The Brewers need starting pitching help. The Brewers need an ace.

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┻┳| •.•) #Brewers didn’t need a SP
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— BP Milwaukee (@BPMilwaukee) July 31, 2018

Of course this would be the return line for the 2018-2019 offseason, because the line never went away during the season. A large faction of fans were dissatisfied with the starting pitching in April; they were satisfied with the starting pitching in May, “but can this staff beat ‘a dude’ in the playoffs?” (Yes!, it turns out); they were particularly dissatisfied with the starting pitching when the season ended in June and July, and again they were dissatisfied with the starting pitching at the trade deadline. This debate was simply never going to be won, because there is a contingent of baseball fans that refuse to either understand or accept what GM Stearns, pitching coach Derek Johnson, systemwide player development, and the front office are trying to accomplish. For arguably the first time in Brewers franchise history, certainly for the first time in a generation, the Milwaukee system strength is pitching, and not of the sort of high octane, all-risk dreamy profiles that flamed out at the turn of the 21st Century; this is a system that is built on turning a fabulous diversity of pitching profiles into potentially successful MLB profiles (witness the scouting range between Freddy Peralta and Corbin Burnes, for example).

When the dust settled, the system worked. The Brewers rotation was good. It was good any particular way you measured it; it was a good rotation if you divide rotation spots based on overall Games Started and workload measurements; it was a good rotation if you divide rotation spots based on true rotational scarcity (i.e., comparing each spot across the MLB); and it was a good rotation if you separate pitching classes into “true starters” and “replacements,” and measure each set of pitchers against different “spots” or “workloads.” The pitching staff was good if you believe in “Aces,” and it was good if you don’t believe Aces exist.

The Brewers rotation was good by every measurement except DRA, which should be the significant focal point of 2018-2019 offseason analysis in an effort to understand how Milwaukee assembled an elite fielding component in order to prevent runs.

If you do not wish to read the details, the table above summarizes the comparative results from each model. Each Brewers starter was assessed according to their relevant spot, and then compared by Innings Pitched (IP), Deserved Run Average (DRA), and Runs Prevented.

Rotation One: By Games Started
One way to assess a starting rotation is by ranking pitchers according to games started on a leaguewide basis. This ranking method is effective because it approximates the scarcity of both MLB resources (there’s not a whole lot of pitchers that can work full seasons) and roster construction. One benefit of focusing on games started instead of another performance metric is that analysts can reflect the success or failure of an MLB club across games started totals; for example, it matters that Gerrit Cole and Lucas Giolito both started 32 games despite widely divergent performances. The distance between Cole and Giolito is approximately 65 runs prevented, even though they worked the same number of starts, which raises an important question about how different teams assess the importance of effective starters versus soaking up innings. In fact, had Brent Suter and Zach Davies not faced injuries in 2018, they may have forced this question with the Brewers front office, and Freddy Peralta also arguably faced this (along with innings workload concerns) down the stretch run.

According to this measurement, there are approximately 10 rotation spots discernible by workload throughout the 2018 MLB, as well as emergency starters (who started one game; I will always assess emergency starters as their own category). On the surface, this is a pleasing model; the top starters by workload typically are the best starters in the game, even if there are differences between guys like Cole and Giolito, as discussed above.

On this model, it is clear that the Brewers succeeded because of their depth. A critique about the top of the rotation could be true in terms of DRA, as the contextual performances of Jhoulys Chacin and Chase Anderson were not comparable to top workload pitchers across the MLB. The importance of the depth should not be understated, from Wade Miley and Peralta to Brandon Woodruff and even Gio Gonzalez. If you’re reconsidering Gonzalez’s trade cost, not only should the veteran lefty’s surface performance be assessed, but one should not that, marginally, he was worth seven runs better than his median workload.

Another benefit of using this model is that analysts can assess “phantom” runs prevented where teams “miss” particular spots. For example, Chacin may not measure up to the median Top Spot prototype, but having his performance was better than not having a heavy workload pitcher whatsoever (in theory; Giolito’s performance would obviously have not validated a heavy workload benefit for the Brewers). If a team was missing a Top Spot, they theoretically would be punished 16-to-17 Runs Prevented. Milwaukee did not use a Five, Seven, Eight, or Ten workload, each of which approximately ranged from 2 to 4 runs below average; one could argue in this way that the Brewers also received 10 “phantom” Runs Prevented by avoiding these typical workloads.

This should help to validate the ideal that there are a couple of different ways to construct a rotation. A team could indeed bank on a Jacob deGrom type atop the rotation, and seek a 30 run advantage from their top workload. One must be careful of the cost for this type of pitcher, however, as if considerable resources are spent at the top of the rotation, they may be diminished at the bottom of the rotation. The Brewers demonstrated the “bottom-up” approach: they lost out on the Yu Darvish sweepstakes, and Alex Cobb did not bite on a one-year deal, so they proceeded with Chacin and Miley, plus their developmental pipeline. That internal pipeline was worth approximately five runs (better than their median workload) to the 2018 Brewers, while external candidates were worth more than 15 runs (better than their median workload). It was not flashy, there were no “dudes” on the marquee, but it worked.

Rotation Two: By Team

Of course, even the preceding model is relatively clean or “idealistic,” for MLB teams do not necessarily construct their rotations according to the same ideal. An additional method for assessing rotations is to judge each team’s rotation spot by turn; since two pitchers literally cannot start the same game, this method goes spot-by-spot, start-by-start for each MLB team. The benefit of this method of rotational assessment is that it reflects team preference, or injury and ineffectiveness circumstances, across the league. Some teams attempt to duct tape 13- or 14-pitcher rotations together, whether they are contending or tanking, while others attempt to yield more mileage from each spot. By giving each team one exclusive spot for each turn (until their pitchers run out), this type of rotational model can allow teams to be analyzed against attrition across the league.

Every team in the MLB required at least six rotational turns throughout the season, but this model demonstrates the divergence of team strategies one they hit six starters. Some teams preferred to give replacement starters two or three starts each, while others leaned on emergency starters.

The Brewers front office, coaching staff, and pitchers did a fantastic job weathering 162. They hit the right buttons in replacing some starters at certain points in time (such as resting Peralta down the stretch, or [arguably] “shuttling Woodruff between Triple-A and MLB), while giving starters room to breathe at others point in the season (this also applies to Peralta, who was given some time to adjust from rough starts, as well as Junior Guerra). By spitting on rotation spots 10 through 14, the Brewers also arguably saved 16 “phantom” runs, as the club would not have found effective pitchers (on average) digging that deep into league or organizational resources. (This line could be argued with further research, however, as one could note that someone like Corbin Burnes could have been effective in two starts, for example).

Rotation Three: By Type
During my time writing at Sportsbubbler (RIP) and Disciples of Uecker, I published annual starting pitching rotation rankings based on the decision point of 100 IP. If a pitcher worked 100 or more innings with 50 percent of their games as starts, they were a starting pitcher; if not, they were replacement depth. On this model, I attempted to assess pitchers according to Runs Prevented, with the ideal that (a) working a lot of innings should be worth more as a starter, and (b) rotation spots could be designated based on the resulting Runs Prevented rankings. I’m no longer certain of this method’s veracity, as I believe there are better ways to assess rotational scarcity and usage across the MLB. But, here we are, testing the Brewers 2018 rotation, so let’s assemble the pitchers.

Wouldn’t you know it, the 2018 MLB did not have many “true” rotation spots: there were only 129 pitchers across 30 teams that fit the first criterion listed above. This is not enough pitchers to fill a true five man rotation, and it’s hardly enough to fill a four man turn.

Yet, those Runs Prevented totals present some order to the universe. There are aces, even if there’s only a couple of them. There are nice middle of the rotation “dudes” that you can really sink your teeth into; 150 IP and 2 Runs Prevented feels like a solid effort for a team. Every contender would accept that workload (every MLB team would, for that matter).

Where there are not full-time starters, replacements are necessary, and MLB really dug deep in 2018: there were 227 replacement starters, including 57 Emergency Starters, across 30 MLB teams in 2018. Basically, on average, MLB teams were using more replacements than they were using regular starters. The Brewers are no different here, and in fact, that’s partially how they gained their value. Viewing the range of Runs Prevented across each of these roles should demonstrate the importance of having a solid organizational pitching strategy; replacement starters need not simply be the pitching equivalent of throwing spaghetti against the wall. Tampa Bay demonstrated this with their genius “Opener” strategy, and they produced one of the elite Runs Prevented units in baseball. The Brewers accomplished their success by using long-term replacements like Miley and Peralta, but they also received value elsewhere across their high-floor organizational depth.

If you previously thought the idea of “Phantom Runs Prevented” by not using a rotation spot was a suspect idea, this seems to be your chance to pounce on the Brewers for not using an “Ace” or true “Number One” starter. By this model, the Brewers were gutsy, punting nearly 63 runs prevented at the front end of the rotation. Yet, the club also did not use a true “Number Four” or full-time starter that should have been replaced, which bought the club another 43 runs prevented. All told, the Brewers rotation of regular starters lost the club approximately 19 runs here, thanks to their cavalier strategy.

Of course, the Brewers used every Replacement typology except a “true swingman,” and this is where the club torched the league. Gio Gonzalez and Wade Miley covered the lack of an “Ace” or “Number One” starter, and demonstrated the value in not having a Regular Four, either. Peralta, Dan Jennings (yes, Dan Jennings), and Woodruff gained significant Runs Prevented advantages in the replacement ranks as well. On top of these depth successes, the rotation was not bad overall; Suter and Guerra were close to true Number Three starters, and Anderson was close to a true Number Two starter. Chacin was better than a typical Number Two starter, boasting a Runs Prevented performance that almost placed him in a phantom “Number One” role for the club.

What is startling on this model is that the Brewers typologies also worked according to DRA. Once an analyst accepts that the club did not have a True Ace or True Number One starter, the threshold for assessing DRA is lowered significantly. Witness Chacin, for example, who was assessed against DRA that were significantly better than 4.00 on the first two models; his DRA performance looks much better on the final model, because once you stop comparing him to Aces, the comparison becomes more realistic. The Brewers deep organization also performs very well against median DRA requirements on this model, which raises a question about which model’s expectations one should use going forward.

The last remaining criticism for fans and analysts rests on how one interprets Deserved Run Average results for the Brewers rotation. On any model one chooses, be it based on Games Started, Team Rotational Turns and Scarcity, or Actual Runs Prevented performance, the Brewers’ rotation was good in 2018. Now it is worth digging through these models during the offseason, in order to gain important lessons for Corbin Burnes, Woodruff, and Peralta during their potential first full workloads in 2019, and even for reworking Jimmy Nelson. Milwaukee has proven the success that can come with aggressive rotational swings and an organizational pitching strategy, coupled with elite, efficient fielding.

An underrated 2018-2019 offseason would find David Stearns making moves to further improve the fielding (such as improving Right Field, and then working Christian Yelich primarily as a Left Fielder), which should in turn help boost the pitching depth strategy going forward. As it stands, the Brewers do not even need an external pitching move; this makes potential offseason moves even more interesting for speculation.

Junior Guerra has had an up-and-down season, which will deserve more analytical scrutiny once the season closes. Brewers fans largely wrote off Guerra after the righty experienced a forearm injury in July (on DL July 14-24), which preceded a truly dreadful stretch of baseball. Returning from the disabled list, Guerra started eight games, ultimately working 37.3 innings while allowing 38 runs (!!!) and a 32 strike out / 16 walk / 8 homer / 1.08 Groundball:Flyball peripheral performance. At this point, the Brewers replaced Guerra in the rotation with newly acquired southpaw Gio Gonzalez, himself looking for some redemption in a new locale.

Guerra’s fall was shocking in part because the righty maintained solid Runs Prevented throughout the year. On May 31, the splitter pitcher averaged approximately Nine Runs Prevented; that swelled to approximately 11 Runs Prevented through July, before returning to approximately Nine Runs Prevented on August 12 and plummeting to -1.3 Runs Prevented by August 24. Guerra bottomed out at an average of -9.0 Runs Prevented on September 9, meaning that the righty boasts one of the Top 10 Runs Prevented “declines” during the 2018 season:

What is notable, however, is that despite Guerra’s large decline from May through September, the righty ultimately provided (approximately) average production throughout the season. Ironically, Gio Gonzalez matches this trend for Guerra as well, as the lefty averaged approximately Four Runs Prevented for the Nationals despite falling to below average production by the time he was traded to Milwaukee.

So, the Brewers entered a playoff stretch run by moving one formerly productive starting pitcher into the rotation at the expense of another formerly productive starting pitcher. Yet, Craig Counsell provided Guerra a couple of opportunities to define his relief role while working in close deficits on September 11 and September 15, and the righty also made another appearance during last night’s series closing victory against the Reds.

I’ve dreamed on a Guerra relief role since the beginning, considering the righty’s command stature and splitter as two of the reasons that the righty might morph from a starting pitcher into a reliever. What is fascinating, however, is that while Guerra is absolutely lights out over 3.7 relief innings thus far (5 K / 0 BB / 0 HR / 1.33 GB:FB), that formerly elite splitter is nowhere to be seen. In fact, according to Brooks Baseball, entering Wednesday night’s match-up against the Reds, the righty had almost exclusively worked fastball / breaking ball in relief. At the time of this writing, Brooks Baseball data had yet to reflect Guerra’s last outing, but raw Gameday Play-By-Play suggests that Guerra was once more a two-pitch pitcher.

What is especially stunning about Guerra moving to a fastball / breaking ball relief profile is that the hurler is not even using his slider. According to Brooks Baseball, Guerra’s velocity, vertical movement, and horizontal movement profile on his breaking ball matches his previous “curveball,” rather than his well-known “slider.” Here’s how Guerra’s pitch profile looked as a starting pitcher in 2018:

To emphasize just how different this new version of Guerra looks from the old Guerra, here’s how Brooks Baseball classified his relief work in September 2017:

While it is too early to make note of any velocity changes on the fastball based on standard deviation on Guerra’s September fastballs as a starter and a reliever, it is worth diving into the sharp arsenal change exhibited by Guerra. According to Brooks Baseball, Guerra’s fastball / breaking ball blend is producing more whiffs and groundballs on his fastball than his starting pitching usage of the pitch, while the “curveball” effectively is acting like a splitter in terms of whiffs and groundballs. Notably, this combination of pitches finds Guerra working in entirely new areas of the strike zone with his fastball compared to his previous usage, with the caveat that this is an extremely small number of pitches to draw any meaningful conclusions.

With this curveball offering, however, Guerra has already thrown nearly as many pitches as a reliever compared to his entire time as a starter in 2018, and here it is worth noting that Guerra is scattering the pitch more evenly across the bottom of the strike zone while also moving it away from the upper-armside (inside against a righty bat) area of the zone:

Ultimately, I do not think assessing Guerra’s arsenal shift as a reliever is “much ado about nothing,” as the righty is suddenly answering a crucial question entering potential playoff series: who can help to stretch out close deficits? Granted, in the playoffs, pitchers like Jeremy Jeffress and Josh Hader will probably experience higher workloads. However, since the Brewers seemingly base Hader’s workload off of his recovery time, adding another reliever that can effectively work a couple of frames is extremely important (especially as starting pitchers work shorter outings as the season winds down). It cannot be understated that Guerra is also working for his future with Milwaukee, a club that is also arguably designing an unorthodox pitching staff that is based around systemic runs prevention rather than standard 1-through-5 starting pitching assessments. This is undoubtedly one reason Guerra had a job to begin with, and undoubtedly one reason the Brewers gave the righty every chance to succeed as a starter. Guerra the reliever could still potentially fit into a 2019 pitching staff that may double down on amorphous roles after general 2018 Runs Prevented success.

Now, perhaps it is time to dream bigger on that relief role for the stretch run, potentially the playoffs, and for 2019; in this regard, it is also time to scrutinize a relief role for Guerra. If it can be stated that Guerra exhausted the utility of his fastball / splitter / slider arsenal in Milwaukee, a new look at a hard, rising fastball and slightly slower curve combination could find the age-33 hurler staying on for at least one more go ’round. In this regard, it’s interesting to think about the pitchers in Milwaukee that have benefited from learning Guerra’s splitter, and now view the righty as a beneficiary of Pitching Coach Derek Johnson’s curveball instruction (recall that this is the pitch that revitalized Jimmy Nelson and Chase Anderson). When one role ends for a pitcher, a new pitch can present a new role; while this should not be viewed as magical thinking, nor a fail-proof development, for now it should be viewed as a new opportunity for Guerra to bolster Milwaukee’s high leverage relief group.

New Runs Prevented Workbook || Runs Prevented Primer

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

With this in mind, it is worth previewing the Brewers and Cubs series by highlighting Chicago’s superior playoff rotation. One of the most common questions that appeared throughout the offseason, and sometimes during regular season chats on @bpmilwaukee Twitter, is whether the Brewers have a rotation that matches the Cubs. After nearly 75 percent of the season, there is a definitive answer to this question:

And I’m not being disingenuous about this: I understand how one can scout the set of Kyle Hendricks, Jose Quintana, Jon Lester, and now Cole Hamels, in terms of stuff and experience, and label them an exceptional rotation that is set to demolish the upstart Brewers. I understand that completely. These are proven guys, too, as Jon Lester has a 1.77 ERA in six World Series games, Cole Hamels has a 3.48 ERA in 16 (!) career playoff games, and the unsung hero Kyle Hendricks has a 2.88 ERA across the Cubs’ recent playoff runs. In fan consciousness, these are the types of pitchers that teams need in order to succeed.

So, the Brewers’ excellent team defense (.722 defensive efficiency according to Baseball Prospectus) leading a lovable, motley crew of rotational ragtaggers hardly seems fun when you could string together a rotation that cost around $100 million annually plus prospects like Eloy Jimenez and Dylan Cease. This price was underscored at the deadline, when Stearns presumably refused to send talent like Corbin Burnes and Keston Hiura to Tampa for a pitcher like Chris Archer, or a pitcher like Josh Hader to New York for one of the Mets aces. It’s rarely stated out loud, but one has to guess that the Cubs’ ability to afford a legitimate sticker shock rotation informs at least part of the jealousy in the hearts of Brewers fans.

Yet here we are: the Cubs have the worst rotation among NL division leaders, and the only contending club with a rotation in worse shape is in Pittsburgh.

One of the common complaints I see in debates about the pitching staff is that the Brewers solely have a great rotation for weathering the regular season. This is typically meant to be an indictment of their lack of playoff talent, while still recognizing that indeed the Brewers prevent runs. But, I do not think that the general paucity of quality MLB starting pitching is understood.

For example, take a look at how MLB starting pitching categories rank by Games Started:

If MLB pitchers were evenly distributed and then ranked solely by games started workload (which is essentially “times through the rotation”), by SP #91 the average workload is approximately 70 percent of the size of the first starter; by SP #121 the average workload is just about half the workload of the first starter; and so on. This table should explain the need to design a pitching rotation with more than five spots, which to my mind vindicates the manner in which David Stearns constructed his rotation (see Zach Davies, Brent Suter, and of course, Jimmy Nelson, alongside other in-season injuries suffered).

Ranked by Runs Prevented, it should be striking how quickly the #2 spot falls off from the top slot, and the sheer volume of innings pitched worked by replacement types. This table should demonstrate the baffling inefficiencies in assembling an MLB rotation (evident prior to 162 games, even!), and the extent to which an uneven distribution of talent can be assumed and exploited by front offices. This should help to underscore the strength of Stearns’s rotation building strategy in 2018.

What you will undoubtedly notice is just how good the top of the Brewers rotation has been, relative to the remaining MLB teams, in terms of Runs Prevented: they do not have a #1 starter, but did feature three #2 starters entering Sunday (Junior Guerra, Wade Miley, and Chase Anderson). This sounds like the beginning of a riddle: would you rather have a rotation with a true #1 and a true #9 or #10? Or a rotation with a bunch of #2s and #4s?

Are there other “Playoffs Rotations”? Let’s have a look across the National League, and also survey three phenomenal AL clubs. How many clubs actually have top rotations suitable for the playoffs?

(1) Cardinals and Pirates: Lately, the Cardinals and Pirates have come on strong in the Wild Card race, and both clubs have rotations that would have to stretch to fit a “Playoffs Ace” mold. Miles Mikolas had not even pitched stateside over the last three seasons, and the righty is leading the Cardinals rotation along with rookie Jack Flaherty; Jameson Taillon is almost certainly an “ace” by the definition of some, but Joe Musgrove arguably was not viewed as a potential improvement upon Gerrit Cole when he was acquired (surprise!).

(2) National League East Leaders: In the National League East, the race between the Phillies and Atlanta is fun because both rotations are lead by young or up-and-coming starters. Plus Anibal Sanchez, which has to be one of the best acquisitions for 2018.

(3) National League West is the Ace Race!: The Diamondbacks and Dodgers get us into “Playoffs Ace” territory, with both Zack Greinke and Clayton Kershaw serving key rotational roles. But even here, one should notice the bizarre assemblages of rookies, upstarts, and comeback candidates gracing both rotations. Two of the best rotations in the MLB certainly have their top rotation types, but after that, it drops off quickly.

Can we appreciate that Clayton Kershaw is having his worst season in a decade, and has prevented 16 runs?

(4) The Rockies and Nationals are contending, too: Of course, the rotation most fans have in mind when they think of a playoffs rotation is the Nationals, who feature Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, and Gio Gonzalez. Additionally, the Rockies are playing at the edges of the Wild Card race with Washington, and they may have the closest thing to a true five-man rotation on the Senior Circuit.

(5) Divergent Top Rotation Fates: Mets and Cleveland:It may be kicking someone while they are down, but prior to looking at the rotations of Cleveland, Boston, and Houston, it is worth looking at the Mets rotation to emphasize that top rotation talent does not always materialize in playoff contending teams, or even elite runs prevention. Noah Syndergaard has struggled with injuries, lagging behind his much-praised teammate Jacob deGrom; both are cited as aces that the Brewers would do well to acquire, even given the steep price.

Meanwhile, Cleveland’s rotation may better suit the “cost” at which the Brewers can comfortably acquire elite pitching. Trevor Bauer and Corey Kluber were both acquired in three-team trades, in which Cleveland surrendered Shin-Soo Choo and Jake Westbrook (respectively). Meanwhile, Carlos Carrasco was part of a relatively large rebuilding move (Cliff Lee and Ben Francisco), and Mike Clevinger was acquired in a depth move. This quartet of trade acquisitions and long development cycles is now worth 100 runs to Cleveland, without always having accompanying prospect hype associated with that type of runs prevention.

(6) The True Playoff Rotations?: Boston and Houston demonstrate two extreme ends of the spectrum of rotation building. The Red Sox feature high-cost aces (Chris Sale and David Price), as well as a couple of pitchers acquired in rebuilding or counterbuilding moves (Andrew Miller and Yoenis Cespedes trades, respectively). On the other hand, the Astros rotation demonstrates the acquisition of three varieties of stalled veterans (Charlie Morton, Justin Verlander, and Gerrit Cole) who fit profiles the Astros front office and coaching staff could work with, as well as a supplemental first round pick (Lance McCullers) and seventh round pick (Dallas Keuchel). If any team has a model for acquiring pitchers that fits Milwaukee’s budget, it’s the former team of GM Stearns.

While the tables above should demonstrate the wide ranging backgrounds, scouting pedigrees, and production demonstrated in contending rotations, I am presenting the following table as basic summary of the last three years of performance among the top Runs Prevented pitchers for current NL contenders (sticking with #1 and #2 starters). Once again, the point is to emphasize the relative variance in performance among these pitchers, as well as the number of newcomers leading these clubs.

Basically, the player development profile of the 2018 NL vindicates Stearns’s rotational vision: in a league run by newcomers, comeback players, and depth acquisitions, a league that requires nearly 10 starting pitchers per team to complete a season, building #TeamDepth was a viable playoff strategy. Stearns has constructed a rotation that compares well to the rookies and comeback kids leading many of the playoff clubs, while also giving fans the fun of rooting for the underdog when Milwaukee faces the few remaining aces in the league.

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.

So it goes tonight at Miller Park, where Ace Junior Guerra hosts Ace Jeremy Hellickson, in a battle perhaps of who can throw the most off-speed pitches, or who can inexplicably baffle batters the longest. It is a battle of unexpected success from low-cost MLB acquisitions, a battle of success from seemingly pedestrian scouting profiles, a battle of baseball lifers who just don’t quit, even after facing adversity in 2017.

Runs Prevented Workbook, July 22:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tmMK4LKWkYmDrkjnwHvJDvuur7evmWAUrwynvyRapYo/edit?usp=sharing

Primer: Exploring Runs Prevented

The Brewers Have a Good Rotation
While it’s not a monthly turn of the calendar, it is the beginning of the unofficial second half of the season, so I assembled another Runs Prevented workbook to assess the progression of MLB pitching performances. The instructions are in the workbook, but basically I used Baseball Prospectus team average and individual pitcher Park Factors, as well as Baseball Reference Three Year and Single Year Park Factors, and basic MLB Runs Allowed per Game, to construct an average of Runs Prevented across the league. Runs Prevented is an important statistic not because it is predictive or attempts to say anything about underlying performance (for that I use Deserved Run Average [DRA] to construct a Runs Prevented “counterfactual”), but because Runs Prevented can simply be plugged into the context of each team in order to assess the actual distribution of runs allowed on the field. Basically, this is everything messy and contextual about the game that ends up on the scoreboard: who receives the best fielding support? Who receives the best bullpen support? Questions like these impact Runs Prevented, but since the game is typically won according to outscoring opponents, I like Runs Prevented as an actual estimation of a pitcher’s real time performance quality.

Since most teams are approximately 100 games through the season, I added a new feature to this workbook: Rotational Averages. Thus far, MLB teams have employed 242 “regular” starters and 36 emergency (“One Game”) starters, which basically averages to more than nine starting pitchers per MLB team. If you were questioning the Brewers rotation during the off season, and continue to question their quality throughout the season, preparing for this war of attrition is indeed the strength of the club; MLB teams have around sixty games remaining and have already required throngs of starting pitching. GM David Stearns’s brilliance for the offseason came in constructing a seemingly mundane rotation that fit the quietly exceptional fielding unit, and could be seamlessly shuffled between roles (or MLB and Triple-A Colorado Springs) to provide starts whenever necessary.

So what does an MLB rotation look like? That depends on what you value. Below, I’ve constructed two tables: the first table assesses MLB rotational roles by Games Started (under the theory that a Number One starter pitches the most rotational turns, and each spot slots in behind that pitcher); the second table assesses MLB rotational roles by Runs Prevented (under the theory that a Number One starter is actually the best starter on the club, and each spot slots in behind that pitcher).

What is interesting about this table is that Runs Prevented are rather evenly distributed, between good and bad pitchers, according to Games Started category. Here a Number One starter is Justin Verlander (30 Runs Prevented) and Clayton Richard (-9 Runs Prevented), and so on. The value here is filling rotational turns, and recognizing that MLB teams need those rotational turns filled.

By Runs Prevented, on the other hand, a so-called Ace is closer to what I believe fans mean when they talk about Aces. But the bottom really falls out on the rotation:

Here, Justin Verlander is clearly a Number One starter, and Clayton Richard is something like a Number Eight or Number Nine starter, even though both pitchers have taken the most turns for their respective clubs.

Each of these rotational assessments demonstrates the shortcomings of analyzing an MLB rotation. Fans and analysts alike prefer to conceive of a rotation as “Five Turns,” following the traditional “five-man rotation” that operates in the MLB, but the trouble is that that classification only suggests a “rest” cycle. One could also use pure scouting grades to categorize each pitcher’s arsenal, command, mechanics, etc., and that might get us closer to a No. 1 / No. 2 / No. 3 / No. 4 categorization; here the trouble is that No. 1 pitchers really don’t exist, then, and most MLB teams are defined by how well they scout and prepare a group of No. 3 / No. 4 starters to “play up.”

This should help to frame the dissonance, and brilliance, that is the Brewers rotation:

By scouting profile, there is nothing close to a No. 1, or even a No. 2, in the Brewers rotation. Currently, Junior Guerra might reach the best grades based on his splitter, which could legitimately be the best pitch in the rotation; based on 2017, one would clearly expect Chase Anderson to serve as the top rotation hurler in terms of pure stuff, but that has not materialized in 2018 (showing the true difficulty of consistent mechanical adjustments by MLB pitchers). In scouting terms, Jhoulys Chacin, Brandon Woodruff, and Zach Davies would probably fight for the purest “No. 3 starter in a good way” classification, although Davies’s injury and Woodruff’s usage pattern would certainly impact that. Otherwise, it’s not even clear what type of MLB roles these guys should be given: Freddy Peralta is a bizarre type of “all-floor” pitcher (meaning, take him as he is, from deception to fastball movement to command profile), and Brent Suter could probably be scouted the same way.

By Runs Prevented profile, however, the Brewers have done what could have been expected of them during the preseason analysis cycle. Many people misunderstood the value of how the Brewers were constructing a rotation, but basically the runs saved by keeping a truly bottom-of-the-league, replacement-style Runs Prevented pitcher out of the rotation would boost the lack of an ace; coupled with the fact that the Brewers were reasonably expected to have several middle of the rotation types, truly serviceable arms, that advantage of not “bottoming out” could be exponentially exploited with each turn in the rotation. For designing a team to withstand a baseball season, even a playoff series, is all about how one distributes risk profiles (and therefore, Runs Prevented): by flattening the risk of a truly awful start almost every single time through the rotation, the Brewers “play up” from their expected scouting roles, DRA underlying profiles (thanks to the defense), and therefore distribute quality Runs Prevented for the team. This is a systemic pitching staff.

Is Junior Guerra an Ace?
I’ve written extensively about the lack of aces in the past (here too), in order to emphasize that a pitching rotation need not be conceptualized by top-tier talent. Furthermore, given the variance at play in MLB pitching from season to season, the simple fact is that very few pitchers, so few pitchers so as to be impossible to categorize, work the consistent, year-in, year-out Runs Prevented profiles that match what fans and analysts (seemingly) mean when they talk about “Aces.”

Now, however, it is worth asking whether Junior Guerra may become a true “Ace” if his 2018 campaign continues. For Guerra prevented approximately 22 runs during his unprecedented 2016 breakout season, and now the righty is holding steady at approximately 10 runs prevented throughout the 2018 campaign. This is really, really good: if the top 10 percent of MLB starting pitchers is demarcated by approximately 16 runs prevented, Guerra is threatening to reach that threshold in two of his last three seasons. This is an excellent occurrence for the Brewers, who stuck with Guerra through a difficult 2017 campaign, and (presumably) allowed the righty to once again work throughout the winter in order to iron out his mechanics. Thus Guerra is clearly establishing himself as some type of globetrotting rotation leader, a workhorse who does not stop pitching year-round and flashes his splitter across the Americas.

If Guerra keeps this up, he’ll simply be #BrewersAce, Ace Guerra, not #2016BrewersAce or #2018BrewersAce. Which should be a great lesson for Brewers fans: aces need not hail from praiseworthy draft profiles or big International bonuses, or nine figure free agency contracts; sometimes they’re just waiting there, on the waiver wire, in need of a mechanical adjustment or a simple chance to pitch.

Correct for the Wrong Reasons
In the offseason, I wrote about Jeremy Hellickson as a potential free agency target for the Milwaukee Brewers rotation. The veteran righty was coming off of a poor surface statistics season that nevertheless featured fantastic underlying performance metrics and very clear areas for improvement in pitch selection. Summarizing Hellickson’s potential surplus value and areas of improvement, I compared the veteran righty’s arsenal and approach to Chase Anderson, using Anderson’s development from 2016 to 2017 as a potential model for Hellickson. I am writing about this now, though, because my words on Hellickson have the privilege of appearing correct, but for the wrong reason; I suggested that the concern with Hellickson was between the balance in his fastball and change up usage, as his cutter was looking for a comfortable place within his arsenal. The implication was that if Hellickson could find a balance somewhat akin to Anderson’s 2017 development, the veteran’s quality change up could return.

By contrast, Hellickson went entirely in the opposite direction, by decreasing his primary fastball, secondary fastball, and cutter usage in order to select his change up and curve more frequently than any other pitch (!!!).

According to Bill James, a junkball pitcher is one who throws a change up “first,” i.e., more than any other pitch, and I like that definition because it attributes junkball status more to pitch selection than velocity (hence my favorite sometimes-junkball pitcher, the fire throwing Edinson Volquez). But if a pitcher throws a change up more than any other pitch, what of a pitcher who throws a change and curve more than any other pitcher? I enter 2018 Jeremy Hellickson as the vaunted “Double Junkball” pitcher, a pitcher who gives you the blues thrice over because he throws a change up more frequently than any other pitch, a curveball more frequently than any pitch but the change, and he was available for nothing more than a minor league contract despite exhibiting underlying traits worthy of nearly $30 million in depreciated surplus value.

But Brewers fans can’t be picky, as this is the organization that made Junior Guerra work (twice!), signed Jhoulys Chacin as their rotational front piece over the offseason, is currently making Wade Miley work, and skipped Fastballer Freddy Peralta over the much-more hyped (and much clearer scouting role) Corbin Burnes to round out the back end of the rotation. Wanting to add Hellickson to that mix is just greedy, but oh what a rotation it could have been, what one with some of the slowest fastballs and most unsuspecting command profiles in the MLB combining to prevent runs like their lives depended on it.

Here, I’m revisiting my past work on Hellickson in order to understand why I was wrong, and to demonstrate the fickle nature of scouting profiles. A perceived fix to a glitch in a pitcher’s arsenal can run in many directions, and it is worth using probabilistic thinking to clearly demarcate and analyze each of those potential directions. Probabilistic thinking means designing a thinking process that thinks through the potential outcomes in a given scenario, including reasons for those potential outcomes and (ideally) assigning weights or probabilities to those potential outcomes. This is the type of thinking that can be applied to difficult-to-quantify areas such as pitching profiles, where data are assembled but can move in multiple directions due to strategy. In the offseason, I thought Hellickson needed to balance his fastballs and take back his change up a notch in order to reassert its success; it turns out that that could mean diminishing fastball use all together, and playing up the curveball to reassert a successful profile.

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

After acquiring Brad Miller two weeks ago, it was only a matter of time before management would call him up to the Brewers. The move occurred on Saturday, as Miller took Domingo Santana’s spot on the roster. Miller was the starting second baseman and batted eighth for the team. He doesn’t have an immediate full-time role with the team, but he had been playing shortstop in the minors and spent most of time in Tampa Bay this year at first base.

Though he plays multiple positions, his defense has consistently rated below average according to Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA). Offense is where his real potential lies. In 2016, Miller hit 30 home runs and produced a TAv of .280, which was the sixth best TAv amongst qualified shortstops that season. That was his age twenty-six season. Unfortunately, he hasn’t come close to replicating his success, which is how the Brewers were able to acquire him so cheaply.

From 2016 to 2017, his batting average plunged forty-two points, yet his on base percentage rose by twenty three points. While getting on base more often is a good thing, there’s a problem if the batter is becoming too passive and not seeking to drive the ball. According to Baseball Prospectus, Miller’s plate discipline profile progressed in the following way:

From 2016 to 2017 Miller did swing less while swinging and missing more. When he did make contact, it wasn’t the good kind. He made less contact in the strike zone and more contact on pitches outside the strike zone. As a result, he hit more grounders and fewer line drives and fly balls. To drill that down further, Miller’s launch angle lowered to below the MLB average, he hit fewer balls hard, and wasn’t getting the barrel of his bat on the ball. Miller’s numbers sank against all types of pitches across those two seasons, so there’s not even one area to point out where he could improve his approach. Lastly, the injuries he suffered don’t seem to be cause of his struggles. His triple slash line from the start of the  season to his first trip to the disabled list mirrors his season ling numbers.

However, all hope is not lost, and there may still be life in Miller’s bat. Though his whiffs have stayed at an elevated level, his other plate discipline stats have recovered. He’s swinging more and making more contact in the strike zone. He’s also missing more pitches out of the zone. One can interpret that as good news that he’s not hitting pitches he won’t hit hard, but also maybe bad news because he’s swinging and missing at bad pitches.

Going back to those Statcast numbers, Miller is actually hitting the ball harder than he ever has and is getting more consistently good contact. He’s raised his launch angle to a career high as well. While expected metrics are not predictive of future performance, his expected stats are below his current season line; it’s not unreasonable to expect more production from him to finish the year.

If Miller sticks with the team and earns more playing time, it’ll be because his bat has created opportunities for him or one of the current double play combo plays himself out of a regular spot in the lineup. The team saw something in Miller (and some deficiencies on the big-league roster), and the components are there for him to regain some of his past success.

On Friday, Junior Guerra pitched five innings, allowing one run on three hits and four walks, while striking out seven Cardinals. Guerra has great stuff, but high pitch counts can prevent him from going deep into games. He has the best Deserved Run Average (DRA) of any regular in Milwaukee’s rotation, but he hasn’t completed more than eighteen outs all season. Guerra is currently walking 3.5 batters per nine innings, which amazingly is not a career high. However, it is above the league wide rate of 3.3 batters per nine innings.

Guerra’s two best pitches for swings and misses are the slider and splitter. They’re effective pitches and batters haven’t made a lot of solid contact against either this season. However, they’ve been balls when thrown 46 percent of the time. The movement on these pitches is amazing because there’s no reason batters should be swinging at pitches with this zone profile:

Of course, that also illustrates why Guerra will always be a high walks, high pitch count, non-innings eating starter: his bread and butter pitches are balls. He wants to live on the edge of the zone. Since he needs to throw these pitches to be effective, the team needs to live with more walks than the average pitcher.

The Brewers will have a day off today, then conclude the home stand with two games against Kansas City. The Royals have the worst record in MLB. They’ve scored the fewest runs and allowed the most runs this season. They were also last in the last Baseball Prospectus Hitlist. Milwaukee then travels to Eric Thames’s house for four games against the Reds.

Photo by Jeff Hanisch, USA Today Sports Images

Related:
Depth Beats Attrition
Trust the Rotation
Aces Do Not Exist
How to Turn One Hader into Two and a Half Chris Sales

Teams are eager to rely on their bullpens more frequently, and at 5.18 IP/GS for his starters, manager Craig Counsell is about as eager as anyone to turn away from the third time through the order as a starter.

If you’re new to baseball analytics, one of the best possible strategies to learn is the starting pitcher’s “times facing a batting order.” The table above demonstrates On-Base-Percentage plus Slugging-Percentage each time through the order for National League starting pitchers. This may seem like a trivial aspect of the game, but if you read the new midseason scouting reports emerging on your favorite arms, or even look into 2018 MLB Draft scouting reports, chances are you’ll see a line like “without a third pitch, a role in the bullpen could be most likely.” What you’re reading, in nearly any variation of this line, is the strategic idea that in order to beat MLB batters a third time through the order, a starting pitcher is going to need additional pitches to cross-up batters and make adjustments as the game deepens. Milwaukee left-hander Warren Spahn is classically attributed with the quote, “pitchers need two pitches, one they’re looking for and one to cross them up,” but even here Spahn was not quite right; a pitcher needs as many pitches as are necessary to adjust to their designated role. I imagine that if you’re Warren Spahn (perhaps much like Ben Sheets or Clayton Kershaw), life is rather easy with mostly two pitches; if you’re Dave Bush or Victor Santos or Zach Davies or pretty much anyone of the other 300+ starters that work in the MLB, life with only two pitches would probably be miserable.

But perhaps the stats speak on their own: last year, the average NL batter the first time through the order was Cory Spangenberg. By the third time through the order, the average NL batter was Christian Yelich. In order to keep batters closer to the Cory Spangenberg level of production, having command of that third pitch (with a quality “stuff” grade, too) will get the scouts ready to slap that “#3 SP” Overall Future Potential grade.

Manager Craig Counsell was handed a group of supposedly below average-to-horrendous starting pitchers according to most Brewers fans, but as most fans could have surmised from the 2017 squad, pitching was the strength of the organization. And indeed, pitching has continued to serve as the strength of the 2018 club, although statistics like Deserved Run Average suggest that the club may be due for some regression to the mean (in terms of preventing runs). But what was most important about the 2017-2018 offseason was that GM David Stearns built a pitching system, and Counsell’s eagerness to pull starters at just the right time has indeed reflected a machine-oriented approach to pitching. Setting aside the injured Zach Davies and the mechanics-ironing Chase Anderson, the 2018 Brewers starting rotation is lead by Chacin (4 Runs Prevented in 69.0 IP), Brent Suter (2 Runs Prevented in 63.3 IP), and Junior Guerra (approximately 9 Runs Prevented in 60.3 IP after Tuesday night). Counsell has pulled these pitchers early almost uniformly; the Table below compares each pitcher’s last major workload as a starting pitcher to their 2018 workload, in terms of facing a batting order multiple times:

This is what managing with an elite bullpen can do for someone: pretty much every night of the week, Counsell can give each starting pitcher the same workload. In contrast to the narrative of burned out bullpens, which Kyle Lesniewski has also studied at Brew Crew Ball, it is worth arguing that Counsell is providing starting pitchers with a clearer definition of a workload. In fact, the old saying for starting pitchers to “go as deep as you can into the game” is rather problematic; if your stuff isn’t there, you’re probably done after 100 pitches and five (or fewer innings), which will be offset by the great 7.0-to-8.0 IP evenings, or complete games. Counsell and the Brewers are almost giving their starting pitchers better role certainty than any “traditional” starting pitcher has ever had (at least in the last 30 years): “give me your best 16 outs.” This is how you turn Guerra, Chacin, and Suter in a 15 Runs Prevented machine, which is one hell of a low rotation, by the way, and exactly the type of performance that turns a low rotation into an entity that offsets the lack of a so-called “Ace” at the top.

Has it worked? The Table below demonstrates that while there are some hiccups along the way, this Big Three low rotation has indeed improved in at least one area of the game, and in some cases the third time through the batting order is receiving grand benefits. These stats are even before Guerra’s course correction at Cleveland:

What is notable about minimizing a pitcher’s times through the batting order is that they can theoretically readjust their plan of attack. Someone like Guerra or Chacin no longer has to think about establishing his best stuff and figuring out what he’s going to do 100 pitches later; Suter might not ever have been expected to go that deep into ballgames, but even the Raptor-esque southpaw can arguably find some benefit in his ballgame by understanding that he needs to go 16 outs. Looking through Brooks Baseball pitching logs, it is arguably the case that what Counsell (and presumably Stearns, coaching staff, and the Front Office in this case) is doing is indeed turning each of these guys into….let’s call them “really, really long relievers who start the game”:

• According to Brooks Baseball, compared to his full season in 2016, Junior Guerra cut his splitter and slider usage (both below 15 percent!) while increasing his secondary running fastball (which Guerra selected approximately 23 percent of the time entering Tuesday night). As a result, Guerra is getting more whiffs on both of his fastballs as a group, and improving his slider whiffs without yielding too much value from his splitter. He’s also improving his pop-ups, suggesting batters are getting weak contact even though they are facing his fastball more frequently (presumably making Guerra more “predictable”).

• As covered by Andrew Salzman in the latest Weekend Recap at BPMilwaukee, Brent Suter is becoming a fastballl-first pitcher. The southpaw is firing what appears to be a near-cutting, rising fastball (think Jacob Barnes) two-thirds of his offerings, with good results in terms of improving swings-and-misses.

• By contrast, Chacin is much more of his previous self, with the caveat that he’s working his slider slightly more frequently than in 2017 while moving away from his primary fastball a bit. His outcomes with these pitches are rather similar as well, which suggests that even if the Brewers are deploying Chacin in a manner that is more systematic and potentially more radical, he is not deviating from what got him through a very successful 2017 campaign, earning him his excellent contract.

Milwaukee is receiving much deserved praise for their bullpen, which was expertly curated by David Stearns during his first two seasons with the club. Now the rewards are visible during what could become one of the most important seasons in franchise history, returning the club to their first extending contending window in quite some time. But it is worth emphasizing that Stearns was correct in assembling a starting pitching staff that could complement the relief staff, and together with the efficient fielders, the arms are a Runs Prevented machine. None of these moves were terribly difficult to make, either, which means that the most thrilling part of this series of moves is that they can be repeated in future seasons: Junior Guerra was Stearns’s very first acquisition, Brent Suter was a deep draft pick during the Doug Melvin era that was freed into a stunning big league role, and Jhoulys Chacin was a proven veteran signed off the margins of an underwhelming free agency class that nevertheless yielded some surprising contracts elsewhere. This is what systematic baseball can look like in Milwaukee, and it involves neither being “cheap” (Chacin signed a decent guaranteed deal) nor “dogmatic” about acquisition style (waivers, free agency, and draft are represented here). Most importantly for the prospect arms, both hyped (Corbin Burnes and Luis Ortiz) and unassuming (Freddy Peralta and others), the Brewers front office is gleefully demonstrated that nobody needs aces any longer. Bring your two best pitches for 16 outs, and let’s get on with it!

Photo Credit: David Richard, USA Today Sports Images

Resources:
Baseball Reference. Player Pitching Splits, NL Pitching Splits, 2016-2018 [CSV].

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