Brewers trade Erceg to Oakland

[MoreTrife]

And why did we give him up for cash considerations? 

[sveumrules]

45 minutes ago, MoreTrife said:

And why did we give him up for cash considerations? 

Likely because the move was a favor to Erceg.

He wasn’t getting an MLB opportunity with Milwaukee, and Oakland’s pitching staff has been historically bad so they are better positioned to roll the dice on his raw talent.

I don’t think anybody was offering much more than cash considerations for a 28 year old converted position player with a 5.07 ERA and 5.9 BB/9 in his 124 career minor league innings.

[igor67]

It's a little thing that can give some of the marginal players a reason to stick with us.

[Frisbee Slider]

Erceg with big strikeout with bases loaded to end the fifth inning against Pittsburgh. Oakland leading Pirates, 3-1 somehow.

[Playing Catch]

On 5/30/2023 at 6:02 PM, igor67 said:

It's a little thing that can give some of the marginal players a reason to stick with us.

Simply anecdotally, (and perhaps solely due to my own positive bias for this organization/front office), but it seems to me that the organization does a lot of these "little things," that allow the Brewers to be competitive with free agents, especially AAAA-type guys that accept they may spend much of the year in AAA (e.g. Jon Singleton). It also helps that their AAA is in Nashville.

If accurate, this doesn't necessarily add very much value to winning games, except for the belief that this front office values depth wherever they can find it. I think this FO trys to avoid negative WAR more than looking for big-time positive WAR.

[wiguy94]

It wasn’t in this thread, but a lot was said on the site about how dumb the Brewers FO was for letting Erceg go. After tonight, Erceg’s ERA is up to 6.40 and his WHIP is 1.73…maybe the FO knew what they were doing after all.

[zurch1818]

4 hours ago, wiguy94 said:

It wasn’t in this thread, but a lot was said on the site about how dumb the Brewers FO was for letting Erceg go. After tonight, Erceg’s ERA is up to 6.40 and his WHIP is 1.73…maybe the FO knew what they were doing after all.

His xERA, FIP, and xFIP are all much more impressive. His statcast peripherals are below.

It seems he walks over 5 batters an inning and his babip is also 0.400, which is not a good combo. Seeing that the hard hit percentage is in the 91st percentile, I wonder if his ERA would be better if he has the Brewers defense behind him. He's also only pitched 31 innings, so a lot can still change with that small of a sample. With that said, you can put me in the jury is still out on him camp.

It seems the Brewers have cycled through a lot of these dime a dozen hard throwing high walk pitchers over the years, so maybe like you said, they know something more than what the peripherals I'm seeing are showing?

 

[StearnsFTW]

5 walks per inning is definitely too many.

[Thurston Fluff]

Low fastball spin rate = low chase rate = high walk rate?

[Playing Catch]

Those Statcast numbers are nuts. He must have really short fingers.

[sveumrules]

Was looking at some reliever leaderboards over at FanGraphs and noticed Erceg popping up here and there.

Definitely having a season of extremes, rankings are among 172 relievers with at least 40 IP so far…

THE GOOD

0.20 HR/9 (3rd)

THE PRETTY GOOD

47.5 GB% (53rd) | 3.44 FIP (58th) | 26.2 K% (77th)

THE NOT SO GOOD

5.56 ERA (162nd) | 13.8 BB% (164th) | .378 BABIP (167th)

xFIP (4.58), SIERA (4.30) and xERA (3.93) all think he isn’t quite as bad the raw ERA, but that his elite HR prevention is likely unsustainable over larger samples so also not quite as good as the FIP either.

That .378 BABIP seemed insane to me so I checked the five Brewers relievers with at least 40 IP and the highest BABIP was Peguero at .267 which ranks 53rd.