sveumrules

William Contreras (3.2 WAR), Jackson Chourio (2.5 WAR), Joey Ortiz (2.3 WAR), Brice Turang (1.9 WAR), Blake Perkins (1.8 WAR), Sal Frelick (1.6 WAR), Garrett Mitcell (0.7 WAR). That's seven Brewers position players age twenty seven or younger under long term team control who have produced 14.0 WAR combined this year. That 14.0 WAR is more than half the teams in baseball (including all four in the NLC) have gotten from their entire position player group. Only the Orioles with their redonkulous young core and the Yankees (buoyed by Juan Soto and his 6.8 WAR) have gotten more WAR from position players 27 or younger this year.

Pretty impressive rookie crop in the NL this year... Skenes (3.7 rWAR), Imanaga (3.0 rWAR), some dude named Tobias Myers (2.5 rWAR), some other dude named Bryan Hudson (+2.39 WPA) Merrill (3.0 WAR), Fitzgerald (2.9 WAR), Winn (2.8 WAR), some dude named Chourio (2.5 WAR), Busch (2.4 WAR), some other dude named Joey Ortiz (2.3 WAR). That's essentially ten wins (& counting) the Brewers have gotten from rookies so far with an eleventh win tacked on from Bob Gas (0.9 rWAR) in his five starts.

With a three gamer against the Reds coming up and the season 70% done, now seems like as good a time as any to take stock of where everybody stands coming down the stretch... OVERVIEW BREWERS 65 W - 49 L | +101 Run Differential PECOTA: 88.7% Win Division FanGraphs: 88.1% Win Division Division Record: 23 W - 13 L Division Games Remaining (16) vsCIN (3), atSTL (3), atCIN (4), vsSTL (3), atPIT (3) CARDINALS 59 W - 57 L | -46 Run Differential PECOTA: 7.0% Win Division FanGraphs: 5.9% Win Division Division Record: 17 W - 19 L Division Games Remaining (16) atCIN (3), vsMIL (3), atMIL (3), vsCIN (3), vsPIT (4) PIRATES 56 W - 58 L | -13 Run Differential PECOTA: 0.4% Win Division FanGraphs: 1.9% Win Division Division Record: 17 W - 15 L Division Games Remaining (20) vsCIN (4), vsCHI (3), atCHI (3), atSTL (4), atCHI (3), vsMIL (3) REDS 56 W - 59 L | +45 Run Differential PECOTA: 1.2% Win Division FanGraphs: 1.8% Win Division Division Record: 14 W - 15 L Division Games Remaining (23) atMIL (3), vsSTL (3), atPIT (4), vsMIL (4), atSTL (3), vsPIT (3), vsCHI (3) CUBS 57 W - 60 L | +7 Run Differential PECOTA: 2.7% Win Division FanGraphs: 2.3% Win Division Division Record: 17 W - 26 L Division Games Remaining (9) atPIT (3), vsPIT (3), vsCIN (3) FULL SEASON LEAGUE RANKS BREWERS 109 wRC+ (9th) | 4.89 R/G (7th) +13.2 BsR (2nd) | +42 DRS (4th) | 21.9 WAR (4th) SP: 101 ERA- (14th) | 7.6 rWAR (16th) RP: 80 ERA- (3rd) | +9.18 WPA (2nd) CARDINALS 97 wRC+ (18th) | 4.15 R/G (24th) +1.4 BsR (14th) | +29 DRS (9th) | 11.9 WAR (18th) SP: 110 ERA- (23rd) | 5.0 rWAR (26th) RP: 91 ERA- (9th) | +4.10 WPA (7th) PIRATES 87 wRC+ (27th) | 4.23 R/G (17th) +2.9 BsR (10th) | -7 DRS (24th) | 5.0 WAR (27th) SP: 85 ERA- (4th) | 12.8 rWAR (4th) RP: 106 ERA- (26th) | +0.38 WPA (22nd) REDS 91 wRC+ (24th) | 4.50 R/G (13th) +15.7 BsR (1st) | -29 DRS (28th) | 9.0 WAR (24th) SP: 94 ERA- (8th) | 10.9 rWAR (6th) RP: 83 ERA- (4th) | +3.25 WPA (9th) CUBS 95 wRC+ (20th) | 4.21 R/G (19th) +8.1 BsR (4th) | +12 DRS (15th) | 11.9 WAR (17th) SP: 93 ERA- (7th) | 9.9 rWAR (9th) RP: 90 ERA- (6th) | -0.93 WPA (26th) POST ALL STAR BREAK LEAGUE RANKS BREWERS (10 W - 7 L) 123 wRC+ (6th) | 5.41 R/G (7th) | 4.4 WAR (7th) SP: 98 ERA- (13th) | 1.3 rWAR (18th) RP: 74 ERA- (6th) | +1.41 WPA (6th) CARDINALS (9 W - 11 L) 98 wRC+ (20th) | 4.15 R/G (23rd) | 2.1 WAR (18th) SP: 108 ERA- (17th) | 1.8 rWAR (10th) RP: 114 ERA- (21st) | -0.89 WPA (23rd) PIRATES (8 W - 10 L) 94 wRC+ (23rd) | 4.44 R/G (17th) | 1.6 WAR (22nd) SP: 89 ERA- (7th) | 1.8 rWAR (11th) RP: 110 ERA- (18th) | -1.49 WPA (29th) REDS (9 W - 9 L) 92 wRC+ (24th) | 4.72 R/G (11th) | 1.5 WAR (23rd) SP: 97 ERA- (12th) | 2.1 rWAR (7th) RP: 101 ERA- (16th) | +0.28 WPA (15th) CUBS (10 W - 9 L) 89 wRC+ (26th) | 4.11 R/G (24th) | 2.1 WAR (19th) SP: 110 ERA- (18th) | 1.4 rWAR (17th) RP: 44 ERA- (1st) | +0.57 WPA (11th)

I'd guess Black or Hicklen is the call when rosters expand. Capra is on the 40 Man too, but I'd have him a notch behind the other two since he is pretty redundant with Monasterio. Would guess Collins is a more of longshot by virtue of not being on the 40 Man and going ice cold over the last few weeks... thru 0719 (348 PA) 286/397/510 (134 wRC+) 13.5 BB% | 19.3 K% since 0719 (64 PA) 161/250/161 (7 wRC+) 10.9 BB% | 21.9 K%

Extra impressive with offense down in the DSL this summer at a .699 league average OPS so far versus a .720 last year.

EXTRA !! EXTRA !! READ ALL ABOUT IT !! Team On Verge Of Complete Collapse Goes 4 W - 2 L The Following Week !!

Obviously more goes into it than strictly WAR, but Skenes is at 3.7 rWAR currently versus Jackson at 2.2 WAR before today. Over the last 15 games / 68 PA coming into today Jackson put up a 177 wRC+ and 1.0 WAR. Continuing that pace over the rest of the year (highly unlikely but how cool would that be?) would get him over 5.0 WAR, maybe even approaching 5.5 WAR. Skenes probably has six or seven starts left if he isn't shut down early, at his current pace that would put him somewhere around 5.5 rWAR too.

Now up to 12 RBI combined for the trio here bottom of eight in a 17 to 10 ballgame. In addition to the offensive explosion, Wande Torres walked the first two batters he faced in the first inning but then retired eight in a row, five via strikeout.

Mejia has an 85 wRC+ as a bat first catcher in AAA. He’s thrown out 6 of 46 attempted base stealers. Haase was at a 123 wRC+ and threw out 5 of 21 attempted base stealers in Nashville.

Yup. His -58 DRS ranks 133rd out of 139 outfielders with at least 3,000 innings since his debut in 2014. He’s ten twenty runs worse than comically bad guys like Schwarber (-48 DRS) and Winker (-38 DRS).

Yeah, if we’re breaking into buckets I’d say they struggled to score once (2 R), scored an average number of runs five times (4 or 5 R), and followed with above average games (6 R+) three times.

Mitchell has the tools to be someone who runs a high BABIP for sure but his .396 mark over 78 PAs this year is still bound to regress some. Only Rob Refsnyder (.394) has come close to that over 200 PAs this year with a decent sized gap down to LaMonte Wade Jr (.375), Bobby Witt Jr (.374), Donovan Solano (.372), and Aaron Judge (.369). If we raise the floor to min. 1,000 PAs during the 2022-24 timeframe Brandon Marsh is atop the leaderboard at .370 with only Riley Greene (.356), Jarren Duran (.355) and Freddie Freeman (.352) clearing a .350 mark. Double that to min. 2,000 PAs during the 2019-24 timeframe and Tim Anderson (.358) is the BABIP king with Yoan Moncada (.344), Trea Turner (.343) and Freeman again (.340) the only guys at .340 or above.

Can kind of get there using date range feature on the FanGraphs game logs. Just splitting the season into rough two month chunks it looks like he’s at… 0405 thru 0604 (213 PAs) 243/343/400 (120 wRC+) 12.2 BB% | 29.1 K% 0605 thru 0806 (158 PAs) 289/373/459 (141 wRC+) 12.7 BB% | 20.3 K%

BRef also tracks “Blowouts” (which they define as games with a 5+ run margin) on their team schedule pages. Here’s how those same dozen teams stack up… MIL (20 W - 6 L) KCR (25 W - 10 L) NYY (27 W - 12 L) PHI (26 W - 12 L) BAL (22 W - 13 L) MIN (22 W - 13 L) CLE (19 W - 11 L) ATL (19 W - 12 L) LAD (16 W - 13 L) SDP (16 W - 15 L) BOS (23 W - 22 L) ARI (20 W - 19 L) Looking at it this way the Brewers clearly have the lowest number of total blowout games, but also the highest winning percentage in such games. Only six blowout losses over 112 total games is pretty nuts all things considered.

Quickest and dirtiest way to look at this is probably what percentage of wins required a save? Here are the rankings for the dozen teams that have won 60 games to this point… CLE (56.7%) 67 W | 38 SV MIL (55.6%) 63 W | 35 SV LAD (53.0%) 66 W | 35 SV BAL (50.7%) 67 W | 34 SV MIN (49.2%) 63 W | 31 SV ATL (46.7%) 60 W | 28 SV ARI (45.9%) 61 W | 28 SV BOS (45.9%) 61 W | 28 SV NYY (43.3%) 67 W | 29 SV KCR (42.3%) 63 W | 27 SV SDP (41.9%) 62 W | 26 SV PHI (40.3%) 67 W | 27 SV Looks like Milwaukee has definitely had fewer comfortable wins by that methodology. CLE (+10.19) and MIL (+8.96) are also the top two teams in bullpen Win Probability Added by a wide margin over ATL in 3rd at +5.14.

April 7th they scored a dozen, followed that up with 8, 9, 7, 11, 11, 4 runs in their next six games. April 20th/21st they went for 12 followed by 2. May 10th/11th was 11 then 5. May 15th/17th was 10 (day off) 4. May 29th to June 1st went 10, 6, 12, 4 over a four game stretch. June 7th/8th they had a 10 then 5. So they’ve scored ten or more runs nine times this year before last night and followed those games up with 8, 11, 4, 2, 5, 4, 6, 4, and 5 runs.

JB Bukauskas had another three up three down inning for Nashville, now up to four scoreless frames with 2 H | 0 BB | 3 K since coming off the IL.

Still have my doubts that the org sees Black as a viable MLB OF at this point. He got four starts in CF and two in LF (and three at 3B) during a 13 game stretch from 0710 to 0731. Obviously an even smaller sample, but he’s started two games each at 1B/3B so far in August.

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Contreras workload has been scaled back over the last month plus. Thru June 30 he started 67 of 84 games at catcher, about 80%. Since then he is at 17 of 27 games at catcher, about 63%.

Not sure it really is. Contreras and Hoskins have DH’ed six of ten games since Yelich’s injury. I’d imagine they’ll get a similar percentage of DH starts from here on out.

The Brewers rarely play their 13th position player to any significant extent, so I don’t have a problem with them using it now to get Haase through to next year as the backup catcher. OF is pretty full with Chourio, Mitchell, Perkins and Frelick. 1B/DH has Contreras, Hoskins, Bauers and Sanchez. The only place we could really improve is a better IF to help out with the struggling Turang/Ortiz duo, but not sure that player is in the system at the moment. Black is better than Haase in a vacuum sure, but I’d just keep getting him consistent reps in AAA until September because their isn’t really a regular spot in the MLB lineup for him now.

Carlos Rodriguez the outfielder has gotta be one of the best examples of how much the depth has increased in the Brewers system. Coming into and out of the pandemic he was making the Top 20 based on the promise he showed on the complex and in A+. Now he’s delivering on that promise with a career year in AA and he’s probably outside the Top 30.

The Carloses Rodriguezes reunited in Nashville.

Josh Timmerman maybe next in line for the bump up? Has fifty pretty successful Carolina League innings under his belt as a college draftee. 13.7 BB% could use some trimming, and he's not gonna keep that 0.00 HR9 forever, but otherwise looks like a pretty good promotion candidate.