These six starting pitchers, justifiably described as bad or less-than-ideal (if you’re feeling kind) in 2016, worked 750.3 innings while preventing nine runs in 2017. The club definitely suffered from Guerra’s opening day calf injury (and then his lack of command), while Peralta showed that he could not build on any gains made during the previous season. But Davies was no joke, improving on his 45 Overall Future Potential (OFP) role to the extent that one might at the very least discuss enshrining him as the ideal back-end starter (at best, he’s surpassed that role). Anderson and Nelson both proved to be the real deal at least for one season, leading the 2017 rotation to an even greater extent than Guerra and Davies lead the 2016 group.

Everyone knew the 2017 returning rotation was going to be dreadful, until it wasn’t.

So here we stand, with almost everyone (including myself) assuming that David Stearns will make another pitching move entering 2018. What’s strange, however, is that for all the #InStearnsWeTrust that Brewers fans fly, they still largely refuse to learn or analyze the GM’s inner workings, such as his 2016-2017 lack of rotational moves and the resounding success that followed. It remains worth repeating that pitching is the strength of this Brewers club, which is why Stearns spent significant monetary and prospect resources (justifiably) improving the outfield and, by extension, batting order for 2018.

Related:
Low Rotation Shift
Aces Do Not Exist
Rotation Spots
How the Brewers Beat the Cubs

Stearns did not necessarily need to improve the starting pitching rotation in 2018, unless one rambles off a set of beliefs: Anderson isn’t who he was, Davies isn’t who he was, Nelson is injured, Garza and Peralta are gone, and Junior Guerra cannot be relied upon. Okay, so Stearns signed the inimitable Jhoulys Chacin, who looks like a rich man’s Junior Guerra (seriously, look at his arsenal and tell me that’s not Guerra’s ideal form), and brought back Franchise Pitcher Yovani Gallardo for what could be another spin at the rotation in Milwaukee.

Meanwhile, the rotation is filled with enough “You’ve got to be kidding me” to give the excellent 2017 staff a run for its money. Homegrown arms take the shape of Brandon Woodruff and Brent Suter; deeper into the system, there are advanced prospects like Jorge Lopez and Freddy Peralta (on the 40-man roster) and Corbin Burnes (off the 40-man roster). If you squint, there’s at least two #3 starters among that trio, maybe as soon as 2018 to boot. If you’re a glass-half-empty kind of fan, that’s a whole bunch of low rotation and reliever risk. But this is not a problem, either, and I direct you to the 2013 rotation as evidence.

Although, perhaps that 2013 rotation is a precisely perfect corollary to the 2018 rotation, as then GM Doug Melvin punted on replacing Zack Grinke or Shaun Marcum and only really received a rotational upgrade after Mark Attanasio negotiated with Scott Boras deep into Spring Training. Still, having lived through that rotation, I’m not convinced that Alfredo Figaro (74.0 IP / -6 runs prevented), Hiram Burgos (29.3 / -9), Mike Fiers (22.3 / -10), Johnny Hellweg (30.7 / -16), and Wily Peralta (183.3 / -21) are quite the same as Guerra, Woodruff, Suter, Gallardo, and Lopez. Even if you’re the glass-half-empty type here, that low-rotation floor should be substantially higher for Woodruff and even Suter than it ever was for Johnny Hellweg or even Peralta (although that’s probably rewriting history with hindsight). In fact, looking at this story again makes it seem inevitable that Jake Arrieta will be wearing Brewers blue on March 26.

With all this in mind, it’s time to take Stearns seriously with this rotation. Even the fact that the Brewers were rumored to be involved with Yu Darvish, and are still connected to nearly every free agency or trade rumor with a pulse, does not negate the fact that Stearns has built a rotation with a very particular character. And this is a very particular character that has worked in 2017, as well:

• Stearns may work with starting pitchers who are typically smaller than the ideally hyped “rotation workhorse body.”

• Stearns works with starting pitchers who do not throw with elite (or even median!) velocity.

• Stearns largely continues the Doug Melvin trend of working with over-the-top deliveries (Anderson is probably his best example here, and Suter was an anomaly be it with Melvin or Stearns).

• Stearns loves starting pitchers who have some type of wiggling fastball (be it a sinker or cutter) and a change-up / curveball profile.

Obviously, you can’t check all three boxes with all pitchers (e.g., Chacin and Woodruff both approach that ideal workhorse body while working as primarily fastball / slider types, and Woodruff’s primary fastball velocity was in the Top 15 percent of all 2017 starting pitchers who threw at least 50 pitches). But there’s enough of a trend across these arms that one can begin to assess what Stearns is looking for in a rotation, and there’s enough success (even if it was somewhat surprising success) in 2017 to begin to take seriously the idea of “trusting” in Stearns’s rotational ideals.

So here we are: why trust the rotation?

• Baseball Prospectus recently released three new pitching statistics that approximate a pitcher’s Power, Command, and Stamina. Of the 608 pitchers that threw at least 10 innings in 2017, Brandon Woodruff is one of only 51 to score a “50” (or better) in all three categories. This list is dominated by two types of players: young pitchers or injured pitchers who posted mediocre (or worse) DRA during their 2017 campaigns, veteran starters generally regarded as solid-to-top rotation types (see Jacob deGrom and Justin Verlander or Gerrit Cole, Lance Lynn, or Jeff Samardzija), or elite relievers (Woodruff’s teammates Corey Knebel and Jacob Barnes are also on this rare list). Woodruff probably is not slated to become Verlander or deGrom or Cole, but even if he reaches Michael Wacha’s range of production, the club is in fantastic middle rotation shape.

• Zach Davies and Brent Suter are both command “aces” (for lack of a better term), overcoming their velocity shortcomings by hammering the strike zone in quality locations (the Command statistic actually tracks certain pitching zones deemed ideal for working corner / borderline strikes).

• Yovani Gallardo and Chase Anderson are near clones of one another (one might ask whether the Brewers are still using biomechanical data that drew the club toward the high release point years ago!). While neither pitcher is graded as a strong “Power” arm, both make up for their lack of power pitching with better than average command and stamina grades.

• Jhoulys Chacin and Junior Guerra both grade as mediocre Power and Command pitchers, but Chacin makes up for these grades with his Stamina. On the other hand, Jimmy Nelson probably grades as the club’s truest “Power” starter, as the righty does not grade well in Command but makes up for that shortcoming with Power and Stamina.

• Across the rotation, Nelson, Davies, and Chacin grade as groundball pitchers (each with a rate at or slightly better than 50 percent in 2017), while Suter, Anderson, and Gallardo grade as steady or improving groundball workers (this trio sits below 50 percent grounders, but one might question whether Suter and Anderson can flirt with that mark given their improvements).

• Finally, as I examined with the club’s approach to the elite Chicago Cubs offense, the Brewers starting pitchers attack the strike zone. Compared to the 2017 National League, the Brewers starters walked notablty fewer batters (23 fewer batters than expected, a 7 percent improvement versus the league). What is particularly interesting here is that the pitchers as a group do not grab an 0-1 count more frequently than the National League average, which suggests that the Brewers win their command battle by yielding weak first swings (95 split OPS+), and winning 2-0, 3-0, 1-1, and 2-1 counts.

The Brewers are entering one of the most important seasons in franchise history with a “What on earth?” rotation. Their likely best pitcher is either injured and therefore an unknown (Nelson), a low-velocity sinker/change command master (Davies), or on the wrong side of 30 with one good career year (Anderson). Their major free agent signing is best described as a potential darkhorse improvement candidate (Chacin), and their other free agent is on a change-of-scenery, win-a-job-in-camp contract (Gallardo). Behind this group, there’s either the one-off age-31 star from 2016 (Guerra), the Raptor swingman working from the south side (Suter), and the Top 10 prospect who grades as a middle-rotation guy (Woodruff). Ironically, the warts on this group resemble the 2017 #TeamDepth that nearly lead the team to the playoffs, where everyone could find so many words to describe the team’s shortcomings without finding enough words to figure out how it would all work.

I’ll be damned if this doesn’t look like another market inefficiency (pick up guys with profiles other teams might punt on and throw some strikes!); I’ve learned my lessons as an analyst, and with these beautiful shortcomings in mind the best story of Spring Training could be the Brewers entering with the rotation as it stands.

Photo Credit: Lance Iverson, USAToday Sports Images

These Brewers are a pitching first club: Milwaukee’s success in 2017 almost entirely hinged on the pitching staff, which prevented 61 runs against the NL / Miller Park. This performance was good for fifth best in the NL. Despite the overall club strength, the Brewers limped along with a weak and shallow low rotation, which ultimately defined their failure to reach the playoffs as a stretch run depended on a series of ill-conceived Johnny Wholestaff days. Here’s how the pitching staff played out, highlighting the low rotation:

Gallardo, for all of his warts as he ages into a low rotation role, immediately solidifies that group of pitchers. David Stearns need not rely on Tommy Milone, Paolo Espino, Wily Peralta types, and instead can ideally roll all of those starts into one pitcher. At best, Gallardo can serve as the club’s Matt Garza, who was pretty much just “run of the mill” low rotation bad, (hopefully) instead of requiring disastrous performances by the likes of Peralta. As a reminder, here is how the thin low rotation and Johnny Wholestaff days lost a chance at the playoffs, or potentially even the division for the Brewers:

It is tempting to dig into Gallardo’s peripheral performance, and perhaps find a silver lining for the starter. If this is your path to thinking about the Gallardo deal, it is worth focusing on the veteran’s strike out rate, which is slowly climbing upward. Much has already been made on Twitter about the righty’s increased fastball velocity, but according to Brooks Baseball it’s the curve that fans should focus on. Gallardo continues to have aspects of his arsenal that generate whiffs, and perhaps as the Brewers transformed Jimmy Nelson into a big curveballer, Gallardo himself can move away from fastball / slider and toward fastball / curve to generate whiffs and groundballs.

Note the runs prevented here, however: Gallardo is not terrible, for all the noise about his bad surface statistics. Plugging in 130 innings of -18 runs prevented ball can actually help the Brewers if it means wiping out 130 innings of Guerra / Peralta (-29 runs prevented) type baseball. In fact, if this exact scenario plays out, David Stearns just bought the Brewers a win, a win at the fringes of the roster no less.

There is a downside to the deal, and it would be disingenuous of me not to mention it, as I have consistently argued in favor of using the waiver pick-up, or low-risk pick up to gamble on building out the back-end rotation. This is certainly a necessary type of move for Milwaukee, but it’s worth investigating the high risk of those replacement type deals. Here, Stearns is gambling that he will not need to make several replacement transactions (think Milone / Espino / Wilkerson / Woodruff), and instead can lend the rotation some regularity every fifth day. Indeed, this could even help to rest up the bullpen and keep those elite innings churning on a typical schedule, too. Along with hunting for that one win at the back of the rotation, Stearns is also trying to buy transaction certainty, which can also be an important aspect of the club. At the worst, he’s probably replaced Matt Garza, and likely for a much lower price, while pushing any waiver type deals to much lower leverage within the rotation.

It would be audacious to call this a playoffs move after all that, and it’s certainly not the type of top rotation grab that Brewers fans wanted to headline the winter meetings. But, this move is a winning move. Now it’s time to bolster the other end of the rotation, in order to further strengthen the bullpen (especially by keeping LHP Josh Hader, LHP Brent Suter, and maybe even Guerra there) and truly push Gallardo to the back spot of the rotation.

Photo Credit: Andy Marlin, USAToday Sports Images

In the cases of both Woodruff and Burnes, the answer is quick and easy, “no” and “no.” Neither pitcher has the combination of raw stuff, command of that stuff, and mechanical execution that renders those 70 or 80 Overall Future Potential (OFP) grades (since OFP operates on a scale of 20 to 80, the top grade is obvious ace territory, and the 70 grade usually runs a “1/2 pitcher” description that makes that grade worth including in “ace” territory). Of course, in the case of Woodruff and Burnes, both pitchers were not even listed as Top 5 arms within the Brewers system by Baseball Prospectus entering 2017. The duo fell behind Top 10 rankers…

• LHP Josh Hader (55-60 OFP, #3 SP or #4 SP / high leverage relief)
• RHP Luis Ortiz (50-60 OFP, #3/#4 SP)
• RHP Cody Ponce (45-50 OFP, average starter / late inning relief or #4/#5 SP or solid relief)

…as well as “Others of Note” RHP Devin Williams (“classic projectable righty”) and RHP Marcos Diplan (“probably future relief” but has “polish and command”). In fact, it is arguable that even with the top five arms in the system, the Brewers do not have an ace.

There is certainly an argument to be made that scouting is an imperfect science, and that perhaps the BP scouting team did not properly price Woodruff’s secondary stuff progression in Class-AA Biloxi, or that they underrated Burnes’s draft day pedigree and almost immediate professional ball impact. Yet, since the BP team bases their scouting approach upon an on-the-ground team that values actual looks, and arguably has more aggressively realistic future prospect grades than other outlets, it is difficult to see the exclusion of either Woodruff or Burnes from the 2017 Top 10 (and “Others of Note”) lists as mistakes. Similarly, accurate “useful middle to back rotation” scouting profiles might indeed “rank” lower than 15th in this Brewers system, but (more importantly) that ranking is not an insult to either player because useful MLB player should never be viewed as a slight on a prospect report.

To complicate matters, even the “accurate” ace grades do not always work out. Perhaps the best current case for this is RHP Lucas Giolito, who ranked atop the White Sox system in 2015 and landed the coveted 70 / 80 OFP (elite starting pitcher or #1/#2 starting pitcher). Giolito was a projected “ace” for many reasons:

“fastball easily works 93-97; can reach back for more; big arm-side run in lower band (93-95); explosive offering; can already throw to all four quadrants; curve shows deep two-plane break; power pitch; adept at replicating arm slot and disguise to fastball; high confidence in offering; will use at any point in the count; commands to both sides of the plate; already plus to better; elite potential; flashes feel for change; turns over with a loose wrist; displays fade with late drop; early makings of strong pitchability.”

Obviously, fans are inclined to take the good without the bad, and running with that Giolito grade also required the downsides: “Lot of body to control; can drift during landing and open early; diminishes fastball command at times; still in the early stages of building stamina; some effort in delivery wears him down; stuff can get loose and sloppy deeper into outings; velocity trails off third time through; will wrap wrist when delivering curve from time to time; change has gap to close to reach on-paper potential; loses action when throws too hard; doesn’t presently command pitch well; leaves up in zone due to early release.” Giolito was the ace in 2015, but even though he’s since dropped in rankings, the new Giolito remains a rarity in a farm system (a 60 OFP, #3 starter).

This exercise could go on and on. As far as 70 OFP aces go, recently there’s Zack Wheeler, Dylan Bundy, Taijuan Walker, Jonathan Gray, and Alex Reyes to consider. These pitchers have had their ups and for the most part remain coveted arms for nearly an organization insofar as few rotations would reject these contributors. But even with great performers like Michael Fulmer, the equation is tough; Fulmer was a 55 OFP with questions about injury and consistency that could potentially impede a #2 type starter. There is no exact science to aces, and picking one is hardly even an artform.

Even Yovani Gallardo, “an outstanding pitching prospect,” missed the ace label and was hit with “#2 and occasional All-Star” as OFP. Should 20.3 WARP signify a #2 arm, that designation would probably serve Burnes, Hader, and Woodruff quite well (and I gather Gallardo’s career earnings justify that, as well).

My standby comment to respond to Burnes / Hader / Woodruff ace talk, or the Brewers system in general, is to comment “aces do not exist.” This is not a throwaway comment, either. Aces do not exist, in the sense that from a scouting profile the grade is so rare as to basically be obsolete within the minor leagues; in the sense of performance, it is categorically true that few pitchers can be great, especially consistently so. The fun with Brew Crew Ball leader and BPMilwaukee Prospect Editor Kyle Lesniewski’s #2016BrewersAce coverage of RHP Junior Guerra is that it hit on something quite central to baseball: even in the most unorthodox historical package, Guerra emerged to dominate batters in 2016. Guerra prevented 22 runs in 2016, a feat hardly matched by a dozen arms in the NL; his splitter was one of the most effective of all time in terms of Brooks Baseball tracking, meaning that Guerra had the stuff to back up the moniker. It was both immensely fun and funny for Guerra to serve as ace, funny in the sense that the Brewers missed front rotation potential in several drafts, but landed it in the form of an age-31 rookie claimed off waivers.

In the sense that Guerra was an ace, I suspect many Brewers fans believe Burnes or Woodruff or Hader could be an ace. This is an interesting problem to discuss because it runs deep beyond semantics. It is not merely semantics to say that a “scouting ace” and a “statistical ace” are different; the difference could land the Brewers a pennant. The trouble with this determination is that it is no easier to define the dominance of a statistical ace. For example, can an ace be one-off? Could an ace have a one-and-hopefully-not-done season, perhaps like Guerra’s 2016 campaign, or does an ace require multiple (consecutive, even!) years of success in order to be termed “an ace”? But in this sense, someone like Kyle Lohse becomes an ace, which is certainly not how many fans (especially not Brewers fans) use the term; but Lohse was a fantastic pitcher from 2011-2014, posting four consecutive better than average runs prevented campaigns.

One might call this the classic, “Is Yovani Gallardo an ace?” question. Obviously this stuff is more than semantics, because we still are inclined to talk about it in 2017. It matters to fans to say, while discussing Burnes or Hader or Woodruff, someone like Gallardo might not be an ace but was a very, very good pitcher, perhaps the next level immediately behind ace (a true #2 starter, perhaps). The table above is obviously just one captured moment in time, as it excludes 2009 and 2010 campaigns in which Gallardo was phenomenal (2.98 and 3.49 Deserved Runs Average (DRA) respectively, with 185+ IP both years) and Lohse was in transition and recovering from injuries. In either case, perhaps neither Lohse nor Gallardo are “aces” in the aspirational sense of the term, but both pitchers were among the top Senior Circuit starters for an extended period of time.

Data:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FeW8mCqDqzf6e6OGlq4SwP0tmIYlT2cpcG288mLQCDw/edit?usp=sharing

But, it’s worth chasing “aces,” and certainly a definition as such. I dove into my runs prevented data, kept annually from 2009-2011 at Sportsbubbler and Bernie’s Crew (unfortunately 2009-2010 are lost), 2012-2015 at Disciples of Uecker, and 2016 personally (officially unpublished). Analyzing a set of 845 individual pitching seasons reveals quite stunning variance that underscores the difficulty of defining acehood.

The big data are not thrilling; a 16 runs prevented season does not strike the “acehood” sense quite like Clayton Kershaw or Zack Greinke when they reach 50 runs prevented in a season. Yet, isolating those 85 pitching seasons above the 16 runs prevented threshold is quite interesting. Indeed, Junior Guerra was an ace in 2016, and by quite a bit (22 runs prevented being significantly better than 16); Gallardo and Lohse are definitely aces; so was Ian Kennedy, Jair Jurrjens, Dan Straily, Doug Fister, Kris Medlen, Wade Miley, Jhoulys Chacin, Henderson Alvarez, and of course Bronson Arroyo. What is striking about this list is the lack of regulars; only 20 pitchers in the 2011-2016 National League reached 16 runs prevented in two (or more) seasons:

This, if anything, should underscore the rarity and strangeness of acehood. Madison Bumgarner has reached 16 runs prevented exactly twice, and in this definition would be exactly as much an ace as Tanner Roark. What’s intriguing about this argument is that by constructing the counterpoint that there is more to being an ace than preventing runs, such as pitching consistently throughout multiple seasons, or consistently serving as a workhorse, acehood once again becomes something that is quite murky and ill-defined. In order to argue that Tanner Roark is not an ace but Madison Bumgarner is, one is required to shift slightly away from peak performance, and search for criteria that will ultimately dissolve the definition of an ace.

Incidentially, only 20 starters in the 2011-2016 NL worked at least 200 innings more than once, although the list diverges quite a bit from the 20 runs prevented aces above. Here, again, Yovani Gallardo answers that ace question with years of consistency:

Combining innings pitched and runs prevented, one can truly see the amount of variance that is inherent in pitching performance, which should be the last nail in the coffin of “acehood” and thus (hopefully) relieve the pressure on the Brewers to develop “aces.”

For this aspect of analysis, I constructed a times series involving every 2011-2016 NL pitcher who appeared during consecutive seasons in the rotational rankings (excluding “emergency starters,” who by definition only worked one start). If you’ve ever imagined that pitching performance varies a bunch on a seasonal basis…indeed it does! When faced with the criterion of working in at least two consecutive seasons from 2011-2016, 216 NL starting pitchers produced 724 pitching seasons, and their performances varied wildly on an annual basis. On a yearly basis, each pitcher might be expected to add or subtract 57 innings and add or subtract 12 runs prevented. To put this in perspective, given that 10 runs is typically understood to be worth “One Win” to an MLB club, each of these pitchers might be expected to either add or substract at least one win on average when they worked in consecutive years. 57 innings is a season’s work by a replacement starter, further demonstrating the importance of understanding variance inherent in starting pitching.

One might expect some outliers to exist, but once again, searching for “consistent” pitchers (pitchers who varied less than the average starter during consecutive seasons) piles doubt on a clear definition of “acehood.” Searching for pitchers with variance reasonably close to the +/- 12 Runs Prevented and +/- 57.0 IP marks reveals fourteen pitchers that started during consecutive years from 2011-2016 while doing so with consistent performance:

[Really, it’s even worth arguing whether Bumgarner, Gio Gonzalez, Mike Leake, or even Tom Koehler and Jon Niese should appear on this list, because 14-to-16 runs prevented is notably higher than 12 runs prevented.]

Once again, the usual suspects are near some quite unusual arms in terms of “ace” discussions. Few would classify Jon Niese or Tom Koehler an ace; when Marco Estrada was traded to the Blue Jays, Brewers fans did not readily call him an ace when they waved goodbye (would one be happy if Burnes or Woodruff or Hader produced Estrada’s career?). However, this list should show the value of the “middle rotation” or #4/#5 scouting designation, as certainly there is room in MLB for arms like Niese, Koehler, and Estrada. Perhaps this list even casts some light on the Arizona Diamondbacks trade for Shelby Miller; maybe a pitching strapped club was not entirely shortsighted when they traded for a 15 runs prevented starter with extremely low variance between seasons (alternately, perhaps they should have looked into the other shoe dropping). Each of these points demonstrates why one should not be concerned with the ranking of the Brewers’ young prospect pitchers, and instead simply await the variance they will produce and hope for the best convergence of variance-cycles during contending seasons.

Aces do not exist. Aces do not exist in terms of scouting, where pitchers can receive ace designation as prospect and “back up” in terms of stuff, face injuries, or even hit banal developmental hurdles. Aces do not exist in terms of runs prevented, where very few arms are able to prevent runs or even work high innings pitched totals in multiple years. Finally, aces do not exist in terms of consistency, for very few National League starters demonstrated the ability to work consecutive seasons with better than average variance between 2011-2016, and many of the arms that are consistent are not “elite” performers that invoke the ideal ace. None of this should be surprising, for pitching is truly difficult, perhaps the most difficult mechanical exercise in all professional sports. This is the logical and empirical conclusion, which should drive a moral conclusion opposed to hanging “ace” tags on pitchers like Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, or Josh Hader. Each of these arms might meet one of the markers used in this article to draw ace-like comparisons at the MLB level, but the overwhelming odds are they don’t; but that alone should not be construed as a bad outcome, for there are bountiful career options without the designation of “ace.”

Data:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FeW8mCqDqzf6e6OGlq4SwP0tmIYlT2cpcG288mLQCDw/edit?usp=sharing

Photo Credit: Caylor Arnold, USAToday Sports Images

Morgan was not the only hero of that game, of course. There was Carlos Gomez, who singled and stole second to set up Morgan’s game winner. There was the unlikeliest hero, Yuniesky Betancourt, whose RBI single in the sixth inning gave the Brewers a 2-1 lead and continued a surprisingly productive postseason for the much maligned shortstop. There was the bullpen, between two scoreless innings from Takashi Saito and Francisco Rodriguez, and the resilient performance of John Axford, who threw a scoreless 10th to earn the win one inning after blowing his first save in months.

But arguably the biggest hero in that series was Yovani Gallardo, who pitched like an ace when the Brewers needed him to most. In Game One, Gallardo threw one of the best games of his career, as he held an Arizona lineup that scored the fourth-most runs in the National League to just one run in eight innings. The only damage came on a solo home run from Ryan Robert. Gallardo managed to strike out MVP candidate Justin Upton twice and held Arizona’s 4-5-6 hitters Miguel Montero, Chris Young and Lyle Overbay (thank you, Kirk Gibson, for benching Paul Goldschmidt to get the platoon advantage, a move that only looks more ridiculous with time) to an 0-for-9 afternoon.

And then Gallardo took the hill for Game Five, forced to clean up the mess left by blowups from Shaun Marcum and Randy Wolf. Gibson didn’t give Gallardo the same gift he did in Game 1 and inserted Paul Goldschmidt into the lineup at first base, and threw the full force of Arizona’s lineup at the Brewers. Could Gallardo hold down such a powerful lineup twice in a week?

Justin Upton got to him in the third inning to open the scoring, blasting a line-drive solo home run to right field. And Paul Goldschmidt managed a pair of hits. But whenever the Diamondbacks threatened to bust open a rally, Gallardo buckled down. Gallardo struck out five batters over six innings, two of which ended innings with a runner in scoring position. The two times Goldschmidt did single, he was batting without a runner on base. Gallardo managed to hold the top four hitters in Arizona’s lineup — Willie Bloomquist, Aaron Hill, Upton and Miguel Montero — to just 1-for-12, keeping Goldschmidt out of high-leverage at-bats.

Gallardo left after six innings, having limited the damage to just the Upton solo homer. It wasn’t always pretty — he nibbled around the plate, as he threw just 66 strikes in his 112 pitches — but he was nasty enough to shut down the Diamondbacks and keep the Brewers in the game even as the offense struggled against opposing starter Ian Kennedy. Gallardo routinely came up clutch in an elimination game, undoubtedly the highest stakes game the city had hosted since the 1982 American League pennant season.

Gallardo wasn’t a particularly decorated player in his Brewers career — he made one All-Star team, in 2010, and didn’t once earn a Cy Young vote. He quickly become a solid major league pitcher with the Brewers, but he never made the next step to become a true staff ace over the course of a full season; from 2009 through 2012, he finished with an ERA between 3.50 and 3.90 every season. But when Milwaukee needed him to pitch like an ace in the 2011 NLDS, Gallardo stepped up, giving the Brewers a performance as deserving of celebration five years down the line as any other we saw that season.

I spent most of the winter in hibernation, buried within the cozy confines of my baseball-analysis den and wading through a sea of pitchers. I’m happy to say that the seeds of thought that were planted in the final weeks of 2013 are now bearing fruit, as the 2014 Starting Pitcher Guide that Paul Sporer and I produced was released last week and covers close to 400 pitchers throughout the professional ranks. This was my second year contributing mechanical reports to the Guide, and I thoroughly enjoyed the arduous-yet-rewarding process as well as the pitching discussions that were generated as a result (and which can be heard on the latest episode of TINSTAAPP).

I dove quite a bit deeper into the pitcher pool this year, with mechanical report cards for more than 200 players. The total was enough to cover just about every pitcher with a shot at starting for his club come Opening Day, nearly all of the pitching prospects who placed in the upper half of BP’s Top 101 prospect list, plus a batch of 30 relievers to ice the cake. Stacking these players side-by-side for each ball club revealed some stark organizational trends, and though some of these team-wide tendencies were apparent in the past, there were a few new patterns that emerged this time around.

Let’s get the recurring topics from “Trending 101” out of the way first.

To start, the Rays are particularly adept at training their pitchers to have excellent balance and outstanding posture, and this element becomes more apparent as Tampa Bay continues to churn out quality arms from their system. Consider the grades of the five starting pitchers who were covered in the Guide, in which each member of their starting rotation earned a plus grade of “60” or better in the departments of both balance and posture (note that these were finalized prior to the Jeremy Hellickson injury). The grades for the big five averaged out to a 63 for both subjects. On the downside, Rays pitchers tend to combine the awesome balance with a deliberate pace to the plate, with an average momentum grade of just 46 for the five starters. The only pitchers with above-average scores for momentum wereDavid Price and Matt Moore, each of whom scored a modest 55 in the category.

[snip]

I have spoken at great length of the Brewers’ preference toward over-the-top pitchers who sacrifice posture in the name of a high arm slot, and that dictum grows louder even as the faces change within their rotation. The three homegrown mainstays from the 2013 rotation each received a poor grade for posture, including Yovani Gallardo (20), Marco Estrada (30), and Wily Peralta (30). The one bright spot was Kyle Lohse, whose 50-grade posture was the best on the staff last season; significantly, he is not a product of the Brewers’ system. The same can be said for newcomer Matt Garza, but the fact that Garza incorporates heavy spine-tilt to the tune of 35-grade posture (at peak) may very well have been the lure that reeled him to “the good land.” Tyler Thornburg is a product of the Milwaukee farm, and his own propensity for glove-side tilt carries a common bond (i.e. 30-grade) with his future rotation-mates. All told, the six starting pitchers who were given report cards in the 2014 SP Guide received an average posture grade of just 32.5, the lowest such GPA of any club in any single subject.

[Read the remainder of the article by Doug Thorburn right here.]

That being said, the Brewers have not had to deal with a ton of pitcher injuries this year. The only real significant injury to the pitching staff has been to Wily Peralta. He went down on May 5th with a strained left oblique and has yet to return to the lineup. Matt Garza was placed on the 15-day disabled list on Monday with right shoulder tendinitis, but according to this article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, it looks like it’s nothing too serious. The right-hander should only miss one start. According to Garza, he’s been pitching with this injury for some time (the article didn’t specify when the injury occurred). If he’s been pitching through shoulder tendinitis for most of the season, it could conceivably explain some of his struggles. As for Peralta, he reportedly has thrown a successful bullpen session.  

#Brewers RHP Wily Peralta threw first bullpen today since going on DL with oblique. Said went well.

— Tom (@Haudricourt) June 29, 2015

Therefore, the Brewers may shortly get him back into the rotation, probably sometime after the All-Star Break.

The Peralta injury also opened the door for Taylor Jungmann, who has been effective since making his debut. While his 2.43 ERA is excellent, he does own a 3.54 FIP, which is roughly league-average. It should be noted, though, that his 3.00 DRA (Deserved Run Average) is above-average. I would expect Jungmann to experience some regression in the second half — but remain an above-average pitcher — and that’s definitely a nice discovery for the Brewers, considering their starting-rotation woes.

Considering these factors, it seems safe to say that the Brewers pitching staff has not overly been affected by pitching injuries in 2015. At least not up to this point. This, however, has not always been the case. Look at the 2008 season. In that year, Brewers pitchers missed 624 days due to injury. The injuries also impacted significant players, as Yovani Gallardo and Chris Capuano missed more than 200 days. Gallardo suffered two major injuries, to his knees, that year. The most significant one was the first knee injury, which was a torn ACL that caused him to miss 144 days. Chris Capuano on the other hand, had Tommy John surgery, which shelved him for the entire season. It went on to affect the rest of his time with the Brewers.

Throughout their time with the Brewers, both players were plagued with injuries, but again, do they deserve the label of being injury-prone? The methodology I used is the same as the one I outlined on Monday — read about it here. With that said, the data shown below is from 2004 to 2014.

* Injury happened in the minors.

Both Vince Perkins and Randy Choate’s injuries happened while they were in the minors. They never threw a single inning with the Brewers, which is why there’s nothing in their innings-pitched column.

At first glance, Gallardo definitely seems like a player who was hampered by a lot of injuries, and he has. He has the fifth-most days missed due to injury since 2004, and he ranks third in the number of separate injuries he suffered during that time compared to other Brewers players. While that is true, he also pitched many more innings than any other Brewers pitcher on the list. Therefore, labeling him as “injury-prone” may be misguided. Chris Capuano and David Riske, I would argue, are players who better fit that profile. Here is a visualization that should aid my argument.

The data here is a lot less clustered than the one with position players. It’s harder to find outliers or players who fit the profile of injury-prone. The one obvious case, though, is of David Riske. He barely pitched for the Brewers, and yet since 2004, he has missed the second-most games. His career took a nosedive when he suffered Tommy John surgery in 2009. He attempted a comeback in 2010, pitching a total of 23.1 innings that year and posting a 5.01 ERA. That proved to be the last year he pitched in the big leagues. This is just another reminder that not every pitcher, after having Tommy John surgery, makes it back or finds success. It is a massive surgery and has ended the career of many pitchers, including Riske. It also seriously affected the career of Chris Capuano, who after suffering his second Tommy John surgery in 2008 didn’t pitch again in the bigs until 2010. While the surgery didn’t end his major-league career, it was a major cause for his end in Milwaukee. In 2010, he only pitched 66 innings for the Brewers. He then isigned with the Mets the following offseason.

PITCHERS VS. POSITION PLAYERS

The other part of all this that I found interesting was that while the position players suffered more injuries, on average, the pitchers missed many more games.

While, this certainly isn’t a league-wide study and simply a look at the Brewers, it wouldn’t surprise me if this were the norm for the rest of the league. Position players probably have to deal with more nagging injuries, while with pitchers when something breaks, it’s more serious.

THE DIFFERENCE

The table above, on the other hand, is an overall look at the data from 2004 until 2014. Let’s look at the difference in days missed between Brewers position players and pitchers for each individual year.

The biggest difference obviously came in 2011. That year Manny Parra, Brandon Kintzler, and Mitch Stetter all basically missed the entire season due to injury. Kintzler only pitched 14.2 innings, Stetter pitched even fewer innings, and Parra missed the entire season. These injuries, though, were to three relief pitchers and didn’t end up hampering the team all that much — especially considering the fact that the Brewers finished first in their division that year.

What some, however, might find most surprising is that in 2013, 2012, 2007, and 2004, position players had more injuries than pitchers. While this is probably not the norm, this can, and does, happen. In 2013, for example, the Yankees pitchers only missed 350 days, while their position players missed 1170 days due to injury, according to Jeff Zimmerman. In that same article, he also shows the top-ten differences in days missed between position players and pitchers from the data he recorded.

CONCLUSION

Obviously, what I’ve done here isn’t a scientific study. I have mostly provided data, in an effort to give us a better sense of which Brewers players can be labeled as injury-prone, although the argument is mostly anecdotal. I would also be interested in seeing how this data relates to the rest of the league. The Brewers, for example, are well-known for having far fewer Tommy John surgeries than other teams in the majors. Today, though, I wasn’t able to provide that. Accumulating this type of information takes a lot of time, so providing better context will have to wait for a later date.

What I hope this has done is not necessarily answer all questions, but also raise new ones for both Brewers fans and general baseball fans.