Mike Fiers
Fiers was non-tendered because Oakland is not paying a mid-rotation starter, at best, a $10 million salary. According to Cot’s Contracts, the last Oakland starting pitcher earning that much money was Scott Kazmir in 2015.

The Brewers immediately come to mind as a home for Fiers because he’s a former Brewer that has survived in MLB despite having below average fastball velocity. His fourseam fastball sits around 90 MPH, which Milwaukee has some experience with. There is ample cause for concern with Fiers though. Last season his swing and miss rate dropped for the fourth straight season, and dipped below 20 percent for the first time in his career. As his whiff percentage has dropped, Fiers has allowed more home runs (ranging from 1.2 to 1.9 per 9 innings) and struck out fewer batters (losing almost two strikeouts per nine innings as there are more strikeouts now than any time in the history of MLB).

However, there may be an area ripe for exploitation which could bring renewed success for Fiers: his curveball. He threw the curve for around 16 percent of his pitches in 2018, which is around his career average. Based on results though, Fiers should be throwing it more. Batters have hit .196 and have slugged .307 against the pitch, both of which are his best numbers. In 2018, those numbers improved to .145 and .181, once again performing as his best pitch results wise.  The pitch also generates his most ground balls: over 60 percent of curveballs put in play over his career have been ground balls. His 2018 ground ball rate on curveballs in play was almost exactly his career average.

Fiers consistently buries the ball below the zone and generates a large amount of whiffs on pitches that would be balls. In 2018, almost all of the damage against the pitch was on pitches out of the strike zone, which a player can live with.

For a pitch that he’ll throw equally to lefties and righties, it’s a little baffling that Fiers hasn’t decided to ride the curveball hard as his overall results have gotten worse. His curveball usage was actually down almost 20 percent last season when compared with 2017. Even after the trade to Oakland, while he threw the pitch more, there’s opportunity to make it the focal point of his attack and Milwaukee has some experience in signing free agent pitchers and having them focus on throwing more breaking balls.

Fiers may not be worth $10M, but I think he would be an interesting signing for a team that has helped pitchers maximize their stuff to more fully reach their potential.

Blake Parker
After a season that saw regression across the board, the Angels non-tendered Blake Parker rather than pay his projected $3.1 salary. Superficially, his 3.26 ERA and career high 14 saves indicate a decent reliever. Digging a little deeper reveals some problems, though:

Most of Parker’s regression is found in performance against his fastball. In 2017, batters hit .179 and slugged .313 against his fastball, with a .204 BABIP, but those numbers rose to .315, .562 and .328 in 2018. Batters hit more home runs against his fastball in 2018 (10) than he allowed in total in 2017 (7).

After spiking in 2017, Parker’s fastball velocity fell from 94 to 92.8 last season. The pitch started the season slower and the velocity continued trending down. He also had a location issue. Parker had previously located the pitch away from both righties and lefties, generally avoiding the middle of the plate and looking to jam hitters as much as possible. That plan failed against both sides as Parker literally had a Rudolph nose in his fastball strike zone plot. While the velocity may not come back, better location can cure a lot of Parker’s ills as batters did the most damage against his poorly located pitches.

Parker also has potential with his other two pitches: the curveball and splitter. The curveball used to be his secondary pitch, but he shelved in it favor of his splitter in 2017. Parker brought the pitch back towards the end of the season. His whiffs on both pitches were down in 2018 and location may have played a role here as well. In his most effective season, Parker threw almost 62 percent of his curves and splitters below the zone, which dropped to 56 percent in 2018. In particular, he consistently missed that spot against left handed hitters. His whiff numbers on those pitches compare favorably in 2017 and 2018, but because he was missing his spot more, batters made more contact.

Aside from the velocity drop, Parker also just didn’t execute his pitches in 2018. If the Brewers think there’s an easy mechanical fix, then Parker is a potential cheap addition to Milwaukee’s monster bullpen.

Note: Projected arbitration salaries are from MLB Trade Rumors.

Baseball Prospectus 2015 Astros Top 10 prospect rankings largely support the reaction of the time, in which Phillips was the “get” of the trade, Santana was a quality, workable advanced prospect, and Hader and Houser both served as equal parts risk-and-reward (albeit due to completely different profiles). It’s worth remembering what type of prospect Hader was when the Brewers acquired the potential fireballing lefty, so I’m quoting in full:

“The long and lanky lefty enjoyed a season to build upon with High-A Lancaster, working with an upper-80s to low-90s fastball with lots of dance out of a tough low three-quarters slot. He can reach as his as 95 mph and could sit closer to that mark in shorter bursts should he wind up in the pen as some evaluators suggest. His slider is a second potential above-average offering that can make lefty bats highly uncomfortable due to the angle of approach. His change is a third usable weapon, though both it and the slider regularly play fringe average or below, as Hader is still working to find a consistent release that allows him to work the totality of the zone with each. He’ll need more precision in execution to continue his run of success against stiffer Texas League competition, and could find a home as a useful lefty relief arm should he prove incapable of turning over upper-level lineups with his fastball-heavy approach.”

Of course, time is equal parts blessing and curse for player development, and in this case the Brewers used varying approaches with each player. Santana had already reached the MLB with the Astros, and the Brewers front office almost immediately caused the trade to pay dividends by recalling the right-handed batting outfielder on August 21, 2015. Santana showed it all within his first two weeks, belting four homers and two doubles while batting .216 and striking out 12 times in 43 PA. The Brewers gave the outfielder time in center field as well as his more common corner spot, potentially testing the waters for a high-power fourth outfield role if the regular right field spot did not work. Santana finished his 2015 Milwaukee campaign with modest success in 38 games, boasting a .299 True Average (TAv) and -4.8 Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA). Adrian Houser joined Santana at the MLB level as a September call-up, immediately compounding the *reality* of this trade, or the sense that this trade could be of real impact for the Brewers.

Using depreciated surplus analysis, here’s how the trade looked on the “day-of.” (The TL;DR is that this analysis essentially monetizes Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP) and Overall Future Potential (OFP), while also considering contract cost and reserve time, to compare prospects and MLB players of varying service time. It is a Benefit-Cost Analysis. More here if you’re interested):

In hind sight, over the course of three prospect cycles (pre-2016, 2017, 2018) and two full seasons, it is easy to view the Gomez-Fiers trade as a complete, smashing success for the Brewers. And the trade was indeed successful; on the day of the trade, the Brewers essentially “extracted” one additional potential MLB average player ($19.5 million) from the Astros, meaning that the trade could certainly be viewed as fair for both the Astros and the Brewers, with the Astros potentially surrendering a bit more than one would normally like for a super star CF and playoff race rotation help. The trade almost certainly was a huge success for the Astros in terms of revenue, as Carlos Gomez smashed the game-winning home run in the American League Wild Card in 2015, ensuring that Houston entered a longer series and had a chance at more playoff coin. I left this out of my analysis, but it is worth separately considering organizational trade incentive.

The last two trade check-ins published midseason 2016 and 2017 are worth publishing once again, just to show the ridiculous swing in surplus value:

So, why the retrospective? Well, frankly, it appears that the trade has already been promptly rewritten as highway robbery after the collapse of Carlos Gomez in Houston, and now the MLB ascent and success of Josh Hader, as well as many of the criticisms of the Brewers’ deep offseason outfield acquisitions, appears to color the value of the trade once more. Now, the Brewers apparently have a potential top rotation starter in Josh Hader, and a superstar right fielder in Domingo Santana…which is great to dream about, but misses the fun and importance of the Gomez-Fiers trade.

The Gomez-Fiers trade was a strong deal for Milwaukee on day one, but it was also a weird deal, and it’s worth exploring that a bit more. Entering 2018, the Brewers had a lot of value extracted from the Gomez-Fiers trade. Josh Hader lost his breaking ball and experiencing some mechanical / approach hiccups in Triple-A Colorado Springs, so his development continued at the MLB level. The twirling fastballer hardly hiccuped from his first June appearance onward, working seven scoreless outings before allowing his first run. Of course, the command was not yet there, as Hader also allowed eight walks to six strike outs over 9.3 IP; compare that to Hader’s current 22 strike out / three walk line over 9.7 IP to start 2018. Anyway, Hader established himself as a curious role player, almost instantly proving to serve as an MLB relief chameleon a la Andrew Miller, but without any of the 96 G / 66 GS / 359.3 IP of trial and error, 5.79 ERA baseball over three teams that actually defined Andrew Miller’s ascent to one of the greatest and most interesting relief aces in the game. For the honest developmental reason that Hader could not start, and that the lefty was re-establishing his stuff, delivery, and command, the Brewers’ young southpaw got to fast forward past the ugly stuff and reach his 2017 Baseball Prospectus realistic role: high leverage relief. This is different than his 2015 prospect role, but it’s not bad; it’s simply more in focus.

As an aside, why should Hader be more than this? Of course the funky lefty everyone loves to cite for Hader’s fantastical upside is Chris Sale, an ace that surprised scouting profiles in some cases. But this is a moment worth instructing on player comparisons: Hader is not Chris Sale. Chris Sale was a 13th overall college pick by the White Sox (2010), a pick who was already working in the MLB during the same year that he was drafted; Hader was a 19th round pick who required two trades and nearly five-and-a-half seasons of development to reach the MLB. Sale was age-23 by the time the White Sox transitioned the one-time oddball reliever to the starting rotation; Josh Hader is in his age-24 season right now. Sale is listed at 6’6″ and threw between 96 and 98 MPH with a primary sinking-running fastball as a reliever; Hader is listed at 6’4″ and throws between 92 and 95 MPH with a primary rising fastball as a reliever. Josh Hader is not Chris Sale and should not be compared to Chris Sale; we have data available to make better comparisons, so make better comparisons. Anyway, Hader is already proving to have potential as a strangely role-flexible, elite quality MLB reliever. Don’t get greedy!

If Hader’s success was at the MLB level as a budding relief ace with extremely flexible roles, Brett Phillips opened 2018 as (presumably) the last Gomez-Fiers player on a Top 10 list. Baseball Prospectus ranked Phillips fifth in the Brewers system, and a couple years of struggle, redemption, and a smashing 2017 MLB debut placed the left-handed batting outfielder’s role in focus. Read this beautiful prose, as not many prospect list roles are so clear:

“OFP 60—First division center fielder carried by his glove and pop
Likely 50—Average outfielder whose secondary skills prop up low averages”

It does not get much better than that. So, Phillips is where he is, another so-called casualty of the Brewers’ #TeamDepth, but in a sense the age-24 outfielder is exactly where his scouting role should place him on a competitive MLB team: Phillips is going to be an indispensable depth player for the Brewers, offering a fantastic glove and arm that keep him in the MLB while the potential promise of power at the plate sorts itself out. This is different than his 2015 prospect role, but it’s not bad; it’s simply more in focus.

Domingo Santana is having a bit of a “ho hum” start to the 2018 campaign, which is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s nearly worth a sigh of relief to see the right fielder opening the year with a .283 batting average and 10 percent walk rate (entering play Sunday), driving a powerless TAv of .273 (not bad!). I know there are a ton of Brewers fans who just want Santana to be a superstar, to break out from the 2017 campaign that saw 3.3 WARP on the strength of a full season of improved plate discipline, .306 TAv, and -7.6 FRAA. It’s tough to say this in the right voice, that’s not a knock on Santana, but Santana need not be a superstar…Santana is a good MLB player. It’s okay to stop there; the OFP 50 / realistic 40 grade RF has already produced nearly 5.0 WARP for the Brewers over portions of four seasons. In fact, I dare say that this is his 2015 prospect role, with the swing and approach concerns ironed out. The Brewers may have picked up Domingo Santana they had hoped to acquire.

Watching Adrian Houser throw 95-to-96 MPH rising and running fastballs during his 2.0 IP relief outing against the Cubs was a wondrous occasion. The big righty (listed 6’4″, 235 lb) threw that heat with ease, and also sprinkled in both of his off speed offerings (a change and curve). There were rumblings in spring that the Brewers hope to stretch Houser into a starter, which was somewhat surprising given the righty’s return from Tommy John surgery and the club’s handling of Taylor Williams (another TJ-returnee). But, every injury case is different, and every rehab case is different, so the Houser that the Brewers picked up in the 2015 trade may now turn in to something that Brewers fans never could have expected: a central player in a pitching staff that is built around depth and aggressive use of a bullpen (Brewers fans literally could not have imagined a quality depth-based rotation rounded out with Wade Miley, Corbin Burnes, Freddy Peralta, and Houser in July 2015, but here we are). In this context, gambling on a potential back-end starter that has already reached the MLB and demonstrated some stuff that could play looks like quite an interesting bet (at least) for the Brewers runs prevention chances. Houser will not be flashy, but he’s here. His injury may change the risk profile, meaning that he’s not the prospect he was in 2015, which isn’t bad; it’s simply more in focus.

Several aspects of player development and strategic assessment make the Gomez-Fiers trade great.

• First and foremost, as I’ve written before and is always worth emphasizing, Doug Melvin did well to acquire mostly advanced prospects who had fairly well-defined scouting roles on the day of the trade. This trade was not as huge a gamble as it could have been.

• Second, the Brewers quickly advanced players when they needed to be advanced, and allowed players with shortcomings to develop at the MLB level.
  • Santana had nothing left to prove in Triple-A, even with strike zone contact questions that were very well known prior to the trade. It was up to the Brewers to help Santana develop that hit tool and iron out that approach at the MLB level.
  • Hader falls into this camp as well; imagine if the Brewers had demoted Hader to Double-A Biloxi last year, as an answer to altitude and as a chance to get the lefty back on track to becoming a starting pitching prospect. Imagine Hader working in Biloxi as a starter throughout the season, getting that command and delivery back while he re-established his breaking ball. That could have happened; see Jorge Lopez and Taylor Jungmann, for example. Instead, David Stearns correctly assessed a need on the MLB club, and correctly assessed Hader’s strength (delivery deception and advanced fastball) and wagered that the southpaw could answer his development questions at the MLB level. These are huge player development successes for Melvin and Stearns, and if you don’t believe it, again, imagine Hader opening the 2018 season as a starting pitching prospect in Triple-A once more, perhaps this time to add innings after he found his secondary stuff in Biloxi.

• Third, the Brewers adroitly took it slow when they needed to, working Adrian Houser all the way back from a Tommy John surgery and returning Brett Phillips to Double-A Biloxi for 2016 despite his shredding the league in 98 age-21 plate appearances. In case Phillips feels like an “old” prospect, remember that he’s still just in his age-24 season in a league with an average age nearly three years older (AAA), while serving as MLB depth. Houser is in his age-25 season serving as MLB depth. Time remains with this trade.

• Finally, with nearly three full years of assessment due on this trade, it is worth emphasizing that this trade is a smashing success despite only one of the prospects truly reaching their day-of ceiling (Santana), while others forged interesting new role questions (Hader), or at the very least solidified the value of usable MLB floors (Houser, Phillips). This is exactly the type of trade that Brewers fans and analysts can study in order to think through the varying degrees of prospect risk, and the types of roles that a prospect can demonstrate (or, the spectrum that even one single role could include). A trade does not need to include top of the rotation starters, superstar right fielders, and flashy everyday defense-first center fielders in order to become a smashing success. Sometimes reaching the MLB is enough, for good player development at that level ensures that some prospect questions can be answered with exclamation points, even without bona fide stardom.

Photo Credit: Benny Sieu, USA Today Sports Images

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.

After one year, this trade raises many question marks. Granted, there’s still quite a lot of value present in the trade, both in terms of future rotation potential (or trade value) for Houston (with Fiers), and trade, controllable contracts, and hopefully potential performance for the Brewers quartet. Still, even raising these types of vacant hopeful pleasantries does not substitute the fact that one year out, what looked like a blockbuster for both sides is creeping toward a somewhat value-neutral non-event. If there’s any lesson to be drawn from this trade, however, it is that the perception of a trade can change over time, and that a trade’s legacy is certainly not finished on its consummation day, nor one year later. In 2017, this trade might still have those value questions for Milwaukee, and even in 2018 or 2019; yet, it is somewhat absurd to suggest that analysts must wait five years to assess the total value of the trade. What is more interesting is to dig deeper into those years and understand how a trade’s legacy and change year-in and year-out.

I know no better trade with which to demonstrate this point than the Zack Greinke trade orchestrated between the Brewers and the Royals. It was commonplace during the 2014-2015 World Series appearances (and Championship) by the Royals to hear Brewers fans groaning about how former President Doug Melvin traded away Championship-caliber players, but it’s easy to forget that by opening day 2013, the quartet of youngsters traded to Kansas City had dwindled to two roster spots (Alcides Escobar and Lorenzo Cain) and a total of 3.1 WARP between the 2011-2012 seasons. Interestingly enough, Zack Greinke suffered his own surface stat nightmares in 2011, waddling through a productive WARP season while ranking fourth best in terms of runs prevention on a solid, consistent Division Championship rotation. Still, the trades for Shaun Marcum and Greinke were indeed vindicated by the Division Championship and League Championship Series run, which undoubtedly netted the Brewers significant playoff revenue shares, not to mention local merchandise.

Greinke netted a strong 8.67 WARP for the Brewers before the front office traded the righty away midseason 2012, understanding that the club would not be able to defend their NL Central crown. By the end of 2012, the trade looked like a rout — the Brewers netted 8.67 WARP, playoff revenue, and Jean Segura, while the Royals controlled the contracts for 3.1 WARP worth of production; about the only benefit Kansas City could claim were those reserve rights.

Using harsh 3-Year, 10-percent depreciation analysis, as with the other sections of the Grading Trades series, one can see that the prospective value of the Brewers prospects matched up quite well with the production value of Zack Greinke; various WARP or contract surplus estimates place the trade package within 80 percent of Greinke’s expected value, which seems quite good for estimating trade value.

EDIT: Updated November 2 to add Yuniesky Betancourt. 1.5 WARP in 2010; 0.14 3-Year Depreciation ($0.5M). Contract surplus: -$5.8M. 

***

Of course, Wade Davis and James Shields may have been more crucial to the Royals’ postseason success than Cain or Escobar (not to say they were unimportant), and both of those righties were traded in a package involving the Royals’ Jake Odorizzi. It is interesting that fans almost never mention that Doug Melvin traded away a depth prospect that allowed the Royals to land crucial Championship-drivers, instead focusing on the controllable Cain and Escobar. Trades are as important to building contenders as controlling players, and the Royals instantly turned around their fortunes even while making a trade that caused much head-scratching at the time (myself included). By 2013, the Zack Greinke traded proliferated to two other deals, as the Royals matched Brewers newcomer Segura with their own acquisition of key production assets.

The Jean Segura story has been told multiple times, and it may be worth revisiting it again a few years in the future. But here it is most interesting to point out that even if Segura had an up-and-down-and-out performance in Milwaukee, the shortstop may have helped to net one of the franchise’s new cornerstones. Isan Diaz, Aaron Hill, and Chase Anderson are the latest branches from the Greinke deal, with Wendell Rijo and Aaron Wilkerson added to the family by extension of the Aaron Hill deal. And so this trade moves on and on: with Diaz, the Brewers have another potentially elite trading chip, or a potential middle infield cornerstone if everything goes right.

It is nearly impossible to write these twists and turns into the Greinke trade saga. Kansas City drew 14+ WARP from James Shields and Wade Davis, although one gets the sense that WARP sells short the situational mastery of Davis. Milwaukee received more than 10 WARP of production from Jean Segura before netting a 50-60 grade surging prospect in Isan Diaz. These figures can be added to total production received by both clubs in the original Greinke deal. Of course, even Cain and Escobar famously overcame their 2011-2012 hiccups to bolster the Royals with valuable play during their contending seasons. Prorated to normalize six years of performance against Greinke’s year-and-four-months for Milwaukee, the production value of the original Greinke deal again appears quite evenly matched:

EDIT: Updated November 2 to add Yuniesky Betancourt. 1.5 WARP (2011); $5.5M contract surplus ($16.0M total annual value). NOTE: 6.6 FRAA in 2011 (!!!).

***

So, one can only imagine the twists and turns that the Gomez-Fiers trade will take in Milwaukee. One can extend this lesson to nearly every trade, in terms of understanding that the lineage of a trade can take winding manifestations that are never imagined at the time of that trade. It remains to be seen if Hader, Houser, Phillips, and Santana impact the next Brewers contender more via trade or their own performances, or a mix of both. If the first year is any lesson, it is worth expecting another strange twist in 2017.

Related Reading:
The Almost-Trade of Carlos Gomez
Brett Phillips: Newest Future Brewer
An Ode to the Uniquely Bright Carlos Gomez
All-Aboard the Jungmann-Santana Express
The Player-Hader’s Ball

Keeping this in mind, it is worth looking at the development of each player involved in the Mets’ and Astros’ bids for Carlos Gomez in 2015. The Mets non-trade for Gomez gave fans a rare look into the different types of offers that front offices can field for a player (or set of players), highlighting the difficulty of determining the most valuable trade in an industry where value can move in many different directions. Yet if this lesson was instantly available in 2015, the trade also offers even more intriguing lessons one year later. Even if a team executes a solid trade, they may need patience to await results that match the expected value of that trade. With that in mind, it is worth analyzing the 2016 campaigns of the Gomez trades.

The Trade Assets
Both Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers underscore the reality that established MLB players can also have rough years,and non-linear paths to success. In 2016, Fiers and Gomez are each having rough years for the Astros, although both for different reasons. Be it for injury (Gomez) or inconsistency (Fiers), the headliners of the Brewers’ biggest 2015 trade exemplify the struggles of the prospects and other players involved, for both the Mets and the new Brewers farmhands. Almost everyone involved in either version of the Gomez deal is worse off in 2016, which is a great opportunity to showcase the difficulties involved with player development.

For Gomez, the elite power/speed centerfielder is finally warming up after an injury-plagued early season. Gomez landed on the disabled list with a ribcage injury, although he was ailing prior to that, too. His .185 / .246 / .250 batting line entering June does not tell the full story for Gomez. Since returning, Gomez has flashed some of those tools that make him an elite threat, posting five homers and five stolen bases over his last 169 PA. However, Gomez is not otherwise hitting the ball, as the veteran is struggling with a .230 AVG and 47 strikeouts over that same time period. One can squint and see the old Gomez building back up, however, and as Gomez continues to get back into his groove, he can build on his power, speed, and walks.

Fiers has shifted his approach toward off-speed pitching in 2016, after earning his name as a one-of-a-kind fastballer. According to Brooks Baseball, Fiers selected his rising or cut fastball more than 65 percent of his 2015 pitches; that rate is down below 55 percent this year. In place of the rising and cut fastballs, Fiers has doubled his slider usage and significantly increased his change up selections. Almost across the board, Fiers is allowing more groundballs, line drives, and fly balls within in repertoire, in place of the whiffs he saw in 2015. It’s tough to pick a culprit for his increased home run rate, as his homers are up on the primary fastball, cutter, slider, and change. It’s not as though Fiers has been bad across the board, however, as the righty is managing to shift between quality and rough outings. His 5.05 DRA paces him approximately five runs below average for Minute Maid Park, which is still respectable for a back rotation profile.

The Mets Players

RHP Zack Wheeler
The New York Times published a detailed discussion of Zack Wheeler’s elbow surgery rehabilitation over the weekend. Wheeler was to be the prize of the Brewers / Mets version of the Gomez trade, a high-rotation potential that would be worth the injury risk and (hopefully) offering much more immediate value than a pitching prospect. Despite a March 2015 surgery date, Wheeler has yet to work in a game in the Mets system during 2016, and only has a few bullpen sessions to his name.

For that potential, one dreams on the running 95-96 MPH fastball and deep breaking pitch repertoire, which helped land Wheeler atop the stacked Mets organizational chart for Baseball Prospectus in 2013. Wheeler, once lauded as one of the best right-handed pitching prospects and a Top 5 overall prospect, now has the risk side of that gambling equation speak louder than the potential reward. Yet, the Mets eagerly await his return, as the righty could serve as a valuable stretch addition for an injury-plagued rotation if he returns to games in time.

• 2016 Impact: N/A (Yet to pitch).
• Future Impact: 3 years arbitration control; Role unknown

UTIL Wilmer Flores
In the middle of May, it looked like Wilmer Flores might join his teammate in the category of “Injured Potential.” The flexible infielder suffered a hamstring injury, and was batting .180 / .255 / .280 when he hit the DL. Since arriving from the disabled list, however, Flores has turned around his performance for the Mets while also serving a crucial role as a utility starting infielder. This rare role has produced a -2.5 FRAA, but one might place an asterisk next to that number to note the fielder’s positional flexibility.

At the plate, Flores is maintaining a strong contact and discipline profile since his injury. With 11 walks and 15 extra base hits (nine homers) in 145 plate appearances, Flores is further strengthening that .282 AVG. This stretch of improvement has resulted in Flores’s most valuable offensive season of his career with a .314 TAv. BaseballProspectus noted that Flores could have heavy pressure on his bat if he landed at 1B, but the 2013 #5 Mets prospect may now possess that elusive above average in-game power.

• 2016 Impact: 1.3 WARP (.314 TAv, -2.5 FRAA)
• Future Impact: 3 years arbitration control; power bat infielder/1B.

The Astros Return

RF Domingo Santana
The biggest contrast between the Mets and Astros package was the future-oriented aspect of the Houston offering (with much less immediate access to that potential). In the context of that package, Domingo Santana was the least risky trade return, in the sense that the powerful right fielder had already cracked the big leagues. However, the MLB future of Santana had many question marks, especially in terms of Santana’s contact within the strike zone. Upon entering Milwaukee’s batting order, Santana instantly won admirers with a .299 TAv and enough walks to offset those strike outs. Santana had nothing left to prove at AAA, so the Brewers traded established left fielder Khris Davis to Oakland to open a roster spot for Santana (thereby doubling down on organizational future potential).

Unfortunately, Santana has struggled with injuries throughout the bulk of the 2016 season. These struggles include a recent setback that truncated Santana’s rehab stint. On the field, the right fielder continued the extremely high walk and strike out profile at the plate, but lacked the home run punch in irregular playing time. Still, a .278 TAv is not dreadful, especially as one considers that the 23 year old’s longest stretch of uninterrupted starts yielded only 100 PA. One could be inclined to argue that Santana’s injury riddled season hurts the Brewers in the sense that Milwaukee still has to answer his question mark in 2017, but that’s hardly a complaint given Santana’s positive bursts since coming to Milwaukee.

• 2016 Impact: 0.5 WARP (missed 56 team games thus far)
• Future Impact: Remains under reserve (approximately 1 year, 79 days service after 2016); Three True Outcomes starting right fielder

CF Brett Phillips
If Santana was the least risky prospect returned in the trade, Phillips was arguably the headliner, as the athletic CF annihilated Advanced A ball and had already earned a promotion to AA within the Astros system. 2015 BaseballProspectus scouting reports of Phillips generally painted a potential five average tool (at least) profile, even though both observers disagreed about the potential hit and power tools (50 / 50 vs. 55 / 45). Phillips’s glove and arm drove the outfielder’s value, however, largely leaving most to believe that he could start in centerfield.

Phillips’s 2016 campaign at AA Biloxi is not as thrilling as his 2015 efforts for that club, as the left-handed bat has found his game power and maintained his walk profile while also enduring a brutal slump. Over the weekend, Phillips snapped a nine game hitless streak, which was part of a prolonged .143 / .271 / .275 slump over 109 PA. Even during that slump, Phillips’s bright spots shone, as the 22 year old collected seven extra base hits and 16 walks. Now, Phillips has a chance to show that he can endure professional difficulty and respond by making adjustments and showcasing that hit tool along with his others.

• 2016 Impact: 1.52 WARP (.273 TAv, -2.6 FRAA. Overall 37th of 81 200+ PA Southern League)
• Competition: Youngest 30 percent of Southern League regulars (200+ PA median age 24); Top 40 percent competition (.690 opposing OPS). [Translation: Phillips is notably young for his league and is facing relatively tough competition.]
• Future Impact: Full reserve control; Toolsy starting centerfielder.

LHP Josh Hader
There is an argument to be made that Josh Hader was the biggest riser among the Brewers prospects returned in the Gomez / Fiers deal, given the lefty’s 50 K / 11 BB / 3 GR performance over his seven games in Biloxi during 2015. The debate about Hader is well-known to BPMilwaukee readers by now: despite a legitimate high velocity fastball from the south side, some combination of off-speed stuff, command, and/or delivery (arm slot) caused many to question whether Hader will be a starter or elite reliever.

Hader has hit some road bumps since earning his 2016 promotion to AAA Colorado Springs, but the southpaw still looks like someone who may force their way into a September call-up. Of course, the youngest age of any Pacific Coast League regular pitcher (50+ IP) in 2016 is 23, so the 22 year old Hader is almost absurdly young for that advanced league. The strike out profile has not left in this advanced league, either, even if Hader is showing some issues with command while pitching in the Rockies. Even if the role is not predetermined, Hader will probably receive every chance to start with the rebuilding Brewers.

• 2016 AA Impact: 2.14 FIP (top among Southern League regulars [45+ IP])
• AA Competition: Youngest 25 percent of Southern League regulars (45+ IP median age 24); second-weakest competition (.662 opposing OPS). [Translation: Despite being notably young for his league, Hader faced weak competition.]
• Future Impact: Full reserve control; High octane lefty.

RHP Adrian Houser
Adrian Houser was the least hyped among the prospects returned, but the righty earned a quick call-up to Milwaukee and Arizona Fall League placement (along with Hader). Last Friday, BPMilwaukee’s Kyle Lesniewski featured Houser in detail in his weekly prospect feature. Lesniewski highlights Houser’s “under the surface” improvements that preceded the righty’s Tommy John surgery.

• 2016 Impact: 3.67 FIP median among Southern League regulars (45+ IP median FIP of 3.66)
• Competition: Youngest 45 present of Southern League regulars (45+ IP median age 24); Top Third opposing difficulty among Southern League regulars (.695 opposingOPS). [Translation: Houser was near median age for his league, but faced notably difficult competition.]
• Future Impact: Injury risk increased; Role Unknown.

For demonstration, take Bruce Seid’s 2009 draft, which was driven (according to popular arguments) either by great late round value or astonishing early round missteps. Any way one slices it, Seid ended up with three 2.5+ WARP players (“Fastballer” Mike Fiers, “Khrush” Davis, and Scooter “Scoots McGee” Gennett. Incidentally three of my favorite Brewers). That former GM Doug Melvin was unable to transform the 2013-2015 Brewers into strikingly consistent contenders with this supporting cast is less an indictment of these players than an indictment of the front office’s miscalculations (or failures of imagination) during those years. Complain all you like about the early round failures, that’s an astonishingly good draft (interestingly enough, the draft return will be even better once one incorporates the trade returns for deals involving Fiers and Davis, respectively).

Alternately, take Scoots McGee’s predecessor, Rickie Weeks, arguably one of the greatest Brewers of all time and (probably quite easily) the organization’s best second baseman. One of the commonly cited “Core Players” drafted by Jack Zduriencik, Weeks easily lands among the top third of MLB players from the 2003 First Round. The median player from that round (according to bWAR) was outfielder Mitch Maier (1.5 career WARP accumulated from 2006-2012). Of course, by now everyone knows that Weeks’s career was derailed by misguided prospect hype, which unfortunately makes the Brewers’ franchise second baseman a “bust” in many fans’ eyes. Nevermind that he’s nearly 12x more valuable than the median player drafted in the 2003 First Round; one of the very best players drafted in 2003 overall; or a better-than-median overall 2nd pick in the history of the draft: Many Brewers fans prefer to side with hype over their beloved power/speed franchise second baseman.

These drafts are merely two organizational examples of the extremes that populate draft analysis. One of the basic reasons that these types of analytical and narrative shortcomings exist is that fans and analysts alike “dismiss” as a truism the fact that the striking majority of players in every draft will never make the MLB: such a fact is taken to be so clearly true on the surface that its impact is not seriously considered.

To counter this analytical blindspot, one can simply look at the median player value for each round in each draft. For this exercise, I wanted to focus on drafts that are mostly “finished,” since more recent drafts would require judging players by value metrics, organizational depth charts, and prospect rankings. By beginning a decade out (with the fantastic 2006 draft), one can find a rather clear model for how player talent may populate the rounds of an MLB draft. To construct the chart below, I began in 1999 and stopped at 2008, since I understand that even aspects of the 2009 draft remain unsettled (take Davis, Gennett, and Fiers, for instance: their careers still hang in the balance, so it’s not really safe to say that their overall value can reasonably be measured).

The spoiler alert is that due to the overwhelming or daunting fact that most drafted players simply fail to reach the MLB, by the third round of the draft the solidly median player value is “Did Not Reach MLB” (DNRM for short). One should not necessarily dismiss this as nonsense, as one must consider that teams are still (mostly) drafting within the Top 100 in the third round. So, if a team is drafting median talent that fails to reach the MLB as early as the first, second, or third round, one can use that metric to evaluate draft day approaches, expectations, risk assessment and management, bonus assessment and analysis, player profiles, hype, etc. (that’s for another day). The purpose of this chart is to simply begin the analysis, starting with the first five rounds:

In the most straightforward terms, this chart means that for the first five rounds, at least 16 players (per round) fail to make the MLB.

Incidentally, the importance of the first round should not be understated: in recent drafts, it is likely that somewhere around 20 percent of all MLB players from a given draft will reside within the first round of that given draft. So, in this sense one can weigh first round misses much more heavily than others, since that is the most likely spot to find an MLB’er (like Rickie Weeks, even, as noted above).

This lends some credence to criticisms of Seid’s early drafts, although one still must deal with the pushback from that excellent late round value (some teams failed to land 10.0+ WARP in the entire 2009 draft, let alone after the fifth round, which should increase the considered value of Davis, Fiers, and Gennett). Successful depth drafting places Seid’s efforts in the top half of MLB draft value in 2009.

One should also note how the increase in supplemental first round picks (and therefore overall first round picks) spiked the MLB player totals (especially in the 2005, 2007, and 2008 drafts). It stands to reason that the basic institutional fact of higher draft bonuses in the first round accounts for those steep MLB player totals; judging by the sheer number of replacement level players available in the first round, one might question whether an 11th or 15th or 20th round organizational player would have an equal shot at reaching the MLB as replacement depth if their bonuses were as high as first rounders. Even a replacement player bumps a club’s first round efforts into “successfully produced an MLB,” which must be a much more favorable return on investment in the eyes of that organization.

Who are these median players? For fun, let’s highlight the best median talent from the first through fifth rounds of the 1999-2008 MLB drafts:

Building a narrative and analysis of the draft, one can take two steps.

• First, one must heavily weigh the “DNRM” reality and build a comprehensive analysis of scouting profiles, player backgrounds, player competitive levels, pre-draft hype, and various aspects of organizational ideologies (mechanical & statistical analytical tools, risk assessment, bonus pool strategies, etc.). There is one sense in which all players that fail to reach the MLB are equal, but the institutional factors of signing bonuses and scarcity of elite talent render first round failures more problematic than, say, 20th round failures.
• Second, one can mine the profiles, backgrounds, hype, and organizational ideologies involving successful “median” drafted players as well, in order to effectively recognize additional replacement talent within any given system, and ultimately build an effective account of how talent is dispersed throughout a draft. In this sense, the profiles of “median” first or second round players (like Eddie Kunz or James Darnell) can potentially serve as guideposts to other replacements or depth talent within an organization.

Of course, one might eventually opt to celebrate the careers of the likes of Josh Banks or John Mayberry, etc., in order to further appreciate the weight of reaching the MLB. Even at the margins of the draft, there is talent that can help an organization in some regard. Should organizations wish to push ahead with current cost-cutting measures, thereby enhancing and maintaining their revenue shares, and extract ultimate value from the draft, they may find valuable lessons by wading through the draft median and DNRM.

Platoon splits have always existed, and teams have always tried to exploit them. In the epoch of sabermetrics, though, the sport has gained a greater understanding of the mechanisms underneath splits. One of the larger things we’ve seen is that (most) all pitchers will fare better against same-handed batters. This means that a club wants its righties to face righties and its lefties to face lefties — in other words, it wants to have the platoon advantage. Some teams succeed in this quest; others fall short. As of late, the Brewers have succeeded.

In 2015, the average major-league team had the platoon advantage for 46 percent of its batters faced, per B-R. Milwaukee had the advantage 53 percent of the time, the highest rate in baseball. This continued a trend for the Brew Crew: In 2014, they also led the majors; in 2013, they ranked third; and in 2012, they ranked sixth. (Disregard the fact that they finished 22nd in 2011, as that goes against the narrative.) For some time now, Brewers pitchers have had a leg up on the competition.

Some of this stems from the nature of the pitching staff, which tends to skew right-handed. Teams without many southpaws will have the platoon advantage more often:

On the bottom left of the graph (which shows teams from 2015), we see the Chris Sale/Jose Quintana/Carlos Rodon-led Chicago White Sox, who ran out a righty for only 41.9 percent of opposing plate appearances. Since most batters are righties, this meant they largely lose out on the platoon advantage. By contrast, batters faced a right-handed Milwaukee pitcher 91.0 percent of the time, the third-highest rate in baseball. Having more righties on your staff means you’ll perform better against righty-heavy squads — which is to say most of them — and means you’ll have the platoon advantage pretty frequently.

But the lack of lefties on the Brewers doesn’t account for everything. The team’s righties also tend to face right-handed adversaries. Last season, the average right-handed pitcher on the Brewers saw a same-handed batter 54.2 percent of the time. That’s notably higher than the MLB average of 52.6 percent. And it wasn’t just one pitcher, either — several of the big names got in on the action:

Nelson and Fiers each beat the average by a significant margin, while Garza, Lohse, and Jungmann hung right around it. Only Peralta had to deal with a lot of lefties, and even then he wasn’t in too bad of a situation. They also received some success from their notable southpaws in this area — Will Smith pitched to 43.9 percent lefties and Neal Cotts did so 40.5 percent of the time, compared to a major-league average of 29.8 percent for left-handed pitchers. In the end, it’s not surprising that Milwaukee had the platoon advantage so often.

Why do these pitchers get to take on (relatively) easy competition? For most of them, it’s because they’ve played pretty indiscriminately to this point. Only Nelson and Peralta have significant platoon splits. Garza and Fiers have no career platoon splits; for the most part, neither does Jungmann, although his is an odd case. While Lohse has something of a weakness against lefties (.283 multi-year TAv, compared to .263 for righties), it’s not too significant. In 2015, the team’s pitching sucked — but it sucked evenly, against righties and lefties. Teams haven’t had an incentive to stack their lineups with opposite-handed hitters, so they haven’t.

So can the Brewers keep this up? I certainly don’t see why they wouldn’t. According to PECOTA, right-handed pitchers will consume 87.8 percent of their 2016 innings, which would again rank among the major-league leaders. And while they won’t have Fiers around anymore, Chase Anderson (career righty rate of 54.2 percent) should fill in for him nicely. With all of the younger arms throwing from the right — only Sean Nolin comes to mind as a developing lefty — this team should continue to rely on right-handers, and take the platoon advantage, for 2016 and beyond.

On Monday, the Brewers will kick off the season against the Giants. Wily Peralta will take the mound versus Madison Bumgarner, and we’ll focus more on home runs and strikeouts than on silly peripheral statistics. Still, things such as the platoon advantage matter — the little upgrades can separate the bad teams from the good, and the good from the great. Although the 2016 Brewers will most likely fall into the former group, they should sustain their excellence in this esoteric regard.

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.)

First let’s acknowledge a few things. No-hitters are a little silly at their core. They’re a celebration of a pitching performance, yet that performance is not necessarily great. The problem is no-hitters are fixated on the idea of the hit and doesn’t take into account how many batters a pitcher walked or hit. It also doesn’t take into account defensive performance. After all, no-hitters can be accomplished even if an error is committed and errors are arbitrarily defined, adding to the credence that a no-hitter is an arbitrarily defined accomplishment. Often times, the no-hitter is not even the best pitching performance during the season. But, you know what? No-hitters are fun. They’re fun for the pitcher, they’re fun for the players, they’re fun for the fans, they’re even fun for those cold-hearted front-office members.

This year, even though no Brewer has thrown a no-hitter, the Brewers have been connected to two of them.

If one paid any attention to baseball this summer, one’s probably heard the name Max Scherzer mentioned a couple of times. And one’s probably heard the name mentioned in context to his two no-hitters. In fact, Scherzer’s two no-hitters in a single season are tied for the most no-hitters thrown in one campaign. But, what’s amazing is that Scherzer could have easily had three no-hitters this year.

On the fourteenth of June, Scherzer was pitching against the Brewers, and he had a no-hitter going into the seventh inning when Carlos Gomez hit this bloop single.

It was the only hit Scherzer allowed all game. He was just inches away from getting his first no-hitter, and little did he know he would go on to throw two no-hitters in 2015. This would have given him the all-time record for no-hitters thrown in one year.

That being said, as I mentioned above, there were seven no-hitters thrown this year, and if Scherzer had thrown a no-hitter that day and subsequently gone on to throw two more no-hitters, the 2015 season would have been the season with the most no-hitters recorded of all time. Here is how the historical data looks. The data was scrapped from Retrosheet’s no-hitters database.

The year that yielded the most no-hitters was 1884, which is an era that predates the dead-ball era and where baseball was still in its infancy. The mark of seven no-hitters in one-year has been done before, though. In 1990, 1991, and 2012 there were also seven no-hitters, which if one wants to exclude 1884, would be tied for the most of all-time in a single season.

There’s also evidence to suggest that we are in an era that has had more no-hitters than ever before. Here is what it looks like, on a per-decade basis.

Since 1875, the only decade that’s produced more no-hitters has been that of the 1960s, and it only produced three more than the 31, which we’ve already witnessed since 2010. Oh, ya, and we’re only five seasons into this decade. Therefore, if the no-hitters keep going at this current pace, then it will be highly probable that we’ll pass the no-hitter by decade mark next year.

The Brewers, though, as a franchise, are not exactly helping, in the rise of no-hitters in baseball. They broke up the Scherzer no-hitter, but on top of that, as a franchise, they’ve only thrown one no-hitter in their team history.

Here is what the data looks like for all current organizations.

As you can see, the Dodgers with their 26 no-hitters lead the pack, followed by the Red Sox and White Sox with 18. The Brewers are all the way at the bottom. They’re not the Padres — no pitcher in their franchise history has thrown a no-hitter — but they’re still near the bottom with the Rays, Rockies, Mets, and Blue Jays.

The Brewers, though, were able to help the Astros add another no-hitter to their franchise. This was mainly made possible with the trade of Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers to Houston. Fiers, then, went on to produce one of the best moments seen this year.

Even if you aren’t an Astros fan, it was hard not to feel joy at the site of Fiers’ amazing celebration. The smile, the way he launched his glove, and then jumped up in joy yielded one of the best pictures and moments in all of baseball. And at the end of the day that’s really what baseball is all about.

It’s a product that creates joy. It helps us suspend whatever is going on in our lives for just a few moments, and experience something that is aesthetically pleasing to our eyes. But, more importantly, baseball is supposed to be fun. Baseball is fun to play, fun to watch, fun to listen to, and fun to think about. It’s an entertainment product, and whether no-hitters are arbitrary is irrelevant. The fans, everyone in the stadium, and on television get’s wrapped up in the communal enjoyment of a singular moment. No-hitters are fun and for as long as they keep being fun, they’ll always be part of the game, and that’s ok.