Will the Brewers Start the Least Impactful Hitter in MLB for Playoff Games?

During the early weeks of the season, Rhys Hoskins was struggling. Watching him, though, I could still see a lot of what made Hoskins the Brewers' top target in free agency this past winter: the power, the well-organized approach, and the better feel for contact than you expect from the troglodytic first baseman. I wrote a piece predicting that Hoskins would turn a corner, and as a statistical premise, I created a statistic called weighted sweet-spot exit velocity. Hoskins ranked well in the number, which nicely captures the process battle of a hitter who can produce at an above-average level, especially with power.

As it turns out, of course, Hoskins didn't quite turn that corner. He nosed upward for a couple of weeks, evincing all his talent and polish, but then he suffered a hamstring injury running the bases. Since coming back, he hasn't been the same guy, either in terms of real production or in wSSEV. The new stat still predicts and correlates with total production at the plate very impressively, though, and it's time to revisit it for a bit, in the context of a different Brewers hitter.

To help the numbers land when I roll them out, let's quickly revisit the form of it. The centerpiece of the stat is the average exit velocity for a batter on balls with a launch angle between 10 degrees and 35 degrees. It's valuable to hit the ball hard, but it's especially valuable to do so with some air under it. The focus on that launch angle band ensures that we're measuring both bat speed and bat path.

The weighting factor, though, is equally vital. We don't want to reward a hitter unduly for hitting it hard, even if it be in the air, if that high-quality contact is too rare to be of much use. So, we also weigh in the percentage of at-bats (originally, I used all plate appearances, but for these purposes, I've switched to at-bats, so we're not punishing a hitter for drawing walks) a hitter takes in which they do hit the ball within that launch-angle band. Hitting line drives and non-lazy fly balls is valuable; so is hitting it hard. This is a way to do both, and the resulting number reads just like a raw average exit velocity.

Here's a chart plotting the rate at which every hitter produces exit velocities of 95 MPH or higher, on a per-plate appearance basis, along with their wSSEV. This is all batters who have come to the plate at least 200 times this year, and I've highlighted the Brewers for examination.

Sal Frelick stands way, way apart from that crowd--not just the Brewers crowd, but the whole group. If we confined the chart only to players with at least 400 plate appearances, even those who look similar to Frelick--guys like Michael Siani, Cavan Biggio, and Nicky Lopez--would fall away. Of the nearly 200 hitters with at least 400 trips to the plate this year, Frelick's wSSEV is lowest by a whopping amount--nearly three miles per hour. The difference between Frelick and José Caballero, second-lowest on the list, is larger than the difference between Caballero and the ninth-lowest player.

Frelick isn't terrible at hitting line drives, and he's downright good--very good, in fact--at putting the ball in play and drawing walks. He just really, really doesn't hit the ball hard very often, and when he does, it's nearly always on the ground. There are dozens of worse hitters in MLB, but not one who makes less impact. Frelick can only be a small, complementary piece at the bottom of a lineup.

Still, he has substantial value. He plays great defense in right field, and he runs the bases well, and he gets on base at an above-average rate, so being unique in bis inability to drive the ball doesn't disqualify him. The Brewers are a team built around defense, and baserunning, and playing small ball. They're built to be and look and win just like Frelick. He's a very real candidate to play regularly for the Brewers, even when they reach the postseason, despite his faults and shortcomings.

It's important to note, though, that the playoffs tend to be an environment friendlier to the long ball than to bunts and singles. Long-sequence offense doesn't work as well against good pitchers, who take the natural advantage pitchers have in the math game of baseball and increase it, swell it, exponentiate it. You have to try to ambush them and score fast. That's not a universal truth, but it's often a winning principle.

The alternative to playing Frelick involves Blake Perkins, Garrett Mitchell, and Gary Sánchez. Perkins plays center in a configuration of the lineup that doesn't include Frelick. Mitchell plays right, and Sánchez slots in as the DH. That the team seems to have room on its roster for third catcher Eric Haase makes this plausible, because Sánchez can DH without the team being out on a limb and endangered by any foul tip off the mask of William Contreras.

As you can see, neither Perkins nor Mitchell is a star in terms of creating high-value contact, either. Perkins is another level of defender even from Frelick, though, and he does hit it hard more often than Frelick does. Mitchell has had a strong second half and showed more offensive upside, and he's almost as good a right fielder as Frelick. They could replace Frelick with those guys, gain some power, and not lose anything much defensively. Sánchez is the kind of bat you really want to find a place for, if possible, because he's capable of changing a game in a single powerful swing.

On the other hand, Frelick really does lengthen the lineup, in a way neither Mitchell nor Perkins reliably does. He bats left-handed and handles right-handed pitchers well, more so than Sánchez. He's also been there, all season, as part of the personality and fabric of the team, in addition to being part of their batting order. The team has to do some careful assessment, of the personal dynamics at play, but also about the odds that Frelick, Mitchell, or Perkins will experience a material difference in their production based on the interaction between their skill sets and the formidable ones of the pitchers the team will see in October.

This is a tricky balancing act. The final three series of the season might help the team find some clarity on it, but the decisions will have to be Pat Murphy's, and they'll have to be made with high stakes and very imperfect information, because the amount and character of information needed to make the decisions well just won't be available in time. Frelick is important to the Brewers. So are Mitchell, Perkins, and Sánchez. The right answer is probably for each of them to play occasionally, for however long their playoff run lasts.

That itself is a fraught approach, though--not only because the playoff run might not last long enough to even out any opportunities, but because picking the wrong options might ensure that it doesn't last long at all. Frelick is a player who wouldn't start for any other team likely to make the postseason, but he's a quintessentially Brewers player, and they're better for having him. It only magnifies their unique approach that such a player can be so integral. Unfortunately for Frelick, that doesn't mean he'll be their best option when the bright lights go on.