Our own Ryan Romano broke down Lucroy’s performance several times throughout 2015. He pointed out two important factors in Lucroy’s decline.

First, Romano focused on the power outage for the Brewers’ All-Star catcher. Lucroy’s ISO dropped to .127 and his seven homers marked his lowest output since the 2010 season. Smartly, though, Romano stresses that Lucroy’s power has actually been trending downward for the past several seasons. The numbers may have hidden the decline in some ways, but his fly-ball percentage has regressed in each of the past three seasons, as has his average fly-ball distance. All of this seems to weave a narrative that’s deeper than just “injury problems” or bad luck. Even when Lucroy performed at a superstar level in 2014, his power numbers were already on the decline and few people noticed because of his other strengths.

“This arguably disturbing trend dates back to Lucroy’s breakout 2012. The aforementioned doubles helped mask it last year, but with their absence, the lower home-run totals have really harmed Lucroy.

The hamstring issue has, in all likelihood, played a role in Lucroy’s newfound power outage. Even since coming back, though, he has hit just one home run in 116 plate appearances. Obviously, he’ll end the season with more dingers than Ben Revere, but a rebound to 2012 levels won’t happen.”

[Read: “Jonathan Lucroy & Losing Power,” by Ryan Romano]

Secondly, on a more positive note, Romano argued in October that Jonathan Lucroy also suffered from a healthy dose of bad luck that affected his overall numbers. The litany of injuries — from hamstrings to concussions — undoubtedly played a role, but the underlying numbers indicate that the 29-year-old catcher should’ve had more BABIP luck, given his hard-hit balls throughout the year. If you’re not afraid of some mathematical analysis, this is a great article to peruse. If math ain’t your thing, the overall narrative is more than worth your time.

“One other thing mostly sets Lucroy apart: He theoretically deserved a great output — not just a good one. While the other players listed above (with the exception of Kemp) have expected wOBAcs around average, Lucroy’s ranked 28th in the aforementioned sample. There’s a big difference between a mediocre player who hit poorly and a phenomenal player who hit poorly; if this model accurately appraises true talent, Lucroy falls into the latter group.”

[Read: “How Unlucky Was Jonathan Lucroy in 2015,” by Ryan Romano]

*****

The Jonathan Lucroy saga in 2015 was disheartening in many ways. Many Brewers fans hoped that he would cement his status as one of the premier catchers in Major League Baseball, but numerous injury issues prevented that from happening. And even when he was on the field, the performance was relatively uninspiring. Moreover, it’s always worrisome when catchers develop concussion issues, as it can quickly become career-threatening — either having to find another position or having to quit playing professional baseball. The latter part is not nearly discussed enough and perhaps an underlying reason why Lucroy hasn’t been traded this winter.

I wanted to touch on three things that weren’t addressed in Romano’s articles above: (1) his heightened strikeout rate; (2) his framing decline; and (3) trading him or not trading him this winter.

In 2015, Lucroy saw his strikeout percentage jump to 15.4 percent, which is his highest since 2011. Luck aside, it was one of the driving forces behind his .265 batting average — also his worst since 2011, no coincidence. One could easily imagine Lucroy swinging at poor pitches, trying to jump start his season, or changing his mechanics to deal with his various injuries. I’m not sure that’s the case, though. His 5.9 percent swinging-strike rate is not significantly higher than his previous numbers (and well below his 2011 mark) and it’s not paired with an uptick in O-Swing% (28.0 percent). Thus, he’s not really swinging through more pitches or swinging at worse pitches — and his contact numbers within the strike zone didn’t vary at all — so what’s up?

One would naturally assume that Lucroy swung less often and took more strikeouts looking. But the numbers indicate that that’s not the case whatsoever. His swing percentage actually rose from the 2014 season, while the percentage of strikeouts looking dropped to a career-low mark of 15.6 percent. All of this leads me to believe that Lucroy didn’t change his approach too much at the plate last season. The significant jump in his strikeout rate — relatively speaking, of course — appears to be nothing more than noise that is likely to correct itself in 2016. That’s positive news for Brewers fans who are hoping for Lucroy to bounce back in a big way.

Secondly, there’s been a lot of talk surrounding Jonathan Lucroy and his decline in pitch-framing prowess. He had consistently ranked atop Baseball Prospectus’ proprietary pitch-framing metrics and had become a posterboy for the new way to value catching defense. Thus, when his offensive decline was paired with a precipitous drop in his framing numbers, many became doubly concerned about Lucroy and his future value.

One of the key contributors to the development of the pitch-framing metrics, Harry Pavlidis, mentioned offhandedly on Twitter that Lucroy’s framing decline probably had more to do with his injuries than anything else, such as working with a young pitching staff. In fact, Pavlidis indicates that research has shown that injuries routinely affect pitch-framing numbers. He also mentions, of course, that Lucroy’s decline has been an ongoing phenomenon — so one wonders if there’s an age curve, of sorts, for framing that impacts Major League catchers over time.

With all of that in mind, more optimistic fans can point to the injuries sustained in 2015 as the major reason why his pitch-framing numbers tumbled from the top of the league. If those can rebound in the upcoming season, it will do a lot for his overall value to whichever club employs him.

This leads to the third and final point: Should the Milwaukee Brewers trade Jonathan Lucroy prior to the 2016 season? It’s a complicated question that has no easy answer from the outside, as we have little idea what trade interest Lucroy garners. The question always boils down to two opposing sides, the “trade him for the best package offered this winter” argument and the “only trade him if the return is good enough” argument. And both sides have significant problems. The former is predicated on the false premise that Lucroy offers no value at all to a non-competitive team, which is steaming pile of manure for multiple reasons, while the latter has zero notion of what good enough means and is relying on a potential bounce-back season that is not guaranteed to come if the “right” offer doesn’t come this winter.

This conundrum leaves David Stearns and the Milwaukee Brewers in a difficult situation, as the magical “right” deal doesn’t appear to be in the cards at this point. The front office could gamble that Lucroy won’t bounce-back in a meaningful way and trade him for a package of players that could very well seem laughably light if the true Lucroy returns in 2016. On the other hand, they could gamble on significant improvement from Lucroy in 2016 and hold him, passing up hypothetical deals that could prove more lucrative than anything they could receive at the trade deadline or next winter.

Both arguments are legitimate in many ways, and one’s preferred side likely correlates with one’s risk tolerance. Trade Lucroy now and deal with the fact that you could’ve sold far too low later, or hold onto him for at least half of 2016 and suffer the potential consequences if his trade value only declines from its current state. This decision is arguably the first major decision David Stearns and his staff will have to make as members of the Milwaukee Brewers. Considering the health of the minor-league system, I believe the Brewers can afford to gamble on a bounce-back season from Lucroy and not suffer too badly if injuries or ineffectiveness drive down his trade value even further. But it is absolutely a gamble, and I’m intrigued to suss out Stearns’ risk tolerance during this extensive rebuilding process.

Breen also wrote about what a trade of this sort meant for the farm system, and that is the key to this follow-up. The Gomez trade brought back more than just Phillips. Domingo Santana, Josh Hader, and Adrian Houser each looked promising to close out 2015. But more important than the performances of those individual players was what this trade indicated about the future of the franchise: They recognized they weren’t likely to compete in 2015 or 2016, so they worked to stock the farm system with as much talent as possible.

Importantly, though, the Brewers have continued to deal players that would help them in 2016 in the interest of securing their future. The November trade of Francisco Rodriguez brought back Javier Betancourt; while Betancourt probably won’t hit enough to be a star, he is still in the minor leagues and is under team control for at least six years—which shows the Brewers are in fact thinking about their next legitimate window of contention instead of holding onto Rodriguez in the arguably-worthless hopes that he would anchor their bullpen for one more year.

The subsequent Adam Lind and Jason Rogers trades signaled a similar philosophy. One can quibble with the returns—none of the five players the Brewers acquired in the deals is a sure thing—but they all appear to be solid prospects and, most importantly, are under team control for a long time. Lind and Rogers would probably have helped the team win a few more games in 2016, but kudos to the organization for recognizing that there isn’t much of a difference between 70 wins and 75 wins and instead shooting for much better in 2017 and beyond.

Gomez would probably have been the Brewers’ best player in 2016. Were he combined with Ryan Braun, Jonathan Lucroy, and Lind, the Brewers could have had a competent offense that got them a few extra wins this coming year. However, the organization wisely decided that they would be better off maximizing those veterans’ trade value, and the Gomez trade was the first indicator that they recognized this.

One interesting side note to this storyline is how the same philosophy has spanned multiple general managers. Doug Melvin made the Gomez trade in what was actually a bit of a surprise—general managers often try to save their job by maximizing current wins at the expense of future success in a phenomenon known as a moral hazard. Melvin, though, made a move that had the organization’s best interests at heart rather than his own before announcing he would be stepping down just two weeks after the deal. Then, new general manager David Stearns stepped in and immediately continued the trend. If I had to speculate about Melvin’s motivations, I would assume that he knew he would be transitioning out of the GM role even before he made the public announcement. Perhaps he understood this was the best jumping off point to a new regime in Milwaukee. Melvin wasn’t concerned with trying to save his job.

Alternatively, though, we could view this as a mandate from ownership saying that it was time to build for the future. I have written previously that I believe Mark Attanasio is a fantastic owner, and so I would not be surprised if he decided that the team needed to move forward and he directed Melvin to do so even before the new front office structure could be put in place. Either way, the Gomez trade signaled that the Brewers’ leadership group recognized that continually fighting for a few extra wins was a suboptimal strategy and that the best way to build a winner was to look to the future.

Of course, Melvin didn’t always struggle in this facet of management. The first five years of his tenure (2003-2007) saw the Brewers draft Ryan Braun, Yovani Gallardo, Rickie Weeks, and Jonathan Lucroy, among others. Those players combined with Prince Fielder and Corey Hart, J.J. Hardy, and Bill Hall — whom the team had selected in the pre-Melvin seasons — to form a strong nucleus that helped the club make playoff runs in 2008 and 2011.

After that, however, the prospect well dried up — such that, for five years running, the Brewers have placed in the bottom five of BP’s organizational rankings:

[Note: These rankings began in 2008.]

With the aforementioned core heading to the Major Leagues, Milwaukee sorely needed to replenish its system. Melvin responded with the opposite due to the club’s competitive window. In deals for CC Sabathia, Zack Greinke, and Shaun Marcum, he sent away Matt LaPorta, Zack Jackson, Rob Bryson, Michael Brantley, Lorenzo Cain, Jake Odorizzi, Alcides Escobar, Jeremy Jeffess, and Brett Lawrie. Some of those players didn’t end up accomplishing much, but the prosperity of some of them — particularly Brantley and Cain, each of whom has played at a borderline-MVP level in the past couple years — have made many fans regret the trades retrospectively.

Inadequate drafting compounded the woes of those deals. Jack noted in his piece that the club’s picks from later years haven’t yet amounted to much. Over the past few years, teams such as the Rangers have managed to maintain a solid minor-league system despite swinging big trades, and they’ve done so by constantly restocking their affiliates through the draft and international free agency. Part of that is good scouting, too, while part of that is a willingness to spend money. Melvin’s Brewers partook in the former half of the equation while neglecting the latter half, though, and it has come back to haunt them.

With that said, Milwaukee has made recent strides. BP’s writeup of the farm system stated that it possessed “talent to makes several teams quite jealous” — a massive improvement from its standing over the past several seasons. After spending the first half of the decade in the minor-league cellar, the 2015 Brewers have taken the necessary steps to move back up to the top half.

Part of this, in fairness, happened before this year. In August, Julien Assouline analyzed the team’s drafts under Melvin, who had perhaps not received the credit he deserved. Some of Melvin’s strengths there stem from the early years, but even in the later part of his run with the Brewers, they fared moderately well. Derek Harvey commented that the club’s drafts from 2009 to 2014, under late scouting director Bruce Seid, provided them with numerous quality players that presently stock their system. Indeed, of the top-20 current Milwaukee prospects, eight — Jorge Lopez, Devin Williams, Monte Harrison, Tyrone Taylor, Jake Gatewood, Kodi Medeiros, Yadiel Rivera, and Michael Reed — came from drafts during that span, while Orlando Arcia and Gilbert Lara signed with the team as amateur free agents in that period.

Still, an improvement of this magnitude, and in this short a span, suggests something different in the past twelve months. Part of the difference stems from the 2015 draft, which has (to this point) yielded incredible rewards. Four of those top-20 prospects came to the team in June: Trent Clark, Cody Ponce, Demi Orimoloye, and Nathan Kirby. Clark stands out as the best of the bunch, but all four have intriguing upside and could continue to blossom further. New scouting director Ray Montgomery, as Harvey observed, seems to have taken off.

The team’s decision to finally rebuild has helped with that. July saw them deal away established starters Aramis Ramirez, Gerardo Parra, and Jonathan Broxton, as well as (relative) stars Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers. Those trades — which, as J.P. Breen correctly posited, meant the team had recognized that its window has closed — brought back a great deal of prospects. Yhonathan Barrios, Zach Davies, Malik Collymore, Domingo Santana, Brett Phillips, Josh Hader, and Adrian Houser now occupy various levels of the Milwaukee system; Phillips, Davies, Houser, and Hader ranked in the top 20, while Santana has already begun to contribute at The Show. Together with Marcos Diplan, an intriguing top-20 farmhand whom the team acquired in last January’s Yovani Gallardo swap, they amount to a formidable group.

Overall, David Stearns inherited a solid amount of prospects when he became the GM in August. Surveying the trove a couple weeks before Melvin stepped down, Derek Harvey concluded that the system had gone from the bottom to the upper half of the league — a prediction that, as stated previously, we’ve likely seen come true. Stearns didn’t stop there, though. In his four-odd months atop the organization, he’s made several trades to bolster the minor- and major-league depth, further improving the system as a whole.

The first two transactions came in mid-November. Stearns swapped Cy Sneed for the Astros’ Jonathan Villar, then followed that up by shipping Francisco Rodriguez to the Tigers in exchange for Javier Betancourt and a player to be named later (catcher Manny Pina). Seth Victor described Villar at the time as “a good acquisition for a team that needs middle infield depth and flexibility,” a player who won’t make a noticeable difference yet should still provide some value. Betancourt — who rounded out the top 20 — is, in Chris Crawford’s estimation, “a high-floor prospect with a fairly well-defined ceiling.” In other words, he could become a Villar-type player a few years down the road.

After BP published its top-20 list, Stearns has made a few more moves, evidently in an effort to muck up the rankings. First came the Adam Lind trade, which brought back three young pitchers: Carlos Herrera, Daniel Missaki, and Freddy Peralta. While I can certainly see the logic in Jack’s distaste for the deal — Lind gave us something to cheer for in this dreadful 2015 season, and those players always hurt to lose — I ultimately come down on the side of J.P., who expressed cautious optimism regarding it.

Not long after that, three more prospects came to Milwaukee. The day following Lind’s departure, the Red Sox sold Garin Cecchini to the Brewers for cash considerations. BP’s Bryan Grosnick called the deal “[t]he definition of ‘buying low,'” as a disastrous 2015 had caused Cecchini’s stock to plummet. Likewise, the players Milwaukee snagged in the Rule 5 draft — Colin Walsh from the Athletics and Zack Jones from the Twins — don’t carry elite pedigrees, or much upside, for that matter.

These deals nevertheless give the Brewers plenty of options for 2016 and beyond, as J.P. outlined a few weeks ago. (Plus, the quantity acquired from these transactions only increased thereafter, when the Brewers sent Jason Rogers to the Pirates, receiving Keon Broxton and Trey Supak in return.) Overall, the solid 2015 draft, along with Stearns’s willingness to trade anything not nailed down, has translated to a complete turnaround in Milwaukee’s minor-league system.

What does this mean for 2016? Well, as J.P. pointed out, the Brewers have more routes they can take at the Major League level; although few of those will likely lead to wins, the results should give the team some clarity for 2017. More immediately, it means the Triple-A Sky Sox will presumably play better in 2016. Michael Schwarz explained how that affiliate would progress with legitimate prospects filling its roster. The biggest takeaway here, though, is general optimism. Years and years of no future, at long last, appear to have come to an end. Now, more so than at any point in recent memory, there could be hope on the Milwaukee horizon.

*****

One of the major topics discussed on this site has been the Brewers bullpen. It has been discussed in depth and at length since BP Milwaukee first launched. While the Brewers had an awful season, the one bright spot was the relief corps. It was a way to focus on the positives of the season.

The interesting part is that evaluation of the bullpen has recently been a big topic in baseball. It started a few years ago when the Oakland A’s traded for Jim Johnson. Most people, including myself, thought they were nuts, the belief being it was a huge overpay, especially for the A’s who took on all of the 10 million dollars remaining on the deal. The strangest part was that this was the A’s; they were supposed to be one of the “smart” teams. Common sabermetrics orthodox suggests that spending money on closers and relievers is a bad idea.

Then last season, the Astros signed Luke Gregerson and Pat Neshek. This season, the Red Sox traded two top-100 prospects for Craig Kimbrel, while the Astros traded a number of talented prospects (including the former number-one-overall pick, Mark Appel) for closer Ken Giles. The A’s also signed Ryan Madison to a three-year deal.

So what gives? All of these teams are highly regarded in the sabermetric sphere. Why are they the ones making these types of deals? If they would’ve been made by different teams, they would have been heavily mocked.

Perhaps we’ve been undervaluing relievers all along. Interestingly enough, the Lord Commander of this website J.P. Breen wrote an article about this very notion entitled “Contention & Building Through the Bullpen” back in August. In the article, Breen discussed the notion of market inefficiency in baseball, pondering what would be the next inefficiency to bubble to the surface. He eventually landed on the use of the bullpen. But his point was that teams were not looking to uncover it. Teams had already uncovered it. The revolution was already underway.

Breen had already seen the trend, that teams were utilizing the shutdown bullpens to, “effectively compensate mediocre or below-average starting rotations.” With the combination of the Royals super bullpen, the Yankees addition of Andrew Miller, the Orioles pair of super relievers (Zach Britton and Darren O’Day), and even the Blue Jays young reliever core, those teams were able to mitigate subpar starting rotations with quality bullpens.

His main point was that the Brewers should take note of this during their rebuild. The fact that contracts for relievers still seem cheap means the Brewers should be able to buy quality relief pitching when the time is right. More importantly, the Brewers now have a healthy farm system. They should be able to use their new and improved system to fill in these important holes in the bullpen. What is especially encouraging, as Breen mentioned, is the Brewers currently have useful bullpen pieces.

These pitchers can be used in a number of ways. They can by used as building blocks or trade pieces. If the Brewers feel as though they can get a high return for one of their relievers, they should definitely make a move and look to acquire more prospects. But, while I’ve mentioned that the Brewers bullpen has been good and while it’s been discussed a number of times on the site, the question still remains: just how good was the Brewers bullpen in 2015?

A few months ago, I would have probably simply looked at one of the WAR metrics to get an idea of the situation. But, as Russell Carleton mentioned in his article, “The Kimbrel Gambit,” WAR may not be the best way to measure or look at relievers: “WAR, by its very nature, seeks to strip out the context out of a player’s results, although the major WAR indices are all aware that for relievers, that’s a little silly. In general, we find that in WAR for relievers, there is an adjustment made so that a pitcher’s WAR is inflated by a factor that is halfway between 1.00 (average leverage) and the average leverage that he faced in the games that he threw. If he normally faced a leverage value of 2.00, his WAR (for his pitching components) would be inflated by a factor of 1.5. The problem here is that while closers do pitch in 40-50 save situations each year, they also pitch in games where they are just getting work in or are filling an inning. (Here’s Kimbrel’s game log for last season. There are a few decidedly non-save situations.) Those ‘extra’ innings aren’t really what teams are paying closers for, and they are generally low-leverage, but they mean that the pitcher’s ‘average’ leverage will decrease. In other words, WAR under-values closers, even with its adjustment and here I don’t think it’s a good metric for what we really want to measure.” Russell concluded in that article that Win Probability Added (WPA) was a better way of looking at relievers. I would agree with this to a certain extent.

In August, I engaged in an exercise and asked the question of who was the Brewers true closer? I made a couple of conclusions. One was that we can take the term closer literally and define closer as someone who “closes” games. The other point was that we can look at closers through the lens of clutch. I defined clutch as the pitcher who pitched the highest leverage innings because that’s the point of the closer mentality. It’s the ability to pitch in high-leverage situations. The point is not that closers are getting paid for saves. Maybe they are, in part, but I think teams are smart enough to recognize that the save is a silly stat. What closers are really being paid for is getting outs in high-leverage situations. That success can, therefore, be looked at through WPA.

Win Probability Added may sound complicated but it’s not. What it does is it “credits or debits” a player based on how his performance affects the probability of winning a game. If a relief pitcher comes in with the bases loaded and one out and gets out of the jam, that has more value than a pitcher who came in and got two outs with nobody on. The problem is that most pitching metrics won’t take that context into consideration. This, to a certain extent, is fine for a starter or a position player, but for a relief pitcher it’s not. This is primarily because so much of his role revolves around the ability to get outs in clutch or high-leverage situations.

So now, let’s look at how the Brewers 2015 bullpen ranks throughout their history with WPA. (I went back to 1974 because that’s as far back as the results go.)

With WPA, the Brewers 2015 season was the fifth-best in franchise history. It also ranked seventh among all Major League teams for the 2015 season. Even though the team would have probably ranked higher by other metrics, it’s still a welcome sight to see the Brewers bullpen this high in the rankings after a number of years of poor bullpen performance.

Another way to look at this information is to analyze how the team ranks every year, compared to the rest of the league. While the fifth-best WPA in franchise history is good, in some years the Brewers reliever WPA might have ranked higher as compared to the rest of the league, even though their overall reliever WPA was lower.

With this ranking, the Brewers 2015 season ranks seventh in its history. While in 1974 and in 1981 the Brewers reliever WPA was lower, they ranked higher compared to the rest of the league. In 1981, the Brewers had the highest reliever WPA in all of baseball. (They also ranked 235th out of 1168 teams in reliever WPA since 1974.)

I, obviously, am not the first to look at WPA. Russell Carleton as mentioned before has already noted that WPA is a good way of judging relievers. Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs has also used this tool. In his article, he noted that the Pirates have beaten their projections the last couple of years while having a high WPA. He noted that the bullpen was a primary factor in beating the projections.

My next question then was this: Is there a relationship between WPA and beating projections? I, therefore, looked at old PECOTA projections dating back to 2008. From there, I looked at the difference in the preseason projections and the actual end of year wins, and how the WPA ranked within those differences. Due to the issue of small sample sizes, I had to split the variables into different buckets. So I put teams who beat their projections from 0-to-5 wins in the same bucket and looked at the average WPA within that bucket. I mainly created buckets of five, with some exceptions due to sample size issues.

I’m sure you can tell that these aren’t the best sample sizes, but they’ll have to do for now. With that caveat, there is a positive relationship between beating projections and WPA. Basically, the more a team outperforms its projections, the better the team reliever WPA was. The more the team underperformed its projections, the worse the WPA. This doesn’t mean that the bullpen was the sole cause of the effect on the difference in projections and actual wins. It merely means that it was probably a factor in it.

On the whole, 114 teams have beaten their projections and those teams averaged a WPA of 3.56. For the counterpart, 118 teams performed worse than their projections and averaged a WPA of -0.15. For the ones who equaled their projections, well, that you can tell from the table above. It’s the one with zero difference.

Beating projections aren’t easy, but teams who have a better bullpen seem to have a better chance of accomplishing that goal.

While WPA is a good stat for judging relievers, it’s not perfect. The biggest problem with WPA is it’s highly dependent on how a manager uses a reliever. If a manager has a misconception about a specific relievers skill set, then it is unlikely that that reliever will be used in high-leverage situations. Closers will naturally get the highest-leverage situation, simply from the virtue of pitching in the ninth inning.

Take Jeremy Jeffress, for instance (I know he’s not a “closer” but it’s the same principle). His WPA was 1.66, meaning that he performed successfully when one takes the context of the game in consideration. While someone like Michael Blazek has a 0.13 WPA even though he performed just as well and even times better than Jeffress in other context neutral metrics. The difference was that Jeffress had more opportunities to pitch in high leverage situations then Blazek.

Looking at gmLI (A pitcher’s average LI when he enters the game), Jeffress has a 1.35 gmLI while Blazek had a 0.66 gmLI. Jeffress also had a 1.44 pLI (A player’s average LI for all game events), while Blazek had a 0.58 pLI. Jeffress, therefore, had many more opportunities to pitch in high-leverage innings. The problem here is determining which one had the better season. I’m still unsure of the answer here. On the one hand, Jeffress’ pitched well in the leverage situations he was put in. On the other hand, Blazek performed well but simply didn’t get the same opportunities.

For teams, the answer is still the same, it’s not about what a pitcher did in the past, but what a pitcher will do projecting forward. When it comes to relievers, teams may then still be able to find bargains by getting pitchers who haven’t pitched in many high-leverage situations, and who performed well even without the context. Those pitchers might be undervalued by their current teams, and if the Brewers stay vigilant, they might be able to us it as an advantage.

Whatever the goal may be, having a strong and quality bullpen is a very real asset. As Carleton mentioned, it can add more than a couple of win’s worth of value, and as Breen has pointed out, it seems that teams are in the know when it comes to this effect. This is no longer the next market inefficiency but now a real strategy in baseball.

It seems many in the media believe sabermetrics to be static. This is simply not the case. It’s actually quite the opposite. Sabermetrics, as Bill James once said, is the “search” or the pursuit towards objectivity. The key word being pursuit. Sabermetrics is always evolving and trying to find better objective ways of making the best decisions. Now, objectivity is a rather complicated concept. Some believe that it is impossible to be completely objective and that very well might be true. But, that is why sabermetrics is pursuing that objective truth.

The point for the Brewers is not to remain static. To keep searching for that next “market inefficiency.” If they want to compete with the likes of the Cubs, Pirates, and Cardinals, they will need to keep an open mind on all things. The bullpen is currently a strength or, at least, was a strength. Building through the bullpen is a smart idea. They currently have the assets for the bullpen to be a strength, but considering the fact that relievers are so volatile, it may be better to move them this winter. (Maybe not someone like Will Smith who cFIP really likes and could have even more value once he’s given more of a chance in high-leverage situations next year). If the Brewers are able to get more quality young players for their relievers, then it might be well worth it.

There isn’t a perfect transition from starter to top-notch reliever. But, most relievers have flaws. Most of them only have two pitches. Some of them have command problems. For the Brewers, the next step will be to identify the best young pitchers who can’t stick it as a starter and put them in the bullpen. Don’t try and force anything. Put the players where they belong and allow them to strive in that role.

Much is made of the next market inefficiency. The true market inefficiency is having a smart and open mind. It is constantly pursuing that objective truth, even if you never reach it.

Thanks to Rob McQuown for research assistance. 

The day after Stearns took over, our own J.P. Breen posted his analysis of the move at our parent site. The Brewers’ future had been up in the air for months after the firing of Ron Roenicke, the installation of Craig Counsell as manager, and the subsequent search for a general manager. The Brewers were connected to all kinds of candidates, ranging from traditional candidates more in the Melvin mold to the extreme youth-and-numbers candidate they eventually selected in Stearns.

As Breen wrote, Stearns’s selection finally put a direction to the Brewers future. “Recent interviews and overall practices in Houston hint at what the New York native could bring to Milwaukee.” Breen wrote. “He has spoken strongly in the past about prioritizing scouting in Asia and the Pacific Rim, something that has not traditionally happened in Milwaukee. Using all data (technological and human) available to shape development and decision-making processes has also come up multiple times in interviews.”

In October, here at BP Milwaukee, Breen expanded on the possibilities the injection of youth into the front office in the form of Stearns and his new assistant GM Matt Arnold, a 36-year-old who had previously worked in the Tampa Bay Rays organization. While the anti-statistics tendencies of the Brewers under Melvin were greatly exaggerated, there’s no question Stearns and his new-age staff are going to have a different ideological approach to building a baseball team than Melvin’s crew did.

The real question, Breen asserts, is not whether the Brewers can bring their organization up to speed on their use of data and technology. Rather, it’s what new ideas Stearns, Arnold, and the rest of the organization can bring to the table. “The real difference maker in Milwaukee will be discovering the next competitive advantage that no one has exploited, the next market inefficiency, if you will,” Breen writes. “Simply using mountains data on framing, spin rates, defensive efficiency, and the like to drive coaching methods and roster decisions won’t be enough.”

Unfortunately, it’s too early to make any real judgments about Stearns or his strategies. The Brewers have been making a bunch of moves this offseason, picking up prospects for veterans like Adam Lind and accruing young, fringe players like Jonathan Villar and Ramon Flores who will have their chance to play their ways into bigger roles. Stearns has really yet to make a major move, though — a trade of a high profile player like Jonathan Lucroy or Ryan Braun or a major free-agent deal — and it’s those moves that tend to tell us more about a GM.

Much of our coverage has focused on Stearns, his new approach, and the future of the Brewers. We didn’t talk much about Melvin and his work in building the Brewers up from a perennial loser to a team that reached the playoffs twice in four seasons. Melvin had his problems — specifically, a farm system that was all but devoid of talent. Between 2010 and 2012, as I wrote in the 2014 Baseball Prospectus Annual, the Brewers farm system produced just 5.0 WAR, 3.2 of which came from late-bloomer Mike Fiers.

But Melvin built successful teams through a shrewd ability to identify undervalued Major League players who could fit into the Milwaukee clubhouse and help teams compete. Seemingly minor pickups like Gabe Kapler, Chris Narveson, Casey McGehee, Nyjer Morgan, Jerry Hairston Jr., and John Axford, all acquired for minimal expenses, contributed in huge ways to the 2008 and 2011 playoff teams. This was one of Melvin’s great talents, the ability to find the diamond in the rough, the missing piece, and to integrate it seamlessly into a roster.

David Stearns has a lot of work to do in assembling the core of the next Brewers contender. The farm system is starting to fill up again, but it will need to keep growing in order to supply the Brewers with the players they need to consistently contend again. We can be sure Stearns has a detailed plan and approach. But he’ll also need to display some of that magic touch Melvin showed in assembling those final pieces to a playoff team. Hopefully, with Melvin sticking around to advise the young general manager, some of Melvin’s magic will rub off on Stearns.