield shuffle. Additionally, since Orlando Arcia is working to the left of Moustakas, theoretically some of the defensive pressure should be taken off of the third baseman.

Misusing Phillips?
One of the remaining questions for the MLB roster is whether Brett Phillips actually had a solid role for the club moving forward. Perhaps because of the left-handed batting bent of much of the Brewers positional group (Eric Thames, Christian Yelich, Shaw, and more recently Brad Miller, too), Phillips has remained out of favor for the club’s official “fourth outfield” spot, a spot that has recently belonged to the hot-and-cold Keon Broxton. Despite a .180 batting average, Broxton has walked and hit for power frequently enough to keep his glove on the roster, which is playing at around 2.4 FRAA (after a -8.2 FRAA campaign in 2017). From the right side of the plate, Broxton ostensibly offers more flexibility when manager Craig Counsell needs to spell Yelich or Thames in the outfield.

Related: Understanding Phillips

The trouble with the Broxton-Phillips wager is that Phillips arguably already surpasses this level of production even with his MLB floor, which he demonstrated in spectacular fashion toward the end of the 2017 season. In that brief performance, Phillips flashed his elite defensive tools (4.3 FRAA), while also presenting a strong batting average (.276), walk rate (nearly 10 percent), and power (seven extra base hits in 98 appearances). This type of production is what makes pricing out an MLB role for Phillips so difficult, because the left-handed batting defensive asset has enough questions about his offensive game to raise the possibility that pitchers will expose his shortcomings with more exposure. But the glove and arm are so good as to keep Phillips in a serious regular rotation if he falls out of a starting spot, and he could easily serve as an MLB outfielder with 300-to-400 valuable plate appearances, the type of ephemeral roster asset that most playoff teams dream of. The trouble with the Brewers trading Phillips is that his floor is arguably already reaching this role, which raises questions about why the club did not employ Phillips for more than 15 games in 2018.

Along with keeping right handed pitcher Brandon Woodruff in the shuttle crew between Milwaukee and Triple-A Colorado Springs, and shifting Corbin Burnes to relief for his MLB debut (when his top role, floor, and the club’s admitted 2019 plans have him slated as a starting pitcher), the club’s usage of Phillips should serve as a serious area for strategic questioning and analysis. Did the Brewers use Phillips to the best of his current ability, even given that they’re working with his MLB floor? The flip side of this argument would hold that since the Brewers do not have outfield space to test Phillips’s top role as a starting center fielder, trading him simply means that a “blocked” prospect will get his chance elsewhere; similarly, if you believe that Phillips will settle into the impact back-up role as well, that’s not a role that you mourn trading away to bolster an MLB roster weakness elsewhere.

Does Fielding Matter?
As for moving Shaw to second base, this is the type of value-seeking move that one would love to see from a loudly-announced, so-called “analytic” front office. The Brewers have one of the most efficient defensive units in the National League, even with the recent demotion of star defensive short stop Orlando Arcia and a display of less-than-stellar middle infield play of late; the club’s bread-and-butter has been stopping hits from falling in the outfield, either on flyballs or line drives, and coupled with the somewhat bizarre distribution of batted balls between pitching units (i.e., the key relievers are typically more groundball oriented, on the whole, than the starting pitchers), the Brewers defensive unit can withstand unexpected arrangements so long as the personnel shift for key game moments.

Additionally, moving Shaw to second base answers an interesting question about the extent to which fielding matters for an MLB club. This question was prominently raised when Arcia was demoted, as even a top tier glove in all of baseball could not hold that batting performance, and now the inverse equation can be applied to Shaw. By True Average, Shaw is one of the very best bats on the Brewers, and the club essentially has a .298 TAv second baseman at the deadline (that’s good enough for sixth best in the MLB among 2B with 100 PA); neither Brian Dozier nor Jonathan Schoop, the remaining rumored second base targets for the Brewers, can be counted on to match Shaw’s impact batting production. Furthermore, keeping Shaw at second base arguably gives the club the chance to continue their long play gamble on Jonathan Villar, who can slide into a meaningful depth role once he returns from the disabled list. The equation here is quite clever, as if the Brewers are going to gamble on Dozier or Schoop putting it together, they can also gamble on Villar, who has shown flashes of brilliance in 2018 and was batting .261 / .346 / .348 over the 20 games preceding his disabled list stint.

If Counsell can start a fielding unit that includes Moustakas and Shaw, and then use a fielding substitution when a key groundball reliever enters a close game (looking at Jeremy Jeffress here), ostensibly the manager has more options to get the offense going without sacrificing key late game defense. One can dream that if the Brewers succeed in the playoffs, this unorthodox defensive gamble lead the way. At worst, Travis Shaw has simply begun a potential shift over to the right side of the infield, where he might serve as a viable first base option for 2019 should the Brewers and Moustakas exercise his mutual option for 2019.

This is #TeamDepth exhibiting team flexibility across the offense, fielding, and contractual horizons, and even if the acquisition cost seems steep, the playoffs payoff is clear and (hopefully) immediate.

Photo Credit: Benny Sieu, USA Today Sports Images

This post was updated at 10:30 AM to include additional BPMilwaukee and Baseball Prospectus links and add Corey Ray as a top prospect.

Stepping into speculative histories of MLB players, I’ve been thinking about what I’d expect from players like Burnes or Peralta if they reached the MLB in 2018. Both pitchers provide extreme challenges to the observer, and for different reasons.

• Burnes provides a challenge because the righty’s quick ascent to the advanced minors has out-paced the non-proprietary information available about the pitcher, which manifested itself during the 2017 season in the form of widely varying fastball, slider, and delivery reports. From early in the season, when on-the-ground reports placed Burnes as a potentially high reliever-risk profile who could make it work as a middle rotation starter, to late in the season when delivery adjustments and improved fastball reports began leaking out, fans and analysts were essentially given several different pitchers’ worth of information. Entering 2018, then, it’s worth asking whether Burnes is the fastball / slider reliever with middle rotation question marks, the middle rotation arm who could decrease reliever risk by continuing to refine his delivery, or the surging pitching prospect who simply continues to redefine roles by refining mechanics and therefore allowing his stuff to take the next step. All of this can happen with Burnes, or none of it; thus the righty prospect is an acute example of information asymmetry.

• Peralta faces different questions about his stuff and profile, especially due to his diminished stature (compared to Burnes) and his pitching approach (he’s not quite a command-and-deception guy, but he twists and turns his fastballs in order to help his stuff “play up”). In one sense, Peralta is much more conventional than Burnes, insofar as Peralta will be lauded as “the small framed righty who proved everyone wrong” should his frame stick in a functional mid-rotation role. On the other hand, given the frame and lack of a strong fastball, it is worth questioning how Peralta’s arsenal and command will play as he advances in the system. The significance of the righty’s pitch sequencing and location will not be understated. It’s tough to say whether Peralta faces “reliever risk” in the same sense Burnes does, as Peralta’s top role is even murkier than his Advanced Minors teammate.

So, if Burnes and Peralta reach the MLB in 2018, what will their potential roles be? What performance levels might fans expect? With Counsell looking at both pitchers as potential midseason reinforcements for the staff, it is worth digging into potential production expectations.

Role risk will be nothing new to the 2018 Brewers; role risk is all over the roster, even beyond the rookie class. But, in attempting to form expectations about Burnes and Peralta, I turned to other rookie pitchers that are on the MLB roster or in Spring Training camp as non-roster invitees. By my count, these rookies comprise (in order of height) Peralta, Taylor Williams, Marcos Diplan, Jorge Lopez, Aaron Wilkerson, Erik Davis, Burnes, Luis Ortiz, Adrian Houser, Brandon Woodruff, Tyler Webb, and Jon Perrin.

• Several of these arms are already established as MLB relievers or very likely to have relief roles in 2018 (see Williams, Lopez, Davis, Houser, and Webb).

• A few of these arms are organizational depth with questionable futures in terms of organizational plans (see Diplan, Lopez, Wilkerson, Davis, Ortiz, and Perrin).

• Finally, there’s a deep group of potential rotation depth, in terms of starters who could work as rotational replacements or MLB emergency starters in 2018 (Peralta, Diplan, Lopez, Wilkerson, Burnes, Ortiz, and Perrin).

• Woodruff is likely the only pitcher here who is a rotational lock in 2018 (and even writing that leads me to raise some questions, as “There is no such thing as a pitching prospect,” there is no such thing as a surefire pitching role).

Available PECOTA projections (March 2, 2018) for 2018 Brewers rookies (Erik Davis and Jon Perrin projections unavailable). This table features IP projections, as well as Runs Allowed and Runs Prevented figures drawn from projected Deserved Runs Average. Runs Prevented figures are drawn from an average of the 2016-2017 Miller Park / National League. PECOTA strike outs, walks, and WARP are also featured.

With these dozen pitchers, I’ve already laid out extensive role risk simply by categorizing these arms. So, in order to form potential expectations for 2018, I turned to speculative history: namely, how many pitchers in the MLB expansion era matched these arms’ precise height, weight range, handedness, and age as rookies? That is to ask, if these pitchers reach the MLB as rookies in 2018 (e.g., their precise 2018 age), how does their physical profile fare (e.g., their handedness, height, and weight?).

To answer this question, and engage in this speculative exercise, I used the indispensable (and highly recommended) Baseball Reference Play Index to search comparable expansion era players. I searched the expansion era because it is a largely integrated era that also includes a relatively similar form of baseball over the decades in terms of pitching arsenals or prototypes (it tracks the diminishing knuckleball, rise of the splitter / forkball, rise of the fastball / slider profile, etc.). Additionally, as I attempted to search other time frames, I found the reasoning to be rather arbitrary (e.g., if I search the Wild Card Era, should I simply search the Contemporary PED era? If I only search the expanded Wild Card Era (2012-present) will I have a large enough group of players to analyze? And so on).

Using the expansion era, here are the search results from Baseball Reference Play Index. For each player, I searched exact height, handedness, age, and rookie status, while also searching a five percent range in weight (there are some issues with using listed weight). The “Comps” column shows the number of historical rookie comparisons for each potential 2018 Brewers rookie.

This table shows the basic summary of the searches that I conducted using the Play Index tool. What immediately surprised me was the lack of comparisons for some players (like Peralta, Diplan, and Webb), and the large number of comparisons available for “prototypical” starting pitching frames (particularly Lopez, Burnes, and Woodruff). Alternately, for a supposedly “old” prospect, the number of comparisons available for Perrin also surprised me, which suggests to me that there has been a path in MLB history for righties of his size and draft pedigree to reach the MLB, even if it takes a while.

Meandering through the comparisons, there are simply some fun and interesting names that appear.

• 2018 rookie Jon Perrin would reach the MLB at the same time as 2012 rookie Yu Darvish, who shares Perrin’s handedness, age, height, and basic weight range; among older comps, Doug Brocail and Todd Worrell are my favorites for Perrin.

• A few names jump off of 2018 rookie Brandon Woodruff’s spreadsheet, like Corey Kluber (!), Ryan Vogelsong, and (of course), Tim Worrell.

• Corbin Burnes has Michael Fulmer and Steve Bedrosian, Houser has Kevin Quackenbush, while Neftali Feliz and Shelby Miller belong to Luis Ortiz. Fulmer is a fascinating comp for Burnes not because of his excellent MLB performance, but because he shared Burnes’s information asymmetry in terms of advanced minors scouting roles and MLB adjustments to exceed expectations. Feliz and Miller are interesting comps for Ortiz, for as the righty faces questions about innings workload and relief risk, it’s good to remember that successful arms have also shared the righty’s frame, height, and age as rookies.

• The lone comps for Diplan and Peralta? Peralta matches 2000 rookie Byung-Hyun Kim (!), while Diplan matches 1965 rookie Dick Selma.

• Obviously, there is a world of gray area here, as these comparisons say nothing about a player’s draft or international development status, stuff, place in the minor league system, etc. Moreover, for my search, I did not use these comparisons to create trends or aging curves, so what I am attempting should not be read alongside the (much more methodologically sound) PECOTA system.

From these searches, a batch of 257 rookie comparison seasons resulted. In order to analyze potential performance markers in environments comparable to the 2016-2017 MLB, I indexed each season according to Runs Allowed per Game (RA/G), and sampled post-Strike rookies that played during a season with a run environment within 5 percent of the 2017 RA/G. This analysis produced a sample of 85 rookie comparison seasons. The following table shows the basic production range for this 85 rookie population:

For this analysis, I focused on Innings Pitched and basic league-level Runs Prevented (I did not investigate historical park factors for this analysis). To compensate for the lack of park factors, I produced a range of runs prevented estimates. Overall, this group of pitchers did not average high innings pitched totals (presumably due to their rookie status, in many cases), with the average pitcher in this sample working nearly 39.0 innings.

This sample can be further categorized to focus on each specific Brewers rookie’s physical profile. In the next table, a range of runs prevented (RnPrv, LowRnPrv, and HighRnPrv) accompany Innings Pitched and Runs averages and standard deviation (IP, IP_StDev; Rn, Rn_StDev).

This table undoubtedly demonstrates a wide range of potentialities for these Brewers rookie pitchers. The innings pitched variance alone suggests that these players could range anywhere from “Did Not Play” to 70-to-80 IP seasons. It’s easy to get excited about some of these results; for example, 75 innings pitched and five runs prevented from Corbin Burnes, or 56.3 IP and six runs prevented from Taylor Williams would represent excellent rotational and bullpen support for Milwaukee.

Yet, the basic averages might provide some hint as to why the Brewers front office has remained quiet on the pitching free agency market thus far: even averaging around 35 innings and providing moderate runs prevented totals, this group of pitchers has a physical pedigree that suggests competent replacement depth can come from rookie ranks. Of course, it is impossible to fully extrapolate from these historical rookie comparisons to the Brewers 2018 pitching staff; this is not a correlative relationship. Yet, through this speculative historical analysis, one can find that Milwaukee has some solid physical characteristics with plenty of historical counterparts (especially Lopez, Burnes, and Woodruff); there are also some nearly one-of-a-kind profiles (see Diplan, Peralta, and Webb). Ultimately, these dozen rookies present Milwaukee’s front office and field management with an array of options to collect outs and prevent runs, even if they’re a group of wide-ranging replacements.

Baseball Prospectus. 2018 PECOTA (March 2, 2018) [CSV]. Retrieved March 4, 2018 from baseballprospectus.com.

Baseball Prospectus. “More PECOTA” (Player Cards). Retrieved March 4, 2018 from baseballprospectus.com.

Baseball Reference. Play Index. Sports Reference, LLC., Sports Reference LLC, 2000-2018. Searches conducted March 3, 2018 from baseball-reference.com.

These six starting pitchers, justifiably described as bad or less-than-ideal (if you’re feeling kind) in 2016, worked 750.3 innings while preventing nine runs in 2017. The club definitely suffered from Guerra’s opening day calf injury (and then his lack of command), while Peralta showed that he could not build on any gains made during the previous season. But Davies was no joke, improving on his 45 Overall Future Potential (OFP) role to the extent that one might at the very least discuss enshrining him as the ideal back-end starter (at best, he’s surpassed that role). Anderson and Nelson both proved to be the real deal at least for one season, leading the 2017 rotation to an even greater extent than Guerra and Davies lead the 2016 group.

Everyone knew the 2017 returning rotation was going to be dreadful, until it wasn’t.

So here we stand, with almost everyone (including myself) assuming that David Stearns will make another pitching move entering 2018. What’s strange, however, is that for all the #InStearnsWeTrust that Brewers fans fly, they still largely refuse to learn or analyze the GM’s inner workings, such as his 2016-2017 lack of rotational moves and the resounding success that followed. It remains worth repeating that pitching is the strength of this Brewers club, which is why Stearns spent significant monetary and prospect resources (justifiably) improving the outfield and, by extension, batting order for 2018.

Related:
Low Rotation Shift
Aces Do Not Exist
Rotation Spots
How the Brewers Beat the Cubs

Stearns did not necessarily need to improve the starting pitching rotation in 2018, unless one rambles off a set of beliefs: Anderson isn’t who he was, Davies isn’t who he was, Nelson is injured, Garza and Peralta are gone, and Junior Guerra cannot be relied upon. Okay, so Stearns signed the inimitable Jhoulys Chacin, who looks like a rich man’s Junior Guerra (seriously, look at his arsenal and tell me that’s not Guerra’s ideal form), and brought back Franchise Pitcher Yovani Gallardo for what could be another spin at the rotation in Milwaukee.

Meanwhile, the rotation is filled with enough “You’ve got to be kidding me” to give the excellent 2017 staff a run for its money. Homegrown arms take the shape of Brandon Woodruff and Brent Suter; deeper into the system, there are advanced prospects like Jorge Lopez and Freddy Peralta (on the 40-man roster) and Corbin Burnes (off the 40-man roster). If you squint, there’s at least two #3 starters among that trio, maybe as soon as 2018 to boot. If you’re a glass-half-empty kind of fan, that’s a whole bunch of low rotation and reliever risk. But this is not a problem, either, and I direct you to the 2013 rotation as evidence.

Although, perhaps that 2013 rotation is a precisely perfect corollary to the 2018 rotation, as then GM Doug Melvin punted on replacing Zack Grinke or Shaun Marcum and only really received a rotational upgrade after Mark Attanasio negotiated with Scott Boras deep into Spring Training. Still, having lived through that rotation, I’m not convinced that Alfredo Figaro (74.0 IP / -6 runs prevented), Hiram Burgos (29.3 / -9), Mike Fiers (22.3 / -10), Johnny Hellweg (30.7 / -16), and Wily Peralta (183.3 / -21) are quite the same as Guerra, Woodruff, Suter, Gallardo, and Lopez. Even if you’re the glass-half-empty type here, that low-rotation floor should be substantially higher for Woodruff and even Suter than it ever was for Johnny Hellweg or even Peralta (although that’s probably rewriting history with hindsight). In fact, looking at this story again makes it seem inevitable that Jake Arrieta will be wearing Brewers blue on March 26.

With all this in mind, it’s time to take Stearns seriously with this rotation. Even the fact that the Brewers were rumored to be involved with Yu Darvish, and are still connected to nearly every free agency or trade rumor with a pulse, does not negate the fact that Stearns has built a rotation with a very particular character. And this is a very particular character that has worked in 2017, as well:

• Stearns may work with starting pitchers who are typically smaller than the ideally hyped “rotation workhorse body.”

• Stearns works with starting pitchers who do not throw with elite (or even median!) velocity.

• Stearns largely continues the Doug Melvin trend of working with over-the-top deliveries (Anderson is probably his best example here, and Suter was an anomaly be it with Melvin or Stearns).

• Stearns loves starting pitchers who have some type of wiggling fastball (be it a sinker or cutter) and a change-up / curveball profile.

Obviously, you can’t check all three boxes with all pitchers (e.g., Chacin and Woodruff both approach that ideal workhorse body while working as primarily fastball / slider types, and Woodruff’s primary fastball velocity was in the Top 15 percent of all 2017 starting pitchers who threw at least 50 pitches). But there’s enough of a trend across these arms that one can begin to assess what Stearns is looking for in a rotation, and there’s enough success (even if it was somewhat surprising success) in 2017 to begin to take seriously the idea of “trusting” in Stearns’s rotational ideals.

So here we are: why trust the rotation?

• Baseball Prospectus recently released three new pitching statistics that approximate a pitcher’s Power, Command, and Stamina. Of the 608 pitchers that threw at least 10 innings in 2017, Brandon Woodruff is one of only 51 to score a “50” (or better) in all three categories. This list is dominated by two types of players: young pitchers or injured pitchers who posted mediocre (or worse) DRA during their 2017 campaigns, veteran starters generally regarded as solid-to-top rotation types (see Jacob deGrom and Justin Verlander or Gerrit Cole, Lance Lynn, or Jeff Samardzija), or elite relievers (Woodruff’s teammates Corey Knebel and Jacob Barnes are also on this rare list). Woodruff probably is not slated to become Verlander or deGrom or Cole, but even if he reaches Michael Wacha’s range of production, the club is in fantastic middle rotation shape.

• Zach Davies and Brent Suter are both command “aces” (for lack of a better term), overcoming their velocity shortcomings by hammering the strike zone in quality locations (the Command statistic actually tracks certain pitching zones deemed ideal for working corner / borderline strikes).

• Yovani Gallardo and Chase Anderson are near clones of one another (one might ask whether the Brewers are still using biomechanical data that drew the club toward the high release point years ago!). While neither pitcher is graded as a strong “Power” arm, both make up for their lack of power pitching with better than average command and stamina grades.

• Jhoulys Chacin and Junior Guerra both grade as mediocre Power and Command pitchers, but Chacin makes up for these grades with his Stamina. On the other hand, Jimmy Nelson probably grades as the club’s truest “Power” starter, as the righty does not grade well in Command but makes up for that shortcoming with Power and Stamina.

• Across the rotation, Nelson, Davies, and Chacin grade as groundball pitchers (each with a rate at or slightly better than 50 percent in 2017), while Suter, Anderson, and Gallardo grade as steady or improving groundball workers (this trio sits below 50 percent grounders, but one might question whether Suter and Anderson can flirt with that mark given their improvements).

• Finally, as I examined with the club’s approach to the elite Chicago Cubs offense, the Brewers starting pitchers attack the strike zone. Compared to the 2017 National League, the Brewers starters walked notablty fewer batters (23 fewer batters than expected, a 7 percent improvement versus the league). What is particularly interesting here is that the pitchers as a group do not grab an 0-1 count more frequently than the National League average, which suggests that the Brewers win their command battle by yielding weak first swings (95 split OPS+), and winning 2-0, 3-0, 1-1, and 2-1 counts.

The Brewers are entering one of the most important seasons in franchise history with a “What on earth?” rotation. Their likely best pitcher is either injured and therefore an unknown (Nelson), a low-velocity sinker/change command master (Davies), or on the wrong side of 30 with one good career year (Anderson). Their major free agent signing is best described as a potential darkhorse improvement candidate (Chacin), and their other free agent is on a change-of-scenery, win-a-job-in-camp contract (Gallardo). Behind this group, there’s either the one-off age-31 star from 2016 (Guerra), the Raptor swingman working from the south side (Suter), and the Top 10 prospect who grades as a middle-rotation guy (Woodruff). Ironically, the warts on this group resemble the 2017 #TeamDepth that nearly lead the team to the playoffs, where everyone could find so many words to describe the team’s shortcomings without finding enough words to figure out how it would all work.

I’ll be damned if this doesn’t look like another market inefficiency (pick up guys with profiles other teams might punt on and throw some strikes!); I’ve learned my lessons as an analyst, and with these beautiful shortcomings in mind the best story of Spring Training could be the Brewers entering with the rotation as it stands.

Photo Credit: Lance Iverson, USAToday Sports Images

López has become something of a forgotten man among Brewers prospects since his 2015 breakout in Biloxi; a follow-up campaign consisting of a 6.65 DRA and 6.2 walks per nine innings can do that to a pitching prospect. The good news is that he retains possession of a starting pitcher’s arsenal. He features a plus fastball that can bump all the way up to 97 mph and a beauty of a low-80s curveball that’s still solidly above-average despite taking a beating in 2016 at Colorado Springs. His changeup lags behind those offerings, but it’s still an average pitch that occasionally looks even better. At the least, it’s plenty effective in keeping opposite-handed hitters off balance. These are the things that #3 starters are made of.

The bad news with López, and with that changeup, in particular, is command. Throughout his career, he’s struggled to keep his walks around three per nine innings, and has endured prolonged slumps where his ability to locate secondary pitches has abandoned him. This points more to mid-innings reliever than mid-rotation stud.

In the right farm system, and with a patient big league club, it’s not hard to imagine López splitting the difference and emerging as a competent, if streaky, back-end workhorse. But the Brewers intend to compete for playoff spot this year in the weakened National League, and López’s path to playing time likely lies through the ‘pen.

The Brewers, no dummies, took the 2017 season as an opportunity to ease López into what could be a permanent bullpen role. After battling through 13 inconsistent starts for the Shuckers in the first half of the season, López made 25 straight appearances in relief, never pitching more than three innings in an outing. These relief outings total 26 if you count his lone 2017 appearance as a major leaguer.

The move appears to have paid off. López ran a 2.43 ERA in the second half, allowing 28 hits and just 10 walks over his 37 innings of relief work. There’s a reasonable argument to be made that this was just another step in his development as a prospect. Former starters generally need some practice before they become good relievers. But if that’s the case, it should also be the last step in his development as a prospect. In this case, it’s time for López to develop as a major leaguer. Here’s what he’s done over the last three years in Biloxi, including his breakout 2015:

That’s very good, very stable performance. So never mind that the Brewers can send López back to the minor leagues to toil away in the Southern League for his fourth consecutive season, there’s simply no point in doing so. All prospects must eventually sink or swim at the big league level. If he’s to be kept away from Colorado Springs, it’s clear that that time has come for López.

But finding a path to big league innings will be difficult this season. López is already buried in the depth chart behind arms like Corey Knebel, Jacob Barnes, Josh Hader, Matt Albers, Boone Logan, and Jeremy Jeffress. At least one of Brent Suter, Junior Guerra, Aaron Wilkerson, and Yovani Gallardo will likely open the year in the ‘pen, as well. That leaves López competing with folks like Oliver Drake, JJ Hoover, Taylor Williams, and Tyler Webb for somewhere between zero and one spots on the active roster.

López’s development has been crooked, to say the least. He was the first top pitching prospect to reach AAA after the Brewers affiliated with the Sky Sox. His signature pitch is a breaking ball, and breakers tend to flatten out and suffer in higher altitude. Compare his path with that of Brandon Woodruff’s one year later: both lit up the Southern League, and both struggled at AAA. López made 16 ugly starts for Colorado Springs in 2016, lost his confidence, and was demoted back to Biloxi; Woodruff made 16 less-ugly starts for the Sky Sox in 2017, gritted his teeth and kept his chin up, and was rewarded with a call-up to Milwaukee. That’s not to ding López’s talent, or his makeup. The human element is always a wild card, and some prospects are better equipped to handle adversity than others. Pair his struggles at altitude with off-field hardships concerning the health of his infant son, and it isn’t difficult to understand why López suffered. (He and Woodruff, incidentally, are exactly the same age.)

Although the prospect of a fourth year at the same level is bleak, making the Opening Day roster isn’t the only way to accrue significant big league service time. Should López not make that initial cut, he need only wait for someone to falter or get hurt. López, with his spot on the 40-man and pair of dangerous offerings, should be high on the list of names to call when that happens. He could be the beneficiary of a change-of-scenery trade, perhaps as part of a package for a controllable starter from a rebuilding team, for example. That way, he could continue his development in a low-pressure environment and maybe even make a run at becoming a controllable starter himself. One way or another, he deserves major league time in 2018. It’s beyond time for a big league club to see what’s in his arm.

In 2015, Lopez made 24 starts in Double-A and posted a 2.88 DRA.  That was just his age-22 season, so even if it seemed like an outlier at the time, his step forward was undoubtedly a positive.  He didn’t have to be that type of pitcher to be a valuable big-leaguer; he just needed to consolidate some of the improvement.

He was, however, unable to do that.  In 2016, he posted a 5.78 ERA across Double-A and Triple-A, and he did not pitch for the big league club at all.  His walk rate shot way up, and he struggled to put hitters away the way he had the previous season.  In hindsight, his 2015 stat line contains a clear outlier, specifically, his .259 BABIP against with Biloxi, that explains some of his surface-level improvement.  That it regressed down into the mid-.300s last year also explains some of the downturn.

I am #notascout, so I cannot pretend to be an expert on Lopez’s mechanical adjustments.  I am sure he was making some adjustments, and I am sure that both he and the organization have been trying to find a way to get him back closer to the 2015 version of himself.  However, as 2016 and the first half of 2017 indicate, he was not all that successful.

His 2017 overall numbers look promising, and they are definitely an improvement.  Even though his season-long 4.25 ERA doesn’t stand out, his 3.50 DRA and 89 cFIP certainly do.  He was able to boost his strikeout rate up to 9.1 K/9, which was the highest full-season mark of his career, and his 3.3 BB/9 was a return to his 2015 self.  I am scouting a stat line here, but it certainly looks like Lopez was able to to fine tune his mechanics and regain his control of the strike zone.

The story of the season for Lopez, though, is that he became a reliever partway through the year.  His ERA on June 17, the date of his last start, was 5.27.  In two-and-a-half months, he was able to cut it by over a run, down to the aforementioned 4.25.  His walk rate as a reliever was 2.7 BB/9, while as a starter it was 3.7.  He also allowed a .293 SLG against him as a reliever, as compared to a .388 mark while a starter; this could be insignificant, but it could also indicate an ability to better avoid the barrel of a bat in this role.

All postseason long, we have seen the value of starting pitchers becoming valuable relievers.  Some teams have converted struggling starters into relievers as a last-ditch effort to save someone’s career, such as the Dodgers with Brandon Morrow.  Others have turned to good starters in high-leverage situations when they needed to simply survive to play another day, such as the Red Sox and Astros using Chris Sale and Justin Verlander out of the bullpen in Game 4 of their ALDS.

This is not a foolproof transition, as more anecdotal evidence demonstrates: see Scherzer, Max, in this postseason, or Peralta, Wily, generally.  This is also not a one-year trend, however; failed starters have become successful relievers for years, and Lopez will be hoping to be another in that successful line of converts.  He has some prospect pedigree, as he was in BP’s Top 101 prior to the 2016 season.  That scouting report itself acknowledges the strikeout potential and the command problems, so it seems as if the worst case scenario came true in 2016.  Given his role change in 2017, though, Lopez could be an option to eat innings in the middle of the Brewers’ bullpen next season.  He is as likely as anyone else to be successful at it, and his strikeout rate provides some hope that he could actually be quite effective.

Photo Credit: David Kohl, USAToday Sports Images

This is a fascinating development for a franchise that has not been known for pitching, and fans and analysts may have to get used to this scenario: the arms are ahead of the bats across the system. In 2017, while consecutive first round draft picks Corey Ray and Trent Clark backpedaled, pop-up pitcher Corbin Burnes posted a phenomenal year and saw his stuff tick ahead after noted mechanical adjustments in his delivery. But the pitching development hardly ends with Burnes, who exemplifies the current stock of middle-to-back end rotation starting pitching prospects that grade out as thoroughly solid quality within that role; reports cooled on Cody Ponce, but he had a ho hum innings building season, as did Luis Ortiz at Class-AA; Freddy Peralta was chasing Burnes for most impactful pitching season within the minors; his trademate Carlos Herrera took a big step forward in full season ball; and behind these quality depth options, Trey Supak, Josh Pennington, and others still had quite fine seasons.

Related Reading:
2017 Brewers Minors: Bats

There is a type of depth with these pitchers that simply cannot be matched by the current bats in the Brewers system. Currently, the bats feature multiple risk factors, especially in terms of developing hit tools. This profile not only suits graduates Lewis Brinson and Brett Phillips, but also the aforementioned Clark and Ray, among others. Perhaps the selection of Keston Hiura in the 2017 draft is most important to counteract this risky trend, although Hiura simply reapplies that risk in a different area of the game. If the Brewers bats currently fit the profile of “could be big tools impact” / “might not make it out of a bench role,” the arms are quite the opposite, with no true top-end pitching prospect in the system. It’s a beautiful thing: not one ace. But among those non-aces, perhaps a number of starters that could prove as “boring” as Zach Davies, or have question marks answered like Chase Anderson or even Jimmy Nelson.

One gets the sense that these Brewers arms could be plugged in the rotation any which way, which should be considered an exciting affair given the recent hype of pitching coach Derek Johnson’s blank-slate, situational-personal coaching approach. It should also be mentioned that in an era of velocity, the top Milwaukee arms are hardly flamethrowers, which adds an interesting question about whether the Brewers are exploiting undervalued aspects of the game (I know that’s a played out question by now, but still…), or simply whether the Brewers have found a profile of arm that fits their system or organizational approach.

To accompany the statistical index of 2017 Brewers minor league bats, I have prepared an index of statistics for the 2017 arms in the affiliated ranks. To provide basic consistency with the survey range for the bats, I translated the initial scale of 50 batting PA to 16.7 pitching IP for assessing seasons. This largely produced a similar number of players across leagues, which also means that league median statistic figures should have a solid range to reflect statistical context.

I choose the method of indexing statistics because it is relatively straightforward in terms of user interface: every metric can be measured against a “constant” or comparison variable, such as “Player Total Average (TAv)” versus “League TAv.” In an index, 1.00 can basically be read as “average,” for it means that a player’s metric perfectly matches the comparison metric. For example, righty Eric Hanhold played his age-23 season at Class-Advanced A Carolina, where the median age was also 23; his index is therefore 1.00 for that statistic.

It should be noted that I calculated the index in a different way for pitching prospects in order to remain consistent with the batting index. This means that an overall index greater than 1.00 suggests that a pitcher’s OPS-allowed was better than the average contextual indicators in the league, and that an index below 1.00 means that pitcher was below average given the context of the league. In order to provide additional context to an index that only weighs age, park factor, and opposing OPS alongside OPS-allowed, I added a Deserved Run Average (DRA) index so that readers can compare outcomes and reflect on the validity of the OPS-allowed index.

This index is slightly different than the batting index, since there are different OPS values for pitchers and their opponents (for example, a batter is facing tougher opposition if the opposing OPS is lower; for pitchers, tougher opposition means higher OPS from opponents). For this reason:

+1.00 Age Index means “younger” than league average age.

+1.00 oppOPS Index means better than average opponents (compared to the league).

+1.00 Park Index means hitter’s park.

This index should not be read as a significant, be-all / end-all assessment of pitching performance. Instead, it should be read alongside other statistics and scouting reports as an indicator of the context in which the pitcher performed, as well as how their advanced performance (via DRA) compared to the league.

A few observations:

• Like the batting index, the “non-prospects” immediately dominate this pitching index. Trey Supak has been a deep cut since the Brewers acquired the projection-upside play in the Jason Rogers trade, and the righty worked what finally would be his first full season….at age 21. Taylor Jungmann is hardly even old for Class-AAA Colorado Springs as an organizational depth option. Quiet relief prospect Bubba Derby, a member of the Khris Davis trade, worked a season that matches the “contextual” aspects of Corbin Burnes or Supak (his trademate Jacob Nottingham also had a fine season on the batting index). Freddy Peralta looks like loads of fun, bringing numerous fastball and off-speed / breaking ball offerings and a funky delivery to keep hitters off balance. In this case, the command aspects (and delivery repetition due to a crossfire set-up) of the scouting report should be read alongside the index to round out future role and expectations, but it is undeniable that Peralta placed himself on the radar of quality organizational depth (at worst) in 2017.

• Cody Ponce had quite an interesting year in terms of DRA deviating from his other contextual factors. In terms of OPS, age, and park factors, Ponce scored well in both Carolina and Biloxi. Yet, the righty’s DRA did not stack up against either league, with DRA index of 0.86 and 0.97 in both assignments, respectively. The big righty is making his way up the organizational ladder, however, and it’s tough not to dream on that cutter or fastball at least helping Ponce secure a solid bullpen role of some sort.

• BP scouting team member James Fisher provided a detailed description of Jordan Yamamoto for last season’s midseason prospect feature, noting that delivery refinements and stuff progression drove the righty’s stock. Yamamoto continued to build on that 2016 notice with an excellent 2017 campaign, arguably putting together the most interesting pitching season in the organization (Burnes received the hype, but Yamamoto could have defined a role).The righty was extremely young for the Carolina League, and if the progression continues, the youngster could be primed to expand on a 140+ IP floor during his age-22 season at Class-AA Biloxi. It is worth noting that Yamamoto did not face tough competition in Carolina, although the funky park factors and his age did mightily correct for that indicator. If you’re skeptical about the index, DRA likes Yamamoto even more.

• Additional potential 2018 pop-ups / projection guys who posted better than average contextual index and DRA scores: Zack Brown, Josh Pennington, Braden Webb, and Thomas Jankins. Keep an eye on: Parker Berberet (!!!), Luis Ortiz, Jorge Lopez, Matt Ramsey, and Jon Perrin.

So where does one move from here?

Related Reading
Part 2: Familia / Feliciano / Ramirez
Part 1: Cooper / Gatewood / Hiura
Prospective 2018

Following the introductory words to the first installment of Midseason 3 Up 3 Down, one could conceive of the Brewers’ farm system as a system of tiers based on percentile and role. This is what is tough about ranking prospects: it is easy to be excited about many minor leaguers, but it is difficult to pin down specific role preferences for future value in a ranking. For example, catcher Mario Feliciano could easily take five years to reach his MLB debut, especially if he retains his defensive position behind the dish. But he could also be one of the most valuable future roles for the system, despite that length of development (potential starting catchers don’t grow on trees). Compare Feliciano to my favorite pitcher, Cody Ponce, or an intriguing utility/depth player like Ryan Cordell. Cordell has a much more certain path to the MLB (he’ll probably arrive within a year if he’s truly on the 40-man roster as an MLB asset) and a much clearer role (Cordell’s defensive flexibility and batting profile almost assure he’ll slide in to create another Hernan Perez). It’s incredibly fun to imagine a bench including Cordell, Perez, Jonathan Villar, and Mauricio Dubon, both due to positional flexibility and the ideal that each of these players could step in for an extended absence and probably hold their own. Ponce might be spinning wheels a bit in 2017, but he remains a quality pitching prospect for the Brewers with a relatively clear path to the MLB (there can never be enough quality pitching depth within a system).

While both Ponce and Cordell are closer to the MLB and have much clearer roles to boot, Feliciano is probably the better Overall Future Potential (OFP) pick for the system. This is just one such comparison, but comparisons like this could be made across the Milwaukee system.

Splitting the system into tiers, it’s crucial to note that a player without a potentially elite or better than average role is not necessarily a bad prospect, especially if they are ticketed for MLB as a depth option. The fact of the matter is, very few prospects will become 70 OFP star profiles (like Carlos Correa, for example), or 60 OFP first-division potential profiles (like Orlando Arcia). Here’s how that reality might look in the Brewers’ system:

Aside from focusing on potential MLB roles, there ought to be a set of classifications that recognizes prospects working in relatively clear organizational depth positions, and prospects that are clearly projection plays. Consider the 2017 MLB Draft, in which the Brewers made considerable gambles with their picks in order to secure long development plays. Caden Lemons is my favorite example of this, a 6’6″ pitcher with considerable room to grow into his frame and therefore become a future power pitcher projection; of course, there is a scenario in which Lemons does not make it to Advanced Affiliates, or suffers an injury through what will almost certainly be a five year development period. This adds risk to Lemons’s profile, and although his MLB ceiling is not yet known, one can recognize future potential in the projection gamble.

There are plenty of prospects excluded from this list, so it should not be taken as a ranking; Franly Mallen, Phil Bickford, Blake Lillis, Jose Sibrian, Joantgel Segovia, Quintin Torres-Costa, and Jordan Yamamoto are just some of the players I excluded from this list. By this point, we’re so far into the system that one can see how a ranking system loses it’s efficacy. Outside of front offices with proprietary modeling systems for scouting and statistical information, I’m not certain there is value in fans knowing who is the #24 prospect or who is the #38 prospect in the Brewers system.

For this installment, BPMilwaukee Editorial Staff (Nicholas Zettel and Kyle Lesniewski) were joined by Craig Goldstein (Baseball Prospectus Prospect Team).

3 UP (and one bonus!)
CF Monte Harrison, Advanced A Carolina (picked by Craig Goldstein): Two freak injuries sidelined Monte Harrison in both 2015 and 2016, dampening the 60 OFP first division center fielder tag in the 2015 Baseball Prospectus Top Ten. Although the 2016 Baseball Prospectus list dropped Harrison to an excellent defensive right fielder role, the prospect’s injury issues have not kept the Brewers from giving him development time in center field. As Harrison advances through the system in center field, a more realistic potential MLB ceiling at that position should materialize. Now that Harrison is healthy, his transition from elite athlete to elite athlete as ballplayer is translating into highly regarded bat speed, leading to a hit tool that solves some of the puzzles that materialized even in his first Top Ten Brewers list. Perhaps the best part is (besides Harrison remaining healthy thus far and having a chance to truly form his ballgame) that even though it feels like Harrison has been around forever, he’s still only in his age-21 season and is younger than 80 percent of the 2017 Carolina League.

Goldstein on Harrison: Long on tools and short on [development] time, Harrison’s mostly healthy season has finally yielded bountiful results.

RHP Corbin Burnes, AA Biloxi (picked by Craig Goldstein): Corbin Burnes exemplifies the split between how fans follow the minor leagues and how scouts follow the minor leagues. The righty has posted phenomenal statistics since the Brewers selected him in the 4th round of the 2016 draft. Reports throughout the breakout 2017 campaign for Burnes have underscored the fastball and slider combination for the 6’3″ righty, while also raising questions about additional off-speed offerings (which would round out a starter’s profile) and delivery (which some suggest may be too high effort to repeat as a starter). Yet, here we are, with Burnes giving Brewers box score hawks fireworks every fifth day, which is unfortunately turning the righty into perhaps the system’s biggest hype case. I say unfortunately because it is clear that Burnes has an MLB ceiling, and it is clear that he needs work to get there (for example, Burnes might reach 150 innings in 2017, which means that the righty may need another year of seasoning in order to build up that true mid rotation workload). Burnes may be one of the best arguments in favor of turning prospect coverage fully away from statistics and toward scouting grades and reports, as there is a good chance those Brewers box score hawks hyping up “could Burnes be the next ace?” will be the first to turn on him should he reach the MLB at his realistic ceiling. None of this should take away from the righty, and obviously actual MLB runs prevention performances from year to year feature strong performances from non-aces (see Chase Anderson and Jimmy Nelson in 2017, and Zach Davies and Junior Guerra in 2016, as just two sets of examples). In this sense, even scouting roles and actual MLB performances diverge. A better line would be that “aces don’t exist,” and allow Burnes the developmental space necessary to turn him into the valuable MLB pitcher that he can be for the Brewers.

Goldstein on Burnes: I’m not convinced he’s not a reliever in the end, but the fastball/slider combo is legit. Waiting on that third pitch.

C Jacob Nottingham, AA Biloxi (picked by Kyle Lesniewski): Nottingham, the centerpiece of the trade that sent Khrush Davis to the Athletics, was one of the more disappointing prospects in the system last season, and an ice cold start to 2017 only further dampened his stock. But the 22 year old appears to have finally started to put things together over the last several weeks. He’s hitting .352/.426/.593 over his last four week’s worth of games, bringing his season-long slash line to .253/.349/.407 with three home runs, which translates to a nifty .279 TAv in the pitcher-friendly Southern League. Nottingham’s bat was supposed to be what carried him to the big leagues, but his defense has been much improved since joining the org as well. A 43 percent caught stealing rate, +3.3 framing runs, and decent blocking numbers (along with a huge reduction in passed balls) should help quell some of the “can he stick at catcher?” concerns.

RHP Carlos Herrera, Rookie Helena (picked by Nicholas Zettel): When the Brewers traded Adam Lind to the Mariners, David Stearns orchestrated a nifty return that amounted to a complete gamble in his new front office’s abilities to develop low minors arms into players that could reach their MLB ceilings (or simply reach the MLB for that matter) and a tiered acquisition approach that ensured each level of the minors would be populated with projection arms. Now, the fruits of that trade suggest Freddy Peralta is the best asset, having recently been promoted to Class-AA Biloxi in his age-21 season. But, Carlos Herrera was perhaps the most projection-worthy starter on the day of that Lind deal, and it is arguable that that fact has not changed even as Peralta climbs through the minors. Herrera is notably taller than Peralta, which adds intrigue to early reports of velocity and ability to spin breaking pitches. One would almost expect that should the righty continue to ascend into a true starting rotation ceiling, he will not resemble the 6’2″, 150 lb., low-90s arm that made it over to Milwaukee on trade day. Of course it’s a long way from “6’2″ with low-90s fastball and spin” to “filled out starter’s frame with a fastball that reaches or sits in the mid-90s and an average or better off-speed offering,” but there are little checkpoints along the way (like a commanding 20 K / 3 BB / 3 HR in his first 16 innings in Helena).

3 DOWN
LHP Nathan Kirby, Injury Rehabilitation (picked by Nicholas Zettel): This should not be viewed as piling on to the lefty, who has experienced tough luck since Milwaukee selected him as a supplemental first round pick in 2015. After undergoing Tommy John surgery, Kirby had an additional elbow procedure completed in 2017, which shortens his potential workload to the end of August (maybe) and developmental ball (also maybe). When drafted, Kirby was viewed as a two-headed beast, one that could potentially flash three above average pitches or serve as a polished, high floor rotational depth guy, or one that could have his ceiling derailed by command and delivery issues. Now, neither of those aspects of the gamble seem pertinent as the Brewers face another long injury rehabilitation in their pitching ranks (see most notably, Taylor Williams, Devin Williams, Daniel Missaki, and Adrian Houser). This was a system where, after 2016, one might have said with confidence that the lower tier pitching ceilings and projection plays were more impactful than the batting profiles, but it’s tough to double down on that statement given the injured impact profiles. If Kirby must wait until 2018 to gain innings once again, the southpaw will be in his age-24 season with 12.7 professional innings under his belt. It is difficult to see a starting profile emerging from this developmental pattern, but injured southpaws have proven to be ageless in the past, meaning it’s time to brush up on bios and profiles like Al Leiter (who like Kirby was listed as a 6’2″, 200 lb. lefty).

OF Trent Clark, Advanced A Carolina (picked by Craig Goldstein): In this iteration of the development cycle, the good becomes the problematic: that strong hit tool that earned rave reviews for Ray Montgomery’s first draft, clearly signalling a shift away from the gambles of the 2014 draft, that strong hit tool that was profiled as leading the way for a center field prospect, is now facing more scouting scrutiny in the prospect’s second  year in full-season ball. It is worth noting that behind Gilbert Lara, Clark is facing the harshest aging curve among regular minor league players in Milwaukee’s system. In the worst case scenario, perhaps Clark repeats at Advanced A Carolina to begin 2018, which could have the benefit of smoothing that curve, giving Clark more chances to sharpen that hit tool, and find separation with the system’s other highly regarded outfielders (which could have the benefit of allowing Clark to solidify that center field role rather than that ‘tweener OFP). Establishing something of a Brinson / Keon Broxton (MLB) | Phillips / Reed (AAA) | Harrison / Ray (AA) | Clark (A+) center field pipeline would provide quite an organizational structure in the middle of the diamond.

Goldstein on Clark: He looked lost at the plate in my viewing, and has been playing LF when Ray is healthy and playing, which puts even more pressure on a bat that was going to be average-dependent in the first place.

RHP Jorge Lopez, AA Biloxi (picked by Kyle Lesniewski): It wasn’t too long ago that Lopez was considered to be the top pitching prospect that Milwaukee had, winning the org’s minor league pitcher of the year after posting a 2.26 ERA in the Southern League in 2015. Last year in Colorado Springs was a disaster, though, and Lopez was returned to AA to begin the 2017 season. His 5.04 ERA in 69.2 innings appears rather underwhelming, though both FIP (3.41) and DRA (4.29) were a bit more bullish on Lopez’s work with the Shuckers this year. An improved K/BB rate after lowering his arm slot apparently wasn’t enough to convince Brewers’ brass he could stick in the rotation. From farm director Tom Flanagan on Jorge’s recent role change, via Adam McCalvy’s most recent mailbag.”The starting rotation at Biloxi is filled with some pitchers that have really thrown well, and Jorge hasn’t been able to show the consistency that we wanted to see in that role….Jorge has all the weapons to become a successful Major League starting pitcher, and we are not closing any doors on that. But by moving Jorge to the ‘pen, and getting him on the mound more often, we feel it will be helpful step in his development.” Lopez was just recently recalled to and demoted from the big leagues, and his profile suggests that he should have the chance to become an impact reliever. Still, that result would be a far cry from the “future #2 or #3 starter” labels that were being slapped on Lopez after his outstanding season two years ago.