Related Reading:
Brewers Organization Catchers

The Baseball Prospectus top 2019 Free Agents list had four catchers in the top 50: Yasmani Grandal, Wilson Ramos, Kurt Suzuki and Jonathan Lucroy. Eliminating Lucroy, who was the second worst catcher who received regular playing time in 2018, the Brewers have three options if they wanted to dip into the free agent pool to try and upgrade the position.

Yasmani Grandal was ranked 9^th best free agent this offseason and projections put him at least a  three year commitment between $15-16M a year. At that salary, Grandal would rank second on the team in annual salary, only behind Ryan Braun. While Grandal is entering his age-30 season, he only trailed J.T. Realmuto in catcher Wins Above Replacement Player (BWARP) in 2018 and was close enough that one could consider him the best in baseball. Grandal may have been the most complete catcher as he ranked second in both Value Over Replacement Player (VORP) and FRAA amongst catchers, which respectively measure offensive and defensive value, showing that he’s strong at both ends of the game.

If there’s one area of concern, it’s that most of Grandal’s defensive value came from framing. He led MLB in framing runs in 2018 but provided only slightly positive value for blocking and throwing runs. If the Brewers were to commit the resources necessary to sign Grandal, then they would need to believe his bat will age gracefully as well as that  he can continue to provide defensive value through framing, which is not a given.

Wilson Ramos is a year older than Grandal and with his injury history projects for a three year contract at $36 million. He doesn’t provide much defensive value. In his last season before tearing his ACL, Ramos had a 10 FRAA. Since the tear, he’s -3.9. Amongst catchers who caught at least 2,000 pitches, Ramos ranked 35^th of 61 catchers in FRAA, which make sense given his numbers: he’s not bad in any one area, but he also doesn’t stand out defensively.

Ramos will provide offensive value. In 2018, his True Average (TAv) was right behind Grandal and ranked fourth amongst all catchers. If you were concerned that a rate stat props up his value, then don’t worry because he was tied for seventh in VORP.

A big worry with Ramos would be playing time management. Prior to his knee injury, he maxed out at 131 games and 523 plate appearances. Last year he appeared in 111 games and went to the plate 416 times between Tampa and Philadelphia. While the Brewers don’t have any problems with rotating players, Ramos has no positional flexibility and would need to be paired with a competent backup who can cover somewhere between twenty-five to thirty-three percent of the playing time. Unless the market on Ramos falls short of projections, it’s difficult to see the Brewers making a strong play for his services because they’d also need to commit to a strong backup, perhaps straining the payroll too much for one position.

The last catcher in the top fifty is one who may make the most sense as a Brewer if he’s willing to leave his current club. Kurt Suzuki has had a late career renaissance at the plate in Atlanta, posting his two best TAvs in 2017 and 2018. In those two seasons, Suzuki started swinging more. Whereas prior to 2017, he was swinging at less than forty-five percent of the pitches he saw, he’s above a fifty two percent swing rate now, while also maintaining a contact rate above eighty percent. Suzuki finished sixth in both TAv and VORP amongst catchers in 2018, providing near equal offensive value to Ramos.

Suzuki does not provide much value behind the plate. He had a -5.5 FRAA in 2018, which was fueled by his poor framing numbers. He finished 52^nd out of 61 catchers in framing runs and his modest blocking and throwing numbers couldn’t offset the framing numbers.

Suzuki’s numbers have increased as he’s played fewer games. He’s split time with Tyler Flowers in Atlanta, playing in 186 games over two seasons with less than 700 plate appearances. The good news is that his advanced age and limited playing time make him a potential cheap upgrade for Milwaukee. Projections have him at two years and $10 million, which is reasonable enough to make him a realistic alternative to Pina or Kratz.

If the team does decide to look to the free agent marker to upgrade the catcher position, it feels like Suzuki would be the target. He’s a low cost option who could provide outsized production when compared with his salary. For an organization that always looks for surplus value in their acquisitions, a player like Suzuki makes sense for the team. Grandal and Ramos are buzzier additions but the cost of those two veterans may not fit in the budget. The good news is that the team has options at different levels outside the organization, so they can negotiate from a position of strength.

Using Baseball Reference multiyear park factors, the Brewers offense finished nearly 30 runs better than their league environment, and Baseball Prospectus park factors have the club performing even better; by True Average, the Brewers are tied with Houston as the fourth best offense in the MLB. According to Baseball Prospectus Batting Park Factor, the actual mix of parks the Brewers batted in was fourth toughest in baseball, meaning that the Brewers were likely to play in environments suppressing runs by approximately five percent.

Like 2018, the Brewers head into next season with a seemingly clear set of positions to improve, and seemingly clear prospects or internal development options to accomplish that goal.

• Orlando Arcia features prominently in calls for offensive improvement, as the elite gloveman suffered serious setbacks at the plate prior to his Triple-A demotions. Arcia’s glove makes roster decisions truly difficult, as the shortstop has impacted the game on the defensive end from the time he reached the MLB. If he bats anywhere near his second half line of .290 average / .320 on-base percentage / .396 slugging, the glove will play (for reference, the eighth batting order spot hit .229 / .304 / .357, so second half Arcia would easily clear that hurdle).

• Second base is a roster challenge, as Noah Nofz highlighted earlier today. It’s easy to dream on the future in terms of Keston Hiura’s potential, but it’s also worth remembering that the Brewers needed to improve center field for 2018 and still traded away their best development options there (Lewis Brinson, Monte Harrison). A trade of Hiura is not out of the question should Slingin’ Stearns get requisite return. The trouble is how the Brewers juggle additional roster elements and free agents there, as opposed to the development pains (or pay offs) of sticking with Hiura.

• Catcher is probably the most popular fan option for improving the club, because it offers the flashiest trade opportunity (J.T. Realmuto) and a couple of the best free agents in the 2019 class (e.g., Yasmani Grandal). Yet, it is worth emphasizing the strength of the Brewers’ fielding behind the dish in 2018, in order to frame offensive performance. Neither Manny Pina nor Erik Kratz were that bad at the plate in 2018, and both were exceptional defenders. Using Adjusted Fielding Runs Above Average, which is a fielding statistic adjusted to assess the nuances of throwing, blocking, and framing for catchers, Kratz (11.1, eighth best) and Pina (6.3, nineteenth best) produced plenty of defensive value for the Brewers. Of course, Grandal is the rare free agent catcher that can produce both excellent offensive and defensive value….

• Right field is a difficult position to assess because it’s become quite barren behind Domingo Santana for multiple reasons. First, midseason trades included Brett Phillips, who would have been an excellent candidate for a glove-first, power-speed fourth outfielder to help boost that corner position. Next, Christian Yelich does not produce good defensive value off of left field, which raises questions about Ryan Braun’s future role (in left field) and the value of keeping Yelich’s bat in the order at any defensive cost (September-level production rendered that question moot for the time being). Furthermore, there are not necessarily advanced outfield prospects that would be considered strong enough to knock Santana off of right field. All this either makes right field the perfect position for an external acquisition, or for staying put with Santana.

The trouble, of course, is that should the Brewers simultaneously develop Arcia and Hiura at the MLB level, and keep Kratz and Pina, this entire series of completely justifiable roster moves could produce an offensive black hole in the 6th / 7th / 8th batting spots when things are going rough (or, in Hiura’s case, just getting started). This is where the Brewers’ most important wager occurs: they must weigh the long-term development plays (both Arcia and Hiura have clear “role ceilings” that are better than average at the MLB level) against the need to contend in 2019 (and produce runs to do so). All of this is potentially compounded when one reasonably figures that Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich cannot possibly be expected to be as good as they were last season; obviously this does not mean that they cannot maintain performance or even improve, it just should not be viewed as a certain outcome.

Baseball Prospectus True Average is an effective statistic because it weighs and combines a more complete picture of offensive production than other metrics, and presents the result in an intuitive number similar to batting average. A player with a .260 TAv is an average player. Aspects included in TAv that are not included in some other metrics are situational hitting and errors, plus alternative weights on strike outs and bunts, among other elements. So, let’s use TAv to assess the Brewers offense: with the descriptions above in mind, how do the elements of the club compare to the MLB positional landscape? What is the positional landscape?

Not unlike pitching staffs, positional ranks across the MLB are split among groups of players for each team. The ideal of plugging in a starting player at each position was always just an ideal, as injuries and platoon strategies have been widespread since the early 20th century ballgame; now, MLB front offices may simply be even more willing to try bizarre positional formats (such as the Brewers’ positional flexibility) and substitution patterns (think 2018 L.A. Dodgers, here). Thus, the split between players with 300 (or more) plate appearances and those working below that threshold is quite large.

It should be noted that outside of the corner infield positions, there are no other positions on the diamond where the median player and the regular player are better than average according to TAv. This should be intuitive in some sense, underscoring the importance of teams finding players that can work at least 300 plate appearances in a season. Of course, the median playing time at each position should demonstrate the difficulty of assembling even a group of players that can work 300 PA at a position; often teams will need to rely on a group of players that fall short of even that mediocre playing time threshold. This uneven playing time environment, set against a foundation that establishes the importance of finding a batting order full of regular players, should demonstrate why and how teams can make wagers or trade-offs with their players (for example, the club can weigh Arcia’s shortstop defense against the value of piecing together a couple of other options at the position; that’s just one example).

With this background in mind, let’s compare major 2018 Brewers batters to the median playing time and regular TAv for their respective positions (as grouped by Baseball Prospectus. Note: I have no idea where Eric Thames went in these CSV):

Milwaukee effectively gambled on both Cain and Yelich, who were team leaders in production and playing time beyond the league median. Yet this dynamic top of the order duo hardly exhausted the positions at which the Brewers effectively stacked regulars. Travis Shaw, Ryan Braun, and Jesus Aguilar were each fantastic compared to their respective positional leaguewide performances; Hernan Perez and Manny Pina were not necessarily as far from “average” batting production as most fans think. Outside of regular workloads, Domingo Santana and Mike Moustakas turned out to be crucial depth players, albeit for different reasons. Retaining contractual rights to Aguilar, Braun, Cain, Shaw, and Yelich should be viewed as extremely positive news for the 2019 club, even with all the caveats about regressing performances, etc.

On this model, the benefits of “standing pat” in free agency and trade markets should have some appeal, as one can see that weighing the defense at catcher and shortstop, or simply waiting for Keston Hiura and(or) Mauricio Dubon to arrive at second base need not be viewed as a drag on the offense. In fact, Hernan Perez can probably cover second base in an effective manner to open the season, allowing the Brewers to free up cash and prospect resources to double down on their pitching staff. Right field becomes an interesting question, as Santana’s closing month produced a final True Average that held up against regular MLB right fielders.

Of course, one can expect that David Stearns will not simply stand pat this offseason. The point, then, is to understand that there is no linear narrative about the Brewers bats improving in 2019. This group of players surged to close 2018, made some crucial developmental strides (in the case of Arcia) and mechanical tweaks (in the case of Braun) that could bode well for future performances. There is no clear path to improving the offense without spending significant cash or prospect resources.

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

Major League Options

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prospects and Depth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stephen Vogt also had a good year for the Brewers.  He put up a .282 TAv in 129 plate appearances with Milwaukee, and he became Pina’s regular partner behind the plate once he came over from Oakland.  He was also solid defensively according to BP’s metrics (7.2 FRAA Adjusted), but his 14 percent caught-stealing rate stood out as a flaw.

So far this offseason, the Brewers have brought both players back.  Pina is still in his pre-arbitration years and is under team control through 2022, while Vogt is into arbitration and is under team control for two more seasons.  Vogt is relatively expensive (at $3 million per year) given what he provides, so the Brewers did have a decision to make about whether to tender him a contract.  They did so, though, and the $3 million price tag suggests that he is not a candidate to be designated for assignment unless he struggles mightily to begin the season.

Working off the assumption that both will be on the roster for much of the season, then, the follow-up question is how playing time will be divided.  Pina hits right-handed and Vogt hits left-handed, so a straight platoon would make some sense on the surface.  Vogt’s inability to hit left-handed pitching supports this idea, as his career .593 OPS against lefties is quite poor.  Pina, though, has a reverse platoon split; he has posted a .768 OPS against righties and a .677 OPS against lefties.  Just using Pina against lefties would negate some of his value.

Defense is also a question.  As mentioned above, FRAA rated Vogt as a positive behind the plate last year, but that had never before been the case at the big league level.  As Jeff Sullivan explored recently at Fangraphs, catcher framing, which is a large percentage of catcher FRAA, has become increasingly volatile.  At this point, it seems fair to say that we cannot be sure how accurately catchers’ defensive values are being captured.  There are many possible explanations, as Sullivan outlines in his article.  One of those, though, is that everyone is better at it than they used to be.  If that is the case, then prior knocks on Vogt’s defense (-10.8 framing runs in 2016 and -8.9 in 2015) are discounted.

Pina does not have a long enough track record in MLB for us to look at his prior defensive data for any guide.  Last year, he was a -3.5 in framing runs, where Vogt was a 0.0.  As mentioned above, though, it’s increasingly unclear how predictive those numbers are.  We cannot be completely confident that public catching metrics are as accurate as we trust offensive ones to be.

I am sure the Brewers have their own internal catching data that are more complete and accurate than are the public models.  Using that information, they will have an idea about the defensive strengths and weaknesses of each of their catchers.  At the very least, they have professional scouts whose job is to evaluate the physical skills of baseball players.  I, obviously, do not have access to those reports, and so I don’t know which of the two the club prefers.  Vogt’s throwing problems are a visible issue, but the most glaring problems are not always the most significant.  Stolen bases do not happen that often, regardless of who the catcher is, so any framing, blocking, or pitch-calling skills would be weighted more heavily in Craig Counsell’s decision-making processes.

Deciding which player will get more plate appearances next year requires some guessing.  Pina was the better player in 2016, but he is already 30 and so is not a long-term project who needs developing.  Because neither player is clearly better, I would expect the playing time split to be about 50/50.  Vogt’s platoon splits means that Pina should play against every lefty, but Pina’s excellent 2016 likely earned him enough goodwill to take some of the playing time against righties as well.

Photo Credit: Benny Sieu, USAToday Sports Images

Related Reading:
Brewers Claim Vogt
Brewers Revolving Waiver Claims

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Brewers Prospects (@BrewerProspect) June 28, 2017

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

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

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

Related Reading:
130 Games of New Wave
An Ode to Chumps

What is underrated about this gang of audacious upstarts is their potential for playoff personality and supreme star power transition on the national stage. These Brewers have a set of undeniable villains on their roster, as well as some stylish counterpoints, workingman depth, and future stars. I’ve previously called these Milwaukee Nine the 2002 Angels for the Ivy League Analytics era based on their penchant for turning an unsuspecting roster into a contender with (almost) everything falling the right way. That team saw a blend of aging stars (Kevin Appier and Tim Salmon, for example), unsuspecting breakouts (Scott Spiezio and maybe even Ramon Ortiz), and newcomers (Troy Glaus and John “Mr. Clean” Lackey) ride a combination of their best possible seasons (in most cases) to World Series glory. Should the Brewers continue their success, fans and analysts will probably be tempted to look back on this team and see a group of players where almost everything went right.

But these contenders have star power in another way, which solely exists through their respective personalities. Who are these 2017 contenders? Milwaukee features a roster of unexpected stars, unexpected depth contributors, and veterans who are holding court while a gang of younger prospects are forging their own identities as stars. [Stats compiled Wednesday evening, June 21, 2017].

THE SLUGGING VILLAINS: Eric Thames (.334 Total Average [TAv]) and Ryan Braun (currently on DL, .292 TAv)
Eric Thames is amazing: there was so much anticipation wound within the fanbase after his signing, and any ideals about the slugger’s shifted plate mechanics may have been mitigated by fan dissatisfaction with the shrewd business of cutting Chris Carter, the home run king of the 2016 National League. Yet herein rests the first contradiction of the 2017 Brewers, namely that a cost-saving move was not a tank move designed to orchestrate a team bad enough to land the top pick of the 2018 draft. Thames cut cost, yes, but aligned the 2017 roster to immediately compete and contend. There must be a supercomputer somewhere in Miller Park that GM David Stearns and company leaned on to analyze their $15 million deal to Thames with this as their forecast.

Yet Thames must be the villain. The positively sculpted first baseman looks like he stepped out of an Austrian body building contest, so much so that one wonders why the MLB does not allow ripped baseball players to don fitness speedos at the plate. Surely Thames is ripped enough to handle such an outfit, and one wonders if he’s the Aroldis Chapman of the Brewers insofar as his workouts are so intense as to force his teammates from the gym at said time. With Thames, greater baseball surely feels that Milwaukee is reinstalling PED use within the Post-Steroids Era landscape, which is terrible for the moralizers until their favorite team has their own alleged user. Could you imagine Cubs fans reacting to a Kris Bryant positive test, or a Jake Arrieta doping clinic scandal? The loudmouthed John “This Late 30s Resurgence Is Totally Natural” Lackey would certainly have nothing to say of his own teammates’ almost certain doping (and when Balco drug dealers insist that half the game is using, one must simply wonder who among each team is indeed using. And who cares?)

Mood: pic.twitter.com/GrxEO1ImjS

— Steve (@BrewersKeepTUTH) June 17, 2017

So Thames became the perfect villain, not simply for his bodybuilding finesse and outlandish WWE-style personna, but also for his legitimate appeal to playing the heel. I happened to be in Milwaukee for one of Matt Pauley’s WTMJ pregame shows around the time of Weathergate at Wrigley Field, and Thames had just appeared with a supposed heel at WWE’s NXT event in the Chicagoland area. Pauley set up the scenario for Thames as heel. Here the villain persona is perfect: Thames, just recently accused of using PEDs by the #1 wife-leaving chicken-eating punk Lackey (who files “knows a villain when he sees one” under “takes one to know one”), is appearing in Chicagoland alongside an entertainment industry heel ready to pump his own sculpted body alongside the wrestler:

Just catching up with NXT and I can only imagine the fantastic chats Kev had with Milwaukee Brewers superstar Eric “The River” Thames. pic.twitter.com/EKjKfh1CeL

— Tom aka The Big Dog™ (@TomBlargh) May 21, 2017

Even more perfect than Thames’s christening as a bona fide villain is his place in the batting order next to baseball’s evil cause celebre, that man who has improved since his involvement and suspensions from the Biogensis scandal, Ryan Braun. Braun is a perfect heel to play alongside Thames, a sort of veteran who understands “evil is just business,” the kind of man who I must imagine asks his partner to play a soundtrack of boos to set the mood when the time is right. Braun gets off on the challenge of perfectly shoving his own perfection in the faces of lustily booing opposing fans, a legacy that is easily three years in the making:

every time road fans boo Ryan Braun it takes me back to the Philly fan yelling “Booooooo! Cheater!” as he homers https://t.co/KqUILBZtK0

— Jack Moore (@jh_moore) April 28, 2016

This is the face of a villain with a .312 career TAv driving 44.4 WARP (photo source). Go ahead and boo away!

So the Brewers are off to quite a great start with playoff persona for 2017. I can imagine the amazement when Milwaukee, a team of absurdly audacious upstarts, makes the playoffs and National TV Broadcasters are welcomed with explaining the phenomenon of lustily booing fans during the Division Series. “This team just came out of nowhere, and yet there seems to be so much disdain for their core stars.” Witness Braun and Thames, the Brewers stars who will play the perfect heels to drive media coverage and fan hatred of these bizarro Brewers.

THEE OBP MAD SCIENTIST: Eric Sogard (15 percent walk rate)
Every heel needs a counterpart. Imagine this counterpart to be the understudy of an Evil Bureaucrat, but the type of counterpart who is so perfectly good at their job as to surpass any moral judgment whatsoever. This is the counterpart that has perfected the insertion of precise scientific knowledge into the organizational structure, so as to return Pareto efficient practices not because it’s the right thing to do but because it’s his certain destiny to allocate resources in the best manner possible. THIS is Eric Sogard, the age-31 middle infielder who paraded into Milwaukee in early May to a chorus of fan resentment only to prove himself the perfect assistant to the EVIL slugging villains; yes, Eric Sogard is the Mad Scientist, specifically the Mad Scientist of On Base Percentage (OBP).

Jeff Curry, USAToday Sports Images, captured our counterpart in his natural environment:

And Noah K. Murray, USAToday Sports Images, managed to find the Mad Scientist in action with one of the Slugging Villains:

The best part about Eric Sogard is that he’s the type of mad scientist who perhaps hides within plain sight. If the thin second baseman was not serving as a wicked double play pairing with Orlando Arcia or setting the table for Eric Thames, it’s difficult to tell whether he’d be more apt to grace the pages of GQ to model workplace ready knowledge chic, or sell you a copy of the newest Algiers or Grizzly Bear record (a good thing!). This is the sign of the mad scientist of the highest order, for his appearances do not betray any type of knowledge above another, and thus he’s perfectly suited to sustain his amazing lead-off skills for the playoff bound Brewers.

SMOOTH OPERATOR: Orlando Arcia (7.3 Fielding Runs Above Average)
I was going to write something here, but I believe recent video simply supports the ideal of Arcia as the Smooth Operator:

Arcia is the Smooth Operator for these Brewers, the joyful, mechanically perfect, gutsy, and perfectly timely shortstop who will perform unbelievable feats with such clarity that you will forget he’s one of the youngest shortstops currently playing in the MLB. The beauty is that the Brewers already have one of the best defensive shortstops in baseball on their roster, and no one knows about it. A recent poll presented by a major media outlet quizzed fans on the best young shortstop in the game, and Arcia was nowhere on the list despite his place atop the MLB in terms of his glove (at a glove-first position no less). So a Brewers playoff run would almost certainly serve as a national awakening for the smooth operator, who would probably welcome the chance to face the brightest lights and return a superstar from a larger market after popping off one of his patented spin-throws.

THE EMERGING SUPERSTAR: Domingo Santana, Travis Shaw, Corey Knebel, Jimmy Nelson, Chase Anderson
There are a number of Brewers on the roster that are materializing some of their scouting reports that made analysts and fans dream some years ago. These range from the thrilling power of Domingo Santana, who is slowly but surely answering questions about his strike zone contact, to the ace-via-middle-rotation Chase Anderson, who is giving a glimpse of why it is important to stockpile middle rotation depth that might have a certain what if? about it. Jimmy Nelson also falls in this category for the Brewers, as does third baseman Travis Shaw, who is answering questions about his abilities as a platoon third baseman for the Red Sox. Travis Shaw looks like a strong cost-controlled starter for the Brewers, at worst a second-division starter who will serve as contending depth and at best a stunning depth guy who will emerge as a star to lead the club.

Mind you, none of this needs to be sustainable for it to work in 2017, which is a great lesson about rebuilding, win-now, and roster building in general: life is what happens when you’re busy making plans. Which is to say that one can put into place the best baseball process known to humankind and still end up demoting Hall of Famer Kyle Schwarber midseason. Stars are never stars for long for the vast majority of baseball history: enjoy this while it lasts!

Corey Knebel is a bit more interesting in this group, as he perhaps had the most certain scouting profile of the bunch (unless one simply focuses on the middle rotation aspects of Nelson and Anderson). The Texas closer gained a job by happenstance for the Brewers, which is perhaps the birth of the vast majority of MLB closers. Knebel, however, had a high leverage relief pedigree since the scouting reports, and he just happens to be cashing in that ceiling to lead a bullpen for a stunning team of National League upstarts.

Anyway, there are multiple players on this Brewers club who could become team leaders for the next contender, and this group of five should not be viewed as exhaustive. This group will be, however, the most likely to gain notoriety should the Brewers push their contending effort deep into the season, and any playoff effort in 2017 seems impossible without this quintet.

THE WORKING CLASS STAR: Hernan Perez, Keon Broxton, Manny Pina, Jacob Barnes, Jesus Aguilar, Junior Guerra, Zach Davies, Jared Hughes.
I’ve already written about the wonders of “the Chump” recently, so I’ll spare the verbiage on this group of players. But, the overall point is still crucial: these Brewers are succeeding precisely because a gang of second-chancers or organizational depth guys are seizing MLB roles. Zach Davies was scouted as a back rotation guy, and his 2017 campaign is bearing that out moreso than his excellent 2016 effort, but as the righty progresses it appears he has a chance to seriously answer questions about his stamina and ability to become an innings eater. This is the difference between a career at the back of the rotation (complete with Mike Leake or Ian Kennedy money) and a trip to the bullpen. Manny Pina is the Player To Be Named Later who is becoming a team regular, both in terms of his solid catching defense and his bat at a premium position. Serviceable supreme is not bad for a PTBNL. Hernan Perez is probably the best “chump” (a good thing) on the club, a superutility player that has helped the club bridge injuries to Braun (2017) and Santana (2016), cover for Arcia when he’s slumping at the plate, or even start in place of Jonathan Villar, or give rest to a CF or 3B. Don’t forget Jacob Barnes, the mid-draft relief anchor, or Junior Guerra, the most incredible upstart you could ever know.

These players round out a roster that could provide national TV networks a complicated feeling during playoff coverage, should the club continue to contend. The Brewers feature a robust group of players, some already detested by opposing fans and therefore ready to provide amazing primetime spectacle (imagine Braun hitting a crucial playoff homer in the face of opposing fan boos), and some ready to remind the national media that they should never have been forgotten in the first place. Yet, on the other end of the spectrum, these Brewers are the anti-Cubs, proving that it’s perfectly fine if no one knows who you are, that you can win with Manny Pina and Hernan Perez and Junior Guerra and Zach Davies when the league is passing them up. And so the Brewers are primed to make their revenge, with a club that’s almost absurdly well-situated to seize headlines and become a loved-and-hated storyline should they continue to contend. Certainly should they fail to contend deep into September or October, it will not be for lack of character.

Related Reading:
Scalp / Spread Strategies
Bandy-Maldonado

Here, following the offseason treatment, I am including major deals from July 2015 (the arguable start of “Rebuilding”) through the present day, meaning that these moves are not entirely Stearns’s trades. Indeed, the Zach Davies / Gerardo Parra trade and the Carlos Gomez & Mike Fiers return remain two reasons that the Brewers did not need to “tank” and design a “scorched earth” rebuild that completely reconstructed the organization. Coupled with draft signings by the late Bruce Seid (such as Jacob Barnes and [soon] Brandon Woodruff), as well as graduated top prospects like Orlando Arcia, and superstar Ryan Braun, the “rebuilding” Brewers have remained competitive due to several different talent streams entering, remaining, and graduating through the system.

Trade Surplus Depreciated WARP & OFP Summary:

As a reminder, I will be following the historical model of Overall Future Potential (OFP) production drawn from the history of MLB performances. Scaled for prospect risk, here’s how those prospect levels can be valuated, with 50 OFP being an “average” MLB player:

Last check-in, here’s how the Brewers’ trades looked. Given Zach Davies’s quick ascent to the MLB, I forgot to add him in this list, so his trade will be featured below.

Following this set of deals, it should be interesting to note that while the Brewers system prospects have had ups and downs, the players traded away have exhibited true depreciation within one year. This should demonstrate one benefit of using a depreciation model to assess future player value, which is the model I have been working with throughout the offseason; players do depreciate in terms of production. Jonathan Lucroy, Jeremy Jeffress, Gerardo Parra, Carlos Gomez, Mike Fiers, Adam Lind, and Jason Rogers all demonstrate this, and it should be noted they demonstrate this without completely crashing their value in the meantime (especially in the case of Lucroy). Khris Davis is perhaps the worst counterexample, as Stearns almost certainly sold low on the slugger, who also deserves credit for making adjustments and shifting his approach in Oakland.

A few quick notes:

• The Lucroy-Jeffress and Gomez-Fiers deals shifted value for completely different reasons. The former relies fully (thus far) on problematic performances by the players the Brewers traded away, while the latter is improving in value both due to struggles by Gomez and Fiers and improvements by Domingo Santana. The Gomez-Fiers deal remains one of the strongest deals to build the Brewers system, even with Josh Hader’s recent struggles, and Brett Phillips’s graduation solidifies at least the 45 OFP grade (which is not nothing), while the ceiling remains to be seen.

• Hidden in the middle of this table is the Francisco Rodriguez trade, which was one of Stearns’s worst trades on the day it occurred. But thankfully, trades are not solely graded on the day-of, and post hoc analysis loves Manny Pina’s development into (at least) a split time catcher at the MLB level. K-Rod has not been terrible, for what it’s worth, but when that contract winds down to its last year the surplus value really depends on short-term production rather than longterm outlook. This hurts the K-Rod score as much as it hurts Lucroy’s assessment in Texas.

• Let it be stated that the Khris Davis trade return was solid (if not spectacular) on the day-of. But it’s great to be reminded that prospect stock can depreciate, too. Fortunately, scouting reports suggest that Jacob Nottingham can remain behind the plate, answering one previous question. But if that power (and bat) does not come around, it may not matter as much; it is getting more appropriate to highlight, say, the 40-45 end of Nottingham’s grade (still means he reaches the MLB) than the 55 end that helped him reach Oakland’s Top 10. Of course, remember that Manny Pina was probably a 40-45 grade minor leaguer when Milwaukee acquired him, so…you know the rest.

• I believe there could be some reason to reassess prospects like Freddy Peralta or Ryan Cordell, who I would rate as valuable depth options for the system. However, for the purposes of this exercise, there is not necessarily enough non-statistical information to fully develop a new scouting grade. So perhaps a few prospects in this table deserve an asterisk next to their grade.

Turning from the “earlier” trades to the 2017 offseason, one can see how Stearns developed the surprising 2017 contender. It is interesting to note that for the offseason coverage of the club, so many of us (myself included) completely failed to properly price the GM’s immediate value for these trades.

For example, Mauricio Dubon was never (and probably will not be) the prime value of the Thornburg deal. What makes the Thornburg deal so amazing is that, given Thornburg’s career development, a straight-up Dubon-for-Thornburg deal would have been solid. Yet, Stearns did not stop there; the GM managed to return not just Dubon, but also a legitimate MLB asset in Travis Shaw, as well as two total lottery tickets (exemplified in Yusion Coca, the Player-To-Be-Named-Later who completed this deal). This trade should continue to “give” to the organization, whether it is in the form of Josh Pennington or Coco being included in a future trade (they are sufficiently far from the MLB to be traded once more), or Dubon working in a utility role or second-tier MLB starting role.

A quick word: These numbers are indeed abstract! The Brewers claim approximately $472.2 million in depreciated surplus value from these trades, which roughly translates to 67 WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player) within the system. These 67 WARP could be maximized and turned into 87 market-rate WARP, they could remain steady over time, or they could further depreciate to 49 WARP. These figures are abstract, of course, because they incorporate risk into the system, and can be cashed out any which way; if Stearns cashes out 87 WARP within the next two years, the Brewers will have quite a competitive team; if these players remain merely competitive or decline further, it will be questioned whether more trades were necessary. The players could continue to depreciate, and many could fail to reach the MLB (if they are prospects). Stearns can cash out surplus through trades or development. So these numbers should not necessarily be interpreted to apply to any timeframe; that’s up to the GM to determine.

Since I’ve already focused specifically on the Jett Bandy-Martin Maldonado deal recently, I will not dive deeper into that deal except to emphasize the importance of post hoc trade analysis. Returning to a trade after the fact, with the proper tools, is not simply “using hindsight,” but rather healthy Benefit-Cost Analysis. Moreover, returning to a trade after the fact, with the proper tools, is an opportunity to potentially sharpen those analytical tools in order to provide better day-of trade analysis. But of course, the Bandy trade is not yet complete, nor are most of these deals, really. So, by returning to these trades with analytical methods over time, one can come to understand organizational value as a malleable entity that is never truly solidified at one point in time. This is arguably yet another reason to oppose “rebuilding,” or to opposing “winning now,” or any extreme organizational strategy; it is also possible to never build an organization, or to build an organization through contrarian means (as Stearns is doing). There should be no reason for an MLB club to fail to simultaneously build for the present and future, save for a lack of creativity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Reading:
Cashing Out OFP
Bandy-Maldonado
Aging Braun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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