Milwaukee » Spring Training

Rymer Liriano and the Risks of Baseball

Jack Moore — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 13:57:50 +0000

Last night, Brewers outfielder Rymer Liriano was hit by a pitch and severely injured. Liriano reportedly suffered facial fractures, and the incident forced him to spend the night in the hospital for observation. The pitch struck the 24-year-old outfielder right under the brim of his batting helmet. “You know that the sound is different,” Jake Elmore, who was two spots below Liriano in Sunday’s lineup, told reporters. “That slap against the flesh. That’s when you know it’s not good.”

Manager Craig Counsell’s only update for reporters was that Liriano was conscious but that “It’s serious.” The only reported diagnosis as of last night was “fractures.” Hopefully this is an injury that looks worse than it was and that Liriano is able to make a quick recovery. Last year, Aroldis Chapman had to get staples across his skull on March 21st after taking a line drive off his head and was back in action by April 6th. The human body is capable of amazing things.

But at this point, Liriano’s Opening Day status and, ultimately, his battle for one of the final roster spots on the Brewers is an afterthought. Beyond the facial fractures, the native of the Dominican Republic almost certainly suffered a concussion. And with a hit sustained so close to his eye, vision problems could be a concern as well.

Every baseball player knows an accident like this — and that’s all this was, a pitch that got away from Dodgers pitcher Matt West — is possible every time they suit up. But this sharpens our focus on exactly what professional players put on the line every time they step up to the plate, whether it’s in a game that counts or in meaningless spring action, when players are warming up their arms and getting in their hacks.

For Liriano, even if he escapes any long-term medical issues from this injury, it threatens his best last chance to break camp with a major-league roster after flaming out with San Diego. Luckily, Liriano turned in 48 days of service time in 2014 and is thus eligible for Major League Baseball’s $34,000 annual pension — the cutoff is 43 days — as well as lifetime healthcare coverage. This is the kind of situation that shows why previous generations of major-league players fought so hard for their benefits. Their work is extremely dangerous, and careers can be threatened when a ball slips out of someone’s hand and careens 90-plus mph at someone’s body.

Baseball players, amazingly, are not paid for spring training. Liriano, thankfully, has the protection of the MLBPA behind him. The majority of the players in camps this year are not — they’re the players wearing the high numbers with no names on the back who announcers jokingly refer to as simply Minor League Guy. These players are already subject to unimaginably poor conditions throughout spring training. Should one of them suffer a similar injury to what Liriano did today, their careers could be over and they would be left with nothing — no support like the major leaguers have fought for and won, and not even payment for the labor he was performing when he was hurt.

Hopefully Liriano is able to make a full recovery and do so swiftly, and hopefully he is able to continue his pursuit of a major-league career. What happened Sunday night was awful. It is also part of what baseball players risk every day when they show up to the park. These risks are exactly why major leaguers fought for their union benefits, and exactly why minor leaguers deserve protections as well.

I Don’t Know Who’s on Third For the Brewers

Colin Anderle — Tue, 15 Mar 2016 14:52:17 +0000

Last month, I broke down the first significant playing-time battle for the Brewers coming into Spring Training: center field. Today, we’re going to look at third base, a position the team threw to the wolves last year with the late-July trade of Aramis Ramirez. Down the stretch, playing time at the hot corner went to Hernan Perez and then, as he outplayed Perez, Elian Herrera. But just like in center, the new front-office regime has acquired a handful of options who are expected to fight for the lion’s share of playing time this spring. Just like in center, too, they were all acquired for bargain-basement prices!

Let’s meet the potentials, shall we?

Tier 3: The Department of Organizational Depth

Hernan Perez

Outlook: Perez had this job for a month or so last summer, but he couldn’t hold it. To make things worse, the guy who took the job from him went to the Dodgers on a minor-league deal. That’s not exactly a good look. Perez has cumulatively played about a half-season in the big leagues, and he’s already tallied a win and a half below replacement level. The writing is on the wall with him at this point.

He’ll be 25 years old on opening day, though, so he’s not quite old enough to be completely written off. Perez just has no prospect pedigree to bank on and a major-league stat line that screams “overmatched.” On the bright side, Colorado Springs should inflate his stats nicely, so that’s cool.

Jake Elmore

Outlook: Like Perez, Elmore has been a below-replacement-level player for his career. Worse still, no less than seven different teams have cut bait on Elmore in the past five years. That’s approximately a quarter of the league who have waived, DFA’d, or non-tendered Elmore. He’s now in Milwaukee on a minor-league deal and traveled to Spring Training as a non-roster invitee. Elmore is around because if multiple infielders succumb to injury he can play all three positions somewhat adequately. It would be disingenuous to write Elmore off as a completely uninteresting player, however — he’s pitched, as a position player, for two different teams already.

Yadiel Rivera

Outlook: Of the three fringe candidates in this race, Rivera boasts the best shot at a major-league roster spot. His defensive skill and versatility, combined with his largely impotent bat, make him a textbook reserve infielder. He can play short, second, and third and leave you impressed at every turn. In fact, his glove has been considered the best in Milwaukee’s system for years now.

Rivera shot through the Double-A and Triple-A levels in 2015 before making his big-league debut in September. After that, he participated in both the Arizona Fall League and the Venezuelan Winter League. While he is a plus defender at all three positions, his bat is decidedly below average. During his minor-league career, he seems to have vacillated back and forth between two different approaches at the plate: he can hit for acceptably mediocre power and strike out a lot, or he can cut his strikeouts to a mid-teens percentage clip while simultaneously slashing his already-tenuous power numbers back to essentially zero. I’m not even remotely kidding; Rivera posted an ISO of .066 in Colorado Springs, which feels like either a typo or some kind of really crappy miracle.

Neither approach seems like one that will provide value at the big-league level, but since Rivera is so useful defensively, that’s basically a moot point. He’s never going to win an award, unless they give one out for “Least Valuable Fantasy Baseball Commodity,” but he should be able to hold gainful employment in a big-league jersey for a number of years. We should all be so lucky.

Tier 2: The Department of Fenway Park Dumpster Diving

Will Middlebrooks

How he was acquired: The Padres non-tendered him, and Milwaukee inked him to a minor-league contract with an invite to Spring Training. It’s probably the best possible situation for Middlebrooks because…

What he did last year: Middlebrooks was downright terrible in 2015. Remember in high school, when you got fired from your first job because you were too busy playing video games and missed multiple shifts? Teenage You was undeniably more valuable to that McJob than Will Middlebrooks was to the San Diego Padres last year. Really, the biggest positive you can draw from Middlebrooks’ tenure in San Diego is probably that he didn’t steal any tanks while in town.

He actually started the year as the Padres’ regular third baseman. But a nightmarish .212/.241/.361 slash line saw him lose his job to Yangervis Solarte in June. Then, because this was the 2015 Padres and no defensive tactic was too wacky to employ, San Diego ran Middlebrooks — who had never played the position professionally — out at shortstop for four starts. Eventually this circus act was shelved, and Middlebrooks was exiled to the minors. At Triple-A El Paso, Middlebrooks posted an OBP of .287 and was almost half-a-game worse than replacement level in just 38 games with the team. His non-tender was not shocking this past fall. Middlebrooks’ breakout 2012 season feels like forever ago now, and if he continues to play as poorly as he did last year, he’ll find himself looking for a new career path before long.

Strengths: You don’t become a Top-100 prospect without some kind of skill. Middlebrooks’ ability to hit for power has been his calling card since he smashed 18 homers and slugged out a .201 ISO in Double-A five years ago. The next season, despite making his big-league debut in May, he was a 1.8-win third baseman. Twenty-seven is nowhere near the traditional decline age, so he still owns that .270-20HR skill set he flashed years ago. Defensively, it’s the same story. He’s inconsistent, but at his best he’s definitely an asset. What’s more is that San Diego’s daffy shortstop experiment might actually have legs — the advanced defensive metrics like what he did there, though the usual cautions about extremely small sample sizes apply here, and he certainly passes the eye test.

Weaknesses: Conversely, you don’t get non-tendered without a few really obnoxious warts. As you might be able to tell from his OBP numbers, Middlebrooks has no patience at the plate and is routinely outfoxed by big-league — or even Triple-A — pitching. Middlebrooks’ premature decline is not merely an offensive phenomenon, either. His FRAA metrics have trended in the wrong direction for several years, and he was two-plus runs below average at both San Diego and El Paso in 2015.

Optimistic Major-League Comparison: The good news is that even a slight correction for Middlebrooks could yield fantastic results. PECOTA’s second-favorite comparison for him is 2013 Trevor Plouffe. Plouffe has been a two-plus win player at the hot corner the past two seasons, but coming into 2013 — at 27 years old, same as Middlebrooks this year — he had a career line of just +0.1 WARP. His career OBP is just .308 and he might never even hit .260, but his power, speed, and defense make up the value lost. In theory, Middlebrooks is quite capable of doing the same thing.

Outlook: It’s not that I’m not rooting for Middlebrooks — quite the opposite, in fact. The thing about professional baseball, when you get past the low minors, is that the sorts of physical gifts that used to buoy Middlebrooks matter far less. It’s an ecosystem in perpetual flux, forever adapting and counteradapting to itself. Middlebrooks was physically gifted enough to make it to, and even succeed in, the big leagues for a stretch. But the league adapted to him, and now he has to either learn to adapt back or learn how to sell insurance. The rarefied air of Colorado Springs and homer-friendly tendencies of Miller Park will give him every opportunity to showcase his power. If he learns any semblance of pitch recognition, that will be a perfect match.

Garin Cecchini

How he was acquired: Milwaukee purchased the post-hype prospect from the Red Sox in December, a deal Bryan Grosnik referred to as “the definition of ‘buying low.'”

What he did last year: It has to be a special kind of bad in order to plummet from “eventual MLB regular” to “sold for cash considerations” in just a year.

When he struggled in his first taste of Triple-A ball in 2014, it was concerning, as a +0.7 WARP season from a top prospect should be, but it was hardly the end of the world. Furthermore, in a late-season cup of coffee, Cecchini didn’t look lost. Then, the Red Sox signed Pablo Sandoval and moved Cecchini to left field. For whatever reason, this seems to have sapped his will to play ball. The player who had once been nicknamed “The Roman God of Walks” in reference to Kevin Youkilis posted a Triple-A on-base percentage of just .286. He didn’t exactly compensate in other areas of his game, either — Cecchini was two wins worse than replacement level at Pawtucket.

Strengths: Cecchini comes with the Kevin Youkilis Skill Set — average defense at third base, power that is present if not overwhelming, and a patient approach that works the count, bleeds out walks, and exhausts pitchers. Even in the post-Moneyball era, it’s an underrated skill set. In other words, it’s a profile that lacks excitement, but really what’s more exciting than someone who can contribute to a championship?

Weaknesses: Two years of evidence indicate that Double-A has been Cecchini’s glass ceiling. In making the jump from Double- to Triple-A, Cecchini struck out at a clip four points higher and lost the majority of his walks. During his second Triple-A season, these trends only got worse. Cecchini’s profile has always been the “low ceiling but high floor” type, which in light of his Triple-A track record has to beg the question: Were we seeing something that wasn’t there because the Red Sox hype the bejeezus out of their prospects?

Optimistic Major-League Comparison: Projection models don’t wear clothes, but if they could, PECOTA would be proudly sporting a “Screw Garin Cecchini” T-shirt right about now. His list of comparables are a Rachel Phelps wet dream, Quad-A flotsam like Trevor Crowe, Cole Gillespie, and Jaff Decker. Sitting atop this catalog of the crappy is none other than Shane Peterson. Like Peterson, Cecchini is pretty decent at avoiding outs and not much else. The difference being Cecchini’s overall offensive game is stronger, while Peterson is actually a plus defender in the corners.

Outlook: The days of expectations for Cecchini disappeared with his batting eye. If he figures out what’s been ailing him about Triple-A pitching, there’s still hope he can turn into an okay big leaguer. But last year was a giant leap towards career minor-leaguerdom for Cecchini and, like Middlebrooks, he’s got nowhere to go but up after 2015. Still, you can’t fault the brass for giving him a shot. All it cost was money, and money’s the cheapest thing in baseball nowadays.

Tier 1: The Department of Resellable Assets

Aaron Hill

How he was acquired: Most of the other names we’ve run through are young, post-hype prospects who were acquired for next to nothing. Hill, on the other hand, is an aging former regular who was foisted onto the Brewers in order to make the Jean Segura/Chase Anderson deal happen in January. In fact, the Diamondbacks were so happy to be rid of him that they agreed to cover over half of his 2016 salary.

What he did last year: For the first time in years, Hill managed to stay healthy, arguably because he struggled to see the field. Arizona frequently tabbed Nick Ahmed, Yasmany Tomas, Jake Lamb, or even Phil Gosselin to play ahead of him. Maybe it’s because their new front office saw Hill, and his lavish contract, as a symbol of everything the old guard did wrong. Maybe it’s that when he did see the field, he slashed a mere .230/.295/.345. For this level of production, Arizona paid a sum of $12 million. In light of that, it sort of makes sense that they’d pay him $6.5 million to stay away from their Major League roster.

Strengths: The best thing you can say in Hill’s favor is he’s been here once before, and he bounced back nicely.

Four years before he played his way out of favor in Arizona, Hill played his way out of favor in Toronto. He was almost a two-loss player when Arizona acquired him in a waiver trade. Then, over the final five weeks of the season, he nearly clawed his way back to even for the year. He improved his OBP by over a hundred points, and his slugging percent by over a buck fifty. The next year, Hill kept the momentum going, hitting .300 in regular action and posting 6.8 wins above replacement. The eight wins Hill was worth to the D-Backs from the end of 2011 through 2012 represent over a third of his career total. It could very well be that he’s the type of player who needs that extra motivation.

The Brewers Roster & The Drama of Spring

Jack Moore — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 15:54:31 +0000

I typically don’t watch much spring training baseball. As great as it is to see people back out on the field in March after a long winter, the novelty wears off quickly for me, and there are only so many games that don’t matter — games that aren’t so much games as glorified practices — that I can watch before I get bored.

Myself and those who share my attitude towards spring training are tempted to say we don’t watch these games because they don’t matter. But for many of the players in training camp, the players who are playing for their careers and to head north with a roster spot, their March performances are the most important ones they’ll put in all year, the ones that determine their livelihood and how many zeroes will come at the end of their checks.

That’s particularly true this year in Brewers camp, as David Stearns targeted a number of fringe players who are out of options in his search for young talent this offseason. All of these players must make the 25-man roster or they will be sent through waivers; more importantly, for many of them, this spring training will be their best chance at making a major-league team. Most teams have only a few of these players on the roster, maybe in the high single digits. The Brewers list includes a ridiculous 16 players who are competing for — at most — 11 roster spots according to RosterResource.com.

3B/1B Will Middlebrooks

OF Ramon Flores

OF Rymer Liriano

SS Jonathan Villar

1B Chris Carter

OF Kirk Nieuwenhuis

RP Jeremy Jeffress

RP Tyler Thornburg

RP Sean Nolin

C Josmil Pinto

IF Hernan Perez

OF Alex Presley

OF Shane Peterson

OF Eric Young Jr.

SP Ariel Pena

RP Blaine Boyer

RP Cesar Jimenez

The only guaranteed spots I see here are the ones going to Villar, Carter and Jeffress. That leaves everybody else fighting for a backup spot with the rest of the Brewers organization, a total of 13 players plus the rest of the club’s’ minor leaguers fighting for eight roster spots. Rule 5 draft pick Colin Walsh, a second baseman plucked from Oakland, may take another spot away from the gaggle of position players angling for a job.

Lots of these players are intriguing. Liriano, Villar, Nolin and Pinto have all been high-ranking prospects at some point in their minor-league careers. The rest either bring and intriguing prospect pedigree or major-league experience to the table. They were all available for cheap for one reason or another — attitude problems, injury problems, they took too long to hit their prospect peak, they don’t have a position, etc. — and all are flawed players. This one month in Arizona will be their only chance to show their talents outweigh their flaws and that they deserve a chance to play in the major leagues.

Sure, these spring training games won’t have the kind of meaning we usually attach to sports. It won’t be about victory and defeat, about the push for October or even about hope for the future. It’s going to be about things that are a little less comfortable to think about — internal competition, the difference between a stream of major-league paychecks and the end of a professional career.

But on a team that isn’t going to be competing in 2016 — as Ryan Braun prefers, we’ll avoid the dreaded “T” word — that means the most meaningful baseball anybody plays in a Milwaukee Brewers uniform this year will come this spring. It might not even come in the games we see on the field. Pivotal moments may come in a practice, in the clubhouse, a player showing he can fit into the culture the Brewers are trying to develop going forward.

As such, I probably will check out a few more Brewers spring training games than usual this year. So often in March there isn’t anything to play for other than the ever-illustrious Cactus League championship. But this season, with the Brewers predicted by so many to be afterthoughts by the end of April, the games played over the next three weeks will mean so much more than those played in the dog days of summer as the losses pile up. If Brewers fans want drama, they should get it while the getting’s good this spring.

Rolling Out the Barrel: The Fruit Salad of a Brewer’s Life

Travis Sarandos — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 15:13:52 +0000

The pitchers and catchers reported last Friday, but the real work starts today, as the Brewers hold their first full-squad workout in Maryvale. With the first Spring Training games just a couple of days away, the long offseason is really starting to feel like it’s coming to a close. No more projections, no more predictions, no more transaction news — it’s nearly time for box scores and results. Today we start by digging into the life of one of Milwaukee’s youngest prospects. Let’s roll it out:

Brew Crew Ball || Catching Up With Milwaukee Brewers’ Prospect Gentry Fortuno (Feb. 24, 2016)

Kyle Lesniewski (@brewerfan28) catches up with pitching prospect Gentry Fortuno, who is entering his first full professional baseball season. The 18-year-old is not necessarily a widely-known name in the Brewers organization yet, but the Brewers’ 18th-round pick in last summer’s draft acquitted himself well with the Milwaukee’s Arizona League team, putting up a 1.89 ERA in 33.1 innings. Lesniewski’s interview with the young right-hander offers a fascinating level of insight into the offseason plans and the spring training regimen of one of the rank-and-file members of the organization, from whom we very rarely hear. Definitely worth the read.

Baseball Prospectus || Fifth Column: PECOTA Picks Philies to Win NL East (Feb. 23, 2016)

Michael Baumann (@MJ_Baumann) explains some of the math behind Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projections by manipulating the percentages to try to get the Philadelphia Phillies, who are projected to win 65 games and finish in last place, into the playoffs with an NL East pennant. There was some hand-wringing when the projections were first released and, for the second consecutive year, they were down on the defending AL champion Royals. A lot of things went very, very right for the Royals last year, with a lot of players performing at a level that was much higher than could have reasonably been expected. So could Philadelphia win the NL East? Look, I once asked a woman out on a date and she agreed, so anything can happen, even if it isn’t likely. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try.

FanGraphs || Why We Hate The Diamondbacks (Feb. 25, 2016)

For whatever reason, there’s actually more to this article than simply having “Tony LaRussa” emblazoned across the screen in large, red letters. Apparently Dave Cameron (@DCameronFG) was feeling like an overachiever. Cameron responds to GM Dave Stewart’s remarks from earlier this week, in which he became very mad about computer projections, going so far as to imply that the computers that churn out the PECOTA projections might have a personal vendetta against the Diamondbacks for reasons only Keanu Reeves might be able to explain. The very mean computers weren’t impressed with the improvements the Diamondbacks made to this season’s roster, which is not a good sign because pretty much no one was impressed with the long-term ramifications Stewart’s moves this winter will have on the franchise.

FanGraphs || Grading The Offseason For All 30 Teams (Feb. 22, 2016)

Speaking of those moves, here’s more from Cameron, who grades the work each team did this winter. Now, as a rule I never trust a man with two first names, but here his opinions are blatantly and obviously correct, so we can take them at face value despite that. The aforementioned Diamondbacks came in with the league’s second worst grade, while the Brewers tied with the Cubs at the head of the class, as each team received an A from Professor Cameron.

UWM Post || Nine Positions in Nine Days: Analyzing the Starting Rotation for the Brewers (Feb. 25, 2016)

Wrapping up a two week series, Gabe Stoltz (@Stoltzy3) explores the state of the major league roster in the starting rotation for the UWM Post, UW-Milwaukee’s student newspaper. He explores some of the Brewers’ options for their Opening Day starter, including an interesting argument for Matt Garza, which I am not angry about at all (Comeback Player of the Year, folks).

Rolling Out the Barrel: Arizona Dreamin’

Travis Sarandos — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 14:21:50 +0000

Folks, I’ve got some great news for y’all: We are officially within a month of Milwaukee’s pitchers and catchers reporting. Though it seems so close (and yet so far), our first piece today has enough ways to fill up those days to last you into Spring Training and beyond. Let’s roll it out:

The Hardball Times || How to Survive Until Spring Training

Joe Distelheim, who is apparently Twitter-less (congratulations! and I’m sorry if you’re not) brings us 31 ways to occupy our time as we enter the home stretch before Spring Training begins. My personal favorite is picking a random team from a random year and just diving in to learn everything about them. He picked the 1954 Cleveland Indians, losers of the World Series but the record-holder for best winning percentage in the American League. I’ll be choosing my team this week, ask me about it!

Beyond the Box Score || Trade Retrospective: Matt Garza to the Cubs, five years later

Taking it back to BtBS, the site we featured heavily last week, Spencer Bingol (@spencerbingol) breaks down the ill-fated (for Chicago) trade that brought beleaguered Brewers’ starter Matt Garza to the Second City in exchange for a prospect package highlighted by Chris Archer. For reasons that were inexplicable at the time and remain so, the Cubs, a 75-win team in 2010, were in win-now mode, jettisoning a prospect who is now one of the game’s best pitchers for the present value of Garza. Although the latter vastly exceeded expectations in his debut season with Chicago, the Cubs lost the trade, even without including the massive surplus value of Archer.

Disciples of Uecker || Lucroy Defeated

Yesterday, our J.P. Breen offered his reaction to the overreaction to Jonathan Lucroy’s comments this week regarding the Brewers rebuild, given to Brewers.com’s Adam McCalvy in the wake of the announcement that Lucroy would miss Brewers FanFest on the 31st of this month. The intrepid Nicholas Zettel (@SpectiveWax) of Disciples of Uecker offered his own take on the comments, which he says are understandable yet still worrisome. If he isn’t traded before the season, which seems more and more unlikely as Opening Day approaches, Lucroy will be counted on to anchor a young roster and to help bring along a young starting rotation — hopefully, he’s fully committed to the cause.

FanGraphs || Lucroy and the New Decline

Speaking of the Brewers’ face of the franchise, Jeff Sullivan (@basedball) takes a look at some troubling numbers regarding Lucroy’s defense. Long thought of as one of the premier pitch-framers in the game, many noticed a stark drop in production from a defensive standpoint for Lucroy in 2015. As Sullivan shows in this piece, it wasn’t just a fluky drop in 2015 — Lucroy’s pitch-framing has been dropping steadily for a number of years, and he’s now dropped all the way to league average. Most troubling is Sullivan’s research that suggests that catchers who begin to decline in pitch-framing runs saved generally do not recover.