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Bandy-Maldonado

Here, following the offseason treatment, I am including major deals from July 2015 (the arguable start of “Rebuilding”) through the present day, meaning that these moves are not entirely Stearns’s trades. Indeed, the Zach Davies / Gerardo Parra trade and the Carlos Gomez & Mike Fiers return remain two reasons that the Brewers did not need to “tank” and design a “scorched earth” rebuild that completely reconstructed the organization. Coupled with draft signings by the late Bruce Seid (such as Jacob Barnes and [soon] Brandon Woodruff), as well as graduated top prospects like Orlando Arcia, and superstar Ryan Braun, the “rebuilding” Brewers have remained competitive due to several different talent streams entering, remaining, and graduating through the system.

Trade Surplus Depreciated WARP & OFP Summary:

As a reminder, I will be following the historical model of Overall Future Potential (OFP) production drawn from the history of MLB performances. Scaled for prospect risk, here’s how those prospect levels can be valuated, with 50 OFP being an “average” MLB player:

Last check-in, here’s how the Brewers’ trades looked. Given Zach Davies’s quick ascent to the MLB, I forgot to add him in this list, so his trade will be featured below.

Following this set of deals, it should be interesting to note that while the Brewers system prospects have had ups and downs, the players traded away have exhibited true depreciation within one year. This should demonstrate one benefit of using a depreciation model to assess future player value, which is the model I have been working with throughout the offseason; players do depreciate in terms of production. Jonathan Lucroy, Jeremy Jeffress, Gerardo Parra, Carlos Gomez, Mike Fiers, Adam Lind, and Jason Rogers all demonstrate this, and it should be noted they demonstrate this without completely crashing their value in the meantime (especially in the case of Lucroy). Khris Davis is perhaps the worst counterexample, as Stearns almost certainly sold low on the slugger, who also deserves credit for making adjustments and shifting his approach in Oakland.

A few quick notes:

• The Lucroy-Jeffress and Gomez-Fiers deals shifted value for completely different reasons. The former relies fully (thus far) on problematic performances by the players the Brewers traded away, while the latter is improving in value both due to struggles by Gomez and Fiers and improvements by Domingo Santana. The Gomez-Fiers deal remains one of the strongest deals to build the Brewers system, even with Josh Hader’s recent struggles, and Brett Phillips’s graduation solidifies at least the 45 OFP grade (which is not nothing), while the ceiling remains to be seen.

• Hidden in the middle of this table is the Francisco Rodriguez trade, which was one of Stearns’s worst trades on the day it occurred. But thankfully, trades are not solely graded on the day-of, and post hoc analysis loves Manny Pina’s development into (at least) a split time catcher at the MLB level. K-Rod has not been terrible, for what it’s worth, but when that contract winds down to its last year the surplus value really depends on short-term production rather than longterm outlook. This hurts the K-Rod score as much as it hurts Lucroy’s assessment in Texas.

• Let it be stated that the Khris Davis trade return was solid (if not spectacular) on the day-of. But it’s great to be reminded that prospect stock can depreciate, too. Fortunately, scouting reports suggest that Jacob Nottingham can remain behind the plate, answering one previous question. But if that power (and bat) does not come around, it may not matter as much; it is getting more appropriate to highlight, say, the 40-45 end of Nottingham’s grade (still means he reaches the MLB) than the 55 end that helped him reach Oakland’s Top 10. Of course, remember that Manny Pina was probably a 40-45 grade minor leaguer when Milwaukee acquired him, so…you know the rest.

• I believe there could be some reason to reassess prospects like Freddy Peralta or Ryan Cordell, who I would rate as valuable depth options for the system. However, for the purposes of this exercise, there is not necessarily enough non-statistical information to fully develop a new scouting grade. So perhaps a few prospects in this table deserve an asterisk next to their grade.

Turning from the “earlier” trades to the 2017 offseason, one can see how Stearns developed the surprising 2017 contender. It is interesting to note that for the offseason coverage of the club, so many of us (myself included) completely failed to properly price the GM’s immediate value for these trades.

For example, Mauricio Dubon was never (and probably will not be) the prime value of the Thornburg deal. What makes the Thornburg deal so amazing is that, given Thornburg’s career development, a straight-up Dubon-for-Thornburg deal would have been solid. Yet, Stearns did not stop there; the GM managed to return not just Dubon, but also a legitimate MLB asset in Travis Shaw, as well as two total lottery tickets (exemplified in Yusion Coca, the Player-To-Be-Named-Later who completed this deal). This trade should continue to “give” to the organization, whether it is in the form of Josh Pennington or Coco being included in a future trade (they are sufficiently far from the MLB to be traded once more), or Dubon working in a utility role or second-tier MLB starting role.

A quick word: These numbers are indeed abstract! The Brewers claim approximately $472.2 million in depreciated surplus value from these trades, which roughly translates to 67 WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player) within the system. These 67 WARP could be maximized and turned into 87 market-rate WARP, they could remain steady over time, or they could further depreciate to 49 WARP. These figures are abstract, of course, because they incorporate risk into the system, and can be cashed out any which way; if Stearns cashes out 87 WARP within the next two years, the Brewers will have quite a competitive team; if these players remain merely competitive or decline further, it will be questioned whether more trades were necessary. The players could continue to depreciate, and many could fail to reach the MLB (if they are prospects). Stearns can cash out surplus through trades or development. So these numbers should not necessarily be interpreted to apply to any timeframe; that’s up to the GM to determine.

Since I’ve already focused specifically on the Jett Bandy-Martin Maldonado deal recently, I will not dive deeper into that deal except to emphasize the importance of post hoc trade analysis. Returning to a trade after the fact, with the proper tools, is not simply “using hindsight,” but rather healthy Benefit-Cost Analysis. Moreover, returning to a trade after the fact, with the proper tools, is an opportunity to potentially sharpen those analytical tools in order to provide better day-of trade analysis. But of course, the Bandy trade is not yet complete, nor are most of these deals, really. So, by returning to these trades with analytical methods over time, one can come to understand organizational value as a malleable entity that is never truly solidified at one point in time. This is arguably yet another reason to oppose “rebuilding,” or to opposing “winning now,” or any extreme organizational strategy; it is also possible to never build an organization, or to build an organization through contrarian means (as Stearns is doing). There should be no reason for an MLB club to fail to simultaneously build for the present and future, save for a lack of creativity.

(1) Grading Thames
Several sources of projection have outlined expectations for Eric Thames in Milwaukee, so I’m not going to attempt to project Thames’s statistical performance in Milwaukee. Instead, I want to look at the opportunity cost of Thames, as well as the potential value from his scouting profile. Really, my analysis of both Thames and Thornburg will depend on your feelings of WARP; whether or not you believe that WARP adequately captured Chris Carter’s value to the Brewers is going to be a factor that impacts how you view the slugger’s surplus value, for instance (a similar issue will arise with Thornburg below).

In my last analysis, I estimated that in terms of contractual value and production, Carter was worth between $18 million and $25 million to the Brewers (the main focal point here is not to consider the fact that he may have cost between $8 million and $10 million in salary arbitration, but that the Brewers could release Carter without spending a dime [and they did just that], which frames his contractual value). The most interesting note on Thames is that the slugger has changed his approach and mechanics while working in the KBO, which places a different lens on his outburst in that league, and also changes his scouting outlook in the USA. Beyond the Box Score features a detailed look at Thames’s swing in the KBO, which shows some development from his MLB swing.

If one attempts to balance Thames’s winding career path with his recent KBO superstardom, a “punt” scouting grade of 45-50 may be in order for the age 30-33 first baseman’s contract. Yet, visions of Jose Bautista come to mind whenever someone says “late 20s mechanical adjustment,” as the Blue Jays’ iconic slugger was little more than a .239 / .324 / .398 slasher through 2008 when Toronto acquired him. The idea that a player can unleash his power after his prime development years is not implausible, and indeed some of those players become superstars (Edwin Encarnacion, Bautista’s teammate, is another example).

In 1,000 scenarios, imagine that Thames reaches 40 OFP 900 times ($1,800M), 50 OFP 80 times ($2,976M), 60 OFP 19 times ($1,452M), and Jose Bautista once ($218M): the Brewers still come out ahead, even if in 90 percent of scenarios Thames effectively busts (0.93 WARP over four seasons). Their total surplus, in this scenario, would be approximately $2.8M. So, the Thames contract is a wash at worst, and at best a fantastic opportunity to sign a foreign league superstar that was simply a late bloomer. Now the only question is if Thames ends up closer to the 0.1 percent odds of breaking out as an MLB superstar on the strength of his KBO adjustments.
Surplus Value: Approximately $2.8M if assumed 40 OFP in 90 percent of outcomes.

(2) Trading Thornburg
How does one grade the Thornburg trade? In my previous grading of current assets, Thornburg’s three-year performance weighed down his significant gains as a reliever. Boston obviously traded for Thornburg with the idea of building on his season as an excellent high leverage relief option, and whether or not Thornburg is a closer, there is a chance that he will provide excellent value to their roster if given the chance to prove himself in the late innings over another season. The best aspect for the big market Red Sox is that they now reserve arbitration rights for Thornburg for three seasons, meaning that there is plenty of time for Thornburg to move within different high leverage roles, struggle, iron out any issues, even weather an injury. In this case, a study of the McCann trade, which caused me to reconsider using depreciation-models to assess trade value, one would do well to assess Thornburg in the most robust manner, certainly weighing his 2016 improvements much more heavily than his previous struggles.

If anything, this comparison should show that it’s extremely difficult to simply assess a trade based on one single model, or one assumption. The Brewers could assume that Thornburg’s troubles would weigh heavier, and they wouldn’t necessarily be wrong; the Red Sox could buy high and have a robust model for Thornburg, and be equally correct. I dare say there will be no equilibrium found for this deal, between either club. The deal is an immediate victory for the contending Red Sox, who bolster their bullpen with a hard throwing up-and-coming reliever that offers three years of arbitration reserve; the deal is an immediate victory for the Brewers, who turned a struggling swingman-at-best into a lights-out reliever and then sold at the best possible moment (it can be argued that even waiting to see if Thornburg could close for the first half of 2017 is too risky for the Brewers, since any issues in that regard would tank the value built during 2016).

Considering both conservative and aggressive estimates for the trade as currently constructed, it should not be outlandish to say that the Red Sox properly gambled that they can retain value with Thornburg’s contract (which can be non-tendered without cost prior to 2018 and 2019). If the PTBNL turns out to be a player with a pedigree other than organizational depth, that might push Thornburg into 2.0 WARP/year territory to regain value. Yet, given that the Red Sox are gambling for playoff spots, overpaying in a trade for a high leverage player is not necessarily a bad deal if the payoff is somewhere between $10 million and $30 million of playoff revenue. Adding together playoff revenue, playoff prestige, and potential flags flying is well worth a PTBNL. There is plenty of evidence to argue the trade a success for either team, which is a good sign that Milwaukee maximized their short-term closer’s value.

(3) Miguel Diaz’s Value
I previously called GM David Stearns’s refusal to protect top RHP prospect Miguel Diaz from the Rule 5 draft a “dreadful, terrible” move, but I think I emphasized the wrong reasons. As the Brewers potentially lost Diaz to the Padres (via the Twins), depending on how he fares early in the season and whether he sticks with San Diego, it is worth recasting the move as a failure even if Diaz does not reach the MLB or his gaudiest 60 OFP from summer 2016.

Imagine that Diaz follows the odds of reaching the MLB at approximately 20 percent; among those potential MLB futures, consider a 40 OFP / roster filler status as the vast majority (95 percent of potential MLB futures, maybe reaching 1.0 WARP over three seasons), a 50 OFP (4.5 percent of potential MLB futures, maybe reaching 4.0 WARP over three seasons), and 60 OFP in 0.5 percent of MLB futures (maybe reaching 7.0 WARP over three seasons). Spread over 1,000 potential futures, Miguel Diaz averages out to approximately 0.23 WARP, or someone worth between $0.500 million league minimum contract (replacement contract) and $1.61 million using the standard $7 million / WARP “market estimation.” This is the biggest problem with failing to protect Diaz: in the first place, he’s one of only a few true 50+ / 60 OFP prospects in the Brewers system. There are many 50 prospects in the system, and several 50+ prospects, even, but not many reached a 60 OFP grade in 2016. Diaz reached that level, and is therefore one of the best prospects even adding in all the risk one can find.
Value Lost: $1.6 million.

(4) Roster Summary
Here is a summary of notables trades, Rule 5 transactions (MLB and AAA), and free agency signings. Moves with 40-man roster impact are highlighted.

Thus far, the Brewers have added approximately $23.7 million in total surplus through 40-man roster transactions (this figure does not factor in full reserve control for minor leaguers, but instead focuses on OFP value). That is basically worth 1.7 WARP from a league minimum contract, or 2.75 WARP from Eric Thames (2.75 WARP is worth approximately $19.3 million, minus $15 million guaranteed). In total surplus value, Stearns has acquired approximately $63 million for the organization, which can be translated as approximately 4.5 total WARP from a league minimum salary, or acquiring approximately three 50 OFP prospects via trade.

Tyler Thornburg is no faceless bullpen arm. He’s struggled with injuries in the past, but this season, when he finally got healthy, he broke out. With an 80 DRA- and 79 cFIP, Thornburg established himself as one of the best relievers in the majors — in other words, he stood apart from the Badenhops, Cottses, and Broxtons of the world.

In one regard, though, he bore a striking resemblance to the aforementioned names. Thornburg had a pretty major platoon split this season — albeit in the opposite direction:

Mostly because of a spike in strikeouts and a glut of grounders, Thornburg crushed lefties this year, sticking with the trend he’d established in prior years. From 2012 to 2015, Thornburg compiled 152.2 innings of work for the Brewers; across that time, lefties posted a .264 wOBA off him, whereas righties knocked him around for a .338 wOBA. In 2016, Thornburg certainly didn’t struggle against righties, but he didn’t blow them away to the extent that he did lefties. Why?

Thornburg’s changeup accounts for a good deal of the split. This season, the pitch had a 21.9 percent swinging-strike rate, far higher than the clip on his fastball (11.9 percent) or his curveball (12.6 percent). Its 44.4 percent ground ball rate, meanwhile, easily topped his fastball (31.1 percent) and didn’t trail his curveball by much (47.6 percent). And as is the case for most changeups, it saw action primarily against opposite-handed hitters:

Everyone Thornburg faced saw the fastball about two-thirds of the time. That last third made a lot of the difference —since the cambio reigned supreme above the bender, the hitters who saw the former more often had far less success. Improving on his curveball, which will probably remain Thornburg’s out pitch to righties, would go a long way toward eliminating this split.

The changeup doesn’t explain all this, however. Thornburg’s primary offering — that heater — dominated lefties, with a 14.5 percent whiff rate and 38.2 percent ground ball rate. Versus righties, its whiff rate declined to 10.2 percent, while its ground ball rate dipped to 27.8 percent. That’s likely due to the pitch’s shifting location:

Thornburg’s fastball is rather distinct. My BP Milwaukee colleague Kyle Lesniewski observed back in April that Thornburg has changed his location of the pitch; although it still has a ton of rise, he now places it lower within the zone, and its arm-side break means it runs in on right-handed hitters. This plot bears that out: Righties saw a lot more inside fastballs this year than lefties did. Against the latter, Thornburg threw 20.9 percent of his fastballs in the closest two-fifths of the strike zone; against the former, he did so 41.8 percent of the time — exactly twice as often. Given a more hittable heater, opposing batters unsurprisingly hit it quite well (or comparatively well, at least).

The break on Thornburg’s fastball should, in theory, make it an equalizer. Max Marchi’s platoon split research showed that “jumping” and “rising” fastballs — the ones without much horizontal movement, but with a ton of vertical movement — play much more neutral than straight heaters. With this location pattern, though, the fastball will have its potential capped, and so will its owner.

The 2016 version of Thornburg was still an elite reliever, which means he probably has the inside track on the closer position for 2017. In that role, he’ll probably continue to excel against lefties, but without a better curveball and a different fastball strategy, he won’t carry that excellence over to righties. Like Jeffress and many other erstwhile Brewers, Thornburg needs to retire everyone indiscriminately if he wants to be as great as he can be.

With both of the club’s late-inning options gone, though, the Brewers had to turn to another pitcher to get outs at the end of the game. The obvious choice was Tyler Thornburg, who was one of the only other successful veteran pitchers in the bullpen at that time, and that is exactly the direction that manager Craig Counsell decided to go.

In the month-plus since the deadline, Thornburg has been the go-to in save situations. Over the past 30 days, he has gotten six of the ten Brewers’ save opportunities, and he has converted five of those six. Saves are obviously not the be-all, end-all of reliever performance metrics (nor are they a particularly effective way of measuring performance at all), but Thornburg has been undeniably excellent since taking over for Jeffress and Smith.

His numbers from the full season are impressive to begin with. After never posting a DRA lower than the 4.87 he put up during his rookie year, he has managed a 2.83 DRA and 2.66 FIP thus far in 2016. This performance uptick has been possible because of a tremendous increase in his strikeout rate; Thornburg’s career K/9 mark is 8.8, but this year he has bumped that all the way up to 11.8. Additionally, he has paired this with an ability to maintain the control improvements he exhibited last year, as his BB/9 rate has stabilized over the past two years right at 3.0.

And perhaps most impressively, since Jeffress and Smith were traded and Thornburg was handed the keys to the bullpen, he has not allowed an earned run. In 17.7 innings, he has allowed just two hits and one unearned run, while striking out twenty and walking only six. Clearly, being moved to higher-leverage situations has not impacted his performance.

This run of excellence does raise the question of what comes next for the right-hander, though. Thornburg is young but not absurdly so—he will turn 28 in a couple weeks—and he is about to be arbitration eligible. His arbitration costs should be low right now because he only has nine career saves, but his price will go way up after next season if he is given the opportunity to consistently pitch the ninth inning. There is also no guarantee that this improvement will stick, as he was a generally mediocre pitcher until this season.

For these reasons, I expect that he will be the next Brewers relief pitcher to be traded. I imagine that the front office will try to move him during the winter—especially if they can include him as a sweetener in a larger deal, where he would likely be more valuable than as a piece in a straight one-for-one deal—but he may in fact be held until next July. The in-season trade market for relief pitchers was a bit out of control, but it is difficult to imagine that teams will be willing to trade top-100 prospects for good but not elite relief pitchers during December. At the end of July, front offices can look at their injury-riddled or underperforming bullpens and get desperate, but it’s much harder to take advantage of good teams during cold, harsh light of the offseason.

It would therefore make sense for the Brewers to hang on to Thornburg through next season’s trade deadline, although that will expose them to some risk that he starts next season slowly and torpedoes any value he has. However, as an arb-eligible reliever with a short track record of success, it is unlikely he has a ton of value on his own right now anyway, so the Brewers would be best served by waiting until next season.

The short life span of relievers necessitates this kind of movement. The club certainly expects to compete in the next few years, but Thornburg will be a free agent by 2020 and may not even be good by that point. The team has been successful at churning out productive relievers (see Smith and Jeffress, for example), so they should not feel tied to their current success stories. There is therefore no reason to hold onto Thornburg unless he is anchoring the bullpen of a surprisingly competitive team next year.

*This article has been updated to reflect Francisco Rodriguez’s end of 2015 transaction.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Best Play: Matt Garza struggled, Ariel Miranda did pretty well, yada yada yada, Tom Wilhelmsen came on in the ninth. The score at the time was 6-3 Mariners, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long. Keon Broxton greeted him with a solo home run, his second of the day, which trimmed the deficit to 6-4. Hernan Perez followed up a Ryan Braun strikeout with a double to deep center, bringing Chris Carter to the plate. With a full count, the slugger turned on a fastball and managed to squeak it over the outfield wall in right-center.

Carter’s two-run blast (+.358) tied the game at 6-6 and gave the Brewers a 44.5 percent win probability, their highest odds since the third inning. Three batters later, Scooter Gennett would bring home Domingo Santana, pumping the team’s chances up to 87.3 percent. It was a stunning comeback, considering the Brewers headed into the ninth with just a 2.8 percent chance of winning. Chalk it up to Wilhelmsen being terrible — and Milwaukee capitalizing.

In his first year with the Brewers, Carter has seen his bat ebb and flow, as it’s done in the past. He’s gotten hot again in August, though, with a .250/.377/.500 line heading into Sunday’s action. Will that production cool off heading into September? Yeah, probably. But if it doesn’t — if Carter closes out 2016 on a high note — he could become a hot commodity on the offseason trade block. Not bad, for a low-cost January free agency signing.

Worst Play: Tyler Thornburg had entered in the bottom of the eighth, retiring the side in order, so he would be the pitcher of record after the offense’s heroics. Since he needed just 11 pitches to record those three outs, Craig Counsell wisely decided to leave Thornburg in. The choice didn’t look wise initially, however, as Ketel Marte worked the count to 3-2 before leading off the bottom of the ninth with a single to left.

Marte’s single (-.132), representing the tying run, brought Milwaukee’s chances down to 68.7 percent. He’d later advance to second base on a wild pitch, bringing Seattle 90 feet closer to a counter-comeback. Prior to the errant pitch, though, Thornburg would retire Nori Aoki and Shawn O’Malley; two pitches later, he’d induce a flyout off the bat of Robinson Cano to seal the victory.

Now that Jeremy Jeffress and Will Smith have gone to those big contenders in the sky, the Brewers have real uncertainty at closer. Or they would  have real uncertainty at closer, were it not for Thornburg’s breakout this season. The kind of reliever that can pile up 30 pitches to end a six-game skid is the kind of reliever you construct your future bullpen around. While there are no guarantees with ninth-inning guys — remember the implosions of John Axford and Jim Henderson — Thornburg has done as well as anyone, and he stands a good shot of keeping this up.

Trend to Watch: The Brewers wouldn’t have had the chance to come back if the bullpen had imploded like Garza did. Thankfully, Jhan Marinez excelled in his regular role as the stopper, facing the minimum seven batters across 2.3 innings. My colleague Travis Sarandos and I have each written about the righty, but I think we’ve both glossed over what might be his defining attribute: a high ground ball rate. Of the seven balls in play against him Sunday, just two went into the air; he’s kept the ball on the ground an even 50.0 percent of the time this season, per FanGraphs.

Strangely, Marinez hasn’t attacked the bottom part of the zone, as most ground ballers do. Many of his pitches have leaked up, in fact:

Despite this, he still manages to get a ton of grounders, and mostly on those pitches he deigns to throw low. We saw this on Sunday as well — although many of Marinez’s offerings traveled into the upper regions of the zone, the ones in the lower areas stayed on the ground when put in play. For some reason, hitters just can’t take advantage of those high pitches.

Milwaukee has a sizable gap between its infield and outfield defenses. The club’s .764 ground ball defensive efficiency is the eighth-best in baseball, while it ranks in the bottom half of the majors in efficiency on fly balls, line drives, and popups. Presumably with this in mind, Brewers pitchers have garnered grounders at a decent clip — their 45.8 percent ground ball rate, by FG’s calculation, puts them 12th in baseball. Marinez has topped that, which seems to have benefited him. Even as his strikeout and walk rates have regressed, the continued presence of ground balls has granted him some level of dependability.

Up Next: The Brew Crew heads home for 10 contests, starting with three against the Rockies. Jimmy Nelson, Chase Anderson, and Zach Davies will square off versus Chad Bettis, Jon Gray, and Tyler Anderson, respectively. After that, it’s all NL Central for the next month (seriously, August 25 to September 25). Let’s hope that Carter, Thornburg, and Marinez make these next few duels more watchable than the first six-and-8/9 games of this road trip.

Top Play: Ryan Braun’s solo home run to lead off the sixth inning, and put the Brewers in the lead 2-1, was the top play of the game (.182). Padres starter Luis Perdomo hung a curveball to Braun on his first pitch of the inning, and Braun crushed it. Perdomo then allowed a single to Hernan Perez and a double to Chris Carter, and it looked like the Brewers could make it an easy game. However, Perdomo induced grounders from the next two batters, then intentionally loaded the bases for Zach Davies, who he struck out.

Bottom Play: Alex Dickerson’s ground out to second base to lead off the bottom of the ninth inning was the bottom play of the game, according to WPA (-.079). Dickerson was the only batter to not strike out against Tyler Thornburg in the 9th inning.

The closest play to that groundout according to WPA was Derek Norris’ fly out to end the sixth inning with Dickerson on second base. Jabari Blash had just singled to score the second Padres run and knock Davies out of the game. Carlos Torres entered and got the flyout on two pitches to end the last rally for the Padres, as they did not have another batter reach base for the remainder of the game. Looking at the two pitches in the at bat, I think Norris would like to have another chance at that second pitch:

Trends to Watch: Orlando Arcia Mania!!! Forgive Brewers fans for their excitement, but the Arcia call up will probably be the most exciting moment that has any lasting impact on the franchise for the rest of the season. Arcia batted seventh, and his presence meant that Villar slid over to third base, Villar’s likely home for the rest of the season. For all the breathless excitement over Arcia’s debut, it was not an auspicious day at the plate. He was hitless in his four at-bats, with one strikeout and three groundouts. To take away a positive, Arcia did see 15 pitches, which hopefully bodes well for continued improvement in his plate discipline.

Tyler Thornburg got the first post Jeremy Jeffress save opportunity. Thornburg needed 14 pitches to complete the ninth inning, striking out two Padres. Thornburg will fit the mold of a fireballing closer a bit more than Jeffress, as he has a higher strikeout rate (12.4 K/9 compared to Jeffress’ 7.1). To illustrate the point a bit further, Thornburg has at least two strikeouts in eighteen of his forty-five appearances this year. Jeffress achieved that in only eight of his forty-seven games with the Brewers. Jeffress was an outlier for a closer in 2016, and the Brewers should see no drop off in the ninth inning as Thornburg settles into the role.

Up Next: After splitting the first two games in San Diego, the Brewers look to get the series win against the Padres this afternoon. Junior Guerra will start for Milwaukee. He fell one out shy of a complete game last week against the Pirates. In that game, he struck out five and allowed one run on four hits and a walk. Guerra has  only allowed eight runs in his last seven starts. Edwin Jackson will make his fourth start of the season for San Diego. After two decent starts to begin the Padres chapter of his career, the Reds scored six runs in five innings in his last start. Jackson allowed ten hits and two walks against three strikeouts. First pitch is 2:40.

This year, Jeffress’s ERA is at 2.84.

Most people will, therefore, think that Jeffress is having a solid year because ERA is still used widely in the mainstream. Even on shows such as MLB Now, a show, as Brian Kenny says, that is dedicated to the thinking fan, they still use ERA on a number of occasions even though ERA isn’t a very good stat.

The reason I bring this up is because, here, at Baseball Prospectus we use Deserved Runs Average (DRA) and DRA isn’t all that fond of Jeffress who has a 4.43 DRA. DRA, however, is very fond of Tyler Thornburg, who has a 2.63 DRA.

The reason this is interesting is because Jeffress and Thornburg have similar ERA numbers. Therefore, on the outskirts, it might seem as though they’ve been just as good this season. In reality, they haven’t.

The next question, therefore, is why does DRA like Thornburg but not Jeffress?

As Judge wrote earlier this year, it’s easy to assume that the “problem” is with DRA, but that in reality, the “problem” is probably not with DRA. DRA is rather telling us something interesting about Jeffress’ performance.

DRA, this year has been revised. I won’t go into the gory details but basically, you can split DRA’s details into three categories, Not-In-Play Runs (NIP Runs), Hit Runs, and Out Runs. NIP Runs are the, “runs saved or given up over average in walks (both intentional and unintentional), hit-batsmen, and strikeouts”. Hit Runs is basically the pitcher’s ability to minimize the damage on pitches that end up being hits. Out Runs is “the pitcher’s ability to generate typical outs on balls in play, usually by generating weak or directional contact. These constitute the majority of baseball batting events”.

Let’s now look at the difference between Thornburg and Jeffress (Negative is good, positive is bad):

Jeffress and Thornburg’s Hit.Runs and Out.Runs are basically the same. The biggest difference is between their NIP.Runs. NIP.Runs is also, “the most valuable contributions a typical pitcher makes to run prevention.” This is significant when trying to understand why DRA thinks Thornburg has been better.

This also means that there isn’t any difference between the contact that Thornburg and Jeffress are giving up. Meaning that the difference is primarily between the pitchers walks, hit-batsmen, and strikeouts.

While Jeffress has hit three more batters than Thornburg this year, the biggest difference between both pitchers is clearly in regards to their strikeout rates, where Thornburg is striking out almost twice as many hitters as Jeffress is striking out. Essentially, the entire difference between Thornburg and Jeffress’s DRA is from their strikeout rates. “Jeffress’s SO rate is fairly abysmal for a high-leverage reliever,” said, Judge in an email.

Judge is right. Amongst all qualified relievers, Jeffress ranks 137th in K/9, while Thornburg ranks 11th.

Thornburg currently has the best DRA among all Brewers pitchers. That’s not saying a whole lot because the Brewers pitching staff isn’t very good, but that does mean that he should probably be the one closing games right now. While the Brewers would ideally like to trade Jeffress this trade deadline, they could probably get more value from trading Thornburg. Teams aren’t stupid. In todays age, they know the value of striking out hitters, and a pitcher who has a strikeout rate similar to that of Craig Kimbrel will have more value than someone who has a strikeout rate similar to that of Cory Gearrin.

With Braun’s assist (+.147) aiding his cause — by raising the Brewers’ win probability from 47.0 to 61.6 percent — Garza seemed to settle down. The Brewers had scored just minutes before, on a Scooter Gennett solo shot, and Garza would make the 1-0 advantage stand up. He faced the minimum three batters in the second, fourth, and sixth innings, and his defense continued to lend him a hand: Two innings after Braun did his thing, Ramon Flores gunned down a runner of his own. All told, the Brewers’ odds of victory wouldn’t dip below 50 percent for the remainder of Garza’s time.

This offseason, I wrote about the Brewers’ general inability to collect outfield assists. This hasn’t changed in 2016, as even with Sunday’s plays, the club’s outfielders have recorded just 13 assists, placing them 15st in the majors. Amazingly, eight of those have come from Braun, who has never reached double digits in that regard. If he can retain his unprecedented arm strength — and if Flores can continue to make sterling throws like the one he did yesterday — the Brewers might not need the budding cannons of Domingo Santana and Brett Phillips.

Worst Play: Sadly, the outfielders’ best efforts couldn’t negate a bullpen meltdown. Enrique Hernandez homered off Will Smith in the eighth to tie the game at 1-1, and Tyler Thornburg gave it up in the following frame. Two singles and a walk, along with a flyout and strikeout, gave Yasmani Grandal a bases-loaded chance to knock in the winning run. On a full count, he did just that, letting a four-seamer fall outside the zone for the game-winning base on balls.

Grandal’s walk (-.349) eliminated any hope Milwaukee had of coming away with the win — since, again, it gave Los Angeles the walkoff. After Thornburg allowed his third and penultimate baserunner, the Brewers still stood a 34.9 percent chance of winning. Each of those percentage points ticked away with each pitch Grandal laid off, until the Dodgers had claimed the victory.

Thornburg’s loss, while painful, was most likely a fluke. Even with the two free passes he issued, his walk rate for the season remains respectable at 7.9 percent. Smith’s blown save, though, might indicate an actual problem. This season, Smith’s velocity has yet to impress; on Sunday, he topped out at 91.9 mph on his fastball. He’s begun to move away from his killer slider as well (perhaps fearing another injury). His whiffs and strikeouts are consequently down, making him an uncertain presence in the late innings.

Trend to Watch: [peeking out from under rock] Did…did that actually happen? Did Matt Garza truly pitch six shutout innings against a major-league team? Granted, the Dodgers rank only 16th in the majors in TAv, and Garza got the two assists plus this play, but still — six shutout innings, from a guy whose DRA imploded to 6.17 last season, is pretty damn impressive.

While Garza clearly isn’t this good, he might have remedied some of the problems that plagued him in 2015. He’s started to elevate his pitches again, especially his four-seamer. That seems to have helped reduce solid contact; according to FanGraphs, his hard-hit rate has declined from 33.0 to 23.5 percent. He’s also fallen behind 3-0 less often than last year, which had become one of his weaknesses. That, along with a higher rate of in-play strikes, has made his plate appearances shorter and his walk rate smaller.

Garza doesn’t yet have the velocity he possessed last year, or the whiffs. And it would also help if he returned to the pitch mix he relied upon before 2015. Regardless, a pair of respectable outings to kick off the season won’t dissatisfy anyone. Maybe Garza can keep this going, and the Brewers won’t have as much difficulty swallowing the rest of his contract.

Up Next: The Brewers have the day off today, which will hopefully help the bullpen recharge. Tomorrow, they conclude their West Coast road trip with two games in Oakland. Jimmy Nelson and Sonny Gray will face off at 9:05 CST in a battle of struggling, young de facto aces; then on Wednesday, Junior Guerra and Daniel Mengden will take the mound in an afternoon bout.

Top Play (WPA):
Chris Carter home runs accounted for all of the Brewers scoring. His first mammoth home run of the game occurred in the second inning and made the score 2-0 Milwaukee (.161). In the sixth inning, Carter again hit a monster home run, which plated three runs — thanks in part to Ryan Braun’s 1,500th career hit, which started the rally. This was Carter’s third multi-home run game of the 2016 season.

The homers came off two extremely different pitch locations: one of which is in his wheelhouse, while the other is atypical for him to handle well from a left handed pitcher.

Chris Carter Career SLG Against LHP

The first home run came on a pitch that shades the extremely brightest red square in that box as well as the purple below it. Basically, any lefty who throws Carter a pitch either belt high or in the middle of the zone is going to get punished. Athletics starter Sean Manaea was in the danger zone. However, the second home run was in the deep blue space at the top of the chart. Carter literally never hits anything there when facing a left hander, but he got a first pitch fastball and crushed it. There’s a first time for everything.

Bottom Play (WPA):
The worst play was Marcus Semien’s strike out in the 9^th inning (-.211). Semien had runners on the corners with only one out, as Jeremy Jeffress had an extremely rough start to the inning. The strikeout was needed to prevent the tying run from scoring on a ground ball or sacrifice fly. Keeping in mind that Jeffress is not a prototypical closer who racks up strike outs (career low 6.4 K/9 in 2016), some Brewers must have been pleasantly surprised with the strikeout.

Jeffress ran into trouble in the 9^th. The first two batters reached on an infield single and a double. Jeffress got his first out on a run scoring grounder by Stephen Vogt. Billy Butler, the next batter, also hit what should have been a run scoring groundout, but Jonathan Villar committed an error on the play. After fielding the ball, Villar looked home then didn’t seem to focus on the throw, and it got away from him and Carter was unable to catch it. After another single, Jeffress got the huge strike out. He got Semien on three pitches, catching him looking on a low pitch, then finished the game by inducing a Chris Coghlan fly out.

Trend to Watch:
Zach Davies had us sending out the no-hitter alerts last night. He made it 6.2 innings without a hit, before Butler crushed a home run to make the game 5-2. Davies was running a high pitch count and if he’d made it through the 7^th, Craig Counsell was likely going to face an imminent tough decision.

This was Davies’ second straight strong start. His combined line in June is 15 IP, 5 H, 3 BB, 14 K, 2R, and he hasn’t allowed more than 2 earned runs in a start since April. Compared with his last start against St. Louis, Davies went back to leaning on his two-seamer, throwing it for 58 of his 102 pitches, his highest usage rate for that pitch since May 15. However, he did keep up his increased change up usage, once again throwing it more than 20% of the time. Considering he doesn’t have an imposing fastball (it’s now below 90 mph), perhaps using the changeup is keeping hitters off balance and preventing them from teeing off on the pitch… except for Billy Butler.

Quick Hits: Along with Braun’s hit, it was a good night for Brewers milestones. Braun became the fifth player in franchise history to collect 1,500 hits with Milwaukee. After Davies exited the game, righty Tyler Thornburg continued his stretch of unconscious relief work: by retiring Chris Coghlan, Jake Smolinski, and Coco Crisp, Thornburg extended his franchise-record outs streak to 26 consecutive batters (perhaps more impressively, the streak spans nine different relief outings).

Up Next:
Remember when interleague was a fun, new, cool, and exciting thing? Neither does MLB, as we have six random interleague matchups this week. The Brewers will finish their two-game series against Oakland tomorrow, and look to complete the sweep against their fierce rivals from the Bay Area. Pitching for Milwaukee is Chase Anderson, the other Brewer pitcher who came close to a no-hitter this year. Oakland will send out Jesse Hahn, who did not complete this first inning in his last start against Houston. First pitch is 7:10.