Lathund

The updated listing is out (for mlb pipeline)... https://www.mlb.com/news/updated-top-100-prospects-list-june-2019 Hiura = #12 Turang = #93 No other Brewers listed in top 100.. Worth noting it's not the actual "proper" midseason ranking, it's mainly just reordering within the existing list. A complete reranking, including draft picks, is due in about a month. As for Rasmussen, I don't imagine he'll be on any top 100 lists even midseason, it's simply still too soon after such a long time out, and probably would be even if he was even better than he has been so far. But he's someone who will be on the mind of prospect writers, and if he proves his health will very much be in consideration for the next one.

I can only really express my feelings about that play in language that is not permitted on this site.

Arcia made his debut in 2016, and has ~3200 innings played at SS since then. Setting the cutoff at 2000 innings, there are 29 shortstops who match the criteria. By Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) Arcia is at +10, which places him 12th. By UZR however, Arcia is 24th with -8. The third major defensive metric, FRAA, is tougher to see how he compares to his peers over multiple years due to the way the data is sorted (Or not). Overall however, Arcia is at +13.7 over this timespan. This year (min. 100 PAs) he ranks 20th with -0.6. Errors and fielding percentage aren't good ways to judge defense, but I'll add it for context; 3rd most errors in that timespan with 50, for the 8th worst fielding percentage (.970). It's usually said, including by the creators and custodians of these metrics, that these metrics need ~3x the sample size of most offensive metrics to have the same kind of reliability. So what Arcia has is close to 3 full seasons worth, which should be treated similarly to about 1 seasons worth of OPS or wRC+. Or in other words, while there's still some error bars surrounding the metrics, and one of them disagrees with the other two, it's still enough to tell us that he's no elite defender. He's an average to above average defensive shortstop, but at best a borderline top 10 defender at his position, likely a few or more spots below that. And even if his defense has been worth the 10-13 runs above average that DRS and FRAA suggests, the three WAR frameworks still put his batting at -32 (WARP) to -47 (fWAR) below average. So while his bat may yet, as he's shown during certain stretches, get to the below average type of production with the bat that makes an elite defensive shortstop an above-average player overall, we probably should still set the bar higher than that as he may not be that defender. He has options remaining, so acquiring or promoting someone else doesn't mean giving up on him, he'll still be a plane ticket away. It's one spot on the roster where the Brewers have that kind of flexibility, and they should strongly consider it. Sadly I don't see much in the way of players out there who are either on teams that will be sellers, or good enough to be a clear upgrade. I don't think the Royals want to move Mondesi, and certainly not for any less than a King's ransom. Andrus might be a Ranger for life, and even if not that's a hefty financial committment. Perhaps Marcus Semien (Even if his true talent level is more like his career 99 wRC+ rather than this years 121) is the best option out there if Oakland fall further back? I don't know if Dubon is any better, but perhaps it's time to find out at some point before the trade deadline? The downside of doing this though is that even if Arcia is not an elite defender, he's still a good one, while the 2B will be someone who isn't all that good (Whether it's Moustakas or Hiura), so a serious downgrade on defense could get ugly.

Yep. He's dominant against RHB (.191/.259/.331 so far at the MLB level), but struggles against lefties (.191/.259/.331), and against lefties that's just the pitch he needs. With how good his fastball (or fastballs, as he can switch it up a bit) is, a changeup alone will get him far and would make sense that he focuses on it over the curveball due to the struggles against lefties. [sarcasm]Looks like pretty good splits to me.[/sarcasm] Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V are too darn close to eachother! The LHB splits should of course be .265/.367/.483

Yep. He's dominant against RHB (.191/.259/.331 so far at the MLB level), but struggles against lefties (.191/.259/.331), and against lefties that's just the pitch he needs. With how good his fastball (or fastballs, as he can switch it up a bit) is, a changeup alone will get him far and would make sense that he focuses on it over the curveball due to the struggles against lefties. Anyway, I'm hopeful about Freddy. I'm not too bothered with the role, that'll sort itself out. He's already very good against righties, overall his stuff yield a very good strikeout rate (11 K/9), and his control is massively improved from last year (2.5 bb/9 vs 4.6 last year). Better command and a way to get lefties out more reliably (likely a changeup) and he'll be very good. As we've seen in his good starts he certainly has the ability to be a starter, just a matter of finding some consistency and making the bad outings less bad. Despite his unconventional build and repertoire, I think he's someone who only needs a small improvement for it to really click. But if I had to speculate about the role, I think the goal is still firmly that both Peralta (and Burnes) will be back in the rotation, and that the strength of that resolve is a lot stronger than it was with Hader as he was just *that* good in relief, and had really struggled as a starter in AAA. Which might have been Colorado Springs, or the small sample size, but might also have been something that made them think he was more suited to relief. I think we forget how dominant Peralta looks at times. For instance, he has one 8-inning shutout and two 7-inning shutouts, allowing a combined 9 walks + hits between those three. I think that they want to give him every possible chance to make good on his obvious ability.

Brewer pitchers' FIP this year so far: 4.38. Last year 4.01. Very significant difference. ERA 4.37. Last year 3.97. Those two stats says this year's staff is quite a bit worse than last year. It depends on what stats you want to use. The problem with using raw numbers is that the run environment changes from year to year, especially with whatevere it is they're doing with the baseball this year. Last year the league average ERA and FIP was 4.15, so far in 2019 it's 4.44. In terms of raw FIP Brewers ranked 13th in 2018, 14th in 2019. ERA- still sees a large difference, but FIP- is 97 vs 99. It does indeed depend on which stat you want to use, and in small samples xFIP which sveumrules used, especially the league- and park-adjusted xFIP-, is superior to FIP and ERA when it comes to correlation with future run prevention. Especially in this case, since the difference is HR rate, which is a notoriously noisy stat. So essentially there's one variable, the least predictive and least reliable, that suggests the team has been significantly worse compared to last year. There's another, the second least predictive and reliable, that suggests it's been slightly worse. The remaining ones that I'm aware of (xFIP, SIERA, cFIP, DRA) all actually says that the team has been better this year. Some of them only in relative terms (i.e compared to the rest of the league), some in absolute terms. I'm not going to claim that they necessarily have been, but there's a lot to suggest they haven't been worse. What's important to factor in is also what's going to happen going forward. The season started with Peralta and Burnes in the rotation and with Alex Wilson closing out games early on. The phase of trying to figure out what you've got and what you need was a rather rough one for the Brewers, and it's still not entirely clear who will have what role of Nelson, Anderson, Chacin, Peralta. But much is clearer now than it was early on. I believe the run prevention will be better going forward, both because the metrics suggests it, but also because I believe we will on average be using better pitchers. Whether that's through guys who have joined the club during the season (like Gio or Houser), or have gotten better as they've gotten healthier and stronger (like Jeffress), or simply using some guys differently or guys just settling in to their roles. The fact that the Brewers to this point still has had the toughest schedule is another thing to factor in, even if it's fairly minor. And when a team outperformed their FIP last year, but are underperforming it this year, look to the defense (And luck/sequencing/randomness, but nothing to do about that so no point bothering really).

That's a rather interesting-looking boxscore for Wisconsin, with David Fry for some reason playing every position.

Well what the eyeball test tells you in that situation is that you disagree with the metrics, rightly or wrongly, not that they're garbage. The whole point of these metrics, and so many others from the sabermetric era, is that what looks good or bad isn't always what it seems. It's not at all easy to with the eye test recognize that one catcher gets 1% more called strikes than another, and it's not immediately obvious how many runs that adds up to over thousands of pitches. But the eye test can easily spot are things like passed balls, that always look bad. But giving up a couple of passed balls more than the average catcher over the course of a season doesn't really give up very many runs. Over the years there have been many attempts, by many different people, at quantifying the value of framing, using various different approaches. And they all reach similar conclusions, that it can cost or save double-digit runs compared to the average. And they all find the same players to grade out well or not. Now what BPros catching metrics don't tell us anything about, and don't attempt to as I don't know how it can really be quantified, is how well a catcher calls a game. But at the same time, looking at something as blunt as cERA over 127 innings is borderline useless. Statisticians stress sample sizes for a reason, it's not something to just ignore. Which teams did they catch against? Who were the pitchers? And so forth. Maybe Grandal is a horrible game caller, I honestly wouldn't know, even if I doubt it. But in terms of what can be quantified rather well, i.e blocking, throwing and framing; he is a good catcher.

Yeah there are, but 60 games isn't anywhere near enough to draw such conclusions. Nor does it really apply as easily on a team level. The point of a stat like FIP/xFIP isn't to say that it is the whole story, but that it is the part of the story that the pitcher is solely (well, umpire, weather, ballpark dimenions and things like that play a part) responsible for, and that measuring that tells us more about actual ability than something like ERA does, which is impacted so much by the defense, by sequencing, by batted ball luck, by decisions from an official scorer, by inherited runners etc. At some point, whether it's 1 season or multiple seasons (And that time frame is obviously different when looking at teams as opposed to individual pitchers), ERA (or RA/9) will become more predictive of future run prevention, but we're absolutely not there yet. I'll add to the above I posted about defense, that if a team is doing better at the "balls not in play" component of the game, but are giving up more runs, it's obviously the balls in play that hurt. Some of that is due to pitchers giving up more hard contact, some of that is due to defense, and some of it is luck and sequencing. xFIP does a better job isolating the pitcher's part of it.

I was just about to post something similar, i.e the hypothesis that perhaps the pitching isn't as bad as many think. By xFIP, DRA, SIERA, cFIP or any other metric, Brewers rank higher this year than last. And at this point of the season, all of them do a better job of predicting the RoS results than the current ERA does. One explanation for the difference in run prevention could be defense. Last year, the Brewers ranked very well in all the major defensive metrics; 2nd in DRS, 8th in UZR, 4th in Defensive Efficiency. This year, those ranks are 10th, 18th and 17th respectively. As little weight as I put on fielding percentage, it paints a similar picture (14th vs 26th). Now it's still relatively early; defensive metrics are usually said to need 3x as long to stabilize as most offensive metrics, so we can essentially put the same weight on it as we could on things like team OPS on April 25th. In other words, that they tell us something about how we've played so far, but not necessarily about true ability or full season results. But it also lines up with at least what I've seen from the games I've watched, that the defense hasn't been as good.

I haven’t seen a single source that shows that he’s at 5-years service time. I’ve seen 4.1 a lot though. https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/n/nelsoji02.shtml 4.107 to start the season, 1 "full year" is 172 days. I can't be bothered to count now, but it sounds about right that Wednesday would have been 65 days on the DL and the major league roster since the start of the year. I.e the rehab assignment time counts, but the time optioned for that last start does not.

Noone strikes out the Brewers 24 times in one game while only giving up one walk and wins!!!

Playing time isn't really a problem with 4 guys for 3 positions. Not even really if you add Perez there against tough lefties, making it 4½ for 3. If they want him to play, he'll play. And it won't really hurt the others too much either.

I personally think you're a bit low on the value of batting average. A single is significantly more valuable than a walk. The 2 lines you put down, in my opinion are pretty close to similar value. The single scores a guy from 2nd, or moves a guy from 1st to 3rd. Singles aren't really on average *that* much more valuable, simply because a large proportion of plate appearances come with no one on base, when they're worth the same. What's really missing though, is power. If the extra points of AVG are all singles, then the stat line with the higher OBP is a lot more valuable. One way to look at it would be to look up the linear weights for walks vs singles and go from there. Another, less accurate but perhaps simpler, way is to simply look at OPS. If all the extra hits (i.e the difference between the .250 and .275 batting averages) are singles, then the first stat line would have a 40 points higher OBP but a 25 point lower SLG, for an OPS 15 points higher. If all the extra hits were doubles, the first stat line would still have a 40 points higher OBP, but a 50 point lower SLG and thus a 10 points lower OPS. As 1 pt of OBP is worth more than 1 pt of SLG, one would have to take that into account as well to find the exact breakeven point for XBH, but I'm way too tired for that right now. Or in other words, give me the .350 OBP in most cases. But one really needs .SLG or .ISO as well in order to judge properly.

An extension might or might not make sense. If it's the 2/24 type of deals that Springer and LeMahieu got, that'd be fine. He doesn't need to be amazing for that to be worth it. If it's more years or a higher AAV, I'd be a bit cautious. Needless to say though this depends a lot on what else goes on with the roster. Does Shaw recover to be at least a league-average 3B or better? Does Hiura keep hitting when he inevitably comes back up later in the year? Does the rotation appear to be settled and not in need of major spending? Will Anderson's and Thames' options be used? Extending Grandal?

Hoping the fact that they didn't double switch for Houser won't come back to haunt. But I guess with their low pitch counts yesterday Jeffress and Hader are available should they take the lead.

I don't know enough about their defense to really have an opinion, and that plays a major part in whoever makes it. The pure statline scouting approach tends to work less well with catchers. But I'd go with Feliciano, betting on youth and tools. The K% is high, but a 142 wRC+ as a 20 year old catcher in A+ is impressive. Aggressively promoted and has responded well. It's harder to judge college draftees beating up on younger pitchers; their offense might be for real, or it might not. But honestly at this point, Nottingham is the most likely among them to make it, simply because he's already made it to the majors and not embarrassed himself there. The next test for the others will be if they can handle AA, and if they can stick behind the plate. I like that they've drafted catchers relatively high in recent drafts, including this year. But not really buying into the idea that they'll get us a bunch of other prospects; prospect-for-prospect trades aren't all that common. Fill the organization with good catchers, have patience and let them develop. Can help pitching development as well. I also suspect that with the upcoming 26-man rosters with the 13-pitcher maximum, a lot of teams will want a versatile 3rd catcher for that extra spot, someone who can play another position (And ideally not 1B) well too. So good catching depth will be very useful, so let's not be trading anyone for a good while yet.

It's still the preseason rankings, minus the players who have graduated and having them replaced by the ones ranked #101 and up.

Spending $16m AAV on a reliever, no matter how good, is no way to run a team without infinite money. Yankees, Cubs, Red Sox, Dodgers etc can do that, but when that $16m is at best (If payroll increases by another $35m...) 10% of your payroll and you already have two (Though one is injured this year) great late-inning guys, you are paying a lot for a very marginal gain. Using that $16m to extend Grandal, or some other equivalent position player move, is a much better use of it. As would spending it on Keuchel. This isn't so much about Kimbrel himself, he would make every single team better than they are. But how much better, and what the financial impact is, differs a lot between teams. It makes sense for the Cubs (Like it would have for the Phillies, Braves etc too), but not for the Brewers.

It should be prorated if 3/45. Whatever he agreed to get paid this year will have money shaved off for what portion of the season he missed. At least it usually gets reported that way and then someone eventually says they didn’t pay “X” amount because he wasn’t with the team all year. It might actually be $40mil through 2021...all depends on how they are reporting the contract. "Just to be clear: The $43 million in Craig Kimbrel's deal is fully guaranteed. The $10 million he'll receive this season is not prorated. He will get $16 million in 2020 and 2021, and the extra $1 million is guaranteed via the buyout on a fourth-year option."

I have absolutely no idea what that's supposed to mean.

You talk about him a lot, but I don't think I've seen you get his name right even once.

In his AAA starts he threw 72, 84, 86, 87 and 97 pitches. I don't think there's a hard limit beyond the usual, but I'm sure they'd be very happy if he could get through 5-6 on a low(ish) pitch count and pull him.

Just about the only good thing about tonight was Travis Shaw going 2 for 3 with a double and a walk. And Hernán pitching a 1-2-3 inning, alternating his windup between the Alex Claudio wiggle and the Bronson Arroyo leg kick.

I'm definitely leaning towards Aguilar being the odd man out soon(ish) unless there's a very drastic improvement. Less of a track record than either Shaw or Thames, and if you factor in the second half of last season where he was OK but not more, his "slump" has lasted longer. He also suffers from the fact that he can only play 1B (Not that I like seeing Thames in the OF, but for the odd game here and there his bat makes it sufferable) unlike the others, and he's a truly terrible baserunner. RHH first basemen also aren't the most highly valued assets out there; the last couple of offseaons saw guys like Corey Dickerson and CJ Cron DFAd or non-tendered (And Aguilar himself was a waiver claim) so while losing Aguilar for nothing or for very little wouldn't be ideal, it's also not that hard to find a decent replacement should one be needed in the future. Or it shouldn't be that hard, even if the Brewers did struggle with it post-Prince and pre-Stearns. With a starting lineup that would consist of two of Shaw, Thames and Moustakas in the IF most days (Unless Perez started) it would be rather LH heavy, but at the same time they'd face twice as many (or more) RH starters than LH so it wouldn't be that big of an issue.