Let's Remember the Jeff Suppan Signing, 17 Years Ago Today

[Matthew Trueblood]

Not long after Mark Attanasio purchased the Brewers, they emerged from a long competitive slumber and got serious about contending again. One of the first signs of the owner's commitment to that came 17 years ago Sunday.

While the 2007 Brewers fell short of being the team who truly broke the team free of the oppressive lousiness that defined them in the late 1990s and early 2000s, they did clear the first major hurdle. That team made the Brewers relevant again. They did so thanks, in part, to the monetary commitment of Attanasio and the Doug Melvin-led front office, and the biggest example of that was the four-year, $42-million deal to which they signed free agent Jeff Suppan, on Christmas Eve 2006. 

Suppan was coming off a three-season stint in St. Louis, in which he was a key contributor to three division-winning teams, two pennant winners, and one World Series championship. He was viewed as a mid-rotation workhorse, with the heavier emphasis placed on the latter characterization. At 32, he still figured to have some miles left in his arm, and the Brewers felt he was the right person to bring their rotation some needed stability.

At Baseball Prospectus, Joe Sheehan expressed his skepticism in clear, intelligent terms. 

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With all of that, there’s very little chance that this signing is going to be deemed a success by the Brewers. There’s a void between the pitcher they think they’ve signed and the one who will pitch for them next year, one that has little to do with Suppan himself, and everything to do with the context changing around him. Suppan, remember, isn’t an overpowering pitcher. Even over the past three years, his Stuff scores have been unimpressive (2, 5, 5, respectively, where zero is average) and his DERAs have run a half-run to a run higher than his ERAs. Suppan has posted three of his highest GB/FB ratios the past three years as well, pitching to the strength of the Cardinals‘ defenses.

Setting aside the archaic Stuff metric that site was experimenting with at the time (they rolled out new stats like Willy Wonka before the secretive turn, back then), what Sheehan was saying was that Suppan (an extreme pitch-to-contact guy) had benefited greatly from a good Cardinals defense and a spacious home park over the previous few seasons, and that his solid surface-level numbers were thus unlikely to come with him up to Milwaukee.

By and large, of course, Sheehan was right. Just days before the Brewers committed to him, the Cubs had signed Ted Lilly to an almost identical deal. Over the next two seasons, the yawning gap in usefulness between Lilly and Suppan would go a long way to explaining the Cubs beating the Brewers for both of those NL Central titles, before the Cardinals swaggered back in and reclaimed their perch in 2009.

Even in his three good seasons with St. Louis before signing this deal, Suppan only struck out 13.2 percent of opposing batters. We all know how the global strikeout rate has shot up over the last quarter-century, but even 20 years ago, the baseline rate was around 17 percent. Suppan was a guy who was going to allow contact. He was a ground-ball guy, but not an extreme one. It screamed trouble. Indeed, in his Brewers tenure, his strikeout rate tumbled still further, until it was south of 12 percent. As a result, he had a 5.08 ERA and a -6.0 Win Probability Added during his time with the Crew. It was an ill-conceived signing, and it turned out pretty badly.

There is one thing Sheehan got wrong back then, though.

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I suspect that we’re underestimating the actual effects of more Suppan-generated groundballs becoming singles. There’s not just the outs/hits tradeoff, but more pitches thrown, more pitches throw out of the stretch, more pitches thrown under stress, all of which increase the potential for injury to a 32-year-old arm that generally works at max effort.

The injuries he foresaw never came to fruition. In his three full seasons with the Brewers, Suppan averaged 32 starts and 182 innings pitched. He wasn't good, but he did soak up innings and provide replacement-level work in a reliable way, saving the team from further taxing its organizational pitching depth. While he was far less valuable than Lilly and even a few other hurlers who signed for similar money that winter, I think you can argue that Suppan's durability and availability did help them stay close in 2007 and reach the postseason in 2008.

Sheehan just seems to have gotten the diagnosis of a max-effort delivery wrong. Maybe Suppan had a high-energy delivery by the standards even of 2006, but when you watch video of him now, your mind immediately goes to a dozen starters who are more violent in 2023. Whereas the context of the era is crucial to understanding a player's strikeout rate, there's an important absoluteness to the injury risk created by a given hurler's pitching mechanics. That risk varies from pitcher to pitcher, but it depends more on their physiology than on any era-specific effect. 

Suppan had a delivery that was perfectly sustainable, and that would be considered clean and easy by modern standards. That's why he piled up a ton of innings during his relatively short stay in Milwaukee, and it's why he still delivered some value as the team's first announcement of their earnest intention to win--even if most of his numbers were wince-inducing.

What are your memories of Suppan's Brewers tenure? Do you remember his Christmas Eve signing? 

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[Frisbee Slider]

17 year career for Suppan. Two seasons with an ERA below 4.00.

I remember being excited for the signing. I should have known Suppan was an average pitcher, sometimes confused for a good pitcher.

[Michael Trzinski]

I liked him as a person, but as a pitcher? Meh...

 

[adambr2]

No, thank you. 

[MoreTrife]

"Supp pitched great" - Yost 

[TURBO]

Let's not...

[Matt Breen]

I remember the signing. I didn't care for the move. Too much money for a guy with limited - and diminishing - stuff. But like a lot of people, I appreciated the effort made by the club. At least we got somebody. I thought Suppan would at least eat some innings - like he had done most of his career. 

Unfortunately, all the red flags about Suppan were true. He was pretty bad.