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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Reading:
Five Stats to Watch

Contending teams are always thirsting for more arms. Furthermore, the recent success of the Kansas City Royals, and the Yankees before them, may prompt teams to prioritize locking down the back end of the bullpen to shorten the game.

Jeremy Jeffress: Service time at the end of the 2016 season 3.104
Jeffress’s service time is notable because he will be arbitration eligible for the first time this offseason. As a newly minted closer, he will start to become expensive as he proceeds through the arbitration process. Jeffress is earning $519,100 in 2016, which will surely increase for 2017.

It’s difficult to find a direct comparison, because many 2016 relievers who filed for arbitration either had more service time or more experience in the closer role. However, Jeurys Familia comes close to Jeffress’s potential numbers after this season. He finished last season with 3.03 years of service time, about where Jeffress will end up, barring injury. 2015 was his first full year as a closer, after spending some time in a setup role. He had a slightly better ERA and WHIP than Jeffress in their pre-closer seasons and had logged about 30 more innings, although the arbitration hearings may not yet be an area welcoming of advanced stats that effectively describe relievers’ success. Familia’s salary jumped to $4.1 million for 2016. That means one might expect Jeffress to come in a little under $4 million.

This is important because an expensive closer is an unnecessary luxury on a rebuilding team. If the team can clear the Braun contract, maybe they won’t mind paying Jeffress’s increased cost. However, with attendance and TV ratings down, this may be an expense they don’t want to bear. It also doesn’t hurt to note that while Jeffress has the closer label, he hasn’t been the best pitcher in the bullpen. These factors may make Jeffress the most likely Brewers reliever to be dealt.

Michael Blazek: 5.62 DRA
There are lots numbers we can use to show how much Blazek has struggled in 2016 aside from DRA. While his strike out rate per nine innings has remained constant at 7.6, he’s allowed 4.1 more hits, 3.6 more walks, and 1 more home run per nine innings in 2016. His .333 BABIP should allow for some improvement, but if he keeps getting hit hard regression will only do so much. Most importantly, an important bullpen piece who is still cheap and potentially valuable via trade is now in AAA to try and regain his form, which likely kills his trade value for the July 31 deadline.

The issue seems to be his fastball. Whereas last year hitters only slugged .338 against his four seamer, this season that’s up to .608. Blazek is allowing slightly more fly balls this year (up around 2.5 percent), his line drive and groundball percentage have remained constant. His velocity is also slightly up this year (94.78 vs. 94.32). Looking through Brooks Baseball, there doesn’t seem to be a specific reason for this downturn. Maybe it’s the small sample of 30.7 relief innings sandwiched around a DL stint. More troubling is the idea that maybe 2015 was the outlier. Relief pitchers are generally shine bright and burn out fast The Brewers need to hope this is an uncharacteristic blip on the radar or a minor injury if they hope to salvage some value from Blazek, either in Milwaukee or via trade.

Will Smith: 6: Times Smith has pitched in at least two consecutive games 
Before the season, it looked like Will Smith was going to close for the Brewers. While a lefty, he was the best returning reliever on the team, and Craig Counsell seemed hesitant to give Jeffress the reins in April without at least a nominal tether. Smith’s injury changed that plan and had the hidden benefit of raising Jeffress’s value as he can now be valued as a true closer.

While there was some speculation that when Smith returned, he would soon be anointed closer, that didn’t happen. He’s primarily been brought into the game in the seventh and eighth innings. Smith’s ability has never been in doubt. Last year he solidified his reputation as the rare lefty who can get guys out from both sides of the plate (.208 TAv against RH in 2015). While he’s not an Andrew Miller level talent, Smith would be an elite available LHP and could command a hefty price. Continuing to show little effects from his knee injury will only serve to increase his value.

Hill’s two-bagger (+.132) gave the Brewers a win probability of 49.4 percent, up from 36.1 percent when he stepped to the plate. Ultimately, this wouldn’t amount to anything; Alex Presley followed up a sacrifice from Ramon Flores with a full-count strikeout, leaving Hill on third base. When the inning concluded with a Jonathan Villar groundout, the Brewers stood just a 25.3 percent chance of winning.

Hill and Presley have some similarities. Neither of them is young — Hill checks in at 34, and Presley will turn 31 next month. Milwaukee brought each one in hoping they’d become veteran mentors and/or trade chips. Thus far, only Hill has accomplished that, starting 63 of the squad’s 75 games and posting a .283 TAv in those contests. Meanwhile, Presley and his .219 TAv probably won’t remain at the major-league level for much longer. In large part due to a talent disparity, Hill has made the most of his opportunities, while Presley has come up short; each of them may leave the team soon, just in different manners.

Worst Play: The game went from close to out of reach shortly after Hill’s efforts. Michael Blazek came on to pitch the eighth inning; he retired the first two batters he faced — thanks in part to Kirk Nieuwenhuis — but he couldn’t put together a shutdown inning. Anthony Rendon worked a free pass, and Clint Robinson swatted an 0-1 fastball into the bullpen in right field.

Robinson’s homer (-.199), for all intents and purposes, killed the Brewers. Turning a reasonable 1-0 deficit into a 3-0 suffocation, it brought their win expectancy down from 28.0 to 8.1 percent. The Brew Crew would reach double digits after scoring once in the bottom of the frame and once in the ninth. In the end, they couldn’t turn it around and would settle for a closer, 3-2 defeat.

Last season, Blazek looked to have broken out, with a 2.43 ERA and 3.69 DRA over 55.2 innings of relief. The PTBNL from the John Axford trade has fallen off in 2016 — his strikeouts are down, his walks are up, and he’s already allowed as many home runs as he did all of last year. Whatever has ailed him, he needs to fix it quick, or he’ll lose his job to someone else.

Trend to Watch: On that note… With Blazek’s meltdown (and Will Smith’s post-DL hiccups), the Brewers have yearned for another bullpen arm to emerge from nowhere. Although it’s still pretty early, Jacob Barnes may have done just that. Despite allowing the go-ahead home run on Sunday, Barnes has fared well as a 26-year-old rookie: He’s twirled 10.1 innings of 2.79-ERA, 3.58-DRA ball. Sustaining that would make him another trustworthy late-inning reliever.

Barnes has essentially no pedigree. At this time last year, he was a mediocre starter-turned-mediocre reliever who had never appeared on a top prospect list. Then he lit up the Arizona Fall League, pitching 11.2 shutout innings with 17 strikeouts to go with only three walks. He maintained that momentum into the 2016 campaign, as he notched a 1.21 ERA over 22.1 innings of relief for Colorado Springs. Since receiving the callup earlier this month, he hasn’t missed a beat.

Two pitches make up Barnes’s repertoire: a four-seam fastball and a slider. The former has fared well enough, riding its mid- to upper-90s velocity to a 66.2 percent strike rate and 6.3 percent swinging-strike rate. But it can’t compare to the latter, which has been nothing short of great — it’s gone for a strike 71.0 percent of the time and a whiff 34.8 percent of the time. No footage of the pitch from Sunday’s game exists online, so we’ll have to settle from this clip of Barnes in his major-league debut:

No, the velocity reading isn’t a typo. According to Brooks Baseball, Barnes struck out Tommy Joseph on a 92.1-mph slider. This season, Zach Davies’s four-seam fastball has topped out at 92.2 mph. If he can continue to harness it, Barnes’s deadly heat will warm up the seats of Blazek and Smith.

Up Next: The Brewers managed to take two of three against the Nationals, and they’ll attempt to keep that up against another scuffling contender. After a day off today, the Brewers complete their homestand with a three-game set against the Dodgers. Chase Anderson and Julio Urias will face off on Tuesday at 7:10 CST; Junior Guerra will take the hill against a for-now undetermined L.A. starter on Wednesday; and Zach Davies will duel Kenta Maeda in the matinee finale on Thursday.

Top Play (WPA):
Yonder Alonso’s single to center, which scored Danny Valencia and advanced old friend Khris Davis to 3B, broke the tie and gave Oakland a 3-2 lead (.228). Both Davis and Alonso would score on the next play as Marcus Semien hit a triple to make the score 5-2.

Milwaukee held a 2-1 lead entering the 6th inning, but relievers Blaine Boyer, Will Smith, and Michael Blazek couldn’t hold the lead, allowing those 4 runs on 5 hits and 2 walks in their 1.7 innings. Indicative of their evening, those relievers combined for one strikeout.

Bottom Play (WPA):
The worst play of the game also occurred in that fateful bottom of the 7th inning. Blazek started the inning allowing a Steven Vogt triple and Valencia reached on a Jonathan Villar error. Vogt’s triple was crushed to the deepest part of the park, but Kirk Nieuwenhuis had a shot at catching it, but the ball bounced off the heel of his glove. After those two hitters reached, Khris Davis did the Brewers a favor and grounded into a fielder’s choice which resulted in Vogt getting thrown out at home (-.156).

Trend to Watch:
Brewers starter Jimmy Nelson was in and out of trouble all night. He induced only 3 swings and misses, down from 6 in his disaster start in San Francisco last week. The A’s contact rate in the game was 93%, running up to 97% for pitches in the strike zone, both well above Nelson’s seasonal and career numbers. With so much contact, Athletics hitters still only swung at 43% of Nelson’s pitches, also below his season average.

Nelson’s first inning was a slog, as he needed 32 pitches to get his three outs. He gave up 2 hits and a walk, and escaped his jam with a well timed double play. This set the tone for the evening, as Nelson only pitched one clean inning, but only gave up 1 run. He stranded 87.5% of his base runnners last night, also above his season strand rate of 76.2%.

Nelson survived and gave the Brewers a chance to win, but his performance last night is not sustainable for a successful pitcher. Nelson didn’t fool batters, and he got lucky that he stranded so many runners.

Quick Hits:
It was Milwaukee’s first game in Oakland since the 2002 season. Back then, the stadium was known as Network Associates Coliseum. The Athletics won that game 8-0 as Mark Mulder pitched a shutout. Ben Sheets started for the Brewers and was chased after four innings.

Up Next: The Brewers finish their west coast trip with an afternoon game against Oakland. Junior Guerra will look to bounce back from his worst start of the season last week in Los Angeles, where he allowed 5 runs to the Dodgers in just five innings. The 5 runs were the most he’s allowed in a game all season, and he gave up a home run for the third straight start. For the A’s, Daniel Mengden makes his third career start. Last time out, he pitched 6.3 innings against Texas, allowing 2 runs ( 1 earned) and striking out 7. First pitch is 2:35.

Top Play (WPA):
Jonathan Lucroy’s two run homer in the bottom of the 5^th, which tied the game at 4 was the top play of the game (.247). All of the Brewers runs were scored via the long ball, as Angels starter Nick Tropeano had a rough go of it last night. The three home runs he gave up equal his career total in his first 16 MLB appearances. The Angels staked Tropeano a four run lead via singles and walks in the 1^st and 3^rd innings. However, Tropeano had issues all day. He didn’t record a single clean inning. His 5 innings of duty resulted in 5 hits, 5 runs, 5 walks, and 6 strikeouts.

Lucroy and Carter mauled Tropeano. Combined, they went 4-5 with a walk, and the three aforementioned home runs. His struggles with the team as a whole can be explained in the next two charts. First, his strikezone plot. Tropeano was all over the place, consistently placing pitches in the middle or outside of the strikezone.

For this second chart, the most telling part for me is those red dots, which represent the Carter and Lucroy home runs. Those weren’t great pitches that the batters got lucky hitting. Those were right in the wheelhouse, and tonight the Brewers made the Angels pay for those mistakes.

Worst Play (WPA):
This one is probably predictable, but the worst play of the game was Yunel Escobar’s double play with the bases loaded to end the 7^th inning (-.282). Junior Guerra got through 6 innings and left the game with a 5-4 lead. Then Michael Blazek entered the game and decided to exemplify his uneven season by loading the bases with no outs via two walks and a single, then finishing the inning without allowing a run. He started off Escobar with two sliders, then got the routine double play ball on a fastball pretty much down the middle. Escobar just missed it. The Angels only got one more baserunner the rest of the game.

Trend to Watch
Chris Carter is streaky. Ryan Romano tackled it here, and anyone who plays fantasy baseball definitely knows this. He now has four home runs in his past three games. One interesting thing to note when looking at Carter’s season so far has been his selectivity and contact rates. His zone rate for pitches seen in the strike zone is .4528, which would be the lowest of his career. His career average has been .4848. As he’s seen fewer pitches in the zone, he’s also swinging less, once again at a career low rate of .4000, compared with his career average of .4592. In even better news, his contact rate has jumped to a career high of .6736, compared to an average of .6331. Those numbers hold for his strike zone swing and contact rates as well. Carter is also swinging at missing below his career average. The batting eye is as good as ever, and pitchers aren’t giving him much to hit. Let’s see if he’s at the start of a power surge.

Up Next:
Day baseball! The series against the Angels concludes tomorrow afternoon, and the Brewers are looking for a sweep, which would be their first of the season. Zach Davies will start for Milwaukee, and will look to allow fewer than four runs in a start for the first time this season. Hector Santiago pitches for the Angels. Santiago struggled in his last start against Texas, allowing four runs on eight hits with only one strikeout in 5.2 innings. Game starts at 1:40.

And when Mike Matheny brought in Rosenthal in an effort to send the game into extra innings, it looked like the Brewers would in fact need extra frames to win the game. But Kirk Nieuwenhuis drew a walk, and Santana drove a middle-middle fastball over the center field wall to give the Brewers the eventual 6-4 win.

Bottom Play (WPA):
In terms of raw impact, it’s tough to beat teams trading home runs in the bottom of the eighth and top of the ninth, but the Cardinals half of the sixth inning was ultimately significant as well.

Jeremy Hazelbaker, yet another out-of-nowhere Cardinals product, led off the inning with a double, putting the tying run in scoring position with no one out. The next two plays, though, would define the game (until, of course, the various late-inning heroics).

Matt Holliday was up next, and he was jammed on an inside pitch but was able to muscle it into short right field, where a previous blooper had already fallen earlier in the game. This time, however, Scooter Gennett made an excellent running catch over his shoulder, keeping Hazelbaker at second base with one out. And while the next batter was up, Hazelbaker attempted to steal third base, but Jonathan Lucroy gunned him down (-.103).

Trend to Watch:
Chase Anderson had a second solid start. His ERA will not accurately reflect his performance, as the three unearned runs he allowed in the first still count on the scoreboard and still required him to give up the hits that drove in the runs, but he settled in nicely after a rough first inning. Anderson was a key piece of the Jean Segura trade this offseason, and the Brewers will be hoping he can settle into being a solid option in the middle of the rotation.

Anderson’s 9:2 strikeout-to-walk ratio in eleven innings is a positive development for the Brewers, especially with Matt Garza’s injury and Wily Peralta’s general terribleness. Jimmy Nelson has also looked good thus far in 2016, so having two or three dependable options in the rotation is a big step for a club that is looking to develop its younger players.

Key Moment:
Brandon Moss’s game-tying home run in the bottom of the eighth came off Michael Blazek, and it was a key example of the cost of Will Smith’s injury. Despite the fact that Smith and Jeffress were to be co-closers and therefore have uncertain roles, Smith would almost definitely have pitched the eighth. With lefties Matt Carpenter and Jeremy Hazelbaker due up and the team’s big bench bats being lefties, Smith would have been the obvious choice to pitch the eighth. Instead, though, Blazek was the best choice.

Worst Play: Normally, we start with the best play, but this recap will go with the chronological order. Following Nelson’s six strong innings, Tyler Thornburg retired the three batters he faced in the seventh (albeit with a wild pitch), and Michael Blazek entered in the eighth. After striking out Carlos Gomez to begin the frame, Blazek issued a five-pitch walk to Luis Valbuena, whom Jake Marisnick then ran for. He seemed to have gotten out of trouble, though, when 2014 AL batting champ and All-Time King of Grit Jose Altuve tapped a comebacker off a 1-2 slider right to Blazek.

Even against a fast hitter, soft grounders back to the mound usually turn into at least one and perhaps two outs. Neither of those happened on Sunday. Blazek grabbed the ball and promptly flung it into the outfield, allowing Valbuena to advance to third and Altuve to arrive safely at second. The error (-.207) dropped the Brewers’ chances of winning from 74.1 to 53.4 percent — they went from a relatively sure thing to a coin flip.

In a postgame press conference, Craig Counsell said that the speed of the runner probably didn’t cause the miscue, but rather that Blazek “got a little off-balance and probably didn’t have a great grip.” For the pitcher who tied for the team lead in 2015 with three Defensive Runs Saved, this slip-up certainly departed from the norm. It would take a clutch performance for the Brewers to escape with the lead.

Best Play: So Blazek did exactly that. When George Springer stepped in against him, Blazek walloped him with three straight sliders. Springer swung through the first, laid off the second, and tapped the third into center field on a fly ball. Keon Broxton reeled it in and gunned the ball to the plate, keeping Valbuena from scoring. The flyout (+.185) brought the Brewers’ chances of winning back up to 71.9 percent. One Carlos Correa groundout later, Blazek had finagled his way out of the inning. He got the hold, and after Jeremy Jeffress retired the side in order in the ninth, the Brewers got the W.

Hopefully, Blazek can figure out what’s ailed him so far and recapture the magic he possessed in 2015. If he continues to walk more batters than he strikes out — as he has to this point in 2016 — he’ll start allowing more runs, and fast. While the Brewers have a pretty deep bullpen, they could certainly use Blazek’s contributions.

Trend(s) to Watch: This game gave us two big takeaways, each of them a continuation of something else we’d seen previously. First and foremost, Nelson excelled. After holding the Giants to two runs over 7.1 innings in his first start of the year, he scattered three hits over six innings against the Astros. This game, though, had something its predecessor lacked — strikeouts, and a lot of them.

Nelson had nine strikeouts in only two of his 32 starts last season, and he notched just three in his debut this season. With this explosion on his record, though, he currently has a 2016 fan rate of 24.0 percent. We should expect some regression from that — even PECOTA’s 90th-percentile projection gives him a 7.7 K/9 — but Nelson does have strong stuff, as evidenced by his 23.0 percent punchout rate in the minor leagues. If he keeps this up, he’ll take a step forward for the second straight year.

The second trend comes from the other side of the ball. On offense this year, the Brewers haven’t performed as well as we’d like, with a mediocre 3.5 runs per game. With that said, they’ve managed to draw a lot of walks, as some sagely predicted in the offseason. Entering Sunday’s action, Milwaukee ranked sixth in the majors with a 10.7 percent walk rate, and the club added to that against Houston.

Dallas Keuchel won the AL Cy Young in 2015, in large part because of his superb 5.6 percent walk rate. Disregarding that, the Brewers roughed him up for six bases on balls over 5.2 innings. A mere 59 of Keuchel’s 110 pitches — 53.6 percent, nearly ten percentage points below his mark from last year — went for strikes. Altogether, Brewers hitters saw a strike for 54.0 percent of their pitches, netting them seven free passes in total. Ryan Braun earned two, and Domingo Santana, Chris Carter, Martin Maldonado, Yadiel Rivera, and Colin Walsh each tallied one of their own.

A lot of crazy things can happen in six games. As much as we’d like for Scooter Gennett to continue tearing the cover off the ball, I can confidently say he’ll cool off pretty soon. Likewise, Milwaukee’s walk rate will fall in time, as Jonathan Villar and his colleagues revert to their prior aggression. But a somewhat patient approach could remain — PECOTA didn’t predict an 8.0 percent walk rate for no reason. If the Brewers can keep working counts and taking free passes, they’ll reward Nelson and Co. for their efforts on the hill.

Up Next: Today, the Brew Crew will begin an eight-game road trip, as they take on the hated Cardinals in a Busch Stadium matinee. Taylor Jungmann squares off versus Michael Wacha at 3:05 CST. The series continues on Wednesday night when Chase Anderson faces Mike Leake, and on Thursday afternoon when Wily Peralta starts against Jaime Garcia. At 3-3 after six contests, the Brewers can’t feel too unhappy with how the first week of 2016 went. Let’s hope that the second week brings them just as much success.

After many years in what Brian Kenny refer likes to refer to as “the dark ages” came the sabermetric movement, accompanied by a slew of new metrics. One of the more recent and popular discoveries is DIPS, by Voros McCracken, which brought us Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), created by Tom Tango.

FIP was modeled after ERA. FIP looks at what a pitcher can control, walks, strikeouts, and home runs. With FIP, we can see which pitchers benefitted from the most luck, the previous season. The best way to do this is by looking at the difference between ERA and FIP. This also would give one insight into how likely a pitcher is to regress the following season.

As my colleague Ryan Romano points out, in a Beyond the Box Score article, FIP has its flaws, “Pitchers can control other elements of the game — some limit hard contact better than others, and some will melt down with runners on base. Because of pitch framing, fluky umpiring, park factors, and a host of other variables, they don’t necessarily control the three true outcomes, either.”

The good news is that 2015 brought two new pitching metrics. The first was contextualized FIP or cFIP, created by Jonathan Judge. Then came Deserved Run Average from Judge, Dan Turkenkopf, and Harry Pavlidis.

Basically, as Judge put it so eloquently, “The vast majority of a pitcher’s DRA is explained by his average linear weights allowed to opposing batters”. Now, DRA also takes into account what Judge calls “externalities”, which including catcher framing, temperature, team defense, the score, the stadium, and more.

cFIP is very similar to FIP. The biggest difference is that it takes into account the context. This includes the catcher, the umpire, the batter’s handedness, the stadium, and more. The most important thing to note, however, is that DRA is a descriptive metric while cFIP is a predictive metric, even though it has descriptive value. Therefore, we can now look at luck or overperformance in a new and better way.

Mainly, I wanted to look at which Brewers players had the biggest overperformance last season. In order to do this, I created a DNA chart to visually show the difference between DRA- and cFIP. (Minimum 50 innings pitched).

I’ve often raved about Michael Blazek’s 2015 season on this site, and for good reason. His 51 DRA- stands as one of the best in Brewers history and deserves praise.

With that said, there’s a reason that teams aren’t clamoring to trade for Blazek or that Blazek isn’t being considered for the Brewers closers job. Instead, all the rumors seem to be surrounding Jeremy Jeffress and Will Smith. Blazek, you see, way overperformed last season. His cFIP stands at 96 compared to his 51 DRA-, marking the biggest difference between DRA- and cFIP among all Brewers pitchers. Comparing it to the rest of the league, Blazek had the sixth biggest difference between his DRA- and cFIP.

In part, do to a fractured hand which ended his season early, Blazek only pitched 55.7 innings last year. This isn’t uncommon for relievers, but it does increase the chance of variation in performance due to the small sample size. It’ll be interesting to see how he performs next year, but this could be signaling that Blazek will have some regression in his performance. He’s never been a big strikeout guy, including last year, and has had trouble with his walk rate in the minors. If those were to flare up again, we could see a downturn in Blazek’s performance. Conversely, a 96 cFIP is still above average, so even though Blazek probably got lucky, he still was no slouch.

As mentioned above, Jeremy Jeffress and Will Smith, have both been mentioned in a few trade rumors this offseason. There’s also been some debate as to whom the “closers” job would go to. This might be because of a couple of factors. A) Both pitchers provided well above average production last season. B) There’s no reason to think those were flukes. Jeffress had the smallest difference between his DRA- and cFIP and Smith had the second smallest, among Brewers pitchers.

With their great stuff, both pitchers bring the ability to strikeout hitters at an above average clip. Jeffress is well known for his blistering fastball and Romano dubbed Smith’s slider as the Brewers best pitch in 2015, which help him accrue an insane 12.93 K/9 in 2015. If he can keep up that performance, then there’s a good chance Smith will repeat his performance from 2015.

I then did the same thing for the teams. (You’ll notice that the X-Axis starts at 80. I did this so that people could better see the difference between both metrics, but it should be noted that there’s far less variance here than there is among players, in general.)

Unfortunately for the Brewers, there wasn’t a big difference between both metrics. The Brewers had a below average pitching staff last year, and they weren’t unlucky, as a whole. So, their performance wasn’t a product of bad luck but merely not having a great pitching staff.

One final element to note is that the White Sox were particularly unlucky last year. More so than any other team. Meaning that their pitching staff could be even better this upcoming season. This could further emphasize the point that they should go for it this upcoming season. Although, they still seem wishy-washy as to whether or not they truly want to compete.

Stuff

We saw earlier that Nelson took the cake in terms of velocity, while Pena’s movement paced the team. On the other end of the spectrum, there was no such divide — one pitch had both the lowest velocity z-score and the lowest total movement z-score:

For a curveball, below-average vertical movement isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since the average such pitch already moves negative. Indeed, the fact that Fiers led all starters in curveball drop last season would seem to work in his favor.

Of course, all the dive in the world won’t count for anything if the pitch has no velocity. Only Jered Weaver, Mark Buehrle, and Julio Teheran threw their curveballs slower in 2015, and it showed. Fiers’s curve went for strikes just 43.0 percent of the time in Milwaukee, and when he put it in the zone, hitters such as Tyler Moore made him pay:

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Those kinds of dingers made Fiers’s curve worth -1.61 runs below average on a rate basis. The Brewers will miss Fiers overall in 2016, but I for one am glad that his curveball will stay with the Astros.

Run Values

Interestingly enough, though, Fiers’s curve didn’t finish last when it came to Linear Weights. Another starter, who remains on the team, held that distinction:

Peralta’s 2015 regression fell squarely on the shoulders of his sinker, which traveled nearly a mile and a half slower than it did in 2014. That meant the pitch often resulted in this sort of treatment, courtesy here of Curtis Granderson:

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But a run value alone doesn’t really do Peralta justice. For his case, we’ll look at something else.

TAv

Using the same samples from the velocity and whiff rate z-scores, I found the average and standard deviation for each pitch’s resulting TAv. These created TAv z-scores, to better reflect how hard batters hit an offering. They certainly clobbered Peralta’s heater:

How bad was this? The next-worst pitch, Tyler Cravy’s four-seamer, had a TAv 1.75 standard deviations over the mean. Only Vidal Nuno and Sean O’Sullivan allowed opponents to abuse them more than this. Let’s throw in another GIF of this atrocity, for good measure:

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I discussed Peralta’s meltdown in December, noting that the movement of his pitches actually improved in 2015. Let’s hope for his sake that he regains his velocity, because if he doesn’t, the 2016 campaign will bring more of the same kind of pain.

Whiffs

When it comes to swinging strikes, things get complicated. Unlike Fiers’s curveball and Peralta’s four-seamer, this pitch actually held its own in 2015:

Blazek didn’t earn many whiffs with the curveball, yet it still gave him 1.99 runs above an average pitch (per 100 appearances). That’s because it accrued its strikes a different way:

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Matt Carpenter and his fellow batters took the curveball for a called strike 30.7 percent of the time, an incredible amount. An exercise like this has limits, as Blazek demonstrates — no one metric can really capture all the value of a pitch.

That isn’t to say, however, that Peralta’s four-seamer didn’t struggle, or that Fiers performed well with his curveball. We can pretty conclusively deem one of those two the worst Brewers pitch of 2015. Hopefully, 2016 will bring more pitches like the ones we saw on Thursday (although, if the team continues this rebuild, we won’t witness great pitching for a few years).

Click here for a complete spreadsheet of all 39 pitches.

Beyond that, pitchers make a better target for sabermetricians, as we can quantify so many elements of their game. Thanks to PITCHf/x, we can now look at pitch usage, velocity, movement, release points, locations — and, most importantly, individual result breakdowns for each offering. This can lead us down any number of analytic rabbit holes, which is where our story begins.

Because we still have a few weeks until baseball returns, I’ve decided to pass the time by constructing arbitrary “best-of” lists. Most of them wouldn’t appeal to any sane person, but I feel that many fans of the Brew Crew would like to know the answer to this question. Of the many pitches we had the pleasure of viewing last season, which stood out above the rest? A question that broad doesn’t have one right answer, but it’s an entertaining exercise regardless.

To accomplish it, I looked at pitches that appeared at least 200 times, isolating myself to those that occurred when the player was in Milwaukee. (In other words, this won’t include Mike Fiers’s time in Houston or Jonathan Broxton’s work for St. Louis.) This gave me a sample of 39 pitches to work with:

Whose quiver contained the deadliest arrow? Well, we can look at the issue a few different ways, each of which has its own merit. I’ll run through them all, with fun GIFs and full explanations, then return with a final summary.

Stuff

When evaluating the quality of a pitcher, we can focus, broadly speaking, on two things: the process (think cFIP) or the results (think DRA). The same general logic applies to the pitches themselves. We’ll begin with a few metrics that will tell us how well the pitches theoretically should have performed in 2015; from there, we’ll then move to the measures of how well they actually performed.

For a pitch to blow away the opponent, it generally has to have either velocity or movement. We’ll thus begin our journey with these two categories. For this, I used the BP PITCHf/x leaderboards to find pitchers (separating starters and relievers) with 200 of each pitch type in 2015. I then found the average and standard deviations of each sample, from which I constructed velocity, horizontal movement, and vertical movement z-scores for all 39 offerings.

The pitch with the most power behind it might seem familiar:

Nelson’s curveball, which ranked above Sonny Gray and Jacob deGrom in terms of velocity, left hitters such as Aramis Ramirez guessing:

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For movement, I took the sum of vertical and horizontal z-scores, to get a rough measure of overall bite. Although the top offering here might not be your first guess, it certainly deserved its spot:

Pena’s four-seam fastball didn’t have much heat, but man, could it dance. Watch how it rises and tails away from Kyle Schwarber:

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Nelson saw more action than Pena did in 2015, which may explain why his curveball feels more familiar. Still, each of these offerings stood out in its own regard. As the Brewers experiment with their rotation in 2016, we’ll probably see a lot more of both the heater and the curve.

Run Values

With that said, velocity and movement alone don’t make a pitch. A better line of thinking would look at the actual production of a pitch, and for that, we have a unique metric.

Pitch Type Linear Weights measure the count changes by each pitch, as well as the result when the offering ends a plate appearance, and expresses it as runs above or below average. This metric generally achieves its goal, and its selection for top Brewers pitch (on a per-100 pitch scale) probably wouldn’t get too much blowback:

Rodriguez won this contest by a wide margin — Michael Blazek’s curveball came in second, at 1.99 runs above average. Darin Ruf would probably agree with that verdict:

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This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since Rodriguez’s cambio made his 2015 resurrection possible. In fact, the changeup was worth more (by this metric) on a rate basis than any other pitch, of any kind, in all of baseball. Taking note of that a few months back, Mark Simon crowned it the best pitch in the majors. Sadly, K-Rod will pitch in Detroit this season, so this changeup will no longer work in Milwaukee’s favor.

Whiff rate

But we shouldn’t stop there, because Linear Weights aren’t perfect. Aside from the fact that they don’t necessarily reflect true talent (which we’ll discuss in due time), they treat all changes of count the same way. In the eyes of Linear Weights, a swinging strike to begin an at-bat is the same as a foul ball, since each puts the pitcher ahead 0-1. That doesn’t testify to the quality of the offering, though — whiffs are clearly better than fouls, meaning the best pitches will usually maximize the former.

For that reason, we’ll move to swinging-strike rate. Here, it’s important to take into account the different baselines, as each pitch fools hitters to different extents. To level the playing field, I created some more z-scores, using the averages and standard deviations of the whiff rates from the aforementioned velocity samples. As with the Linear Weights, the winner here won’t shock anyone:

Here, too, the leader dominated the competition: The runner-up — Neal Cott’s cutter and its 15.7 percent whiff rate— only topped the mean by 1.24 standard deviations. Based on this hilarious A.J. Pierzynski swing, I can’t argue with that:

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I covered Smith’s transcendent slider back in June, and although Smith himself faded a bit down the stretch, this pitch didn’t miss a beat. Unlike Rodriguez, Smith should stick around, so this glorious breaking ball will continue dominating for the Brewers.

In the end, Nelson’s curveball, Pena’s four-seamer, Rodriguez’s changeup, and Smith’s slider disrupted plenty of hitters last year. These standout offerings gave us something to look forward to in an otherwise dismal campaign. (On that note: Later in the week, I’ll use this methodology to find the worst Brewers pitches of the 2015 season. Until then, we’ll simply have these masterpieces to keep us warm.)