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

Major League Options

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Prospects and Depth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of course, these Brewers look very, very bad in some areas of the game. One can use Pythagorean W-L, or Run Differential (Runs Scored / Runs Allowed), to estimate a club’s expected record based on their underlying elements. In this case, the results are much uglier than .500. If one had told Brewers fans and analysts that their favorite club would be 4-8 after the first dozen games, that would probably cause a bit more pause than a .500 record. How did we get here?

• The starting pitching has been worse than many people expected, even worse than many naysayers could have imagined.

• Much of the bad starting pitching performance is due to poor fielding. While the Brewers starting pitchers are 11 runs below average thus far (!!!), these arms have also allowed four more runs than expected based on Fielding Independent Pitching (which is awful this early in the season). A 41 RS / 53 RA club might have been able to eat more innings, or given a few close games more breathing room.

• More importantly, the starting pitching’s poor performance has occurred early in games. Only Chase Anderson and Zach Davies have completed six innings of work thus far in the season, which means that in three additional turns through the rotation the bullpen has required (at least) another inning of work.

• Innings pitched workloads over nine inning games are one thing, but since the Brewers have played in so many close games, the workload has been compounded by extra innings games. Milwaukee has already played three extra innings games thus far in 2018; to put that in perspective, seventeen MLB teams have yet to play two extra innings games in this young season.

• The fielding really is bad. According to Baseball Prospectus Defensive Efficiency and Park-Adjusted Defensive Efficiency statistics, the Brewers fielding unit is easily in the bottom third of the MLB. This is somewhat surprising given that (a) the Brewers had a relatively middle-of-the-road fielding unit in 2017 and (b) the Brewers’ offseason moves largely were meant to improve the defense (see Eric Sogard, Lorenzo Cain, and Christian Yelich transactions as examples).

• Of course, the batting performances thus far have been terrible. In fact, based on the 2018 National League and three-year Miller Park factor, the Brewers have average nearly one run below average per game. The bats have scored five or more runs in 5 games thus far; the trouble is, when they are not scoring runs, they are not scoring runs. In this department, the Brewers have also scored two-or-fewer runs in 5 games thus far. You can say what you want about the pitching, but you’re not going to win many 0 run support games.

• Beyond the performances, the poor play on the field has been compounded by injuries. Currently, Christian Yelich and Corey Knebel have joined Jimmy Nelson, Boone Logan, and Stepgen Vogt on the disabled list. Meanwhile, Lorenzo Cain is also nursing a day-to-day injury, which produced the club’s listless batting order that appeared in last night’s loss in St. Louis. There’s no other way to say it: the Brewers have a pretty good team on the DL right now, which is certainly not an excuse for poor play (especially for a team that was supposed to call depth its strength), but is one explanation for the gloomy attitude among Brewers fans.

• Ultimately, there also seems to be this attitude among Brewers fans that since success was unexpected in 2017, every game in 2018 would be a referendum on those expectations. It is as though Brewers fans are simultaneously terrified and angry about the mounting poor play, while also angrily pounding their fists in vindication: “See, I told you the rotation was bad! See, I told you this wasn’t a good team! The front office was fooled by their 2017 team!” That sort of attitude does not help anyone, but in an era where fans identify more with roster-building and playing along as General Manager, rather than imagining themselves as ball players and aligning themselves with labor, this produces fan sentiments that are sensitive and easily bitter towards shortcomings on the field.

So what’s going right? According to Baseball Prospectus, first and foremost, the Brewers pitchers are yielding relatively high percentages of ground balls and pop-ups. This essentially means that the pitchers are doing their job of limiting hard contact and keeping the ball on the ground. Given the general career fielding profiles of the Brewers defense, one might expect the Brewers’ Runs Allowed profile to self-correct should Milwaukee arms continue to allow solid groundball and pop-up percentages. Additionally, although the Brewers rotation has not been designed to strike batters out (48 of 269 batters struck out thus far), they are limiting the walks (22 of 269 batters). While the home run total must come down, thus far the strikeout-to-walk ratio is a sign of success.

Of course, it is more difficult to see the silver linings with the Brewers offense. In fact, the Brewers bats have batted-ball statistics that their pitching staff would like to see: Milwaukee batters are thus far keeping the ball on the ground and popping up at strong percentages, which is not a good trend to see for an offense. Despite all this, it is worth noting that the Brewers True Average of .246 is basically around the league median; currently, a .258 TAv is a Top 10 performance among MLB teams, and six teams have TAv between .245 and .249. It is worth noting that, thus far, the Brewers batters have ended significantly more plate appearances after the first pitch in 2018 than 2017, but they are not succeeding in those plate appearances: their .305 / .317 / .441 batting average / on-base percentage / slugging percentage slash line is notably below average for first pitch plate appearances.

One key silver lining statistic that the “home run or nothing” vultures may be thrilled to see: the Brewers are significantly limiting their strike outs thus far (near 10 percent improvement), knocking the ball into play more frequently. Their home run rate has plummeted from 3.7 percent in 2017 to 2.1 percent in 2018 thus far, which is certainly something to continue watching. As Milwaukee continues to knock the ball into play more frequently, they must change their orientation away from a groundball and pop-up team. “Home run or nothing” is not a bad offense if the home runs mean a club is not grounding out and popping up.

As the season progresses, it is worth tracking home runs, fly balls, and runs scored per game across the MLB. Thus far, the run environment has deflated, which is another interesting element to consider regarding the Brewers’ roster construction. Compared to the run environment of 2016-2017, the Brewers pitching staff is even better than its current performance, but the deflation in runs scoring amplifies every shortcoming on the mound. Alternately, it is worth questioning whether a shift in the ball is affecting batter across the league. Given MLB efforts to speed up the pace of the game, as well as their ambivalent responses to the “bad press” of various (independent) corroborations of juiced baseballs during 2016-2017, it is plausible that MLB could have put the lid on the juiced ball.

Ultimately, this is not “small sample size” warning to throw out the analysis above: the Brewers have several shortcomings that cannot continue. The bats cannot continue to walk at low rates, or hit the ball on the ground, or pop up. Somehow, adjustments at the plate must center around maximizing patience and discipline to drive the ball around the ballpark. The fielding cannot continue their inefficient play, and this has nothing to do with errors; errors are one thing, but inefficiencies around the diamond are hurting a Brewers pitching staff that is meant simply to feed a defensive unit. In fact, the arms must continue to feed ground balls and pop-ups to their fielders…that’s one trend that should be maintained.

Yet, so long as Christian Yelich is injured, so long as Jimmy Nelson is injured, so long as Corey Knebel is injured, so long as Stephen Vogt and Boone Logan are injured, it is worth seeing a club scraping by at .500 as an extreme strength. #TeamDepth has already been tested, and the club is doing what many of us expected they would do anyway: they are playing in close games, night after night, and must use their strong bullpen and fielding to make that equation work. Now the equation of players executing that strategy have changed, which is not an excuse; indeed, that’s the whole point of #TeamDepth. It’s worth punting this 6-6 start, considering each .500 point as a 0-0 event from which the team can be newly evaluated. Put aside the 4-8 run differential, even: we know what adjustments the Brewers need to make, and we know they have one of the deepest clubs in the game to attempt to execute those adjustments. Now it’s time to see if it works.

Photo Credit: Jeff Curry, USA Today Sports Images.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo Credit: Benny Sieu, USAToday Sports Images

Those narratives will undoubtedly carry into 2018 guided by the very same contradictions: Milwaukee will indeed be developing many young players at the MLB level (including Lewis Brinson, Josh Hader, Brett Phillips, and Brandon Woodruff), while the team also has several opportunities to improve with established players (either through trades involving their prospects, through free agency signings, or both).

To put it another way: GM David Stearns can take the roster in several directions, and certainly has the resources available to contend while continuing to develop some players.

One way to assess player value, and therefore roster needs, is to estimate the surplus value that each player (and their contractual situation) provides the team. Value is assumed to be production and scarcity, recognizing that a player is not simply valuable to a club based on production, but also based on cost and the general availability of that skill set within the MLB. Surplus is the difference provided between a player’s production and their contract, recognizing that these aspects can be double-counted (a team simultaneously receives a player’s production on the field and their production gauged against their contract). Based on these assumptions, I tracked the surplus value of the Brewers 40-man roster (as of October 20, 2017) by using harsh depreciation to reduce each player’s maximum value (recognizing that a player’s performance typically declines over time save for rare cases).

The following chart tracks changes in surplus entering 2017 to entering 2018, while also assigning an Overall Future Potential (OFP) role for each Brewers roster member:

What these surplus numbers can suggest, in the abstract, is the difference between “the number of the wins above replacement” a player will produce during their contract and the OFP a team might receive if they traded the player at this point in time (alternately, they might suggest a contract range; for example, if the Brewers offered Neil Walker a $30 million contract, they would likely retain some surplus value during that contract).

Using the extremely interesting and difficult case of Jonathan Villar to interpret this table, his 2016 campaign and contract control years still loom large enough to suggest that the Brewers should not move the infielder for cheap; but the shortstop-turned-bench/utility option does mean that Villar’s ultimate role is trending downward, meaning that if Milwaukee believes that role decline is real and will continue to materialize, moving Villar for less than his top value could offset the issues of rostering a declining role. This should outline the difficulty of making roster decisions: in the case of Villar, there is not necessarily a right answer.

I should add that surplus value is abstract in the sense that there is a point at which additional surplus does not provide a team transaction value. Scooter Gennett and Chris Carter should be the most specific examples of this phenomenon in recent Brewers memory, as both players retained solidly positive surplus value entering 2017, but were essentially unwanted on the trade market and therefore expendable for nothing. Following this example, a rule of thumb might be to expect any type of roster move once a player’s surplus value dips below $20 million (or, less than three wins above replacement). Looking at the table of the Brewers roster above, this fact should seem intuitive with many of the names on the list (for example, it is highly unlikely that the Brewers would be able to move a player like Andrew Susac or even Eric Thames for their maximal surplus value).

By averaging each player’s 2017, 2018, and OFP surplus value, and comparing that to their change in value over time, a rather intuitive 2018 roster emerges. In this case, I excluded each player with a Negative-50 percent change in value (ex., a 50 percent decline), which produced need at Catcher, Second Base, and Right-Handed Pitcher, with additional question marks about the Utility roles. This is a rather succinct picture of the actual needs for the 2018 Brewers, and it also shows that if a few key free agents are retained, or similar free agents from outside the organizational signed, the Brewers can assemble quite a good roster:

These tables need not force an analyst to rely on numbers alone in order to validate roster decisions. Compare the following descriptions of potential role upgrades for the 2018 Brewers with those players’ statistical trends, and find nearly 20 roster spots (on the 40-Man) that can be upgraded for 2018:

The benefit of this exercise is that additional roster functions can be analyzed, either through descriptive or analytical means. For example, one could compare some of the best Rule 5 Draft Roster Protection candidates with the players above in order to find the most salient moves for the future value of the organization. Via Brewerfan.net:

Once again, this should exhibit a rather intuitive process of evaluation. If the future value of a catcher such as Jacob Nottingham is better than either Stephen Vogt, Andrew Susac, or Jett Bandy (or all three players), it should not hurt to lose one of those players in order to roster Nottingham. Each of these catchers are good candidates for contractual non-tenders for this reason (and, indeed, catcher is a position that the Brewers can upgrade in terms of depth behind/alongside Manny Pina). Similarly, allowing Matt Garza to walk via free agency and rostering Marcos Diplan, Freddy Peralta, or Devin Williams in that place should improve the pitching surplus of the roster. Where it gets more interesting is considering a player like Mauricio Dubon, and whether he simply takes the spot of free agent Eric Sogard, or overtakes Villar or Hernan Perez.

Using these analytical approaches should validate the fact that the Brewers are in a unique position entering 2018. They are a good team, indeed, that also features many up-and-coming players to develop at the MLB level and many declining roles that can be replaced. Where surplus value becomes useful is targeting particular trades, or simply determining when a player should be released or non-tendered.

A player like Keon Broxton, Perez, Susac, or Vogt should demonstrate this difficult decision-making process, and perhaps cause fans to realign their expectations that these types of players can receive impactful trade returns to Milwaukee. Given the packed outfield for 2018, the Brewers could conceivably release a player like Broxton should trade partners refuse to bite with a 45-to-50 OFP / quality depth trade (matching Broxton’s $11.5M-to-$19.8M surplus), for the trouble is that Broxton’s expected role is indeed declining (and any particular trade partner will also know that). This should not simply be viewed as picking on Broxton, as the point exists for Vogt and several other players on the roster.

“Slingin’ Stearns” earned his nickname for wheeling-and-dealing on the trade market during his first offseason in Milwaukee, but that reputation has calmed over time (not surprisingly, as the club completed their rebuilding process). Stearns did not show any hesitation in aggressively using waiver claims and releases to define his 2016-2017 offseason, and now the GM’s reputation may be defined by how effectively he clears roster space for what’s next: refined future development and improved MLB roles to contend in 2018.

The 2017 season proved that these goals can align and coexist within the same roster, so there are no excuses for failing to improve this strategy by learning from the 2017 progression.

Photo Credit: Jim Young, USAToday Sports Images.

I’m not entirely sure why that is, but I have a theory.  It’s a pretty good theory in that explains why they would be good early and bad late, not just one or the other. It’s a multi-part theory and there is some luck involved, but the main thing is that…

• The best Brewer hitters have big platoon splits.

Once recently in a chat, Keith Law called Travis Shaw a platoon player, which made me mad for 5 seconds, until I realized he has a point, and that point carries over to Thames as well. It’s especially telling that the Brewers are super weak in the 8th inning where managers are more willing to play match ups with pitchers as opposed to just using a closer. Shaw has an OPS of .937 (.312 TAv) against opposite side pitching while falling to .777 (.254 TAv) against same side. Thames has the biggest split on the team (outside of Stephen Vogt’s ridiculous .763 versus .220), dropping from .907 (.312 TAv) to .693 (.240 TAv) when he faces a lefty. The two best Brewer hitters become very ordinary when opposing managers play it smart.

Against right-handed pitching, Thames, Shaw, Sogard, and now Neil Walker are studs, and both Braun and Domingo Santana are still effective against same side pitching. Against left-handed pitching, especially late-in-game lefty specialists, it can get ugly for the Brewer southpaws. Platoon split issues affect every team, but rarely is the effect this dramatic with arguably two of the best three hitters on the team.

• Strikeouts and Home Runs

It is a Brewer beat writer cliche to bemoan the fact that the Brewers can only score via the home run. Hitting home runs isn’t a bad thing at all, but there is some truth to the one-dimensional nature of the Brewer attack, and it can bite them in a big way in certain circumstances. The Brewers are an extreme home run hitting team, tied for 6th in baseball with 1.44 per game.

At home, they are the National League’s most home run heavy team with 1.52 per game, but they have a fairly severe split as they average only 1.35 home runs per game away from Miller Park, 11th overall and 7th in the National League, and they have scored 24 more runs at home than away despite playing one more road game.

When the Brewers play a road game in a homer unfriendly park, as they did recently in San Francisco, they often have trouble scoring runs. Even though they won the series in Los Angeles’s hitter-unfriendly park, they only scored 7 total runs in doing so.

It’s a good thing the Brewers do hit home runs, because they don’t hit much of anything else. The Brewers strike out a ton. They have an incredible knack for swinging and not making any contact. Milwaukee is last in baseball with 9.82 strikeouts per game, one of only two teams over 9.5 strikeouts per game. The Pirates strike out only 7.31 times per game, with the Cubs and Cardinals are solidly in the eights. Strikeouts aren’t the worst thing in the world, but when you attain the Brewers’ level of futility it does have an affect on your ability to string hits together, and move runners over.  Against lesser starters, or even opposite side aces, the Brewers have been more than competent on offense, but against late-inning fire-ballers and platoon specialists, the home runs go down, the strikeouts go up, and you’re left with a completely impotent lineup.

There is a certain level of consistent production necessary to score runs without the aid of a home run. Teams need to be good enough at hitting (and walking) to allow good fortune to string a few together, but this simply never happens with the Brewers late in games. If the hits are too infrequent, the streaks will also be infrequent.

• The Fix

This is a tough problem because the practical solution to the platoon issue involves more frequent pinch-hitting for Shaw, Thames, and the lefties in general, and that can always come back to bite you later should the lineup turn over. The strikeout problem is simply endemic to team composition. It’s frustrating to see a team repeatedly jump out to leads only to give them up later and the fits and spurts of a home run heavy team can be maddening. Perhaps the best strategy, as the pitching has improved in the second half, isn’t to hit more later, but to defend more later. September call-ups are almost at hand, and while guys like Lewis Brinson (hurt, unfortunately) and Brett Phillips are still working on their hitting, they remains good-to-elite fielders. Spelling Santana or Braun (or both) in the late innings for defensive purposes could pay big dividends down the stretch, especially given that the Brewers don’t score runs late anyway. The high-level Brewer prospects are almost all good defensive players, and this could very well be the perfect use for them.

Sometimes it makes sense to turn into the skid.

Photo Credit: Isiah J. Downing, USAToday Sports Images

New acquisition Stephen Vogt provided all the offense the Brewers needed in their win on Friday night, hitting two home runs to push the Brewers to a 3-2 victory. Those two homers equaled half of his season output with Oakland, which helps to explain why he was available on the waiver wire in June.

Vogt’s two home runs came on low pitches: a 93 MPH sinker from Edinson Volquez on the inner half of the plate and a 96 MPH fastball from David Phelps middle away. While the Volquez sinker was clearly a mistake in location, the pitch from Phelps was where pitches want to attack Vogt. He spent two years as a full-time catcher in Oakland, and the book on him was to throw away, preferably low:

Whereas before 2017 Vogt was still productive facing this plan (.286 and .262 TAv in 2015 and 2016), the bottom seemed to fall out this year. The fly ball revolution has been one of the biggest stories in baseball this year, but Vogt is hitting more ground balls than ever. His current ground ball percentage of 38 percent is a career high. Even worse, when he is hitting the ball in the air, he’s been ineffective with a 19.6 percent infield fly ball percentage.

Looking deeper into the numbers, Vogt can still catch up to a fastball and send it far. Before coming to Milwaukee he was slugging .511 on four seam fastballs, slightly higher than the previous two years. Unfortunately, Vogt has been sub-replacement level on every other pitch this season. Vogt used to be able to generate power on sinkers, curves and cutters, forcing pitchers to choose wisely when deciding what to throw, but that has been gone for two months. Pitchers have picked up on this and are throwing him fewer hard pitches as he flails at the breaking stuff. As a thirty two year old catcher, Vogt will probably never return to his peak performance, but as part of a catching platoon who can punish fastballs, Vogt can be reasonably productive over the next few months.

Eric Thames received a two day break last week to take a break and try and reset himself due to his recent struggles. The rest was preceded by a ten game stretch where Thames went 3-37 with three walks. During the slump, breaking balls became a serious bugaboo:

The breaking balls were causing so many problems that he couldn’t hit fastballs anymore. So, upon his return to the lineup, Thames went 2-6 with two walks and a homer over the two games. The home run came on a 92 MPH fastball middle in. While that’s a pitch that someone like Thames should crush, he hadn’t been. We’ll see if his renewed focus leads to April results.

The home stand continues as the Baltimore Orioles make their first visit to Miller Park since 2014. The Orioles recently endured a streak of twenty games where they allowed at least five runs, which saw them sink to fourth place in the American League East.

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Brewers Claim Vogt
Brewers Revolving Waiver Claims

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Brewers Prospects (@BrewerProspect) June 28, 2017

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

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

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

The Brewers have gotten fine production out of the catcher position, as Bandy and Manny Pina have combined to hit .249/.317/.409, slightly above average for National League catchers (103 Split OPS+ per Baseball-Prospectus). But Bandy’s performance has utterly tanked in June. He was just 2-for-38 with 17 strikeouts this month, a far cry from his ridiculous April (1.010 OPS) or his passable May (.688 OPS). His hot start was nice while it lasted, but it’s clear the other shoe has dropped.

Vogt and Bandy have had almost indistinguishable seasons thus far. Bandy’s line sits at .211/.287/.380; Vogt finished with the Athletics at .217/.287/.357. This could very well be a lateral move, but I love it for the Brewers. Vogt has been substantially better at the plate in June. His excellent plate discipline hasn’t left him, and it has powered him to a .229/.357/.371 line in 15 games this month. Perhaps not All-Star material, but another on-base threat in Milwaukee’s powerful lineup would be a real asset.

Most importantly, the opportunity cost of this move was virtually nil. No prospects are blocked and none were traded away. The only price tag is the money remaining on Vogt’s $2.95 million contract for this season. Additionally, thanks to the late start to his career, Vogt is still arbitration eligible and is under team control until 2020.

Vogt is 32, and even as someone who didn’t receive consistent playing time until later in his career, playing catcher for that long takes a toll on the body. The odds that he rediscovers All-Star form with the Brewers are pretty slim. But Vogt at least has that history to fall back upon. Bandy has never played at a level anywhere near what he showed during his absurdly hot April, and he likely never will again.

I love the fact that the Brewers were ready to pounce when a player like Vogt became available. The cost here is minimal, as Vogt will earn roughly $2 million for the rest of the season. If the Brewers weren’t willing to make that kind of investment to improve the team in an improbable first place season, I’d question ownership’s priorities. Especially considering the Wild Card is looking like it will almost certainly come out of the National League West, with the Rockies leading the Cubs by 7.5 games for the second Wild Card slot, every little bit of improvement the Brewers can get will be critical.

When Oakland waived Vogt, it was a perfect opportunity for the Brewers. Vogt fills a need and has a history of success. Catchers who have hit like Vogt has in the past rarely become available midseason without a steep price. Maybe Vogt will prove to be finished, but the Brewers have nothing to lose by seeing what’s left in the tank.