The Brewers need starting pitching help. The Brewers need an ace.

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┻┳| •.•) #Brewers didn’t need a SP
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— BP Milwaukee (@BPMilwaukee) July 31, 2018

Of course this would be the return line for the 2018-2019 offseason, because the line never went away during the season. A large faction of fans were dissatisfied with the starting pitching in April; they were satisfied with the starting pitching in May, “but can this staff beat ‘a dude’ in the playoffs?” (Yes!, it turns out); they were particularly dissatisfied with the starting pitching when the season ended in June and July, and again they were dissatisfied with the starting pitching at the trade deadline. This debate was simply never going to be won, because there is a contingent of baseball fans that refuse to either understand or accept what GM Stearns, pitching coach Derek Johnson, systemwide player development, and the front office are trying to accomplish. For arguably the first time in Brewers franchise history, certainly for the first time in a generation, the Milwaukee system strength is pitching, and not of the sort of high octane, all-risk dreamy profiles that flamed out at the turn of the 21st Century; this is a system that is built on turning a fabulous diversity of pitching profiles into potentially successful MLB profiles (witness the scouting range between Freddy Peralta and Corbin Burnes, for example).

When the dust settled, the system worked. The Brewers rotation was good. It was good any particular way you measured it; it was a good rotation if you divide rotation spots based on overall Games Started and workload measurements; it was a good rotation if you divide rotation spots based on true rotational scarcity (i.e., comparing each spot across the MLB); and it was a good rotation if you separate pitching classes into “true starters” and “replacements,” and measure each set of pitchers against different “spots” or “workloads.” The pitching staff was good if you believe in “Aces,” and it was good if you don’t believe Aces exist.

The Brewers rotation was good by every measurement except DRA, which should be the significant focal point of 2018-2019 offseason analysis in an effort to understand how Milwaukee assembled an elite fielding component in order to prevent runs.

If you do not wish to read the details, the table above summarizes the comparative results from each model. Each Brewers starter was assessed according to their relevant spot, and then compared by Innings Pitched (IP), Deserved Run Average (DRA), and Runs Prevented.

Rotation One: By Games Started
One way to assess a starting rotation is by ranking pitchers according to games started on a leaguewide basis. This ranking method is effective because it approximates the scarcity of both MLB resources (there’s not a whole lot of pitchers that can work full seasons) and roster construction. One benefit of focusing on games started instead of another performance metric is that analysts can reflect the success or failure of an MLB club across games started totals; for example, it matters that Gerrit Cole and Lucas Giolito both started 32 games despite widely divergent performances. The distance between Cole and Giolito is approximately 65 runs prevented, even though they worked the same number of starts, which raises an important question about how different teams assess the importance of effective starters versus soaking up innings. In fact, had Brent Suter and Zach Davies not faced injuries in 2018, they may have forced this question with the Brewers front office, and Freddy Peralta also arguably faced this (along with innings workload concerns) down the stretch run.

According to this measurement, there are approximately 10 rotation spots discernible by workload throughout the 2018 MLB, as well as emergency starters (who started one game; I will always assess emergency starters as their own category). On the surface, this is a pleasing model; the top starters by workload typically are the best starters in the game, even if there are differences between guys like Cole and Giolito, as discussed above.

On this model, it is clear that the Brewers succeeded because of their depth. A critique about the top of the rotation could be true in terms of DRA, as the contextual performances of Jhoulys Chacin and Chase Anderson were not comparable to top workload pitchers across the MLB. The importance of the depth should not be understated, from Wade Miley and Peralta to Brandon Woodruff and even Gio Gonzalez. If you’re reconsidering Gonzalez’s trade cost, not only should the veteran lefty’s surface performance be assessed, but one should not that, marginally, he was worth seven runs better than his median workload.

Another benefit of using this model is that analysts can assess “phantom” runs prevented where teams “miss” particular spots. For example, Chacin may not measure up to the median Top Spot prototype, but having his performance was better than not having a heavy workload pitcher whatsoever (in theory; Giolito’s performance would obviously have not validated a heavy workload benefit for the Brewers). If a team was missing a Top Spot, they theoretically would be punished 16-to-17 Runs Prevented. Milwaukee did not use a Five, Seven, Eight, or Ten workload, each of which approximately ranged from 2 to 4 runs below average; one could argue in this way that the Brewers also received 10 “phantom” Runs Prevented by avoiding these typical workloads.

This should help to validate the ideal that there are a couple of different ways to construct a rotation. A team could indeed bank on a Jacob deGrom type atop the rotation, and seek a 30 run advantage from their top workload. One must be careful of the cost for this type of pitcher, however, as if considerable resources are spent at the top of the rotation, they may be diminished at the bottom of the rotation. The Brewers demonstrated the “bottom-up” approach: they lost out on the Yu Darvish sweepstakes, and Alex Cobb did not bite on a one-year deal, so they proceeded with Chacin and Miley, plus their developmental pipeline. That internal pipeline was worth approximately five runs (better than their median workload) to the 2018 Brewers, while external candidates were worth more than 15 runs (better than their median workload). It was not flashy, there were no “dudes” on the marquee, but it worked.

Rotation Two: By Team

Of course, even the preceding model is relatively clean or “idealistic,” for MLB teams do not necessarily construct their rotations according to the same ideal. An additional method for assessing rotations is to judge each team’s rotation spot by turn; since two pitchers literally cannot start the same game, this method goes spot-by-spot, start-by-start for each MLB team. The benefit of this method of rotational assessment is that it reflects team preference, or injury and ineffectiveness circumstances, across the league. Some teams attempt to duct tape 13- or 14-pitcher rotations together, whether they are contending or tanking, while others attempt to yield more mileage from each spot. By giving each team one exclusive spot for each turn (until their pitchers run out), this type of rotational model can allow teams to be analyzed against attrition across the league.

Every team in the MLB required at least six rotational turns throughout the season, but this model demonstrates the divergence of team strategies one they hit six starters. Some teams preferred to give replacement starters two or three starts each, while others leaned on emergency starters.

The Brewers front office, coaching staff, and pitchers did a fantastic job weathering 162. They hit the right buttons in replacing some starters at certain points in time (such as resting Peralta down the stretch, or [arguably] “shuttling Woodruff between Triple-A and MLB), while giving starters room to breathe at others point in the season (this also applies to Peralta, who was given some time to adjust from rough starts, as well as Junior Guerra). By spitting on rotation spots 10 through 14, the Brewers also arguably saved 16 “phantom” runs, as the club would not have found effective pitchers (on average) digging that deep into league or organizational resources. (This line could be argued with further research, however, as one could note that someone like Corbin Burnes could have been effective in two starts, for example).

Rotation Three: By Type
During my time writing at Sportsbubbler (RIP) and Disciples of Uecker, I published annual starting pitching rotation rankings based on the decision point of 100 IP. If a pitcher worked 100 or more innings with 50 percent of their games as starts, they were a starting pitcher; if not, they were replacement depth. On this model, I attempted to assess pitchers according to Runs Prevented, with the ideal that (a) working a lot of innings should be worth more as a starter, and (b) rotation spots could be designated based on the resulting Runs Prevented rankings. I’m no longer certain of this method’s veracity, as I believe there are better ways to assess rotational scarcity and usage across the MLB. But, here we are, testing the Brewers 2018 rotation, so let’s assemble the pitchers.

Wouldn’t you know it, the 2018 MLB did not have many “true” rotation spots: there were only 129 pitchers across 30 teams that fit the first criterion listed above. This is not enough pitchers to fill a true five man rotation, and it’s hardly enough to fill a four man turn.

Yet, those Runs Prevented totals present some order to the universe. There are aces, even if there’s only a couple of them. There are nice middle of the rotation “dudes” that you can really sink your teeth into; 150 IP and 2 Runs Prevented feels like a solid effort for a team. Every contender would accept that workload (every MLB team would, for that matter).

Where there are not full-time starters, replacements are necessary, and MLB really dug deep in 2018: there were 227 replacement starters, including 57 Emergency Starters, across 30 MLB teams in 2018. Basically, on average, MLB teams were using more replacements than they were using regular starters. The Brewers are no different here, and in fact, that’s partially how they gained their value. Viewing the range of Runs Prevented across each of these roles should demonstrate the importance of having a solid organizational pitching strategy; replacement starters need not simply be the pitching equivalent of throwing spaghetti against the wall. Tampa Bay demonstrated this with their genius “Opener” strategy, and they produced one of the elite Runs Prevented units in baseball. The Brewers accomplished their success by using long-term replacements like Miley and Peralta, but they also received value elsewhere across their high-floor organizational depth.

If you previously thought the idea of “Phantom Runs Prevented” by not using a rotation spot was a suspect idea, this seems to be your chance to pounce on the Brewers for not using an “Ace” or true “Number One” starter. By this model, the Brewers were gutsy, punting nearly 63 runs prevented at the front end of the rotation. Yet, the club also did not use a true “Number Four” or full-time starter that should have been replaced, which bought the club another 43 runs prevented. All told, the Brewers rotation of regular starters lost the club approximately 19 runs here, thanks to their cavalier strategy.

Of course, the Brewers used every Replacement typology except a “true swingman,” and this is where the club torched the league. Gio Gonzalez and Wade Miley covered the lack of an “Ace” or “Number One” starter, and demonstrated the value in not having a Regular Four, either. Peralta, Dan Jennings (yes, Dan Jennings), and Woodruff gained significant Runs Prevented advantages in the replacement ranks as well. On top of these depth successes, the rotation was not bad overall; Suter and Guerra were close to true Number Three starters, and Anderson was close to a true Number Two starter. Chacin was better than a typical Number Two starter, boasting a Runs Prevented performance that almost placed him in a phantom “Number One” role for the club.

What is startling on this model is that the Brewers typologies also worked according to DRA. Once an analyst accepts that the club did not have a True Ace or True Number One starter, the threshold for assessing DRA is lowered significantly. Witness Chacin, for example, who was assessed against DRA that were significantly better than 4.00 on the first two models; his DRA performance looks much better on the final model, because once you stop comparing him to Aces, the comparison becomes more realistic. The Brewers deep organization also performs very well against median DRA requirements on this model, which raises a question about which model’s expectations one should use going forward.

The last remaining criticism for fans and analysts rests on how one interprets Deserved Run Average results for the Brewers rotation. On any model one chooses, be it based on Games Started, Team Rotational Turns and Scarcity, or Actual Runs Prevented performance, the Brewers’ rotation was good in 2018. Now it is worth digging through these models during the offseason, in order to gain important lessons for Corbin Burnes, Woodruff, and Peralta during their potential first full workloads in 2019, and even for reworking Jimmy Nelson. Milwaukee has proven the success that can come with aggressive rotational swings and an organizational pitching strategy, coupled with elite, efficient fielding.

An underrated 2018-2019 offseason would find David Stearns making moves to further improve the fielding (such as improving Right Field, and then working Christian Yelich primarily as a Left Fielder), which should in turn help boost the pitching depth strategy going forward. As it stands, the Brewers do not even need an external pitching move; this makes potential offseason moves even more interesting for speculation.

On Method:
When I run Twitter chats from BPMilwaukee, one of the most curious things to my mind is that followers of BPMilwaukee will not necessarily support general BP stats work. No concerns there, really; it’s not necessary to “brand” MLB stats analysis, and indeed when one begins supporting stats-as-brands, that’s just as problematic as how so-called Old School stats like Runs Batted In or Earned Run Average are used in orthodox baseball discussions. No, what I find curious is the general idea that a stat like WARP or DRA is faulty because it is “made up,” which is presumably a concern because the BP stats team are extremely transparent about how the stats are constructed and also how (and why) they are changing. So folks actually know that DRA changes…which is different than how the vast majority of websites present baseball stats. What is problematic about this attitude about DRA is that it ignores how other statistics are merely “constructs” in the very same way that DRA is merely a construct, and it also trades in the murky waters of false certainty.

For the past two years, I have worked in Community Development and Economic Development positions while completing a professional urban planning and policy degree. I used to believe that I was a “stats” guy or an “analytics” guy, but I never quite understood the importance of what actual statistical analysis means until I was forced to reckon with my biases while training for economic analysis. Before I learned and studied stats, and was required to use them on the job, I thought the “numbers” were most important. While fields aligned with statistics are concerned in some sense with “numbers” and thus with producing “numbers-oriented results” (i.e., sometimes your boss really wants the results of your analysis), by far the most important elements of statistical analysis are “concept validity,” methodology, and uncertainty. What is most important about statistical analysis is process, it turns, out: how an analyst reaches a conclusion is much more important than the concluding numbers on their own, for it is only in light of outlining methodology, and explaining what is at stake with a certain measurement, that anyone (including a consumer of those numbers) could understand the numerical results of statistical analysis.

It’s ironic that many victories of the so-called “analytics movements” are now enshrined in their own dangerous orthodoxy, for what everyone seems to have forgotten is that even if the debate was about numbers, the original controversy was to convince the “Guards of Baseball Knowledge and Value” that there were legitimately different ways of thinking about the game and that that meant there were legitimately different measurements that could be presented. Somewhere along the line, we became obsessed with those measurements, rather than the process-oriented creed of focusing on how to think about baseball. This extends to statistical analysis, then, too: it is as though when many fans were convinced of the merits of WARP and other stats, they simply turned over the box containing ERA, RBI, etc., dumped out those contents, and stuck the new measurements into the box. That was never the point, and to the extent that many of us did not communicate the significance of process-oriented thinking about baseball stats, that was our problem (and I place myself in this camp, having only realized the significance of this issue over the last few years).

Anyway, “concept validity” is the most important thing that I have learned about statistical analysis, aside from clearly stating your uncertainty in proper terms. “Concept validity” is basically the extent to which the phenomena you’re trying to measure match the methods that you’re using to measure the phenomena. What should be inherent in this process is an understanding that as an analyst’s approach to measuring phenomena changes, so too should their results change; one need not hold the numerical results of analysis sacred, for if new empirical evidence emerges, methodological research unearths a better way to measure something, or a literature review reveals a better way to define a concept, there is nothing wrong with the analytical results changing.

So, keep this in mind when you’re thinking about why DRA has “changed.” DRA doesn’t “hate” anyone on your team, or love them. It is not a mark against DRA, or WARP, that the stat is consistently updated and changed, because that is a sign that its authors are attempting to reach that mark of “concept validity.” If it is the goal of DRA “to tease out the most likely contributions of pitchers to the run-scoring that occurs around them” and updated methodological approaches, or an updated understanding of pitching-related data, helps to accomplish that goal, revising the stat is a methodological strength. That said, I can understand that within a statistics field, one may have disagreements with some of the particular methodological approaches; but I don’t take any substance of that type of disagreement to dismiss the value of the overall methodological process of DRA.

This is why the new DRA is so important: it continues Baseball Prospectus’s commitment to presenting uncertainty (as has been done on Brooks Baseball, as one example) in publishing baseball statistics. Embrace this approach: so far as DRA is “made up,” it is made according to a methodologically sound process that upholds honest and transparent thinking about uncertainty.

DRA Values
One of the approaches to constructing DRA is to valuate the Run-value of pitching outcomes, and those outcomes are published by Baseball Prospectus. These elements are arguably more important than the DRA output itself, for these outcomes show the balance of a pitcher’s performance: is a pitcher saving runs during hits, balls not in play (e.g., Home Runs, strike outs, walks, etc.), or outs on balls in play?

My favorite Brewers pitcher, Zach Davies, is a “casualty” of the new DRA (h/t to Kyle Lesniewski for beating me to this realization). But we’re not going to say, “DRA hates Zach Davies.” On the contrary, it is possible to see that from Davies’s Out Runs (-1.4), Not In Play (NIP) Runs (1.9), Hit Runs (1.4), and Framing Runs (-0.1) that Davies is not getting the job done in terms of limiting runs when the ball isn’t in play, and he’s not limiting runs that occur on hits, either. Here’s how the 2018 Brewers look, sorted by NIP Runs (Josh Hader is real!):

These run elements help to define DRA. At this point in the season, however, it’s important to note just how large the Standard Deviation appears for DRA. For example, Davies’s DRA is currently published at 6.02, but with a standard deviation of 1.00, approximately 70 percent of the time, Davies could be expected to land between 5.02 DRA and 7.02 DRA. Tracking DRA with RA9 (Runs Allowed per 9 IP), something like a 5.02 RA9 gets Davies into respectable rotation territory, and there’s no telling that the righty could also prevent runs to a greater extent (i.e., serve as an even greater outlier).

Here are Brewers starters by variation, sorted by lowest Standard Deviation.

Now, let’s repeat this measurement with WARP, which should help to underscore the extent to which fans should quote Replacement Level stats with certainty. Doesn’t this make you wonder what the error bars might be on Baseball Reference or FanGraphs WAR? Hopefully those websites follow suit and publish WAR error bars where possible.

What I find extremely interesting about this exercise is the extent to which the Brewers starting pitchers exhibit variation in their potential WARP production. Almost to a man, the Brewers remaining rotation (after Brent Suter was moved to the bullpen to make room for Wade Miley) could range anywhere from replacement level to solid rotation piece (for reference, among 149 pitchers with 17.0 IP or higher, 0.34 WARP is a median 2018 performance thus far). This will be a stat worth watching for the remainder of 2018.

Finally, the last stat worth watching is whether the Brewers can continue to out perform their DRA. For my last publication on Runs Prevented, the Brewers as a pitching staff were approximately 18 runs better than their DRA suggested. My hypothesis here is that the Brewers groundball efficiency machine is leading this charge, but that could be one of many explanations including random luck.

These statistics provide a wide range of tools for Brewers fans and analysts. Ranges of DRA and WARP can be compared in order to assess both uncertainty and potential overlapping fields of value. To my mind, the best aspect of this new presentation is that fans and analysts no longer need to feign false certainty over WARP, and this is great; one shouldn’t need to say “Zach Davies has a 6.02 DRA” right now, when one can say “Davies’s DRA ranges from 5.02 to 7.02.” This exercise can be repeated throughout the season, and perhaps through embracing uncertainty we can find better hypothesis about how and why a team is under-performing (or over-performing) their peripheral stats or DRA estimates.

Photo Credit: Patrick Gorski, USA Today Sports Images

I’m serious about my answer, and so far, this is exactly what is happening. What do I mean when I say Craig Counsell and the Brewers found a new way to play baseball? Well, to start things off, it’s important to understand the “times through the order penalty” (TTTOP for the rest of this post). Pitchers, either due to fatigue, or familiarity with the lineup, generally get worse the more they see a hitter in any given game. This results in the sixth and fifth innings (respectively) typically being the highest scoring innings in a major league baseball game after the first. (The first inning is the highest scoring inning due to the offense’s ability to line up their best hitters to start the game.)

Old Reliever Strategy

Too much ink has been spilt by SABRmetrics people yelling at saves. The ninth is frequently a high leverage situation, and while it’s not optimal to have a set closer, there have been thousands of dumber ideas in baseball, and in sports generally. One of those terrible ideas is the notion that over the course of a game, after your starter has departed, you should use relievers from worst to best until the game is over. Generally, your seventh inning guy is worse than your eighth inning guy, who is worse than your closer. If you have to go to your sixth inning guy, pray, hope, and watch out. This strategy creates the perverse result of exacerbating the TTTOP by replacing your struggling starter with one of your worst relief pitchers.

Instead of all of this arbitrary nonsense, the Brewers have taken a novel approach. They are happily accepting the best two thirds of starters like Brent Suter and Jhoulys Chacin, and replacing the back third with the superhuman Josh Hader.

Suter is an extreme case of TTTOP, as opponents have OPSs of .593-.783-1.007 on his first, second, and third trips through the lineup, respectively. Chacin’s numbers are .676-.733-.766 for his career, which isn’t bad at all, but he still does get worse over the course of the game. Zach Davies often gets off to a bit of a rough start, but just like everyone else, the third time gets him as opponents OPS .754 the first time around, .691 the second, and .764 the third. Hader, by the way, has allowed an OPS-against of .331 this year, and while he has pitched multiple innings regularly, he has never turned over the order. For his career, his OPS-against is .501.

Sale and Hader

Chris Sale, the outstanding starter for the Red Sox, formerly of the White Sox, is a frequent comparable for Hader due primarily to left-handedness and hair, and those who wish to push Hader to start often cite Sale as the example. I used to be in favor of pushing everyone into a starting role if there was a chance it would work, but I’ve changed my mind on Hader. The Brewers have figured out the best way to use Hader, and they should keep at it. They should be widely lauded as progressive geniuses on this front, and what they’ve actually managed to do is to turn average (or in some instances below average) pitchers into Chris Sale 2-3 times per week.

Hader has been completely dominant in 2018, having struck out 25 of 41 batters faced, walking only 3, and allowing an opposing slash line of .079/.146/.184. That is simply ridiculous. The Brewers’ strategy with most of their starters has been to let them traverse the lineup twice, and then go to Hader at the first sign of trouble on their third trip. With Knebel out and Guerra pitching well, they have strayed from this a bit, but that’s a good thing. There is no reason to be set in their ways on the bullpen, and it’s good to see that Counsell is so adept at either reading situations, or taking advice from the numbers guys, or both.

With a pitcher like Suter, Hader converts him from someone who goes through the lineup at .593 – .783 – 1.007 clip to .593 – .783 – .331. Chacin goes from .676 – .733 – .766 to .676 – .733 – .331. Davies goes from  .754 – .691 – .764 to .754 – .691 – .331. Chris Sale’s career OPS-against is .626, and his TTTOP slash for his career is .591 – .621 – .662. 

The bottom line is that every time Hader takes the 3rd turn for one of the back-end guys, he’s taking away a big run-scoring chance for the Brewers’ opponent, and he’s preventing that pitcher from being exposed. Hader has shown himself capable of throwing about two innings every other day, and so he can pull this off two or three times per week. Once Hader does his job, the “traditional” Brewer bullpen is more than capable of taking it the rest of the way. With the exception of Oliver Drake, everyone has been excellent in the early going, and if Knebel can get healthy, the Jeffress-Barnes-Knebel combo should be as deadly as any in the league, with a game Matt Albers backing them up.

Is This Sustainable?

My biggest fear when this all began was that they would burn out the bullpen, and maybe they will, but it’s clear that the front office and Counsell have thought about this, and have a plan to deal with it. They have freely swapped out pitchers from Colorado Springs, and Counsell is open in his press conferences about the fact that they have a certain number of bullpen innings in mind for the season.

I started the season as a huge skeptic on this strategy, but I’m coming around to it. It is, if nothing else, an extremely creative tactic, that makes excellent use of a rare asset in Hader. The recognition of the 5th and 6th innings as fixable trouble spots seems obvious in retrospect, and if the pen can hold up for 162 games, the Brewers will wind up with one of the best staffs in the league, all because Josh Hader acts as a starting pitcher catalyst.

Photo Credit: Jeff Hanisch, USA Today Sports Images

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

Against the mighty Cubs, then, the Brewers went +6 RS / +12 RA compared to an average distribution of the Cubs seasonal Runs Scored and Runs Allowed. Compared to the Brewers’ own performance, Milwaukee went +2 RS / -3 RA against the Cubs based on an average distribution of their seasonal Runs Scored and Runs Allowed. On balance, this means that the Milwaukee Nine held their own against the vastly superior Cubs, which was evident throughout the tense September series in which the Brewers forced a divisional conversation and nearly made the playoffs.

Brewers fans are largely complaining about the state of the club’s Winter Meetings, as the club is expected to improve pitching but came away from the meetings without any new starting pitchers or relievers. Obviously, the offseason is very young, and Stearns himself has shown a penchant for working deep into the offseason: see the Khris Davis trade in February 2016, as one example, or even the bullpen-depth-defining Jared Hughes signing entering 2017. But even as fans fret about a rotation featuring Chase Anderson, Zach Davies, Junior Guerra, Brent Suter, and Brandon Woodruff to enter 2017, it is worth remembering the performance against the Cubs to frame the potential of this group of arms. Specifically, it was the unassuming Davies (and, arguably, equally unassuming Anderson and Suter) that strung together some of the best outings against the Cubs.

In fact, selecting a biased sample of these four pitchers’ best starts against the Cubs, a 58.7 IP, 15 runs (2.30 runs average!), 47 strikeout / 11 walk / 4 home run performance appears. Despite a 47 RS / 28 RA (!!!) team performance in these ten, Milwaukee’s bats and bullpen unfortunately failed to support the starters in some of these games, resulting in a 6-4 record despite the successful starting pitching (Milwaukee went 3-6 in the other nine games versus the Cubs with a much worse 41 RS / 56 RA performance).

Selecting the successful games obviously presents a biased image of performance, but it is worth diving into these starts in order to see how the Brewers succeeded. In what follows, it will be clear that the Brewers succeeded by adjusting throughout the year against the Cubs, and (for the most part) sticking with extremely balanced pitch selection approaches against the monstrous Cubs offense. What is meant to result from this study is increased fan confidence in the approach of the pitchers along with the catching staff, coaches, and (probably) team baseball research department. The Brewers undoubtedly had a lot go right in 2017, and if no baseball season can be successful without luck, the Brewers were particularly lucky in their convergence of events. But, luck does not explain the full story, as across the board a group of relatively unknown or unheralded players quietly gave hell to the most hyped team on the Senior Circuit.

This is not to suggest that the Brewers will have continued success against Cubs bats simply by working in similar zones, but rather that these Brewers processes of dancing throughout the zone from start to start could continue to orient these arms for seemingly surprising success. Indeed, the Brewers arms already improved by 26 runs between the first and second half of 2017, thanks to a 4.11 runs average in August, capped off with 3.64 runs average in September/October. Milwaukee is a pitching-first club, and the nails approach against the Cubs demonstrates one of the keys to that success.

The image of Zach Davies conjures a sinker-change up starter who constantly works low in the zone. What’s intriguing about Davies’s success against the Cubs throughout 2017 is that the righty consistently worked up into the zone to offset his low, sinking change up and blooping curve. Moreover, the righty’s additional pitch, what Brooks Baseball calls a “Cutter” but could be somewhere between a traditional cut fastball and slider, became one of the balancing aspects of his approach with the Cubs. The “cutter” itself for Davies is an interesting pitch, one that the young righty first expanded in 2016, and then shifted slightly in 2017; the PITCHf/x readings are slight, but essentially in 2017 Davies was using the pitch to “run” slightly more armside and rise slightly more than the 2016 version. Unlike 2016, Davies basically evened out his exceptional change up and big curveball, an arsenal change that churned out more groundballs and whiffs from the cutter in 2017.

Here are Davies’s four best starts against the Cubs. The shifts are subtle, but it’s clear that the righty was changing his approach with each meeting against the Cubs simply based on pitch selection. But these aren’t wholesale changes, instead (like the pitcher) they went on-a-bit, off-a-bit, adding and subtracting subtly to find a successful approach with each start. By the end of the year, the approach was working wonders for the righty.

Davies did not simply rely on pitch selection to baffle the Cubs, however. The righty consistently changed his approach within the zone for each start, including challenging the Cubs up in the zone with both fastballs and breaking balls. According to Brooks Baseball, here are the four best Davies starts versus the Cubs in terms of total zone migration:

By separating Davies’s sinker and fastball, as well as his cutter, change, and curveball, one can isolate the specific areas of the zone in which the righty was attempting to work “hard” and “soft.” Here are Davies’s sinker and the occasional fastball:

I grouped Davies’s “cutter” with the change and curve, because I’m simply not certain that it works like an additional “hard” pitch for Davies. The righty’s arsenal is beginning to look like that of Shaun Marcum at his best (a very good thing, remember Marcum was a 12.1 WARP starter from 2007-2011), meaning that the righty can provide armside- and gloveside-breaking pitches, while also essentially changing speeds on his “sinker” (with the change up) and “fastball” (with the cutter), making the curveball the “great” equalizer. Against previous scouting reports, size questions remain for Davies, although he has remained particularly durable in each of his advanced seasons thus far, and he is succeeding beyond the expected back-end starter “Overall Future Potential (OFP)” role because of his ability to adjust at the MLB level and due to his new cutter.

The cutter is typically the breaking pitch that Davies throws “uo” in the zone, with the curve and change dropping low. This gives Davies the distinct advantage of working three different velocity levels through different areas the zone:

What is striking about both migrations throughout the zone is that Davies does not simply “climb the ladder” with the hard stuff as time progresses, but he also locates his “breaking” and “off speed” offerings higher in the zone from time-to-time, too. As a result, Davies is essentially going straight after Cubs batters, and despite their acumen for power, they were largely unable to hit the righty as the season wore on. This could be an effective mindgame from Davies, insofar as he has established himself as someone who not only prefers to work low in the zone but also is perceived to be someone who cannot come into the zone to challenge batters. One might question whether batters’ lack of expectation for pitches within the zone allowed Davies to have an advantage for pounding those areas with strikes. Indeed, he was rather successful throughout these four starts in terms of limiting hits:

Notice that by the last start against the Cubs, despite locating heavily throughout the zone and especially gloveside (to your right on the GIF), the Cubs simply did not end AB in those zones, and did not collect hits in those areas.

Like Davies, Chase Anderson’s success in 2017 swirled around a cutter and a curveball, although those tow pitches mean two different things for both arms. Anderson has become slightly more of a “velocity” pitcher, ramping his fastball from roughly 92 MPH in 2014 to nearly 94 MPH in 2017, and he famously revamped his curveball and cutter under the watch of pitching coach Derek Johnson. With a new grip, and increased usage of both the curve and cutter (at the expense of the change and other fastballs), Anderson upped the whiffs and groundballs on the curveball within the system of his new arsenal.

What is interesting about Anderson is that while one might expect Davies to be the wily pitch shifter, against the Cubs Anderson’s five-pitch arsenal moved in a more extreme manner than that of Davies. With the added velocity, Anderson effectively looks like a cross between a pitch-bending trickster and a classic over-the-top power pitcher:

From start to start against the Cubs, Anderson also migrated his pitching approach throughout the zone. Here are the righty’s three best starts against the Cubs. Notice the total overall migration from armside-to-gloveside zone approaches, especially the sharp overall pitch location contrast between the two September starts:

Within these overall migration patterns, Anderson’s distinct alignment of the cutter / fastballs approach and off-speed stuff is a beautiful thing. Unlike Davies, I lumped Anderson’s cutter in with his fastballs, simply because Anderson has a less distinct fastball queue than Davies (who throws a true “sinker”), as Anderson’s “moving” fastball is more like a hard running, riding pitch than a sinker. That his cutter is also nearly 90 MPH makes that pitch much closer to Anderson’s original fastball velocity, and easier to classify as a true cut fastball. Watch as Anderson stacks up the Cubs gloveside with hard stuff in his first September start, then dilutes the hard pitches throughout the zone:

What’s stunning with Anderson’s fastball / off-speed pitching approach is how he completely splits the two classifications of pitches throughout the zone. Granted, this would happen somewhat with Davies as well if the cutter is treated like a fastball instead of a breaking ball, so it is worth bearing this methodological decision in mind. Still, Anderson’s split is quite extreme, as shown in his first September start: with fastballs and cutters blaring in gloveside, Anderson whips those off-speed pitches to the armside of the zone. Once again, this is a beautiful type of dispersion, as once the Cubs have this start in mind, during their second look at Anderson later in the month, he completely moves his off-speed pitches gloveside.

Like Davies, Anderson effectively used these moving selections to limit hits from Cubs bats:

With Brent Suter and Junior Guerra, there are fewer starts available, and therefore less room to compare their respective arsenals.

So let’s just appreciate that Suter throws his 86 MPH fastball as his majority pitch (he is NOT a junkballer), and that he also consistently used his fastball to challenge Cubs bats high in the zone:

With the lefty’s insistence against squaring up when he releases the ball, Suter’s high fastball must be an uncomfortable sight. Imagine the Raptor’s arms rotating at you, and then instead of a top-down delivery, the southpaw slings the ball around his body while also pushing it high in the zone. This is a beautiful pitch, and it’s also worth questioning whether Suter is really just throwing a cutter; from time to time, the Raptor throws that pitch in a way to break “in” on righties, which is precisely what he did in both starts against the Cubs.

Not to be outdone, Guerra’s post-injury work against the Cubs revealed a bizarre variation of his splitter, where the off-speed pitch actually flattened out and seemed to flutter as a “straight change up” to the plate. Guerra often seemed to have no idea where the bizarre splitter would run, as the pitch sometimes dropped, sometimes rose, and sometimes simply landed on a straight line like Rich Harden’s ghost pitch:

It should not be viewed as a cliche that the Brewers beat the Cubs because their best pitchers consistently adjusted against Chicago bats. It’s not a truism that MLB players succeed by adjusting; they succeed by adjusting, and at times when the adjustments don’t work, the struggles can be difficult to turn into effective performances. The Brewers succeeded with a gang of unheralded pitchers, in the form of swingman Suter, old rookie Guerra, “back-end” Davies, and replacement level Anderson. But none of this quartet was what they were supposed to be during the 2017 season, in part because of their ability to use flexible approaches to maximize their tools. Davies maximized his approach by coming after presumably unsuspecting batters high in the zone, while Anderson maximized his approach by running vast migrations throughout the strike zone. The difficulty of this approach is that while it is true that Milwaukee will once against need these pitchers to adjust to succeed in 2018, their adjustments may not necessarily mimic their 2017 success; new or changed pitches may emerge, new pitch sequencing, or velocity questions (or surpluses) may also impact zone approaches.

At the very least, the ability to adjust in 2017 should cause Brewers fans and analysts not to count out this unsuspecting rotation prior to 2018.

Photo Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki, USAToday Sports Images.

2018 Milwaukee Brewers Top Ten Prospects (and more)

The Brewers are in a bizarre state of flux as an organization, with the most hyped prospects of the 2015 and 2016 drafts largely stalled, injured, or drifting backwards save for an exception or two, and several of the rebuilding trades hanging in a suspended state of anticipation. This whole line could easily turn around if Lewis Brinson makes adjustments at the MLB level and hits, or Brett Phillips continues to override his weaknesses with a well-rounded set of secondary skills. As has been previously mentioned, the 2017 surprise success largely vindicated President Doug Melvin’s 2015 deadline trades (Zach Davies, Domingo Santana, and Josh Hader combined for 7.5 WARP), and the greatest steps forward in the minor league system (perhaps for the second consecutive year, if one counts last year’s Brandon Woodruff campaign) belonged to the late Bruce Seid’s 2014 draft (Monte Harrison for certain, as well as improving depth roles from Jake Gatewood, Troy Stokes, and Jordan Yamamoto).

Again, none of this is news to the Brewers minor league fan, but it’s worth repeating in order to process the difficulties and absurdities that define player development: there is no linear path to baseball success. Now, one of the ostensible reasons for the necessity of the Brewers rebuild (a weak homegrown farm system) will define key roles for the 2018 big league club (Orlando Arica, Jacob Barnes, Brent Suter, and the aforementioned Woodruff) and perhaps the next impact outfielder for the club (Harrison). A system in which Harrison potentially leapfrogs Brinson is fascinating insofar as it seemed highly improbable even a year ago, but then again, unexpected outcomes are the new normal in Milwaukee. This is the club whose rebuilding GM, David Stearns, has made his best moves at the MLB level (Travis Shaw, Chase Anderson, Jonathan Villar, and Junior Guerra) rather than with the minor leagues (Brinson is his major hope here).

Stearns awaits his first impact prospect graduation to the MLB level. Will 2018 be that year?

Update (9:15 AM): to visualize the system in another light, here is a look at the last five drafts, including the top five picks from each and their 2018 organizational outlook. Ten of these players dot the Top 20, including three top tier prospects, another two are already on the MLB roster, and two other prospects have defined the MLB roster via trade:

All of this is a prelude to a difficult question about the state of the Brewers minor league system once more. For a system with advanced quality prospects (Brinson, Woodruff, and Phillips still make the cut as rookies), there remains much risk in developing full MLB roles. Phillips may be the closest of the group to his impact role, as the fantastic defensive centerfielder and Three True Outcome bat showed just how an “inbetween” role at the MLB level can look at its best. My favorite comp for Phillips is Jarrod Dyson (who also happens to be one of my favorite free agent targets for the Brewers), as Dyson exemplifies the “true fourth outfielder” role, someone who has evident shortcomings in terms of pure scouting but uses his strengths to define an extended career. Dyson is a 9.7 career WARP player despite never cracking 350 plate appearances in a season; he has become one of the most valuable players of his draft class and a true anomaly as a player that can define a career through a string of sub-2.0 WARP seasons.

As for Brinson, the BP Prospect Team listed one risk: “He may not hit major-league pitching. Wheeee!” In extended form: “Brinson has shown the ability to make adjustments at each level, but he’s also needed adjustment time. I find those prospects to be a bit riskier at the highest level.” Woodruff, on the other hand, does not exhibit the same type of risk as someone like Brinson, as the righty has never been held to All-Star ultimate roles. But, even if the “will he be a reliever?” debate is not as loud with Woodruff as it was (and is) with Josh Hader, it remains, hiding within the necessary adjustments in Woodruff’s secondary pitch approach. This is not an incurable problem, as it is worth noting that Zach Davies had the same back-end rotation versus bullpen question marks, and has since adjusted his arsenal and approach into an MLB rotational bulldog stance.

Any warnings about Brinson are worth extending to Monte Harrison, perhaps the most stunning solid Top Five appearing in the 2018 list. One can learn from Brinson’s MLB transition in order to temper hype expectations for Harrison, as indeed the pure athlete has already demonstrated the extent to which a professional baseball career will take its twists. 2017 top draftee Keston Hiura joins Harrison at the very heights of the list, arguably the best prospect in the system on the basis of that hit tool, but knocked down a rung depending on how one views the defensive scenario for Hiura. The second baseman-to-be will inevitably receive every chance he needs to stick in the infield, and then he’ll get every chance to stick in the outfield, too. One wonders if he might, at worst, follow a path blazed by Jason Kipnis, who certainly showed that an impact second baseman need not bring the leather year after year.

Corbin Burnes rounds out the new faces in the Top Five. The righty might exemplify the risk-hype wager for the Brewers system, as Burnes will almost certainly not meet the expectations of Brewers fans who are solely scouting his stat line thus far. Burnes became quite an interesting case study throughout the 2017 season, as scouting reports based on early season viewings had yet to capture his delivery adjustments that occurred later in the season, and almost everyone on Brewers Twitter had conflicting information about his stuff. It was interesting to watch the developments unfold, certainly a lesson to fans that (1) statistics do not mean a thing at the minor league level because (2) there is often significant disjoint between those stats and the scouting of mechanical adjustments and organizational approaches with minor leaguers. There are numerous player development hurdles to define role risk for prospects before one considers questions about information asymmetries.

What is intriguing is that Burnes may be one of the clearest prospects on this list to quickly reach his peak role, middle rotation starter.

Let us bask in the mid-rotation arm that could be Burnes, and destroy the narrative that “the Brewers do not have any aces.” This concern occurs again and again with Brewers fans, and it’s as unnecessary an application of unrealistic expectations that could exist within baseball fandom. Here, leaning on the successes of 2017 can provide worthwhile lessons going forward: Jimmy Nelson was never scouted as an ace, Chase Anderson was never an ace, Zach Davies was never an ace, even Josh Hader was never an ace. Brent Suter? Junior Guerra? ….well… Anyway, you’ve clearly seen the point by now: MLB pitching is quite a volatile endeavor, with very few pitchers piecing together consistent MLB campaigns (or even consecutive, successful MLB campaigns as regular starters). Should Davies follow up on his 2017 season with another good year, for instance, even he would be catapulted into some fantastic category, “MLB pitcher with three consecutive better-than-average seasons.” If Davies does that, and Burnes is even Zach Davies, the Brewers rotation will be solid beyond belief.

If you do not learn anything else from the Milwaukee Brewers 2018 Top Prospect list, hopefully you will walk away with the view of the benefits of having multiple advanced-minors, mid-rotation pedigree arms lined up. For that matter, even the value of having multiple players stacked at any position should be evident; now, the 2020 Milwaukee Brewers do not necessarily rely on Lewis Brinson in the outfield. Through the layers of 5,000 universes, it’s probably Brinson, but we also know that it could be Phillips, or it could be Harrison (or of course, someone else entirely). Each of these statements, each of these players, obviously means different things for the Brewers, who could be a 76-win team in 2020 after peaking with this current roster. So it goes: once you walk away with the lesson about aces, or #TeamDepth, or role risk, you gain the comfortable certainty of player development and team-building volatility. The best part is that many of these players are close to the MLB, meaning that Brewers fans will soon get to agonize over a new, tumultuous journey.

Photo Credit: Benny Sieu, USAToday Sports Images

Recently, my surplus analysis of the Brewers roster affirmed the relatively well-known fact that Catcher, Right-Handed Pitcher, and Second Base are the greatest positions of need for Milwaukee in 2018.

Extrapolating those needs:

• While Manny Pina performed quite well, the Brewers could use stronger back-up support. It is not clear whether Stephen Vogt, Andrew Susac, or Jett Bandy have profiles that are suitable for high-end back-up to help the Brewers contend. This is prior to considering any concerns in approach or mechanics that suggest Pina will not be able to continue performing at his 2017 level.

• Waiver trade deadline acquisition Neil Walker delivered solid production down the stretch for the Brewers, and arguably should be a clear target in free agency given the lack of any immediate prospect that flashes a strong starting second baseman role in the advanced minors. Walker will not block any prospects, and his ability to play at multiple infield positions will help the Brewers execute their “Team Depth” strategy.

• Finally, right-handed pitching will take hits due to injury (Jimmy Nelson), free agency (Matt Garza and Anthony Swarzak), uncertain prospect production / development projects at MLB level (Brandon Woodruff, followed by Corbin Burnes and company), and arguably role depreciation as well (everyone from Junior Guerra to Jorge Lopez to Aaron Wilkerson could fit this description). It should not be outlandish to suggest that the Brewers could easily use two-to-three additional starting pitching options in order to withstand April-through-July and the battle of attrition that is the 162 grind.

This post will outline a set of topics for free agency analysis, but first it is worth looking at the three-year depreciated surplus figures for the Top 25 free agents among pitchers and batters. The following tables include:

• Raw 2017 Three-Year Depreciated Surplus (treated without contract, as though the player was a 2016-2017 free agent).

• Raw 2018 Three-Year Depreciated Surplus (once again, treated without contract, with every player on a three-year scale for ease of comparison).

• The difference between 2018 and 2017 depreciated surplus, which should read like “role depreciation,” or “role trend,” to suggest whether the player is largely trending upward or downward.

• These figures are drawn from Baseball Prospectus WARP, knocked down to 70 percent to imitate production regression of aging and injury (etc.), and placed on the “market rate” WARP schedule of approximately $7 million per one WARP.

• Additionally, players that have options or opt-outs were not included in this search in order to present a uniform class of players and avoid complicated contractual assumptions.

First, the best bats:

Now, following the same table structure, a look at the 2018 pitching free agents:

Future Topics:
From this basis, much analysis should follow, as the surplus figures are highly abstract and obviously not tethered to the reality of negotiating contracts that could span anywhere from one-year (perhaps for someone like Cameron Maybin) to seven-years (for someone like Yu Darvish). Obviously, specific statistical, mechanical, age, injury, and other considerations will come into play in the actual market, as well. More detailed analysis on these areas will follow. However, for now, it is worth drawing some big picture conclusions about the class:

• Should someone wish to gamble on injury recovery risk, pitchers from Alex Cobb to Michael Pineda, or even Yu Darvish, could provide significant surplus (yes, Darvish could provide surplus value to a club even with a huge contract). Obviously, these cases will require particular attention to detail in terms of mechanics, injury type or severity, and other medical or recovery-related factors.

• The supposed lack of star power among position players could provide a feast for the right front office mentalities: players from Eric Hosmer to Neil Walker to reclamation projects like Carlos Gomez, Jonathan Lucroy, or Carlos Gonzalez could deliver plentiful returns to front offices with a sharp eye to mechanics, strike zone approach, and other related factors.

• An amazing bench (or set of depth role players) could emerge from this class, lead by someone like Jarrod Dyson (a fantastic glove-first centerfielder). Even the Brewers, with their noted glut of outfielders, could arguably find room to upgrade depth roles with a player like Dyson (who offers more certain defense and a rather disciplined-if-unspectacular plate approach compared to someone like Keon Broxton off the bench).

• Moreover, who will be the next Chase Anderson? Or rather, how will the Brewers front office learn from their coaching and arsenal approach successes with the veteran? My vote in this regard is for the unheralded Jeremy Hellickson, who you last heard about in the ridiculed 2017 deadline trade involving the Phillies and Orioles. Yet although Hellickson followed up his strong 2016 campaign with some troubles in 2017, his arsenal and mechanics maintain the basic form of their 2016 foundation. Additionally, the righty works with the much-familar sinker-cutter-curve-change approach that the Brewers have worked with (see Davies, Zach, as well as Anderson).

While all the hype will justifiably go to guys like Jake Arrieta and Yu Darvish, the 2017 Brewers pitching success proved that arms can indeed succeed by being placed within a particular system that uses the proper individualized approach to each pitcher’s needs (Derek Johnson’s chameleon coaching style is oft-praised for this characteristic). For this reason, a raw mechanical project like Arrieta could succeed in Milwaukee, but given the cost comparisons and serviceable depth options available, this is a perfect offseason for Stearns and the front office to gamble on pitching acquisitions that fit a particular mold suitable to the organization. Since Milwaukee will face market constraints throughout their contending years, learning how to repeatedly find the next Chase Anderson will arguably be as important as learning when to jump at an elite contract.

The Brewers can indeed contend in 2018 while continuing to develop players at the MLB level, but they will be required to do so with the most….interesting roster in the division (as opposed to the one with the most starpower). In this regard, perhaps a consistent head-scratcher like the 2012-2016 Orioles is a better model for replication and discussion than the popular Cubs, Pirates, or Astros building models.

Photo Credit: Jeff Hanisch, USA Today Sports Images

Except the pitching would indeed prove to be a problem for the Cubs, one that fully defined the club’s descent from “great team bordering on dynasty” to “just another very good team.” The distinction is crucial, for the Cubs slip left the door wide open for an upstart Brewers club that chased their big market foes deep into September; the two clubs played an extremely close series in Milwaukee in September that allowed the Cubs to finish the Brewers’ divisional aspirations, but the Brewers pushed the Cubs as hard as they could. The Cubs rotation would nearly be shambolic compared to its 2016 version, if fans were to forget that 14 runs prevented from the first four starters in a rotation is quite solid.

On the other hand, the Brewers entered the season with a rotation full of question marks. Ace Guerra would be returning for his second career season, after taking the world by storm as an age-31 rookie in 2016. He could not make it through his first start before the Brewers needed their first depth option. Wily Peralta came on strong to close the 2016 season, but quickly showed that those results were a mirage. That the front office kept Matt Garza around could lead one to question just how “analytical” this club is, as the righty’s first three years in Milwaukee proved his release at $12 million+ would be worth more than his spot in the rotation. Brent Suter emerged as a valuable up-and-down, swingman type in 2016, and expanded that role in 2017. Chase Anderson and Jimmy Nelson looked like low rotation innings eaters, at the very least, until mechanical changes in delivery timing (Nelson) and pitch sequencing adjustments (Anderson) catapulted both starters to the top of the National League.

If the Cubs opened a -90 run door for the Brewers, Milwaukee entered that door with a 35 run improvement of their own, closing some of the gap between the clubs (the remaining gaps would be largely explained by the exceptional Cubs offense, but the Brewers stuck around thanks to their equally exceptional bullpen).

In the middle of the season, I studied 2011-2016 runs prevented progressions for National League rotations, and found that a typical pitcher working in two consecutive seasons would see their production fluctuate by approximately 57.0 Innings Pitched and 12 runs prevented. Granted, this was only the average fluctuation; more extreme fluctuations like those from Jon Lester or Jimmy Nelson would not necessarily be uncommon even if they were surprising. At the very least, the 2017 season demonstrated how rotational fluctuations can help to define the fate of a ballclub simply when the same cast of characters are kept around (again, these rotational fluctuations are calculated without any consideration to additions or subtractions in personnel).

For the Cubs, they likely learned a lesson that their large payroll capacity can readily solve, and pending free agency from a couple of their declining options will help them make that decision. Chicago largely began answering this question when they unloaded prospects for the midseason acquisition of Jose Quintana (84.3 IP, 6 runs prevented in Lakeview). Milwaukee, on the other hand, must heed the warning of the 2017 Cubs, and look at their own internal fluctuations for clues about building a successful 2018 rotation.

• First, were the positive steps of Anderson and Nelson missed entering 2017, or were the pitchers expected to take steps forward? This will be a crucial test of the club’s pitching approach with their internal analytics and their on-field coaching staff. If the Brewers were working with both pitchers on adjustments and did not expect either to move forward, the club must investigate these lessons to make better forecasts for the 2018 rotation.

• Second, were the overall forward steps of the rotation worthwhile enough to keep the same staff around? The Brewers already have a rotation spot to fill due to Jimmy Nelson’s shoulder injury (which the club is expecting to eat into a significant portion of the season), and they also have a decision to make about Matt Garza’s option. But, it is worth asking whether the club can expect to move forward by opening rotation spots for pitchers like Brandon Woodruff (43.0 IP, -1 Runs Prevented in his first taste of MLB action) or even Suter (who could serve as a season-opening 5th man while advanced minors options make their last adjustments before promotion).

Beware those fluctuations, and heed those forward steps by Anderson and Nelson: the Brewers contended in 2017 solely on the strength of their above average pitching staff. So the question remains, what will be the next step for this pitching system?

Photo Credit: Benny Sieu, USAToday Sports Images

Of course, the Brewers win also brings the club thoroughly into “winning season territory,” beyond the mere .500 win total (81) or the “well, I guess they won one more game than .500″ mark of 82 wins.

Now, with five games remaining in the season, these 2017 Brewers are fighting for their playoffs lives, improbably fighting for a divisional shot, and perhaps most improbably, fighting for a slot among the Best Brewers Teams in Franchise History. Let’s have a look:

Obviously, the cynical Brewers fans will point out that the fact that this team is one of the best in franchise history reflects the losing nature of the franchise, rather than the strengths of this 2017 club. I think that’s a cop out, for several reasons; first, this team clearly features some key young- and prime-aged players getting ready for a contending run (hopefully); second, this team clearly features one of the very best pitching staffs in Brewers history, including both the starting rotation and the bullpen. This last fact will be true by runs prevented (even if the team allows 50 runs over the last five games, they will remain a significantly better than average club; they are currently on pace to prevent 60 runs), as well as by WARP.

The historical Baseball Prospectus pitching statistics show that Jimmy Nelson (3.95), Zach Davies (3.57), Corey Knebel (2.22), and Chase Anderson (2.13) each have more than 2.00 pitching Wins Above Replacement (WARP); no other Brewers team has accomplished that, ever! If one is inclined to complain about the offense, and call this team one-dimensional, well, sometimes very good baseball teams are one dimensional, and it just happens that this Brewers club actually is lead by pitching instead of the club reputation for being offense-first (CSV retrieved September 27, 2017).

To provide context for the significance of this pitching accomplishment, consider the fact that the Brewers have five 2.0 WARP position players in 2017, as well. However, by comparison, Brewers teams have had five or more 2.0 WARP position players in 2016, 2014, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2005, 1996, 1992, 1991, 1990, 1987, 1983, 1982, 1979, 1978, and 1972, according to Baseball Prospectus Team Batting Statistics (CSV retrieved September 27, 2017). So, indeed, this pitching performance is special for the Brewers, and makes the 2017 club a true anomaly in the history of the franchise, a true pitching-first ballclub.

The 2017 Brewers are already one of the very best clubs in franchise history, and each win as the season closes should hopefully keep the team in the playoff hunt and solidify this historically good standing within the franchise.

There will be an entire offseason to assess this club in terms of what’s next, but it should be immediately clear that this 2017 team is somewhat of an anomaly. There are no real stars (only Travis Shaw has reached the 4.0 WARP level), and the club’s identity is in the rich assemblage of depth players who just needed a chance to play. Manny Pina, Hernan Perez, Jesus Aguilar, Keon Broxton, Jonathan Villar, and maybe even Eric Sogard fit this mold as players producing 1.0 to 2.0 WARP in 2017; not one of these players is a standout, or perhaps even a member of the next “planned” Brewers contending core, but together they are worth nearly 8.0 WARP to the club. The offseason will be the occasion for deeper dives into the talent of this club and their likelihood of continuing success with this roster, but two things are certain:

(1) This Brewers club is a team in the truest sense, with a real identity across the diamond. I hope that when the club is building “planned” contenders, they do not forget the lessons learned when seeking ignored or unproven avenues of talent. Hopefully the next “planned” contender does have a productive Lewis Brinson or Corbin Burnes, named by the club as the 2017 Minor League Players of the Year, but it would not be all that bad to have a 2017 Manny Pina, 2017 Chase Anderson, 2017 Jimmy Nelson, or 2016 Jonathan Villar coming along for the ride as well.

(2) Let’s hope these Brewers continue to win out, because this pitching-first club with a deep and lights out bullpen and two notably better than average starters (Anderson and Davies) could wreak havoc in short form playoff series. All Milwaukee needs to do is get there, so get there! Go Brewers!

Photo Credit: Benny Sieu, USAToday Sports Images

Prior to opening a season-ending stretch against nearly all NL Central opponents, the Brewers face the dominant National League East leaders, the Washington Nationals. The Nationals are on a completely different level, exhibiting equally exceptional offensive and pitching performances.

Milwaukee will face a set of solid starters, including Max Scherzer to close the series on Sunday, meaning that the Little Rotation That Could has another clear challenge ahead of it.

MLB Game Notes call Saturday a TBD vs. TBD affair, but with rosters expanding for September the Brewers are expected to start rookie Brandon Woodruff as the fifth starter. Zach Davies and Jimmy Nelson have their work cut out for them. Against Gonzalez, Davies has a chance to continue his excellent string of starts. Over his last 10 starts, Davies has worked 65.3 innings, allowing 22 runs with a 45 strike out / 17 walk / 3 home run Fielding Independent Pitching performance. After a couple of hiccups against Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, Nelson helped the Brewers beat the Dodgers with a strong quality start in Los Angeles, showing that the righty can continually adjust through rough stretches in his 2017 break out. Davies and Nelson have a chance to show that they are indeed leaders of the rotation, and they will set the scene for the Nationals series.