Matthew Trueblood

In the final part of our preview of the 2023 Brewers’ starting pitchers, the focus is the final two spots in the rotation, where there are some questions we knew there would be, and some new ones that have popped up this spring. Image courtesy of © Allan Henry-USA TODAY Sports We had better start by clarifying something. In Part One of this three-part starting pitching preview, we discussed Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff, where there’s hardly anything but good news and good feeling. In Part Two, we discussed the next two men on the rotation depth chart, Freddy Peralta and Eric Lauer, and admitted much more unease, but still, those two were slotted into the third and fourth spots. Here, though, we’ll tackle not only the fifth spot in the rotation, but how secure is Lauer’s hold on the fourth one, and even whether or not a sixth place is there to be filled, be it right away or later in the campaign. Wade Miley: Good When Healthy, Hurt When Hurt It’s been a half-decade since Miley arrived in Milwaukee for the first time, honed the cutter that has defined the second half of his career, and found consistent success. Since then, he’s been either very good or injured every year. Unfortunately, the split between those two outcomes has been an even one. He was available for less than $5 million in guaranteed money precisely because he’s not someone the team can count on to stay healthy. Frequent injuries haven’t prevented him from working to evolve as a pitcher, though, which is how he has stayed ahead of the aging and adjustment curves despite his lack of overpowering stuff. As recently as 2019, he was throwing the kitchen sink at right-handers, because he could only count on his changeup as a complementary offering. He tweaked its spin axis in 2020, though, achieving an extra couple inches of sink, and ever since, his usage of that offering has increased. In 2022, he used the cutter and the changeup in almost equal proportions against righties, and needed little else. (The box on the right in the image below is the reengineered changeup.) In 2021, Miley had a similar breakthrough for his arsenal against lefties. He turned his slider from almost a firmer version of his curveball into a pitch with more lateral and less vertical movement. (The new version of the slider is in the box on the left, above.) The altered weapon pairs beautifully with his cutter, and he’s ratcheted up its usage dramatically against lefties over the last two years. He still has a four-seamer, a sinker, and a curve, but he’s been able to rely on them much less as he’s found the best patterns and interactions involving the cutter and one complementary pitch for each handedness of hitter. By all accounts, Miley is healthy to begin 2023. He’s looked fine in limited Cactus League time. The Brewers can’t count on him for many innings this season, but in his two healthy seasons out of the last four, he’s averaged 165 innings pitched. There’s a chance that he’s a stellar, stabilizing force at the back end of the rotation, and even if he breaks down at some point, the team should get solid outings from him in the meantime. The Mysterious and Unexpected Sixth Starter! In theory, that should round out our starting pitching preview. In practice, we have some more to discuss. Eric Lauer pitched in a B game on Tuesday, in an effort to get his work in with less interruption and less outside scrutiny. Sometimes, that’s a non-story, the kind of thing teams just do to manage the grind of spring training and help a pitcher for whom there’s no special value in the semi-competitive atmosphere of official games. In this case, it feels a little more ominous, because the interruptions that had so compromised Lauer’s Cactus League outings so far weren’t incidental nonsense–they were loud hits and frustrating walks. On Wednesday, Bryse Wilson pitches for the Brewers in Maryvale, as they host the Padres. It’s a final audition for Wilson, who has looked good this spring, but finally found a stress point in his last outing. Asked to stretch to the fourth and fifth innings for the first time, he got rocked by those same Padres, allowing five runs (including two homers) in the middle innings. Still, he’s going to make the team, and increasingly, it seems plausible that he could step into a complementary role with Lauer. Nothing Lauer has done this spring has evinced an ability to work deep into games, but he should be able to get the Brewers through the order once and then some most of the time. After that, Wilson would make a good piggyback for him: he throws with the opposite hand, and their arsenals are dissimilar. This is how he can still be a major X-factor for this team in 2023, and why the work he and the pitching team have put in this spring will bear watching. Meanwhile, Adrian Houser has lost the battle for any rotation position, but he could still figure into the rotation picture as the season unfolds. He’s always hungry for that opportunity, even this spring, as he’s tentatively embracing a relief role. Lauer’s apparent untrustworthiness poses a problem for the team, because we already knew that Freddy Peralta and Miley would face persistent injury concerns. Without Lauer locking things down, there might be more starts to backfill than the team had hoped. Into that breach, alongside Wilson and Houser, will step Janson Junk, Robert Gasser, and Ethan Small, and if his recovery stays on track, Aaron Ashby could seize a job by June. Much of the Brewers’ season (more, perhaps, than they might have hoped a month ago) will depend on the success of at least one of those young hurlers. In fact, depending on how the team elects to navigate the season, much could depend on two of them. Recall that in 2021, the Brewers used a six-man rotation virtually the entire year. That was a special circumstance, coming off of the COVID-shortened 2020, but it might still be a tool to which Craig Counsell, Chris Hook and the rest of the team’s key decision makers turn. In the modern game, 25 years past the last expansion and with so many tools available to help pitchers develop and improve, finding six credible starters is not as difficult as it once was. We’ve discussed six players in considerable depth during this three-part preview, not counting Houser, whom we broke down as part of the preview of the battle for the back end of the rotation last month. Ashby, Gasser, Junk, and Small are all at least nominally viable starters. If the team feels that Corbin Burnes will hold up better into October as part of a six-man staff; if Gasser goes to Nashville and learns to consistently get his breaking ball down; or if the team thinks Miley could stay healthy longer with the extra rest, we could see the six-man rotation again. It might really be the highest use of available talent under the current constraints of pitcher usage, and the Brewers have the depth and the familiarity with that system to turn to it. In any case, they have the strongest rotation in the NL Central, and if they win the division this season, it will be thanks largely to this corps. View full article

We live in the age of the opener. The popularity and utility of that strategy have peaked and begun to decline, but looking at both rosters and considering everything at stake, Team USA might be best-served to deploy it Tuesday night. Image courtesy of © Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports There’s no realistic scenario in which Devin Williams doesn’t pitch for Team USA tonight. Merrill Kelly is not going deep into this game against Samurai Japan’s loaded lineup. That lineup is stacked with left-handed batters, and Team USA is far from similarly rich in left-handed pitchers. Aaron Loup will surely get an inning, or at least part of one, but he’s vulnerable to the right-handed hitters lurking on Hideki Kuriyama’s bench, and he did pitch (albeit very briefly) Sunday night against Cuba. Kyle Freeland could be asked to work a couple of innings, but if we’re honest with ourselves, Freeland isn’t good enough to trust him much against the lethal lefties in the heart of Japan’s lineup: Shohei Ohtani, Masataka Yoshida, and Munetaka Murakami. Jason Adam and David Bednar have great career numbers against lefties, but the samples are small and there are warning signs, too. Ryan Pressly is fine, and can wait for the ninth inning to protect any lead the Americans are able to build. Nick Martinez hasn’t pitched since the group stage of the tournament, and after going to NPB to rehab his career, he might have insight on how to attack some of the key Japanese hitters. It’s Williams, though, who has the dominant and unmixed track record. He’s got the screwball known as the Airbender, a pitch that can twist away from those left-handed sluggers and frustrate them, including inducing a lot of swings and misses. I think Kelly can give the team nine outs Tuesday night. Loup, Adam, Bednar, and Pressly are all good for three apiece. That’s 21 outs, leaving six more for which Mark DeRosa and Andy Pettitte need to account. I don’t think they could do better than to give Williams the ball to open things and see if they can get all six from him. If not, they could always turn to Kendall Graveman to get a batter or two at the bottom of the Japan order, preserving a sense of routine for Kelly and lining him up to come in for the third frame. Williams got at least four outs three times last September, without incident. He’s capable of getting down and back up without losing his stuff or command. He’s one of the most gifted pitchers in the sport and the best bet to hang a couple of zeros at the front end of Samurai Japan’s line score. With the World Baseball Classic championship on the line, Team USA should ask him to set the tone. Would the Brewers allow that? As a Brewers fan, would you be ok with seeing your relief ace stretched out that way? It’s a fair set of questions, but also a great reminder that we need to reframe them. While Williams is playing for Team USA, he and his coaches there should have the discretion to decide what risk he takes with his career in the pursuit of glory. It’s also the case that relievers like Williams often try to stretch slightly and practice getting up and down at this stage of Cactus or Grapefruit League play. This setting couldn’t be more different than that one, but then, that’s the whole point. View full article

The second semifinal of the World Baseball Classic, played Monday night in Miami, was something close to the platonic ideal of a high-stakes baseball game. Luis Urias had the greatest moment of his young career during it, and he and Rowdy Tellez can come back to Brewers camp with heads held high. Image courtesy of © Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sport A great baseball game needs a sense of rising action. In a perfect world, you’d get the savor and soupçon of a pitching duel between two dominant yet disparate starters, and on Monday night, we lived in a perfect baseball world. Roki Sasaki shut down Novena México the first time through the order, shredding them with fastballs over 100 miles per hour and a splitter that moved like a slider at 92. Patrick Sandoval held serve, though, with his slider-heavy left-handed attack stifling the left-leaning Samurai Japan lineup. The very best games, though, don’t demand of their audiences the exhausting patience and tenacity of attention required to appreciate a 1-0 or 2-1 battle. At some middle stage, the tension breaks, and an early blow is struck. In Monday night’s contest, two Brewers fueled that much-needed change of pace. Baseball is a lot like life–just not in the way you were told when you were a kid. It’s a game of earning big moments by winning the small ones, and then of winning the big moments by keeping things small. If you seize your opportunity more often than you let it slip by, you’ll win most of the time. Seizing that opportunity depends on raw ability, but also on being prepared and staying in balance. Sometimes, you put a down payment on some good luck by suffering some bad. In the second inning, Rowdy Tellez had scorched a ground ball against Sasaki, but because he hit it nearly straight down and nearly straight into the shifted defense, it was a groundout. In the fourth, though, he hit a meager trickler, a ground ball down the third-base line that would have been an easy out, but for that very same shifted infield. It wasn’t just that Tellez got lucky, though. He fought that ball off. He put it in play, something three of the first 12 batters Sasaki had faced had failed to do, and he got a single out of it. Isaac Paredes did much the same, although with a blooper instead of a grounder, and that brought up Luis Urias. He’d already managed a single against Sasaki, in the second inning, but it had been a cousin of Tellez’s, not a sharp line drive. He was hanging in against stuff that clearly had him nearly overwhelmed, and the baseball gods smiled on him. After falling behind 0-2 on a blazing fastball and a bad whiff against the splitter, he’d laid off one more splitter and fouled off another two with emergency swings. When Sasaki went back to the top of the zone with a fastball, Urías hit it back at him for an infield single. In the fourth, Urías was ready for the first-pitch fastball, but he fouled it away. He knew Sasaki would use that pitch to set up the splitter, and when Sasaki executes that pitch, it doesn’t matter that much if the hitter knows it. The important thing was, Sasaki didn’t execute it, and Urías–not overswinging, staying on the ball even though it was 10 miles per hour slower than its predecessor and way out on the outside edge of the plate–didn’t miss his opportunity. That didn’t turn out to be enough, of course. In the seventh inning, Japan struck back, with an equally impressive home run from an equally exciting young MLB star, Masataka Yoshida. Along the way, both teams did miss some opportunities, but both teams’ pitching depth cracked slightly–just enough to create more opportunities. Randy Arozarena stole a home run in the fifth, and after the tying homer by Yoshida in the seventh, he led off the eighth with a double that required a bit of a miscalculation by the right fielder, setting up a two-run rally that vaulted México back into the lead. The edge could have been made even bigger, but Tellez couldn’t quite manage the same trick that served him so well throughout the tournament to that point. He struck out with a runner on third and one out, a pivotal moment in the game. After taking a called second strike that he thought was low, he bravely took the next pitch, a diving splitter that many hitters would have chased after the same set-up. Like life, though, baseball sometimes forces you to pass the same test more than once, and Tellez whiffed on another splitter on the next pitch. Therein lies the beauty of the game, and of life, and it’s not by any coincidence that the cruelty of both lives right in the hip pocket of that beauty. Tellez had one chance, and missed it. Paredes picked him up by smacking a single to drive in the runner he stranded there, but Yoshida threw out the trailing runner at the plate, stopping the scoring and ending the inning. Though Urías got another plate appearance to lead off the ninth, the Brewers duo was done having chances to alter the game, and Samurai Japan finished a comeback with great, relentless offense in the eighth and ninth frames. If the Brewers can’t learn much from Urías and Tellez, as they come back with stories of the games and the moments they just experienced with Novena México, they don’t deserve to win anything this year. In all likelihood, though, they’ll be able to glean plenty, and the performances of those two guys during the six-game run México managed also prove that the Brewers can trust them both to win those small moments and stay small enough to come up big when the big moments come. View full article

On Monday at 6 PM Central, México takes on Japan in the second semifinal of the World Baseball Classic. It's a huge moment for the sport, for both countries, and for the players involved, which include two key Brewers hitters. Image courtesy of © Sam Navarro-USA TODAY Sports Just as Japan's national baseball team has a name--Samurai Japan, an indication of the seriousness and earnestness of their endeavor--they use in international competition, México uses Novena México--the México Nine. It's a reinforcement of the sense of teamwork and selflessness to which the club aspires, and that spirit has been on display throughout their improbable run to the final two days of this tournament. Luis Urías and Rowdy Tellez have been right in the middle of it all, and they get another chance to gel with their teammates and forge a miniature miracle on Monday night. The Brewers couldn't hope for a better way to prepare these two for the regular season. Not only have they played in high-energy, high-stakes atmospheres, but they've had to grind out at-bats against tough same-handed pitchers with high-level stuff. Tonight, they'll see one of the most talented and electrifying pitchers on Earth, as Roki Sasaki toes the rubber for Japan. Sasaki, 21, has a fastball that can push past 100 miles per hour, and his splitter is one of the nastiest offspeed pitches in the world. Last season, he had 173 strikeouts and issued just 23 walks in 129 innings over 20 starts in NPB, with a 2.02 ERA. He also did this: Every round of advancement a team achieves in the WBC is worth a mid-six-figure payment to the country's baseball federation. That means that, from a purely financial perspective, it has already been good for México to get this far into the competition for the first time. If they make it to the finals, they could end up with a total purse north of $2 million, but far more importantly, this run of success has already boosted the profile of the sport in México. Soccer still rules there, but baseball has always had a strong foothold, and this moment has deepened and broadened its popularity. Samurai Japan has to be the favorite. Even with impressive young Angels starter (and, perhaps, Shohei Ohtani- and Lars Nootbaar-neutralizing lefty) Patrick Sandoval on the mound, Novena México faces a tall task. The ace potential of Sasaki and the firepower of the Japanese lineup are both formidable. They've not only won every game they have played, but largely dominated. They've outscored their opponents 47-11. No one even expected México to get this far, and doing so required upsetting the United States in pool play and coming from behind to beat Puerto Rico in the quarterfinals. Tellez and Urías were crucial in the winning rally that night. They have a chance to do something special again Monday night. In Catholic tradition, a novena is a series of special prayers and requests for intercession performed over nine days. Today is the 10th day since the start of this magical run by Novena México. Standing like David before a baseball Goliath, the team (led by Tellez and Urías) will hope to answer the prayers of a nation of baseball fans--one that extends far beyond the borders of the physical country. This tournament is an awesome thing for baseball, and tonight offers an opportunity for Brewers fans to put themselves in an October state of mind a week before the season even begins. View full article

For the record, I’m pro-pitch clock! It’s just that it’s a pretty stern system they’ve installed here.

Having gone through the entire lineup, we can now focus our position-by-position preview of the 2023 Milwaukee Brewers on the clear strength of the team: the pitching staff. We’ll break our previews of the starting rotation into three parts. Today, the spotlight shines solely on the co-aces who lead the way. Image courtesy of © Quinn Harris-USA TODAY Sports Whatever other key variables and questions exist, there’s little question that the Brewers need their pair of established frontline starters to stay healthy and be consistent this year. If they do so, this team can put up a fight against the Cardinals in the NL Central, even without several other things going their way. If not, their hopes for that kind of contention become desperately fragile. Let’s key in on the essential factors for Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff, as they try to form the backbone of a meaningful October run. Corbin Burnes: The California Cowboy The stuff has always been ace-caliber, and since he turned the corner during the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign, Burnes has shown the command and the self-knowledge required to make good on that extraordinary talent. He’s the dominator of this staff. Built like a cattle rancher and with the visage to intimidate without antics or put-ons. He has the flowing hair and the beard, but there’s also that delightfully distinctive way he holds his glove as he comes set on the mound, like an experienced rancher or renegade saloon poker player, reaching for his pistol in its crossdraw cradle. It’s a small thing, but it completes his vibe gorgeously. Speaking of small things, those are the only kinds of things on which he needs to work much going into 2023. Despite his well-documented (and apparently costly) hiccups late last season, he was once again one of the best starters in MLB. He’s honed and clarified his arsenal against both left- and right-handed batters: cutter, curve, and change against lefties; cutter, slider, sinker, and curve against righties. With that array of weapons, he can miss bats as consistently as any starter in the league. The downsides are what they have always been, for Burnes. On occasion, he tries too hard to throw a strike, and ends up grooving the ball in a way that hitters see well and square up often. He surrendered 23 home runs last year, which is hardly back-breaking, but it meant the difference between his Cy Young Award-winning numbers of 2021 and a merely very strong stat line in 2022. On the other end of the spectrum, but very much rooted in the same underlying truths about his repertoire and delivery, Burnes doesn’t actually fill up the zone with his stuff, and when hitters are able to guess along with him or pick up on something that tells them which of his darting, diving offerings is coming, they can wait him out and draw more walks than his overall numbers would suggest. Last season, Burnes had zero walks in nine of his 33 starts. In another seven, though, he had at least three, and in those seven rougher outings, he allowed 20 runs in 40 innings of work, while issuing 25 free passes and plunking three more hitters. That crossdraw set position hints at something very real: Burnes is about deception and movement, rather than precision. He has great command, but it takes the form of great execution, and that can mean that his location is sometimes suboptimal. His challenge in 2023 will be to have more starts in which he’s consistently on the edges of the zone, rather than being just outside it or forced to pitch too much within it. Little things like the below might be trickier, too, since he'll have to navigate the rough waters of working with a rough-edged young receiver much of the time. Unlike Burnes, Woodruff doesn’t try to lock into a set group of pitches to each type of hitter and use them in relatively constant proportions. He does make the slider scarce against lefties, and only deploys the changeup sparingly against righties, but he shifts the frequency of his four-seam fastball, sinker, and curveball more subtly and idiosyncratically. Small absolute changes in his overall numbers can indicate much bigger ones in what he’s really doing. When he went away from the sinker last year, it left him without much of an out pitch–not because that offering itself was generating strikeouts, but because it was setting everything up. In the past, Woodruff would often start lefties out with unexpected sinkers, getting ahead in the count before putting them away with four-seamers that seemed to explode to the top of the zone in contrast with the sinker. Against righties, the sinker could either induce weak contact early in the count, or set up a breaking ball at the end of the sequence. That’s why Woodruff has worked so hard this winter to recover his feel for it. Summary and Projected Value ZiPS Projections Player ERA GS IP BB SO Corbin Burnes 2.99 29 174.3 46 215 Brandon Woodruff 2.96 28 158.0 40 184 Burnes and Woodruff will serve as a powerful 1-2 punch and are ranked first and fifth in terms of ZiPS projected pitching WAR for all major leagues at 4.9 and 4.0, respectively. They'll face new challenges, too, though, such as Burnes's adjustment to working under the tyranny of the pitch clock. He will not be able to control the tempo on the mound as well starting this season. In 2022, he took an average of 15.1 seconds in between pitches with the bases empty, and 19.2 seconds with runners on base. Both of those figures will have to fall in order to avoid frequent pitch clock violations in 2023. If you’ve been paying attention to spring training games, or minor-league games that used the pitch clock last year, you’ll know that the 15 seconds allotted to each pitch goes by quickly and gives each pitcher far less time to focus their delivery. Projection systems haven't truly adjusted for those effects, because they're wildly difficult to predict, but it's certainly a factor to watch when it comes to Burnes. Woodruff doesn't have as tough an adjustment ahead, in that sense, and if he can get the changeup to bloom in full as a putaway pitch for lefties while mixing the sinker back in, he should be capable of meeting even these lofty expectations. The Brewers certainly hope so, because their ticket to the postseason has Burnes's and Woodruff's pictures on it. 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With our position-by-position preview of the 2023 Brewers nearing its conclusion, we now turn our attention to the position that barely counts as one: designated hitter. Image courtesy of © Mark Hoffman / USA TODAY NETWORK In the modern game, most teams use the DH spot not to fit an extra slugger into their everyday lineup, but as a rotational repository for players who are already part of that lineup, but could use a rest from the daily duties of their defensive positions. Last year, the Brewers were such a team. They had Andrew McCutchen start 82 times there, but Christian Yelich also took 35 starts; Keston Hiura slotted in 24 times; and Rowdy Tellez and Hunter Renfroe fit there a fistful of times apiece. This winter, though, Milwaukee veered in a dramatically different direction, increasing their offensive upside but adding to the risk and rigidity of their roster at the same time. The Starter For Jesse Winker, last season was a major career setback. It might not have been a derailment, but it certainly represented a change of tracks, and he enters 2023 trying to prove that he still has star-caliber production in him. In his lone season in Seattle, he was plagued by injuries to his knee, his shoulder, his back, and his neck, two of which required surgery after the campaign. Health has been the greatest limiting factor of his career to this point, so that wasn't surprising. Less expected and less welcome, though, was the fact that Winker's preparation and dedication were called into question at the end of the year. The Mariners have a different set of expectations for staying ready to play than do the Reds, and Winker didn't meet the new standard. Even before whispers turned to shouts at the end of a frustrating year, though, Winker was tangled up in all the wrong things. He helped touch off a brawl against the Angels during the summer, which Seattle was able to use as a moment of unification and cohesion, but which demonstrated a certain lack of discipline from Winker that would become a sore spot by September. Of course, no one ends up popular when they arrive with big expectations and fail to deliver on them. That was the fundamental reality of WInker's season. He has a great eye at the plate. He rarely swings and misses. Neither of those things changed last year. What did change was that, whereas he hit the ball hard and on a line very often during his Reds career, he got under the ball much too often and didn't generate anywhere near the same consistent quality of contact in 2022. It's possible to see why, to some extent, by watching his tape. 4895a793-f2f7-4be5-a37b-2278fea7096b.mp4 In the above clip, from 2021, Winker showed why he was such a special hitter. He generated tremendous power by keeping his hands back and delaying the rotation of his trunk as long as possible, with his hips well ahead of his shoulders and hands. However, thanks to great posture and a very direct hand path, he didn't get under the ball, the way most hitters do when they try to create such torque and leverage. He could keep his bat flat even through the top of the zone, without losing the ability to elevate. Now, check out a similar pitch from 2022. 0a54a076-841e-4fb5-91d8-7e97c6e10895.mp4 Some of what was so good in the first swing is intact here, but the crucial, fractional things are lost. His front shoulder opens up a bit early. His back shoulder dips slightly. As a result, and in his effort to still reach the ball with the barrel despite the front shoulder carrying him away from the plate sooner, he extends his hands sooner, and the result is a ball that is slightly mishit: a bit too high, not quite hard enough. Those are, of course, just two swings, but they nicely capture what was wrong throughout 2022. Winker hit more fly balls and pop-ups, and fewer ground balls and line drives. That can be a good thing, but because of things like the examples above, it was a bad thing for him. In 2019, Winker's average exit velocity on batted balls to the opposite field was 89.2 miles per hour. In 2020, it was 89.7. In 2021, it fell, but to a still-good 87.4 miles per hour. In 2022, that figure dropped all the way to 82.6. The reason was exactly what the above imply, even though he hit the balls in question to right-center: pulling off the ball a little sooner and taking a loopier path to it cost him the ability to drive the ball as consistently, especially the other way. Whether all of that can be attributed to being banged up, and whether being banged up in the first place should be blamed on Winker and his suspect preparation, is impossible to know for certain. Since he's a free agent after 2023, though, he'll surely be as motivated this year as he has ever been. By all indications, he'll be ready shortly after Opening Day, if not on Opening Day itself, and the Brewers will get to find out how much of his unfortunate Seattle sojourn was just a poor fit between player and new team, rather than a poor showing by the player in a vacuum. The Backups We delayed publication of this installment of the preview series, on the theory that Thursday would bring clarity on the situation of Luke Voit. The ball of burl and brawn that is Voit has an opt-out clause in his minor-league contract with the Brewers that took effect when the team didn't add him to the 40-man roster by the end of Thursday. As of Friday morning, though, there's no indication that Voit has elected free agency. Still, the Brewers' choice not to make room for him on the roster and remove the doubt speaks volumes. If Voit does end up staying with the team and contributing in 2022, we should expect it to be in a small role. He's not part of the club's plan, per se, or else they would have taken the simple steps required to ensure that they would have him when the season begins. Instead, then, we can turn our attention to the mix of utility players and semi-resting regulars who figure to see time at DH whenever Winker isn't occupying it. Hiura is the most obvious. His spring stats have been brutal, and he could yet be swept away in the roster machinations that will be necessary over the next fortnight, but his clearest path to any playing time is at DH. The bigger chunk of right-handed DH at-bats might go to William Contreras, though, and that might be the factor that most drove the decision not to add Voit to the roster at the mini-deadline Thursday. Contreras hasn't looked like an easy or even likely reclamation project for the team's vaunted catching infrastructure in his Cactus League showings so far. They might well feel that they will need to play Victor Caratini behind the plate more often than previously projected, and that would nudge Contreras's potent bat to DH more often. In addition to those two, Yelich, Tellez, and even Willy Adames could spend a few days apiece at DH, depending on the health of Winker and the composition of the rest of the roster. Summary and Projected Value Projection systems still like Winker. PECOTA, from Baseball Prospectus, thinks he'll be the Brewers' best hitter in 2023, though part of that is because their offensive value metric (DRC+) privileges hitters who demonstrate consistent skills and have a down year in a particular one. Since Winker still walked often and struck out relatively infrequently during his lousy 2022, DRC+ had him as 10 percent above average, even in that campaign. That's a decent microcosm of the overall sense of the position, actually. While last year wasn't technically encouraging for Winker or for Yelick, and while the likelihood that Contreras will play DH fairly often this year raises as many questions as it answers, there's a high floor and considerable upside here for the Crew. They should get good production from the DH spot. It's just a matter of figuring out from whom, and whether that production will come at an undue cost elsewhere in the lineup and on the roster. View full article

That’s a good vision! Significantly increased revenue sharing is as tough a sell with big-market owners as the cap itself is with the players, but it might be the thing with the best chance to satisfy all parties—even if imperfectly.

Recently, in response to an offseason of unprecedented spending and the relentlessness of the Mets’ and Padres’ owners, MLB formed an economic reform committee. Their eventual goal is to establish a salary cap. Would that be good for the sport? Image courtesy of © Roy Dabner, for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel via Imagn Content Services, LLC Obviously, the MLB Players Association will fiercely resist any effort to implement a cap. If that weren’t self-evident, MLBPA executive director Tony Clark said as much in the wake of the news of the committee’s inception. By now, most fans realize that if the fight really is to be one between millionaires and billionaires, then the right side to take is that of the millionaires–the players. That would incline many fans to mistrust advocates of a cap, and there are good reasons to do so. In truth, though, we need to avoid oversimplifying complex issues like this one as a matter of owners and players in direct and dual confrontation. There are more constituencies to consider. The owners are far from monolithic in their interests or their preferences. Small- and mid-market teams will always push for a cap if they have an opportunity to do so, but deep-pocketed, aggressive owners like the Mets’ Steve Cohen, San Diego’s Peter Seidler, and Philadelphia’s John Middleton are much less likely to support one. More importantly, fans have a right to think of themselves as a party to these deliberations, and not to merely align themselves with one of the two more powerful blocs at the bargaining table. We should all demand that players receive a fair share of the revenue generated by the game, and we should all want to ensure things like player safety and the eradication of human trafficking or the exploitation of children. When it comes to something like a cap on major-league payrolls, though, the absolutes of right and wrong fall away. In fact, even the financial and economic impact of a cap is less clear than some of its more fervid opponents would have you believe. Any cap system would also involve setting a salary floor, likely in excess of 50 percent of the cap. Right now, six or seven teams spend less than any likely floor would compel them to spend each year. Moreover, putting a cap in place would require clear definitions of baseball revenue and a fixed percentage of that revenue being distributed to players. Under the current system, owners have found more and more ways of making money they can semi-credibly declare not to be related to their teams, and thus, the share of revenues and profits that players receive has steadily shrunk. Finally, and perhaps most urgent of all to Brewers fans, there’s this: a salary cap inevitably lessens the impact of market size on perennial competitiveness. As many have observed, the major American sports leagues that do employ a cap hardly have perfect parity. Nor does the lack of a cap prevent teams from spending competitively or winning often even in smaller markets, as the Padres, A’s, Rays, Brewers, and others have proven in various ways and at various times over the last quarter-century. Still, the correlation between payroll and competitiveness is stronger when the gap between high and low payrolls is wider, and as long as there’s no cap in place, those wide spreads (and the resultant advantages for teams in bigger markets) will persist. If there were a salary cap in MLB, the Brewers would still face tough choices. They might still need to spend less than most of their rivals, since their revenues are relatively small–albethey ample, especially when combined with the enormous personal fortunes of their owners. The cap probably wouldn’t permit teams to retain more than two or three players on the kind of market-rate, high-dollar deal to which the Brewers already have Christian Yelich signed, and for which Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, and Willy Adames will be looking over the next two years. With those limitations working to tamp down the potential value of seeking their paydays elsewhere, though, it would probably be easier for the team to sign at least one of the three to a long-term deal. The strength of the club’s scouting and player development infrastructures would also be more valuable, since every constraint on on-field spending makes the advantages teams derive from non-player expenditures more pivotal. Many of the things we love about baseball would only become more indispensable in a capped league. Again, that doesn’t mean the cap is a panacea. There are plenty of reasons to worry about abuses or cheating by owners, because baseball owners have abused and cheated every set of rules to which they have ever agreed. A cap would slow the growth of player salaries, especially at the higher end of the market, and could result mostly in billionaires sitting on larger piles of cash. If taking the risk of that could yield a better, fairer game, however it might be worth rolling the dice. Where do you fall in this debate? Would a cap have enough of a moderating impact on the importance of market size and revenue to make up for whatever evils would come with it? Would it be the cataclysm Clark describes? Let us know what you think in the comments. View full article

We've covered the whole field, now, in our positional preview of the 2023 Brewers. We'll round things out with right field, where a rookie could have an instant impact--if he gets the opportunity he's earned. Image courtesy of © Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports His name is everywhere, even though his real form is suddenly nowhere. Tyrone Taylor's absence from the outfield mix will be a conspicuous one as the season gets going. Without him, the Milwaukee outfield leans heavily toward left-handed hitters, and there's a risk of some serious defensive deficiency. Still, thanks to Sal Frelick, there's also an appealing upside. The Starter The new Collective Bargaining Agreement gives the Brewers an easier path to keeping Frelick on the Opening Day roster. It's not the kind of comprehensive or wholly rational incentive for which we might have hoped, but it's there. Because the relevant top prospect lists this winter included Frelick as one of the game's top 100, the Crew could get a bonus draft pick in 2024 if they carry Frelick all season and he gets sufficient support for the National League Rookie of the Year. There's a bit of a trap there. Every team who monkeys around with their top youngsters' service time and keeps them in the minor leagues to claim an extra year of team control does so at the risk of hurting their team during whatever period of time they go without a qualified big-leaguer. Under the new rule, the Brewers have a chance to chase a reward, but they risk losing the year of team control (in 2029) and getting nothing in return for it, if he's merely solid. In that case, though, and in this specific circumstance, the team would have a few ways to walk back their aggressive choice. If Frelick doesn't burst out of the gate, he'd be easy to send back to Triple-A Nashville when Taylor comes off the injured list. If he struggles mightily in an early look at big-league pitching, he could even be demoted in favor of more playing time for Tyler Naquin, Brian Anderson, or Owen Miller. Let's think more positively, though. The Brewers should carry Frelick all season, because it's unlikely that they'll find a better player to slot in consistently in right field until Taylor returns, and it's equally unlikely that they'll have a better, more well-rounded player to rotate through all three outfield spots and the designated hitter role once Taylor does come back. In 19 plate appearances with Team Italy in the World Baseball Classic's pool play, Frelick had seven hits (including three doubles), a walk, and zero strikeouts. In 11 trips to the plate in the Cactus League before that, he had five hits, including a double, and just one punchout. That only continues (and increases the impressiveness of) the trend he established last year, as he strikes out less and less as the level of his competition increases. That, surely, can't last, and Frelick's lack of significant power gives him little margin for error. To be a first-division regular, one who is pushing the Brewers materially closer to the playoffs, he probably needs to keep his strikeout rate south of 15 percent. In the modern game, where the average hitter fans 23 percent of the time and only the most elite contact guys get down near 10 percent, that's a tough limbo bar under which to duck. If anyone is up to that challenge, though, it might be Frelick. The Brewers should give him that chance, knowing that they have good fallback plans if he proves not to be ready to play above-average baseball right away. The Backups We talked plenty about Brian Anderson in the third base preview last week, but it's worth mentioning that he could easily be the primary right fielder against left-handed pitchers for the first month or so. He has a strong arm, and his power looks good enough this spring to make him a creditable corner outfielder. When Anderson is at third base, though, or at other times when he and Frelick are both unavailable, the duty is likely to fall to Naquin. Though he's never demonstrated the consistency or completeness of skill set to be an everyday star, Naquin has the power and baseline athleticism to be a fine fourth outfielder and platoon weapon. As ever, Craig Counsell will be asked to mix and match to some extent, and he's great at eliciting production in those situations. Summary and Projected Value The only thing that feels truly safe to say about right field for the Brewers this year is that they won't have any one player start there 130 or 140 times. Frelick, Taylor, Anderson, Naquin, and Wiemer will divvy up the playing time somehow, but whether it's Taylor and 70 starts or Frelick and 110 who leads the way can't be predicted well from here. FanGraphs sees all that volatility, and projects the team to fit into the lowest tercile of the league in WAR at the position. Baseball Prospectus is even more tepid, because PECOTA is lower on Frelick than are other projection systems. This is the second or third spot in the lineup, though, where the Brewers have the ability to far outdistance their statistical expectations, because they have such depth. Doing so will be a matter of playing the hot hand, without exposing themselves to the vagaries of guys who have clear areas of uncertainty and inconsistency. View full article

The Brewers have a number of intriguing young players vying for playing time in center field in 2023. That gives the position high upside, but the risk here is obvious. Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports Not with a groan or a loud rip, but with a tweet, the Brewers' center field depth gave way before Cactus League games even began. Tyrone Taylor's elbow injury leaves the team almost wholly dependent upon Garrett Mitchell at that position throughout the early stages of the season, and as exciting as Mitchell's upside is, that's a bit nerve-wracking for a team that can only call this season a success if they reach the postseason. The Starter Mitchell is a baseball rat, blessed with tools that don't always come packaged with such dedication to the game itself. Grade him out on baseball's traditional five tools, and he's above-average in four: glove, speed, arm, and power. Even that undersells him. Mitchell is a burner, although we should expect to see him ratchet his topline speeds down slightly as the rookie turbo effect wears off. He might also hit the ball a bit less hard, when he gets all of one, for the same reason. In the exchange, though, he's likely to make more contact than he did in his brief stint with the parent club in 2022. Rookies who reach MLB have a tendency (one we can now document, thanks to Statcast) to play the game without holding anything in reserve. That means unexpectedly impressive sprint speeds and maximal exit velocities, relative to whatever reports we get on them in advance of their debuts, but it comes at a cost. Rookies haven't yet learned that playing at that speed will make one vulnerable in MLB--vulnerable to manipulation by the other team, vulnerable to sloppy mistakes, and vulnerable to injury. Once they settle in a bit, though, players with good feel for the game and the willingness to wade through the inevitable adversity find their way to a more tenable balance between aggression and caution. That doesn't always mean that they can fix their shortcomings. Mitchell has one loose comparator in former Cubs outfielder Brett Jackson, who came up in 2012 after being the team's top draft choice in 2009. Jackson, like Mitchell, was a left-hitting, unusually toolsy collegiate outfielder out of the Pac-12. In his 142 trips to the plate for the moribund baby bears in 2012, he struck out 41.6 percent of the time, and he never got another full-fledged shot in the majors. Last year, Mitchell struck out even more often than did Jackson in his audition. He's smart, but Jackson was smart. His defense gives him a higher theoretical floor than his whiff rate implies, but so did Jackson's. He's susceptible to the same failure to which Jackson succumbed. However, there are two key differences: Jackson whiffed on nearly 38 percent of his swings in that short stint in 2012. A decade later, Mitchell only missed on 31.5 percent of his swings. Foolishly, the Cubs spent the winter immediately after Jackson came up and scuffled so much trying desperately to rebuild him. It was a catastrophic failure, and he permanently lost touch with his natural talent. While the Brewers and Mitchell certainly want him to close some of the holes in his swing and approach in 2023, neither party made any attempt to overhaul him. Strikeouts will be the limiting factor in Mitchell's offensive production. They shouldn't be a crippling problem, though, and given the great glove work he can offer in an outfield that badly needs some stability and solidity in the middle, the Brewers can put up with quite a few of them before the juice is no longer worth the breeze. The Backups Were Taylor healthy, he would be not only Mitchell's backup, but a really nice shield against any platoon vulnerabilities the young left-handed hitter shows as he tries to matriculate into a regular big-league role. Since he isn't, the team will have to scramble a little bit. Sal Frelick has had the kind of spring that would force the team to seriously consider carrying him on the Opening Day roster, even if they were fully healthy. Since they aren't, he has an especially strong case for being included, and although he's nothing like the defender Mitchell can be, he has the speed and the other rudiments to acquit himself in center if his bat does what seems possible. Failing that, things really get dicey. Joey Wiemer is the kind of big, rangy athlete who can fake it for a long time in the cozy center fields of the NL Central, but he's a better fit for right field in even the medium term. Owen Miller has taken fairly well to center field in a couple of spring looks, but it's hard to imagine that the team wants him playing there with any regularity. Taylor's elbow is the key to everything, when it comes to maintaining a backstop for Mitchell. Summary and Projected Value The chasm between projection systems on Mitchell are as wide as you'll find. Dan Szymborski's ZiPS system pegs him as an essentially league-average hitter and estimates he could contribute 1.6 WAR in something considerably less than full playing time. Baseball Prospectus's PECOTA system has him as one of the worst hitters in baseball, and only expects 0.4 WARP from him. Whereas ZiPS would recommend starting Mitchell over Frelick based on equal offensive footing and Mitchell's superior glove, PECOTA would urge Frelick over Mitchell, because it much prefers Frelick's batting profile. In reality, of course, Frelick is as likely to spend significant time in right field, alongside Mitchell, as he is to usurp him. The real wild cards are Taylor's availability to spell and counterbalance each; Jackson Chourio's progress toward the majors; and the extent to which guys like Brian Anderson, Tyler Naquin, and Miller can keep the outfield functioning until Taylor, Chourio, or Wiemer can round it out more permanently. In the meantime, the high-wire act will have to do. View full article

We’ve reached the outfield in our position-by-position preview of the 2023 Brewers. Let’s tackle left field, simultaneously the simplest and the most complex spot for the team in the coming year. Image courtesy of © Allan Henry-USA TODAY Sports Only five players in MLB will take up a higher percentage of their team’s Opening Day payroll than will Christian Yelich: Cincinnati’s Joey Votto; Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera; Kansas City’s Salvador Perez; and both Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin, for Washington. None of those teams are considered contenders in 2023. The Brewers are. That sets the stakes for left field very high. The Starter In early Cactus League action, Yelich has been dominant, with an OPS of 1.404 over his first six games. That’s good news, even if it’s largely typical of him. Yelich has been an excellent spring training hitter since 2017. Christian Yelich, Spring Training OPS, 2017-22 Season OPS 2017 1.084 2018 1.044 2019 1.292 2020 0.637 2021 1.357 2022 0.686 He’s been even more consistent than that suggests, if one gives him a pass for not hitting the ground running in the four meager games he played in 2020, before COVID-19 shut everything down. His only poor season in Arizona was last spring, and it’s good to see him back in rake mode this February and March. Still, we know better than to assume that that means Yelich will rebound to his MVP form. As many have observed, most of Yelich’s power has gone to the opposite field, and while all power is welcome, what everyone is really waiting to see is whether he can consistently turn on the ball, the way he did in 2018 and 2019. Maybe that’s an oversimplification, though. What set those peak years apart from the rest of Yelich’s career, in terms of batted-ball direction, was less the frequency with which he pulled the ball than the extent to which he drove it back up the middle of the diamond, using center field, rather than truly going the opposite way. Christian Yelich, Batted Ball Direction By Season, 2016-22 Season Pull % Center % Oppo % 2016 33 38.2 28.8 2017 27 44.2 28.9 2018 31.3 44.2 24.5 2019 35.8 40.6 23.3 2020 33.9 37.1 29 2021 33.9 36.3 29.8 2022 33.4 38.9 27.6 That nuance mirrors the facts of the case when it comes to trajectory off of Yelich’s bat. When he became a lethal slugger, it wasn’t by morphing into a fly-ball maven. He just hit slightly fewer ground balls. The implications of the two arcs are different, but they do point in a common direction. It’s the same problem I highlighted in identifying Yelich as an X-factor for the Brewers’ season recently: his power is still there, but he’s not getting out and making contact with the ball at a point that allows him to fully actualize it. Yelich hit another long drive in Sunday’s Cactus League game against the Cubs, though again, it was to left-center field, and this one died at the wall. He’s not quite showing, at least in spring ball, that elusive and extraordinary ability to get his bat up to full speed and hit the ball out in front of the plate, with both the physics and the geometry right, and without rolling over and hitting a ground ball instead. Still, his talent peeks through, and it tantalizes. Defensively, it’s much harder to see the upside. Yelich had a ball clank unprettily off his glove for a two-base error Sunday, a microcosm of the trouble that finds him more and more often over the last couple of years. According to Baseball Prospectus’s new fielding metrics, Yelich was three runs better than an average left fielder last year based on range alone, but gave two of those runs back with his weak arm. Baseball Info Solutions pegged him as one run better than even, based on range and positioning, but two runs worse with his arm, and another run was lost when they calculated the net effect of his good fielding plays and his misplays and errors. If he weren’t taking up so much of their payroll, and if the team hadn’t loaded up on guys whose only tenable position is the batter’s box this winter, he might be better off at designated hitter in the near future. The Backups The old maxim of outfield play says that fielders who can both run and throw well play center field, while those who can only throw play right and those who can only run play left. That’s far less true now, as the game has evolved to expect more athleticism from corner outfielders and the relative importance of speed and arm have evened out a bit in each corner. As such, almost any outfielder the team carries is a prospective backup or fill-in for Yelich. Tyrone Taylor was the Swiss Army knife of this outfield mix, as a right-handed batter with all of the tools to be a great defender. While he’s hurt, everything is a bit more up in the air, but he was likely slated for right field, anyway. Garrett Mitchell is very unlikely to play left for any significant period, since he’s quite likely to play center field every day. That leaves Blake Perkins, Tyler Naquin, Brian Anderson, and Keston Hiura as the men on the 40-man roster who have a chance to spend time in left field early on. Anderson, with his strong arm, will probably play right whenever he’s not at third base, but Naquin and Perkins are both solid left fielders who could be credible left-handed hitters, to boot. Neither will replace Yelich’s production, but keeping their highest-priced star fresh is a vital task for Craig Counsell and company, and the presence of some quality depth options makes that easier to do. Summary and Projected Value The projection systems have no mechanism by which to simply delete Yelich’s explosive seasons from their memories, so they’re persistently optimistic about him in a way that many Brewers fans (three years into the frustration of his regression, even if the level to which he’s regressed is theoretically fine) might find difficult to digest. Still, it’s comforting to be reminded how high a floor Yelich sets. According to PECOTA, the projection system from Baseball Prospectus, Yelich’s 30th-percentile projection–an outcome he should beat 70 percent of the time–would still be above-average offense and average defense, and a total value of roughly 3 wins above replacement. We can all envision scenarios in which he comes in below that, but perhaps in several of those, Jackson Chourio explodes onto the big-league scene by midseason and makes up the difference. Although it feels oddly fragile, the Brewers have every reason to expect left field to be a position of strength and upside for 2023. View full article

The Milwaukee Brewers’ delegation to the World Baseball Classic has already yielded some impressive performances, headlined by a prospect who made the most of a rare opportunity Saturday. Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports Last year, Carlos F. Rodríguez pitched very well in the Brewers system. After being a sixth-round pick from a Florida junior college in 2021, he made the most of his first full season as a professional, moving up from Class-A Carolina to High-A Wisconsin and posting good numbers. He ranked 11th on our countdown of the top 20 Brewers prospects this spring, and FanGraphs has him 20th in the system. On Saturday, though, he got a chance to showcase his talent in a new and challenging way, and he more than met the moment. A Nicaragua native, Rodríguez not only got the invite to represent that country, but was handed the ball to start their first game of the tournament. Facing a Team Puerto Rico lineup stacked with good big-league hitters, Rodríguez threw four strong innings, allowing just one run on two hits and striking out three. More exciting (and more fun, for those who love either prospects or numbers) than the raw results, though, was the fact that Rodríguez’s performance was tracked by Statcast. That allows us to say, definitively, that he was throwing six different pitches on Saturday. While we saw Rodríguez pitch effectively with both a curveball and a slider last season, and while his changeup already had an above-average grade on FanGraphs’s scouting report for him, that cutter is a new and fascinating wrinkle. Its movement is tighter and later than that of his slider, and it’s also about five miles per hour firmer. Less surprising, but also notable, was the fact that Rodríguez utilized his sinker just as much as his four-seam fastball in the outing. He didn’t miss bats with the sinker, and a couple of batters did hit it hard, but they mostly pounded it into the ground. If he’s now a six-pitch guy, he’s increased his chances of sticking in the starting rotation as he rises through the minors, and he should be regarded a bit more highly. That doesn’t mean there won’t be things to work on. Though he showed a good plan of attack and got opponents to expand the zone by setting them up well at times, Rodríguez doesn’t yet have the command he’ll need to be a starter in MLB. Still, everything about this outing was encouraging. He handled a high-pressure atmosphere; kept his underdog team in the game; spun the ball well; and touched 95 miles per hour with his heat. If Nicaragua gets eliminated–as everyone still expects, especially after the rest of their pitchers gave up eight runs in five innings when Rodríguez departed–then the young right-handed can return to Brewers camp having done brilliantly in his lone opportunity. There were other Brewers active in the early games of the WBC, too, though. Sal Frelick, playing for Team Italy, is 4-for-14 through their first three games, including a pair of doubles, a pair of runs scored, a pair of RBIs, one walk (against zero strikeouts) and one stolen base. The setting and the pool in which Italy was placed are perfect for Frelick, and he’s put on a show, albeit for a team that will not advance out of pool play. In Team Panama’s victory over Frelick’s Italian team on Friday, Javy Guerra also made a statement, coming for a 20-pitch save in which he only threw fastballs; averaged 97.7 miles per hour on them; and touched 99.5. Team México is off to a less auspicious start, having lost a tremendously taut and exciting game to Team Colombia to begin their tournament. We saw launch angle problems from both Luis Urías and Rowdy Tellez in that contest, as Urías had two hard-hit ground balls that killed rallies for México, and Tellez had a couple of popouts. Even more painfully, Urías was charged with what became the decisive error in the 10th inning, on a very tough play at shortstop–a cue shot that took him to his right and took a bad hop. The lone bright spot for either player was a sixth-inning plate appearance by Tellez, who hung tough against a lefty with a runner on second and nobody out, ultimately hitting a check-swing ground ball on a 3-2 count that moved the go-ahead run into scoring position. (Alas, two batters later, it was Urías who hit into an inning-ending double play.) As I write this, Team Netherlands is beating Frelick, Brett Sullivan, and Italy 1-0. That’s the delightful nature of the World Baseball Classic; the action is nonstop. Sunday will bring more fun for Brewers fans, as México takes on Team USA (and Devin Williams) in the second game of pool play in Phoenix, while the Brewers who stayed home will play against the Cubs at Sloan Park in Mesa. View full article

Today, we finish out the week by completing a trip around the horn. Our position-by-position preview of the 2023 Brewers is headed for the hot corner. Image courtesy of © Matt Kartozian-USA TODAY Sports Though they don't directly or solely model themselves on the Tampa Bay Rays, the Brewers do emulate their small-market brethren in their approach to building a position player corps--especially on the infield. That means a lot of playing matchups, prioritizing depth over star power, and understanding the value of overlapping skill sets. Nowhere is that more clear, for this year's version of the team, than at third base. The Starter If there were any questions about Brian Anderson's status as a full-time regular coming into camp, he's done everything within his power to banish them from the minds of the Brewers and their fans. The only remaining question, spurred by Tyrone Taylor's balky elbow, is whether Anderson will spend a substantial share of his time in right field during the early going, rather than at his original defensive home. The reasons why one might have doubted his status as an everyday player a month ago are the same as the reasons why the Brewers were able to sign Anderson for just $3.5 million in free agency, after the Marlins non-tendered him early in the offseason: a woefully inconsistent and underwhelming pair of seasons at the plate. Injury had much to do with those struggles, but Anderson also needed to make some adjustments in his setup, in order to tap into the value of his good bat speed and feel for the barrel. Here's a video of Anderson getting beaten inside on a pitch last May: e3121c6c-1e16-41fb-8791-f7ded1a41385.mp4 Note that although he begins with a slight waggle, his hands reach a point of almost perfect stillness before the pitch is thrown, with the barrel of his bat almost perpendicular to the ground. He has a timing trigger, a pulldown to get his hands moving, but there's still a slight hitch, and that's one reason why he's late on the inside fastball. By the end of last season, Anderson had partially fixed that particular problem. He'd lowered the bat toward parallel with the ground and back over his shoulder, and was in motion before the pitch. He's carried that over this spring, and it seems to really help. Some hitters can start from a full stop (or nearly so) and still get the head of the bat into the zone on time, with good rhythm, but most can't, and Anderson appears to fall into that latter camp. Getting more rhythmic and being on time has helped, but Anderson is also crushing the ball this spring simply because he's healthier. Take a look at his home run off of Cubs starter Drew Smyly on Feb. 28. It certainly helps that Smyly doesn't throw overwhelmingly hard, and that he was trying to sneak a cutter past Anderson inside. What we see on that swing, though, is much better fundamental strength than Anderson was able to sustain last season. Bothered by a lingering left shoulder injury and a bulging disc in his back, Anderson was unable to stay as balanced, rotate as cleanly throughout his swing, or keep the bat moving at top speed through contact, the way he so often did early in his career. If he remains healthy and sticks with the altered setup that has unlocked his thump this spring, he'll be a fine hitter, be it at third base or in right field. Last year, his defense at third base took a turn for the worse. He still has a strong arm and good athleticism, though, and has shown the hands and feet of a perfectly competent infielder in the past. The adjustments he needs to make to shore up that side of his game are mostly mental, though it will certainly help if he can avoid further back trouble, too. The Backups Again, Urias is a fine fallback, but if he's playing second most of the time heading into the season, then Abraham Toro and Mike Brosseau will be the main guys behind Anderson. Since most of the team's other options for right field bat left-handed, it's easy to envision Anderson playing right against lefties until Taylor returns, and Toro (a switch-hitter) or Brosseau (a righty who handles lefties very well) being the third baseman for the day. Toro has played more second base recently, but came up as a well-regarded third baseman, including defensively. That he's getting an earlier, fuller taste of high-caliber pitching by playing for Team Canada in the World Baseball Classic can only help matters. The question with him, though, will be whether he can get back to hitting the ball hard at an acceptable rate. In the minors, he not only generated impressive traditional numbers, but caught teams' eyes with the subsurface data. That has not translated to the majors, despite his good contact rate and obvious athletic ability. It will be interesting to see whether the Brewers ask him to open the season in Nashville, in order to finish implementing any changes they have in mind to make him dangerous at the dish again. Summary and Projected Value As is true at second base, it feels very much like the Brewers will cobble together above-average production at third in 2023. They've put multiple useful players in place, and only outright disaster would make it a truly lousy position for them. Still, the certitude and star power provided by Willy Adames at shortstop is markedly absent here. In our entire circuit of the infield, one thing became clear: the team is overdue to produce a homegrown infielder of lasting quality. Hopefully, Brice Turang will end that drought this season, pushing Urías more prominently into this third-base picture and taking some pressure off of Matt Arnold to make nimble and aggressive choices in the free-agent and trade markets. In the meantime, though, that pressure remains. The team's success with developing outfielders recently has only made up for the dearth of infielders, and the many resources (Anderson's salary, the trade capital required to land Urías and Adames, and so on) that demanded. Baseball Prospectus's PECOTA projections peg Anderson as narrowly above-average at the plate, and Toro as equally below-average. If each plays the steady but unspectacular defense they've played in the past, that should translate to solid value at third. They only need a couple of wins above replacement at the spot, in the context of this roster. FanGraphs, ever the more dour prognosticators for this year's Crew, views Anderson as a lesser hitter than Toro, but still gives him more playing time. They also rank the Brewers 17th in projected production at third, despite having Urías (generally a projections darling) getting the majority of the time. Even if they are slightly below-average at third, the Brewers can win the NL Central in 2023. They just need two of their four options there to work out, in terms not only of playing to their established talent level, but of being available, rather than being pulled away to positions of more dire need or sidelined by injuries. View full article