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

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

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

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

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

Source: BrooksBaseball.net

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

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

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

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

My head hurts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am writing this introduction to emphasize my respect for readers’ wishes not to encounter political topics at BP Milwaukee. I have weighed this heavily, due to the impact of some previous features that leaned political in my writing career both here and elsewhere. Since I believe this is an issue with great societal significance, and is deserving of lasting conversation, I respectfully invite readers who wish not to encounter political content to stop reading after this note. I respect your wish for baseball content at BP Milwaukee, and in that case turn you to our recent in-depth trade deadline coverage, prospect discussions, and analyses (as well as our forthcoming posts that will return to baseball tomorrow).

We can all hope that fewer analyses about topics like this will need to appear for future generations. My hope is that open, analytical, empirical discussions will help forge that future.

Milwaukee is a deeply segregated city. But that line has become something of a throwaway, a truth that was deeply ingrained by the early 1990s and remains true to this very day; a fact so true that residents can now utter it with resignation as frequently as they utter it with disdain. It is worth revisiting the structure of Milwaukee’s segregation because what is crucial about racial segregation in Milwaukee, as in other rust belt cities, is that racial segregation is delivered alongside harsh income segregation and stratification. These dual forms of segregation are evident in Chicago, Detroit, and Buffalo, among other cities, and even a legacy of so-called Sewer Socialism could not deliver the necessary infrastructure and policies to avert racial and income segregation in Milwaukee. While this feature will not have the space to detail each and every opportunity impacted by the correlation between income and racial segregationist policies, detailed social sciences fieldwork from Milwaukee are effectively analyzing this spiral of despair (this famously includes Matthew Desmond’s Evicted, which revolutionized social science survey methodology for studying eviction; Brenda Parker’s Masculinities and Markets uses field work in Milwaukee to demonstrate raced and gendered impacts of professional development trends beginning in the latter half of the Twentieth Century).

What does this have to do with the Milwaukee Brewers and Josh Hader? There are several concerns regarding this question. The first, and most important problem, with the content of Josh Hader’s Tweets is that most fans and commentators wrote off the content as a one-off instance of prejudicial behavior, ignoring the institutional and social structures that underlie racism, sexism, homophobia, and misogyny in the USA. The second problem involves Hader’s association with the Milwaukee Brewers on his Twitter handle, whereby Hader’s actions as a teenager were now linked to the organization through his profile. This issue is typically dismissed by a statement about linear time, where a commentator will note that Hader wrote these Tweets prior to his employment with the Brewers, ignoring the flat, instantaneous, almost timeless realm of social media. The devastation of these Tweets emanated from the content, which was extremely hate-filled, duplicated almost endlessly for hours on the national stage of the MLB All-Star Game, where the Brewers as an organization were suddenly in line to answer about the actions of a teenager; the linearity of time cannot simply alleviate the Brewers’ responsibility for this content (through a social media policy) or Hader’s responsibility for this content (through his moral conscience and development as a person). If Hader had truly changed as a person, and was truly sorry about his past, those Tweets would not have existed to be plundered during the All-Star Game.

Thus exhausts the second claim, but with this feature I would like to analyze the first concern in depth: by dismissing Hader’s actions as an instance of individual prejudice, Brewers fans and national commentators alike are severing Hader’s actions from the community in which he works. This is quite a large concern for an organization like the Milwaukee Brewers: an organization that accepts significant public subsidy for their operating expenses at Miller Park; an organization that sells its public subsidy as a tool for economic development within their community and (or) region; an organization that ostensibly is service-oriented through a notable Community Foundation. Make no mistake about it, the impact of the Brewers’ community footprint can be easily broadcast and publicly noted, as evidenced by their commitment to the Roots for the Home Team program that links urban farming and youth employment initiatives to the supply chain for MLB stadia; while this is a small program with a small impact, its positive potential and implications for MLB clubs rethinking their ballpark supply chain should not be undersold. My contention is that the Milwaukee Brewers can, and should, implement the same types of positive practices within their broader community in response to the Josh Hader incident; this is an opportunity for the organization to grow a robust, transparent, and public process for working within underserved communities in Milwaukee.

Why does this matter? In 1970, when the Milwaukee Brewers were officially born, the City of Milwaukee was largely middle income. Using longitudinal Census Tract data for a 415 Tract (see references for Hulchanski; Nathalie P. Voorhees Center), four-county metropolitan region demonstrates that 303 Tracts were classified as “middle income,” meaning that the average person living in one of those Tracts maintained a share of income between 20 percent above and 20 percent below the regional weighted average. In other words, 73 percent of the greater Milwaukee metropolitan region was middle income, and the highs and lows were relatively evenly distributed; 21 Tracts featured income 40 percent (or more) above average, while only 11 Tracts featured income 40 percent (or more) below average.

Mapping these data using longitudinal Census Tracts, here is how income was approximately distributed across the City of Milwaukee when the Brewers came to town:

By 1990, opening a decade of rumblings about a new stadium for the beloved Brewers, following a decade of Harvey’s Wallbangers and other competitive teams, income stratification after the industrial reorganization of the City was already evident. In my experience of Milwaukee, I feel very fortunate to have been part of a busing program in which I attended very good schools in the center of the City, and I have fond memories of this time as Milwaukee Public Schools was implementing prideful, multicultural programming. I had no idea that the City was emptying of investment and, by extension, income. Compare this 1990 income distribution map with the 1970 version:

In 2016, when the Brewers were opening a new era of optimism through GM David Stearns’s rebuilding process, the investment trends of the last four decades in the City of Milwaukee roughly matched the tear-down vibes as the Brewers traded away MLB assets. This time frame also corresponds with the construction of the new Milwaukee Bucks arena, several new skyscrapers in the central business district, and a general sense that the downtown area was revitalized with condominiums and other forms of investment. Contrast the sense of downtown optimism with a city that was devastated by decades of disinvestment and aimless local, state, and Federal policy efforts:

There are many stories that can simultaneously be told about the last five decades of urbanization in the USA, and in this regard the current political environment should be viewed as logical completion of this era, rather than some anomaly. Over the course of five decades, a combination of structural-institutional policies decimated cities, including mortgage insurance Red-Lining (which denied mortgage insurance to areas in which minorities, most frequently Black or African American, lived, thereby stopping formal investment in those areas), industrial restructuring and capital flight from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt, technological reorganization, and formal austerity policies at local, state, and Federal levels that sought to systematically cut services while stripping cities of their greatest public assets (such as Milwaukee’s highly-regarded sewer system).

The dismal results of this reorganization of social and institutional norms produced urban landscapes of declining income, as evident in Milwaukee from 1970 to 2016; this map should be read as the five decade culmination of the preceding maps:

These practices were not only directly targeted against low-to-moderate income people, but also against racial and ethnic minorities. Viewing American Community Survey race and ethnicity estimates from 2012-2016, one can find that the culmination of extreme income stratification in Milwaukee corresponds to the culmination of extreme racial and ethnic segregation.

Table One: 2016 Estimates of Race and Ethnic Origin Based on Analysis of Four-County Milwaukee Metropolitan Region Income Categories

Most Milwaukeeans understand this divide in their hearts, or face it in their daily existence, but it is worth systematically analyzing the progression and distribution of income over the last five decades in order to demonstrate the impact of segregation by race and class. Across the four-county Milwaukee metropolitan region, the Census Tracts that experienced a large increase in income over the last five decades are overwhelming white, not-Hispanic (89 percent); the same can be said for Census Tracts that experienced moderate change in income over five decades (82 percent white, not-Hispanic). By contrast, among people living in metro Census Tracts, 40 percent are identified as Black or African-American, not-Hispanic, and 19 percent are identified as descending from Hispanic or Latino origin. Viewing the four-county metropolitan region as a whole, this stratification of income and segregation by race and ethnicity is spatially evident between “suburban” Ozaukee, Washington, and Waukesha counties, and the County and City of Milwaukee.

This is what “Milwaukee” means on the Milwaukee Brewers jerseys. Milwaukee can be many things, of course; Milwaukee could be an ideal of working class success, an immigrant success story on the (then) western frontier of the USA; Milwaukee could be beer, signifying the strength of the brewing industry that remains evident across the infrastructure and buildings of the City; Milwaukee can be what we lost, a symbol of the lost industrial grind; Milwaukee could be Wisconsin’s resurgent urban gem, a chance to demonstrate innovation in environmental policy and affordable housing development (both of which are happening); Milwaukee can be home, or a birth place (this is why I wear my Milwaukee Brewers hat across Chicago, for although Chicago is now my home, Milwaukee is where I was born, and this is important and evident for reasons other than when I order a bagel). Milwaukee can be all of these things, but you cannot construct an image of the city, or the region, without grappling with the devastating policies of the last five decades and the subsequent income stratification and racial segregation.

What can be done? I understand that I have only spoken to one aspect of Josh Hader’s Tweets, and I don’t mean that to diminish the importance of fighting for gender equality and sexual liberation. Frankly, I focused on the concerns of income inequality and racism first and foremost because there are clearer ways to build a methodology for demonstrating the outcomes of these institutional norms and social practices; it is more difficult to write about gender identity, the casualization of work, gendered division of labor, and extension of household practices into professional spaces that undergird misogyny and homophobia. I frankly do not know how to systemically examine and write about this issues in an effective way, other than to say that I greatly oppose misogyny, sexism, homophobia, and racism.

In terms of policy implications and public service, the Milwaukee Brewers have fallen short, as an organization, in their public demonstration that they oppose the spirit and practices associated with the societal message of Hader’s Tweets. To my knowledge, Principal Owner Mark Attanasio has yet to even issue a public statement about the matter (if this was broadcast and I missed it, or published somewhere and I missed it, please correct me). I personally find this baffling, especially during a time in which the Brewers are exhibiting forward-thinking practices regarding community economic development (such as the Roots for the Home Team program). It is not enough for Josh Hader to receive sensitivity training because for this punishment to be retributive, the issues evident in his Tweets would have to simply be “prejudicial” on an individual basis, rather than embedded in decades of social practices. These social practices have destroyed the City of Milwaukee, and tens of thousands of Milwaukee residents grapple with the effects of poverty, isolation, lack of services, lack of resources, and lack of occupational and professional mobility that accompany systemic income inequality and racial segregation.

This is not the Milwaukee Brewers’ issue to solve alone, but they are a large stakeholder in the region, one that ostensibly operates for the purposes of improving economic growth in the region and developing economic opportunity. If the Brewers are serious about their potential to drive economic development as an organization, they need to issue a stronger public response to the Hader incident; a response that speaks not to the content of the Tweets or the individual instances of prejudice, but one that acts against five decades of institutional neglect and disinvestment throughout their City. This is an opportunity for Mark Attanasio to place the large profits of the club’s rebuilding efforts and MLB Advanced Media pay outs to great use within the community, for even a fraction of the club’s profits would go a long way to spur public investment and service opportunities. This is bigger than Josh Hader, but he can publicly, openly support such efforts with the Brewers.

References
Brown University Longitudinal Tract Data Base. Spatial Structures in the Social Science. Retrieved May 26, 2018 from Brown University. Tables: All Full Count and All Sample.

Hulchanski, David J. “The Three Cities Within Toronto: Income Polarization Among Toronto’s Neighborhoods, 1970-2005.” Toronto: Cities Centre, University of Toronto, 2010 (ISBN 978-0-7727-1478-7). Accessed online via PDF:
http://www.urbancentre.utoronto.ca/pdfs/curp/tnrn/Three-Cities-Within-Toronto-2010-Final.pdf

Kursman, Jessica and Nick Zettel. “Who Can Live in Chicago?” Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement, University of Illinois at Chicago. June 6, 2018. Accessed online via blog:
https://voorheescenter.wordpress.com/2018/06/06/who-can-live-in-chicago-part-i/

Logan, John R., Zengwang Xu, and Brian Stults. 2014. “Interpolating US Decennial Census Tract Data from as Early as 1970 to 2010: A Longitudinal Tract Database” The Professional Geographer 66(3): 412–420.

University of Richmond. Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America. Accessible online:
https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/ [HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!]

Nathalie P. Voorhees Center for Neighborhood and Community Improvement. “40th Anniversary Symposium: Who Can Live in Chicago?” University of Illinois at Chicago, May 4, 2018. Center Link:

http://voorheescenter.uic.edu/

U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey. Five-Year Estimates, 2012-2016. Retrieved August 5, 2018 from factfinder.census.gov. Tables B01001 (Sex By Age); B03002 (Hispanic or Latino Origin by Race); B19301 (Per Capita Income in the Past 12 Months).

Related Research:
Broad, Dave. 2000. “The Periodic Casualization of Work: The Informal Economy, Casual Labor, and the Longue Duree.” In Informalization: Process and Structure, edited by Faruk Tabak and Michaeline A. Crichlow, 23-46. Baltimore, MD.: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Centeno, Miguel Angel and Alejandro Portes. 1989. “World Underneath: The Origins, Dynamics, and Effects of the Informal Economy.” In The Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries, edited by Alejandro Portes, Manuel Castells, and Lauren A. Benton, 11-37. Baltimore, MD.: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

O’Connor, Alice. 1999. “Swimming Against the Tide: A Brief History of Federal Policy in Poor Communities.” In Urban Problems and Community Development, edited by Ronald F. Ferguson and William T. Dickens, 77-121. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.

Sassen, Saskia. 2000. “The Demise of Pax Americana and the Emergence of Informalization as a Systematic Trend.” In Informalization: Process and Structure, edited by Faruk Tabak and Michaeline A. Crichlow, 91-115. Baltimore, MD.: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Smith, Neil. 1984. Uneven Development: Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Weil, David. 2017. “Income Inequality, Wage Determination, and the Fissured Workplace.” In After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality, edited by Heather Boushey, J. Bradford DeLong, and Marshall Steinbaum, 209-231. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now the 2018 Brewers are on pace to challenge the 1988 Brewers for the best pitching staff in franchise history. As it stands, the Brewers could basically pitch average baseball for the remainder of the season and finish with the third best staff in franchise history; as the table above shows, Milwaukee has already surpassed their 2017 Runs Prevented total this season.

The purpose of this post is not to present a normative argument about whether or not the Brewers should be expected to produce the best pitching season in franchise history. Evidence abounds in all directions. First and foremost, at the time of this writing, the trade deadline has yet to pass, which means that the Brewers could further improve their pitching; second, the latest average Runs Prevented table demonstrates that the Milwaukee hurlers are already approximately 12 runs from their May 31 pace, meaning that the club has slowed slightly in their elite Runs Prevention; additionally, key injuries and subsequent ineffectiveness (ranging from Brent Suter and Zach Davies to Matt Albers and, of course, Jimmy Nelson) also impact projections of runs prevention. Alternately, Chase Anderson has prevented approximately seven runs since the beginning of June, and is beginning to look like a rotation leader at the same time the club traded for Joakim Soria and recalled Corbin Burnes to bolster the bullpen. If anything, this swirling set of evidence might allow one to believe that the pitching staff will at least remain steady.

Rather, I am going to investigate the pitching staff structure for a few of the best franchise pitching staffs listed in the table above. The purpose here will be fun, first and foremost, as almost everyone can name the key Brewers batters and supporting casts of the club’s great offensive performances (ten of the top 13 runs production seasons come from the 1978-1983 and 2009-2012 roster cores), but the great pitching staffs beyond Teddy Higuera, Ben Sheets, and CC Sabathia remain underappreciated or perhaps even unknown. Furthermore, by comparing the structures of these great staffs, one can get an idea of how pitching roster construction has evolved over time. For example, the 2018 Brewers may very well end up producing the greatest bullpen in franchise history, but how does their rotation compare? On the other hand, one might expect the classic 1980s clubs to be rotation-first, in terms of value.

Defensive Efficiency
Prior to investigating Baseball Prospectus pitching profiles of these classic Brewers pitching clubs, it is worth emphasizing that most of the top Brewers pitching teams were also typically very good fielding teams relative to their respective leagues.

Indeed, the table above demonstrates that the 2018 Brewers shares the top of these fielding profiles with the 1992 club, which were the most efficient fielding unit on the Junior Circuit. Here, I am using defensive efficiency to assess fielding because it is a basic number that calculates the extent to which a fielding unit converts outs. The outliers here are the 2005, 2011, and 2017 Brewers clubs, which prevented runs despite mediocre fielding performances (they prevented approximately 26, 47, and 47 runs, respectively, despite their middle of the road fielding).

Roster Construction
Teddy Higuera had quite a career for the Milwaukee Brewers, posting single season WARP totals above 4.0 in three of nine seasons. Higuera’s best year in Milwaukee occurred during the 1988 season, in which the southpaw worked nearly 230 innings while striking out 192 batters to only 59 walks. Using Deserved Run Average (DRA), a statistic that scales pitching performance to numerous contextual components, Higuera was better in 1988 than in any other season in Milwaukee, and those results total nearly 7.0 WARP.

Yet the 1988 club was also a crossing of two eras in Milwaukee, where the fading glory of Harvey’s Wallbangers (who never got the consistent ace they deserved in Higuera) would congeal into a roster core that could never quite get Robin Yount and Paul Molitor into the playoffs with a second generation of talent. Behind Higuera, the 1988 squad featured four prominent contributors age-25 or younger in Juan Nieves (23), Don August (24), Chris Bosio (25), and Bill Wegman (25), ostensibly giving the Brewers a stable pitching rotation around which their next contending seasons could follow. Yet injuries, ineffectiveness, and inconsistencies derailed this group, leaving 1988 their best performance. Of these youngsters, Bosio was en route to beginning a stretch of several quality pitching seasons, and in fact the righty was more valuable each of 1989, 1991, and 1992 (compared to 1988).

Chuck Crim deserves mention, of course, because the 26-year old rubber arm worked more than 100 innings over 70 appearances. Not only did the righty work 42 multiple inning appearances according to Baseball Reference, but he also inherited 68 runners. In terms of percentage points, Crim’s strand rate was eight points better than the league average, meaning that aside from his own exceptional runs allowed total, Crim added several Runs Prevented simply by stranding runners that occupied bases when he entered ballgames; this performance foreshadowed Brian Shouse’s efforts for the excellent 2008 pitching staff (60 IR / 20 scored), as well as Jeremy Jeffress and Dan Jennings (62 IR / 14 scored (!!!) entering Sunday) in 2018. This excellent performance is reflected in Crim’s leads converted statistics, as the righty successfully produced nine saves and 13 holds, against only two blown save or hold opportunities.

The Crim mention is a perfect transition to the 2017 pitching staff, which featured a few excellent starting pitching performances boosted by an even better bullpen. Thus appears Jacob Barnes in the club’s top performers for 2017, as the hard near-cutter / slider reliever is not only a throwback to the bread-and-butter 1980s reliever (enter Crim, a favorite media comp for Barnes, too), but also one of the only 2017 Brewers pitchers to accumulate more than 1.0 WARP. What is interesting about the 2017 pitching staff also foreshadowing the strengths of the 2018 staff, and that is the sheer depth of the pitching operations. Eventually, the pitching-by-depth gamble unraveled as the club faced injuries and a rotating cast of fifth starter ineffectiveness down the stretch. But along with the more popular impact relievers of Corey Knebel and Josh Hader, Barnes was one of the key reasons for the club’s success in 2017 and, like Crim and Hader, another deep round MLB draft success story.

By the way, let it be said that for any other critiques of the Brewers current GM, David Stearns sure can build a runs prevention unit. Despite being in his third season as GM, and ostensibly leading the club through a rebuilding phase, Stearns already boasts two of the 17 average or better pitching staffs in franchise history. Interestingly enough, for all the grief President Doug Melvin gets about his apparent inability to assemble a pitching staff, the highly regarded Harry Dalton also had the same issue. While Sal Bando is not highly regarded by most Brewers fans, the GM sure could build a pitching staff, and Bando (more than Melvin or Dalton) is Stearns’s target for building quality pitching; Dalton and Melvin are obviously the targets for beating postseason appearances.

Comparing Jimmy Nelson, Chase Anderson, and Zach Davies, who was an excellent Runs Prevented starter in 2017 even if his WARP did not look great, to the 1988 squad should underscore the difficulty of building a consistent rotation. Producing a great starting rotation certainly does not come close to guaranteeing pitching success in the following season, when injuries, mechanical adjustments, and inconsistencies that were absent in the “great year” can creep up in the following campaign. Once again, though, the Brewers have a group of truly controllable, quality starting pitching arms (as they did in the late-1980s), but it is worth raising questions about the scouting profiles and future prospects of these arms following the mechanical adjustments and injuries that have plagued 2018. The book is not closed, however, as Chase Anderson has shown over his last ten starts (59.7 IP, 3.02 ERA, four quality starts); if all goes well, Anderson’s contract extension would be well-justified if he comes anywhere near Chris Bosio’s best four years in Milwaukee.

2008 needs no introduction, as the Brewers media and Twitter recently celebrated the tenth anniversary of the CC Sabathia trade. Of course, as Sabathia rightfully carries the reputation as the arm that saved that season, it is always worth emphasizing that Ben Sheets was phenomenal in 2008 as well. Sheets managed a 3.13 DRA and 5.3 WARP across 31 starts, including an electrifying 1-0 complete game effort over the Padres while pitching through a torn elbow ligament. In terms of pitchers putting their careers on the line for Milwaukee, it’s tough to top Sabathia and Sheets, as both pitchers risked millions of dollars on the 2008-2009 free agency market to will the Brewers to their first playoff appearance in a generation; Sheets lost the bet for future millions, while Sabathia cashed on an uncanny performance.

But oh, ode to Manny Parra, Dave Bush, and Carlos Villanueva, the sometimes frustrating but often dependable low rotation and swingman crew for the mid-00s Milwaukee teams. Bush was worth approximately 10 WARP to the Brewers over his 2006-2008 seasons, with 2006 being the high mark; Villanueva and Parra each had their best Milwaukee years in 2008, which is not a bad thing to occur during a playoff race. This trio of pitchers seems quite comparable to many of the 2018 Brewers group, for this trio either had unassuming stuff, or serious profile questions or command concerns when the stuff was there. While one will be quick to point out that the 2018 Brewers do not (yet) have their Sabathia, nor do they have their Sheets, one can find semblances of the Bush, Parra, and Villanueva trio in profiles such as Junior Guerra, Jhoulys Chacin, Wade Miley, and/or Freddy Peralta. This is not an insult: the 2008 trio have never truly received enough credit for their respective roles in carrying the rotation early in the season, nor for their overall value.

Finally, if 1988 was the best franchise pitching season, 1992 exemplified the turn of generations once more, as Jamie Navarro and Cal Eldred were set to join Bosio and Wegman atop the pitching staff. This time, Wegman bested Bosio in terms of value, but both pitchers were quite strong, producing nearly 10 WARP for those 1992 Brewers. Eldred and Navarro also acquitted themselves well, although they would reprise the injuries, inconsistencies, and ineffectiveness that has served as a theme throughout these pitching profiles.

In 1992, one can suddenly see the eras shift, as baseball’s strategic tides moved toward relief pitching prominence, and these Brewers had a deep and fantastic bullpen. Fetters, Holmes, and Orosco were not even the most prominent relievers on the staff (see Plesac, Dan; Henry, Doug; and Austin, Jim). What is stunning about this group is that despite their excellent and deep composition, the Brewers were near the bottom in the American League in both Saves and Holds, and their relievers mostly faced low leverage innings according to Baseball Reference. In 1992, 42 percent of Brewers relief appearances qualified as low leverage; to get a sense of what that might look like, consider than the 2018 Brewers are nearly the exact opposite, with 36 percent of relief appearances qualified as high leverage. It is interesting to think about this strategic snafu of 1992 during a current season in which managers are reaching for their bullpens early and often in order to gain every advantage possible.

Yet is a bullpen ever a vehicle for anything other than strategic failure? Is there a proper way to manage the pen over an extended period of time? If the 2018 Brewers are going to catch the 1988 squad to produce the best pitching season in franchise history, hopefully manager Craig Counsell effectively dispatches those Runs Prevented in the most strategic manner possible.

Baseball Prospectus. Milwaukee Brewers Individual Statistics by Team [CSV]. Retrieved July 29, 2018.

Baseball Reference. Milwaukee Brewers Franchise [CSV]. Retrieved July 29, 2018.

Baseball Reference. Park Factors and League Encyclopedia [CSV]. Retrieved July 29, 2018.

Runs Prevented were calculated using the average of park factors between Baseball Prospectus and Baseball Reference sources, with the addition of a basic league environment runs prevented stat as well. Each Brewers team was assessed by average runs prevented and standard deviation.

Then, near the end of the first half, they slowly started to undo all of the good they’d done earlier; it is now an open question as to whether they truly are intelligently managed, or if they just happened to luck into a winning strategy without realizing it was a winning strategy.

We have all of these great stats for baseball players because baseball is mostly a series of easily quantifiable individual acts, but there are certain interlocking parts on defense and in the bullpen. If you muck with any of those, you can drastically change your fortunes. It all started innocently enough on May 9th. May 9th was the day the Corey Knebel was activated from the disabled list, and when that happened it completely changed how Craig Counsell used his stable of relievers for the worse.

The best way to demonstrate this is in Counsell’s use of Josh Hader. Hader had been used as a multi-inning fireman through all of April and most of May. Through May 25th, Hader made 18 total appearances, and in 12 of those appearances he pitched between two and three innings. He only made an appearance of one inning or less on three occasions. On May 21st, Knebel resumed a proper “closer” role, entering in the 9th inning to finish games in his next four appearances, and finishing the job three times. After Knebel became the closer, Hader’s usage plummeted.

After May 25th, Hader would only pitch more than one and two-thirds inning once, in a 3-inning appearance against the Twins on July 3rd. Hader made 13 appearances after May 25th, and lasted one inning or less in 7 of them. It’s fine to be careful with Hader as he’s a unique weapon when healthy, but this hardly seems like being careful. The ideal use of Hader probably looks like the early season version, with multi-inning appearances followed by one or two days of rest. This run of shorter appearances with one over-long appearance, seems bad.

It might not have been quite so bad had Matt Albers stayed healthy. Albers has been quietly excellent, and having him around with Jeremy Jeffress and Hader makes the bullpen mostly idiot-proof. But Albers last pitched on June 11th, and without him, things have fallen apart. Craig Counsell’s refusal to use Hader in games where the Brewers trail, even by small margins, has severely limited his use. Worse still, Counsell’s willingness to go to the weak part of the bullpen when they trail resulted in big innings for bad pitchers. Dan Jennings is ok, but he’s just OK, and his 3.76 Earned Run Average (ERA) and 1.325 Walks and Hits per Innings Pitched (WHIP) don’t warrant having been used more than the outstanding Jeffress, but that is exactly what has happened. Jacob Barnes has thrown 37 innings with a WHIP of 1.568. Mike Zagurski actually pitched innings. And, of course, Knebel’s automatic entry into save situations with a 4.53 FIP and 3.93 DRA isn’t exactly helping either.

Counsell, in many ways, has reverted to making the decisions of an average manager, except it’s almost worse as he’s put the typical constraints of a closer on his best fireman as well.

The Starters
 
The Brewers can’t afford to run a stupid bullpen, because their starters are a powder keg of dynamite sitting on a pile of twigs and oil-soaked rags inside of a magnifying glass factory. If you read Baseball Prospectus regularly you probably already know about DRA (Deserved Run Average) but if you don’t, DRA attempts to get to the true value of a pitcher by controlling for the factors outside of a pitcher’s control. It adjusts for things like the ballpark a pitcher pitches in, the quality of the catcher, the defense, the weather, the altitude, and a host of other issues. I consider DRA to be mostly a “front office stat” in that it’s most useful if you want to take a pitcher from some other environment, and stick him into yours. If a pitcher on your favorite team is bad and DRA says he should be good, from a fan perspective, it doesn’t really matter that his DRA is good. The results were bad, and that’s what counts.

In this case, I think it actually should matter to fans. The first thing you should know is that the DRA of every Brewer starter is terrifying. Zach Davies has a 5.71 DRA. Wade Miley has a 5.43 DRA. Junior Guerra has a 5.13 DRA.  Those are bad numbers, and with one exception, every Brewer starter’s ERA is drastically lower than their DRA.

Suter is close, but according to DRA, much of the success of pitchers like Chacin, Anderson, Guerra, and Miley is due to “other factors.” Unfortunately, the Brewers have removed many of those “other factors” from the team of late. One of the big other factors is the defense of Orlando Arcia.

Arcia has struggled with the bat all season, and there’s nothing wrong with sending him on a trip to Colorado Springs to get right. However, Arcia has now been effectively gone for about a month given his lack of regular playing time in late June before he was sent down on July first, and while Arcia’s bat has been awful, losing him comes with a real cost on defense. Arcia’s 3.7 Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA) is second only to Lorenzo Cain, and he accumulated that number in far fewer attempts. On a per play basis, Arcia is likely the best Brewer defensive player, and I suspect almost all defensive metrics understate his true value. The Brewers are on the high end in terms of teams who employ the shift, and Arcia’s greatness in the field allows the team wide latitude in positioning their lesser defenders. If Nate Orf is playing shortstop, it’s much more difficult to commit extra infielders to the right side, knowing that any hits to the left will be hopeless. Orf, Tyler Saladino, and Brad Miller aren’t in the same league as Arcia defensively, and while Saladino has had a nice offense surge lately, they are not good enough offensively to compensate for the lack of Arcia’s glove.

Simultaneously, the Brewers have attempted to get more offense into the lineup by playing Eric Thames in the outfield. When the Brewers have Cain, Christian Yelich, and Ryan Braun/Domingo Santana/anyone else, they have an outstanding defensive outfield, but with Cain missing some time lately, and Thames playing more frequently, the outfield defense has suffered at the same time the infield defense is suffering. The Brewers have taken everything that was working earlier, fundamentally misunderstood why it was working, and turned it on its head. The smidgen of extra offense they may have created simply isn’t worth it.

 
What Should They Do?
 
If the Brewers plan to roll with this pitching staff, the first thing they should do is call up Arcia, and commit to living with whatever issues he may have offensively. More than anything, they need to go back to leaning on their strengths. During the All-Star game it was discovered that Josh Hader wrote several racist, homophobic, and misogynistic tweets when he was in high school seven years ago. He has apologized, will undergo sensitivity training for whatever that’s worth, and will not be suspended, but from a baseball perspective, it will be interesting to see if the constant boos and heckling he is likely to encounter for the foreseeable future will render him less effective. He was already showing some signs of mortality before the incident, and if this compounds whatever physical issues he may have been experiencing, it could destroy the team’s chances.

If Hader can no longer be relied on, it’s imperative that they do the next best thing and use Jeremy Jeffress as they did early season Hader, and if Corbin Burnes can help fill the gap, so much the better.

Monkeying with internal personnel has hurt the team more than it has helped, and Milwaukee could stand to acquire at least one more bat, and if possible, a high-strikeout starter. Having an actual good pitcher who can go deep into games and limit balls in play would have a cascade effect on the bullpen by allowing them more rest, while also boosting the offense. If the pitcher is not as reliant on the defense, the team can afford to sacrifice some defense with moves like having Thames in the outfield.

The Brewers could also address the offense more directly by acquiring a bat, preferably at the catcher position. With Manny Machado off the market, improving on offense at shortstop is likely a fools’ game at this point, but the catchers are still awful, and an upgrade would do a world of good. They could also potentially upgrade at 2nd base as Jonathan Villar has been a disappointment, and it would not be surprising to see the team acquire Brian Dozier from the Twins. Whatever moves they make, they need to bolster their strengths, not replace a major strength in one area with a comparatively minor upgrade in another.

When Knebel was out, the baseball universe taught the Brewers several good lessons about how baseball could, and should be played. As soon as their closer came back they reverted to every old bad habit that they could, and while they clearly understand their own weaknesses on offense, they don’t seem to grasp the trade-offs that can accompany fixing those issues. Hopefully the return of Albers takes care of the bullpen. Hopefully Arcia’s recent success at AAA gets him back to the big leagues in short order. Hopefully the players play their way into their proper roles. I had all of the confidence in the world in Counsell to make this all happen earlier, but that confidence has mostly eroded. Here’s to hope and dumb, stupid luck.

Currently, the Brewers have four Top 100 pitchers:

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

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

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

Baseball Prospectus: Milwaukee Brewers Team Audit

Make no mistake about it, Brewers fans and analysts, this is a trap. It’s so easy to polish off phenomenal expectations at a time like this, and rejoice that the Brewers get to play an apparently easier stretch of schedule entering the break. But the team is experiencing some injuries of attrition in the field, just as the offense has finally produced a stretch of 30 games averaging better than 2018 NL / Miller Park runs scored (more on that later). The rotation has done a fantastic job, as has the elite bullpen, which are only getting attention due to a couple of recent blow-ups and blown leads….mostly occurring in games where the batters still cannot get it together.

So in honor of this schedule, which is certainly a trap, let’s have some fun with 21 statistics that are neither here, there, nor anywhere for what will certainly Attrition Central for #TeamDepth. If the Brewers can escape this stretch of play with a 9-12 record, that’s probably correction enough for the run differentials and a sign that the war of attrition did not go terribly wrong.

Ten
Ryan Braun is having a somewhat tough year balancing some new fielding assignments, relatively part time play, nagging injuries once again, and hard-hit batted balls with relatively bad luck. But it’s not all bad for the face of the franchise: in 9.7 percent of his plate appearances, Braun has hit for extra bases (12 doubles, one triple, and eight home runs). By comparison, the average National League bat hits for extra bases in approximately 7.6 percent of plate appearances.

Twelve
For the season, much has been made of the Brewers batters’ ten shutouts. In fact, this is quite an important number for Milwaukee batters, as the total Runs Scored “zero” has appeared more frequently than all but one run total: two runs.

For the 2018 campaign, the Brewers have scored two runs more frequently than any other outcome by the offense. What’s worse is that this number is not really accompanied by very good run totals, either; five runs is very nice, and it’s good to see that number tied with “0” for second place, but after that both of “3” and “1” are below average run totals.

Sixteen
For all the criticisms that Brewers baserunners have faced for their aggressive style over the years, it seems that the exceptional baserunning performance of Milwaukee has mostly escaped fan consciousness. Undoubtedly this is due in part to the fact that the Brewers are not scoring runs at an average clip. But, according to Baseball Prospectus Baserunning Runs, the Brewers are the third best team in the MLB in terms of baserunning production. Translating this to stolen bases, Lorenzo Cain leads the team with 16 steals in 19 attempts, ahead of Jonathan Villar (10 / 12), Christian Yelich (9 / 10) and Ryan Braun (7 / 9). In fact, Milwaukee is the second best team in the National League in terms of stolen bases (58 of 71 attempts). Run, run, run!

Twenty
Only the New York Mets have attempted fewer sacrifice bunt attempts than the Brewers in 2018. Milwaukee has attempted 20 bunts thus far, with successful sacrifices 14 times; this is good for a success rate that is higher than the league average. Ironically, for the lack of runs scored, Milwaukee is not only a great base running team, but they are also posting average or better situational hitting statistics according to Baseball Reference. This occurs across categories: sacrifice bunts, productive outs, baserunners scored, and advancing baserunners (with less than two outs at third base and zero outs at second base). The problem for the Brewers is simply that they do not get enough batters on base frequently enough…

Thirteen
….and when the Brewers do get baserunners on, their tendency to hit ground balls results in the highest percentage of ground ball double plays in the National League (13 percent of GIDP opportunities). This is notably worse than the NL average of double plays produced in ten percent of opportunities. So much for strike outs being a bad thing!

Four
One wonders if the defensive flexibility of the ballclub might actually explain some of the troubles the club has in terms of scoring runs…the Brewers only have four players with more than 50 starts at one position (Lorenzo Cain and Travis Shaw lead as the most regular regulars with 70 starts, followed by Villar (55) and Arcia (53) in the middle infield). Jesus Aguilar does not even have 50 starts at first base this year; Christian Yelich’s most regular position is left field…for 32 games, and catcher and right field have also been impacted in the games started department (probably due to the respective performances of Manny Pina and Domingo Santana more than strategy).

I was certainly in the camp that expected defensive flexibility to be a strength for these Brewers, and I certainly do not think it is a downright liability given the performance of the fielders. But given the performance of the offense, I think it is worth questioning whether flexible defensive roles have an impact on batting performance for these players.

Nine
Why are the Brewers pitchers so good? Their groundball percentage is fading to the middle of the pack, minimizing their ability to produce double plays as well. However, Milwaukee arms excel at limiting fly balls, and their 9.46 percent pop-up rate is the best in the MLB according to Baseball Prospectus.

Five
For all the rumblings about the Brewers relief pitching hitting their regression to the mean, it’s worth noting that the pitchers are not terribly far above average in some stats to begin with. For instance, the Brewers rank fifth in the National League with 32 percent of their Inherited Runners Scored, despite inheriting fewer runners than the league average (100 versus 106 for the typical NL team). This is an indication of how the club is quite good with inherited runners scored, but not necessarily perched atop the league.

4.3 at 23
It’s too bad that the Brewers pitchers are not yielding more ground balls, because Orlando Arcia remains one of the best shortstops in baseball despite his lack of playing time. Arcia has the fewest games played of any SS in the Top 10 for Fielding Runs Above Average. Yet, the 23-year old glove-first fielder ranks sixth in FRAA with his 4.3 mark. Another statistic worth remembering: at 23, Arcia is tied for Carlos Correa as the youngest elite defensive shortstop, and among shortstops with at least 60 games only Ahmed Rosario of the Mets is younger (but he’s nowhere near as good defensively). If you like more straightforward statistics, according to Baseball Reference Arcia remains one of the very best MLB shortstops with 10 Defensive Runs Saved; only Freddy Galvis and Addison Russell are better in the NL.

Second Best at .336
Jesus Aguilar is having a fantastic season, boasting a .336 True Average (TAv) and 1.4 FRAA. That offensive performance is second only to Freddie Freeman among first basemen with 60 or more games played.

One
For their fantastic pitching staff, the Brewers only have one player in the top ten percent of all MLB, in terms of Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP). That player is lefty high leverage reliever Josh Hader, ranked as 40th (!) with 1.54 WARP. No full-time reliever ranks higher, and only one pitcher better than Hader is younger (Jack Flaherty).

Ten
Many Brewers fans are suggesting that the club needs an ace in their pitching rotation. When I host chats on BPMilwaukee Twitter (@BPMilwaukee), the most common questions since the off season typically concern the quality of the MLB rotation. Throwing out the extremely advanced stats, let’s look at games started and ERA+ (a contextual assessment of Earned Runs Average). Here we are, half way through the season, and only ten clubs have at least three starters with 10 GS and an ERA at or above league average: the Red Sox, Cubs, Cleveland, Tigers, Astros, Angels, Mets, Cardinals, Nationals, and Brewers.

Seventeen / 40 Percent
If you’re interested in an ace, though, using the colloquial definition of someone who can lead a rotation in terms of performance and starts, who would be better than Jhoulys Chacin? Sorting all MLB starting pitchers by games started and ERA+, Chacin meets the strongest definition of good performance in a heavy workload.

Of course, including advanced contextual statistics, it is worth questioning whether the club will see some course correction from the starting pitchers. Here, Junior Guerra’s 4.69 DRA is the best among Brewers starters with at least 60 innings pitched. That’s good for 71st in the MLB. Yet, once Guerra is working between the lines, his splitter remains one of the best in the game at inducing swings-and-misses; thus far Guerra is yielding nearly 40 percent whiffs-per-swing on the split (only slightly lagging his 2016 performance that put that pitch on the map).

Thirteen / Forty-Three
Overall, the Brewers pitching rotation forms quite a strong unit: the club’s starting pitchers have 13 Runs Prevented as a group. This performance helps the team maximize a phenomenal bullpen, as the Brewers can frequently keep the game close. With a bullpen that has prevented 43 runs, the starting pitchers are often handing close games to relief pitchers that are ready to help convert those games into wins.

Six
When is a better than average offense not really that good? Over the last 30 games for the Brewers, it turns out! Those big ticket runs totals against Philadelphia have gone a long way toward improving Milwaukee’s season long offensive figures….

….but for all that, over the last 30 games the most frequently Runs Scored total for the Brewers has declined from the season leading 2 RS. Twenty percent of the Brewers’ games since they returned from Minnesota have ended with 1 RS for Milwaukee. If you missed seeing 2 RS, do not worry, for that remained the second most frequent run total over that time.

Seventeenth in Right
Domingo Santana is a tough player to figure out right now. If someone had told Brewers fans that the right fielder would have -2.6 FRAA roughly halfway through the season, most would have expected that he would be in the running for one of the most valuable right fielders in the MLB. Alas, in True Average (TAv), Santana’s mark of .259 (i.e., roughly league average) ranks 17th of 24 MLB RF with 60 or more games played.

Fourteen
Perhaps Lorenzo Cain is able to produce so many stolen bases in part because he’s on first base so frequently: the Brewers Center Fielder is drawing walks in 13.8 percent of his plate appearances!

Nineteen (Two)
Without park adjustment, across the 2018 MLB the Brewers’ offense currently ranks 19th in terms of Runs Scored. Their pitching staff currently ranks 2nd in terms of Runs Allowed.

Photo Credit: Jeff Hanisch, USA Today Sports Images

For a team that is seriously out performing their run differential (expected Runs Scored / Runs Allowed record), Hader more than any other pitcher personifies a bullpen that is ready to support their club in any scenario and (usually) bring home the win. Even failings in close games, such as Sunday’s 1-3 loss to the Twins, typically have the stamp of a poor offensive performance, leaving it difficult to fully blame the bullpen or pitching staff as a whole unit. Hader is also quite a thrilling personality, as he exemplifies one of the prospects acquired during the first rebuilding stint (started July 2015 by President Doug Melvin) reaching the MLB in a successful role. Now that Hader is a successful reliever, it’s tough for fans to remember that not even three years ago he was a questionable prospect that could offer many potential futures to the Brewers; now Hader represents a winning club on the field, which undoubtedly enhances his face of the post-rebuilding Brewers.

It’s tough to hang on a role on Hader right now. The southpaw is undoubtedly capable of serving as a closer, as well as a multi-inning fireman in any part of the game. He’s a true strategic role player for the Brewers, but even his elite performance is not enough for some fans; some Brewers fans and analysts continue to question whether Milwaukee should employ Hader as a starter, insinuating that even 27.3 IP, 1.10 DRA, 8 runs prevented (!) of relief work are not enough to settle the question of Hader’s role.

Yet, evidence is emerging that Hader himself is part of a vanguard of multi-inning relievers working in the game. Much of the credit for this trend goes to Andrew Miller, who assembled a thrilling set of multi-inning performances during Cleveland’s 2016 march to an American League Championship. But Miller is hardly the face of this high inning relief movement; in fact, when searching for MLB relievers that work at least 1.50 IP/G and work exclusively during relief (Relief IP / Overall IP = 100%), Andrew Miller is nowhere to be found. What is found, however, is that Josh Hader is one of nine long multi-inning relievers working in 2018; for context, the season is hardly a quarter of the way through, and nearly as many long multi-inning relievers are working in 2018 as worked during 2016-2017 (11. See Table One below).

Table One: Long Multi-Inning Relievers, 2013-present (Minimum 1.50 IP / G, 100% Relief IP)

What is striking about this trend is that while the long multi-inning relievers employed in 2013 were mostly quality pitchers judged by Deserved Run Average (DRA), from 2014-2017 the arms were mostly unsavory options, which leads one to wonder whether these relievers were closer to the standard “long mop up option” than 2018 Josh Hader. Now, in 2018, Josh Hader is one of several quality long relievers working.

Table Two: Classic Strike Out Relievers, 1962-1994 (Minimum 75% Relief IP, No IP/G Minimum)

Hader’s absurd strike out performance is also worth noting in terms of redefining this long multi-inning reliever role. Hader’s strike out performance can easily be assessed against classic closers, and while his strike outs are exciting, adjusted for era one can find that there are a classic group of MLB relievers and swingmen who ably exceeded the strike out averages of their respective leagues (Table Two, above). 30 years ago, strike out rates were approximately 35 percent lower than current totals, which means that strike out statistics must be normalized or indexed to the league environment in order to compare performances across eras. Using Baseball Reference League Encyclopedia and Baseball Prospectus historical Individual Pitching Stats by Team, I contextualized strike out performance by indexing a pitcher’s individual strike out percentage (K%) to their league’s percentage. By assessing the “K_Index” alongside innings pitcher per game, one can get closer to normalizing relief performance across time and assessing relief pitching excellence. Thus, although we will see below that Hader’s strike out performance is very good, there is a group of historical arms, especially Rob Dibble, Ron Davis, Bill Caudill, Duane Ward, Lee Smith, and Norm Charlton, who compare quite well to Hader while also working significantly more innings (it will be interesting to see if Hader maintains his early strike out brilliance for a 70-to-90 IP workload).

In terms of assessing workload, the Brewers’ young southpaw has yet to reach the 2.0 inning per game threshold, but there is a “classic bullpen era” (1962-1994) set of pitchers that may serve as an aspirational model for designing Hader’s role moving forward. Table Three (below) lists forgotten relievers that worked from 1962-1994 with at least 2.0 IP per game, sorted by strike out excellence.

Table Three: Classic High Strike Out, High Inning Relievers, 1962-1994 (Minimum 2.0 IP / G, 100% relief IP)

Note that while many of these relievers would not fit “our” current understanding of a closer or high leverage reliever, this group of relievers generally were strike out monsters of their time, compiling relatively high strike out rates during comparably low strike out eras. The DRA follow suit, as 26 of these pitchers posted DRA below 3.50.

Table Four: Modern High Strike Out Relievers, 1995-Present (100% Relief IP)

Assessing “modern” relievers after the beginning of the Wild Card era, it is difficult to find a solid relief role comparison for Hader. Yet, the fun of the southpaw’s strike out performance is that he is an elite pitcher whether one compares his performance with short inning closers or high inning relievers. For example, Table Four (above) demonstrates that Hader’s overall strike out index is better than any modern reliever save for Eric Gagne, and the adjacent presence of Billy Wagner and Aroldis Chapman provide tantalizing southpaw comparisons. Table Four is truly a list of “who’s who” closers over the last 24 seasons, coupled with a few other surprises.

However, part of Hader’s appeal in his current role is that manager Craig Counsell can employ the lefty for six or more outs during a single appearance. This seemingly places Hader in special company within the modern game; after all, only Rafael Soriano, Joba Chamberlain, Francisco Rodriguez, and Troy Percival come close to reaching Hader’s IP / G in Table Four. Thus, it is also worth comparing Hader’s exceptional performance to relievers with similar innings pitched roles. Table Five (below) demonstrates another terrain of the modern game that helps to define Hader’s current value as a reliever.

Table Five: Modern High Innings Workload Relievers Ranked by Strike Out Performance, 1995-Present (Minimum 1.50 IP/G, 100% Relief IP)

Once again, Hader shines: whereas the southpaw demonstrated an extremely high workload among the modern closers in Table Four, in Table Five his strike out rate shines among modern pitchers that worked longer outings. Here, more thrilling left handed comparisons emerge, specifically Norm Charlton and Arthur Rhodes. I also expanded Table Five beyond 30 pitchers to showcase Tyler Glasnow, who is another 2018 high inning reliever posting a very strong strike out rate. While Glasnow’s surface statistics do not appear as great as Hader’s thus far, there are peripheral aspects of the righty’s performance that suggest that he could improve. Together, Hader and Glasnow suggest that there may indeed be a sea change in how managers are viewing relief roles (and, perhaps, how front offices are viewing testy starting pitching prospects with delivery and command concerns). The crucial difference between Glasnow and Hader, of course, is that Hader did not need to fail as a starter prior to moving to the bullpen, and it is worth questioning whether that type of player development decision is crucial to Hader’s success as a reliever thus far.

In 2018, Brewers fans are witnessing an elite bullpen, with Hader undoubtedly serving as the sparkplug and the most exciting graduate out of the farm system. The southpaw served as the sparkplug by covering high leverage situations during closer Corey Knebel’s absence, ostensibly giving Counsell more freedom to be more fluid with bullpen roles after Knebel’s return. Hader is arguably the most exciting graduate out of the farm system not only due to his excellent performance during a playoff run in 2017, but due to his enhancement of that role in 2018. With the caveat that much can change over the course of the season, Hader thus far has rightfully sparked excitement by producing a relief performance that has rarely been seen either from elite closers (in terms of innings workload) or high workload relievers (in terms of strike outs). So where will the “regression” take Hader throughout 2018? Hopefully these tables provide numerous comparisons for the lefty, as well as key role comparisons for how MLB managers can use their arms: there is an entire generation of high workload relievers that are forgotten, falling outside of the praise of the classical closers yet giving hints for how a new generation of arms can be employed. Hader and a group of other 2018 hurlers could serve as the vanguard.

Photo Credit: David Kohl, USA Today Sports Images

References:

Baseball Prospectus. Individual Stats – By Team. CSV retrieved May 20, 2018.

Baseball Reference. League Encyclopedia. CSV retrieved May 20, 2018.

On Method:
When I run Twitter chats from BPMilwaukee, one of the most curious things to my mind is that followers of BPMilwaukee will not necessarily support general BP stats work. No concerns there, really; it’s not necessary to “brand” MLB stats analysis, and indeed when one begins supporting stats-as-brands, that’s just as problematic as how so-called Old School stats like Runs Batted In or Earned Run Average are used in orthodox baseball discussions. No, what I find curious is the general idea that a stat like WARP or DRA is faulty because it is “made up,” which is presumably a concern because the BP stats team are extremely transparent about how the stats are constructed and also how (and why) they are changing. So folks actually know that DRA changes…which is different than how the vast majority of websites present baseball stats. What is problematic about this attitude about DRA is that it ignores how other statistics are merely “constructs” in the very same way that DRA is merely a construct, and it also trades in the murky waters of false certainty.

For the past two years, I have worked in Community Development and Economic Development positions while completing a professional urban planning and policy degree. I used to believe that I was a “stats” guy or an “analytics” guy, but I never quite understood the importance of what actual statistical analysis means until I was forced to reckon with my biases while training for economic analysis. Before I learned and studied stats, and was required to use them on the job, I thought the “numbers” were most important. While fields aligned with statistics are concerned in some sense with “numbers” and thus with producing “numbers-oriented results” (i.e., sometimes your boss really wants the results of your analysis), by far the most important elements of statistical analysis are “concept validity,” methodology, and uncertainty. What is most important about statistical analysis is process, it turns, out: how an analyst reaches a conclusion is much more important than the concluding numbers on their own, for it is only in light of outlining methodology, and explaining what is at stake with a certain measurement, that anyone (including a consumer of those numbers) could understand the numerical results of statistical analysis.

It’s ironic that many victories of the so-called “analytics movements” are now enshrined in their own dangerous orthodoxy, for what everyone seems to have forgotten is that even if the debate was about numbers, the original controversy was to convince the “Guards of Baseball Knowledge and Value” that there were legitimately different ways of thinking about the game and that that meant there were legitimately different measurements that could be presented. Somewhere along the line, we became obsessed with those measurements, rather than the process-oriented creed of focusing on how to think about baseball. This extends to statistical analysis, then, too: it is as though when many fans were convinced of the merits of WARP and other stats, they simply turned over the box containing ERA, RBI, etc., dumped out those contents, and stuck the new measurements into the box. That was never the point, and to the extent that many of us did not communicate the significance of process-oriented thinking about baseball stats, that was our problem (and I place myself in this camp, having only realized the significance of this issue over the last few years).

Anyway, “concept validity” is the most important thing that I have learned about statistical analysis, aside from clearly stating your uncertainty in proper terms. “Concept validity” is basically the extent to which the phenomena you’re trying to measure match the methods that you’re using to measure the phenomena. What should be inherent in this process is an understanding that as an analyst’s approach to measuring phenomena changes, so too should their results change; one need not hold the numerical results of analysis sacred, for if new empirical evidence emerges, methodological research unearths a better way to measure something, or a literature review reveals a better way to define a concept, there is nothing wrong with the analytical results changing.

So, keep this in mind when you’re thinking about why DRA has “changed.” DRA doesn’t “hate” anyone on your team, or love them. It is not a mark against DRA, or WARP, that the stat is consistently updated and changed, because that is a sign that its authors are attempting to reach that mark of “concept validity.” If it is the goal of DRA “to tease out the most likely contributions of pitchers to the run-scoring that occurs around them” and updated methodological approaches, or an updated understanding of pitching-related data, helps to accomplish that goal, revising the stat is a methodological strength. That said, I can understand that within a statistics field, one may have disagreements with some of the particular methodological approaches; but I don’t take any substance of that type of disagreement to dismiss the value of the overall methodological process of DRA.

This is why the new DRA is so important: it continues Baseball Prospectus’s commitment to presenting uncertainty (as has been done on Brooks Baseball, as one example) in publishing baseball statistics. Embrace this approach: so far as DRA is “made up,” it is made according to a methodologically sound process that upholds honest and transparent thinking about uncertainty.

DRA Values
One of the approaches to constructing DRA is to valuate the Run-value of pitching outcomes, and those outcomes are published by Baseball Prospectus. These elements are arguably more important than the DRA output itself, for these outcomes show the balance of a pitcher’s performance: is a pitcher saving runs during hits, balls not in play (e.g., Home Runs, strike outs, walks, etc.), or outs on balls in play?

My favorite Brewers pitcher, Zach Davies, is a “casualty” of the new DRA (h/t to Kyle Lesniewski for beating me to this realization). But we’re not going to say, “DRA hates Zach Davies.” On the contrary, it is possible to see that from Davies’s Out Runs (-1.4), Not In Play (NIP) Runs (1.9), Hit Runs (1.4), and Framing Runs (-0.1) that Davies is not getting the job done in terms of limiting runs when the ball isn’t in play, and he’s not limiting runs that occur on hits, either. Here’s how the 2018 Brewers look, sorted by NIP Runs (Josh Hader is real!):

These run elements help to define DRA. At this point in the season, however, it’s important to note just how large the Standard Deviation appears for DRA. For example, Davies’s DRA is currently published at 6.02, but with a standard deviation of 1.00, approximately 70 percent of the time, Davies could be expected to land between 5.02 DRA and 7.02 DRA. Tracking DRA with RA9 (Runs Allowed per 9 IP), something like a 5.02 RA9 gets Davies into respectable rotation territory, and there’s no telling that the righty could also prevent runs to a greater extent (i.e., serve as an even greater outlier).

Here are Brewers starters by variation, sorted by lowest Standard Deviation.

Now, let’s repeat this measurement with WARP, which should help to underscore the extent to which fans should quote Replacement Level stats with certainty. Doesn’t this make you wonder what the error bars might be on Baseball Reference or FanGraphs WAR? Hopefully those websites follow suit and publish WAR error bars where possible.

What I find extremely interesting about this exercise is the extent to which the Brewers starting pitchers exhibit variation in their potential WARP production. Almost to a man, the Brewers remaining rotation (after Brent Suter was moved to the bullpen to make room for Wade Miley) could range anywhere from replacement level to solid rotation piece (for reference, among 149 pitchers with 17.0 IP or higher, 0.34 WARP is a median 2018 performance thus far). This will be a stat worth watching for the remainder of 2018.

Finally, the last stat worth watching is whether the Brewers can continue to out perform their DRA. For my last publication on Runs Prevented, the Brewers as a pitching staff were approximately 18 runs better than their DRA suggested. My hypothesis here is that the Brewers groundball efficiency machine is leading this charge, but that could be one of many explanations including random luck.

These statistics provide a wide range of tools for Brewers fans and analysts. Ranges of DRA and WARP can be compared in order to assess both uncertainty and potential overlapping fields of value. To my mind, the best aspect of this new presentation is that fans and analysts no longer need to feign false certainty over WARP, and this is great; one shouldn’t need to say “Zach Davies has a 6.02 DRA” right now, when one can say “Davies’s DRA ranges from 5.02 to 7.02.” This exercise can be repeated throughout the season, and perhaps through embracing uncertainty we can find better hypothesis about how and why a team is under-performing (or over-performing) their peripheral stats or DRA estimates.

Photo Credit: Patrick Gorski, USA Today Sports Images