Matthew Trueblood

The Brewers have questions, platoons, and guys competing with each other in camp at almost every position this spring. Shortstop, however, is a beacon of stability. Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-USA TODAY Sports Almost since the moment the Brewers traded for him in 2021, Willy Adames has been an impact player. While his profile has the kinds of holes that tend to be obvious and oft-discussed, his strengths have come into focus over the last couple of years. That's made him a prime candidate for a contract extension, and it's also put to rest (at least in the short term) anyone's thoughts that Brice Turang would matriculate to the majors as a shortstop. This is one place where the Brewers have a clear and comfortable hierarchy of choices. The Starter Adames is a prototypical modern shortstop, with the power that has become so prized at what was once such a slap-hitter position. His approach and swing will always lead to strikeouts, and last year, he took a more aggressive tack, leading to a career-low 7.5-percent walk rate. That's nit ideal, of course, but he made that change for a reason. After struggling mightily against sliders in 2021, he was downright dangerous against them in 2022. The tradeoff of expanding the zone moderately more in order to hit the ball hard much more often on breaking stuff was, though fraught, a sound one. Source: Baseball Savant He's nearing a bit of an extreme in terms of batted-ball profile, with a career high in average launch angle and a career low in ground-ball rate last season. It will be interesting to see whether he's able to adjust back in the direction of making hard contact at lower angles, if that's what the pitches he sees dictate that he do, because the shift ban does open things up for him a bit. Adames faced shifts in 151 plate appearances last year. Funnily enough, though, the new rules might also work in Adames's favor in the field. Since those new rules demand more of shortstops in terms of sheer range, Adames could gain on his peers as much as anyone. As elucidated by Baseball Prospectus's new suite of defensive stats, he was one of the best defenders in baseball at the spot last year, but that was driven especially by his range, rather than exceptionally smooth hands or a strong arm. Highest Range Out Score, Shortstops, 2022 (min. 1,000 inn.) Name Innings DRP RDA Runs Range Out Score Fielded Plays Attempt Range BRR Arm Willy Adames 1199.7 11.9 12.4 4.4 453 16 -0.5 Dansby Swanson 1433 12.3 10.8 3.2 529 0 1.5 Ha-Seong Kim 1092 6.9 8 3.1 420 12 -1.1 Isiah Kiner-Falefa 1185 6.1 8.1 3 445 15 -2 Geraldo Perdomo 1160 6.2 6.4 2.3 438 8 -0.2 Source: Baseball Prospectus If things do pan out that way, Adames is only going to get harder to sign for the long term. That's why I recommended this weekend that the Brewers act now. Of course, while he's away from the club to play for the Dominican Republic in the World Baseball Classic, it's unlikely that an extension comes together, but hopefully there will be time for the sides to talk after the Classic winds down, and before Opening Day. The Backups Perhaps the strongest single argument for carrying Turang on the roster right from Opening Day this year is that if the team doesn't do so, they really won't have a credible backup shortstop. He was narrowly viable as a fill-in before shift restrictions, but Luis Urías is no shortstop under MLB's rules for 2023. Nor are Abraham Toro or Mike Brosseau, although Urías and Brosseau could stand there for a bit in a true emergency. Whether right away or later in the year, Turang will be the real insurance policy at short. He's gotten a bit thicker and stronger over the last year, but that hasn't interfered with his litheness or his quickness. Indeed, as the game is played today, he needed a little bit more strength, anyway. His long-term home is at second base, and he could even be the regular there immediately, but he's also perfectly well-qualified as an understudy to Adames. The real loss, if Adames should go down for any meaningful stretch, is the same one we saw last year: the lineup will hurt and hunger for power throughout any absence. Summary It would be great if the team had their star shortstop locked up for another 10 years, or if Turang were a more exciting, fully qualified replacement for him in the medium-term future. As it is, though, the Brewers are well-situated at shortstop, with the kind of dynamism most teams can only envy there. The stability Adames provides and his ability to fit comfortably into the heart of the order facilitates the team's emphasis on versatility and interchangeability almost everywhere else on the diamond. Projected Value According to FanGraphs, the Brewers rank eighth in projected WAR from shortstop, at 4.6. Adames, naturally, makes up the lion's share of that. At Baseball Prospectus, he's only projected to earn 3.1 WARP, but that has as much to do with the fact that Prospectus's value metrics (DRC for offense, DRP for defense, and WARP, overall) obey a stronger central tendency than do other similar projections as it has to do with any difference in real value. While there are superstars with more complete games and more subtle flaws, Adames is a star-caliber shortstop, and as long as he's healthy, the Brewers will be one of the best teams in the league at that position. View full article

As we continue to tour the diamond in the runup to Opening Day, second base now comes under the microscope. There are two very good options available, but choosing the right one won’t be easy for the Brewers. Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports Last week at FanGraphs, Jay Jaffe wrote about the weakest position groups on each contending team in the National League. The Brewers showed up in that piece, because according to the FanGraphs second base depth charts, they’re worse off than all but five other teams at that position. The site ascribes most of the playing time for Milwaukee second sackers to Brice Turang, but he’s only projected to hit .236/.307/.341. In reality, though, things probably don’t depend as much on Turang as the projections think. The Starter Turang will have an impact on the 2023 Brewers, but the bet here is that the bulk of the playing time will actually go to Luis Urías. This spring, Urías has gotten considerable time at second base, and he’s looked better there than in past looks. With the new restrictions on defensive positioning, arm strength is a bit more important, and Urías would be stretched thin at third base under those constraints. At second, though, he’s an adequate defender, and his bat is more than adequate. Summary It would be easier to get a handle on who will open the season as the starter at second base if Urías and Toro weren’t departing to play for México and Canada, respectively, in the World Baseball Classic. As it is, Turang will have ample time to show the team what he can do, but he’ll probably spend much of his time at shortstop, anyway, because Willy Adames is also off to play for the Dominican Republic. Since Turang is a left-handed hitter, Urías is a right-handed one, and Toro is a switch-hitter, the most likely outcome here is that the team has three different guys play at least 30 games at the keystone in 2023. Under Craig Counsell, the Brewers have never minded implementing platoons or timeshares, and the emergence of Adames to stabilize one infield spot makes that easier. They have some power, some on-base skills, and some speed in their grab bag, so their situation is much less dire than the FanGraphs depth charts suggest. Projected Value Be it FanGraphs or Baseball Prospectus, though, the projection systems think little of Turang. PECOTA is even less friendly that FanGraphs’s numbers, and views Toro as a below-average hitter, too. Urías projects well, but again, where he delivers that value remains an open question. According to PECOTA, the five players discussed above will combine for 3.3 WARP in 2023. Over half of that is Urías alone, though, and he’s slated primarily for third base by BP, too. The team’s chance to get that kind of production from second base itself lies largely with Turang. Statistical systems were never going to love him, given how little power he showed until reaching Nashville last year. If his physical and mental changes yield consistent, translatable power gains, though, he’ll far outperform the projections. There’s just no way to know whether or not that will happen, in advance. View full article

In the second installment of our position-by-position preview of the 2023 Brewers, we migrate from behind the plate to first base. Led by the third straight successful veteran reclamation project at that position, Milwaukee appears set to enjoy solidly average or better production again this year. Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports The great challenge of being a nimble team, committed to winning on a budget and reloading on the fly, lies in finding things the organization can do successfully several times in a row, rather than just getting it right once. The current Brewers regime has demonstrated that invaluable skill, by getting strong offense from Eric Thames and Jesús Aguilar as scrapheap pickups for first base, then pivoting to Rowdy Tellez when Aguilar faded and needed to be replaced. The Starter As daunting and discouraging as some fans might find his numbers against southpaws to be, Tellez is a perfectly adequate regular first baseman. In this roster setting, where he can be shielded somewhat from bad matchups and where his power can play up a bit thanks to the coziness of Miller Park, he has every chance to continue being even better than that. Tellez, who will turn 28 later this month, is also primed to get plenty of help from the new rules limiting defensive shifts. Tellez sported a .215 BABIP last year. That’s nearly unsustainable, even with the shift in place, except for extreme fly-ball hitters and those without the ability to hit it hard. Tellez is neither of those things. In the chart above, note not just the redness of the hexagons across the right side of the infield and into shallow right field (indicating how hard he hit the ball), but the size of them. He was frequently hitting it sharply into areas of the field that won’t be as well-defended in 2023. The Brewers’ offensive specialty is improving and drilling on swing decisions. They want their hitters to be patient, and not to miss their pitch when they get it. Tellez has become the perfect pupil for that approach, and he should see a better return on the investment he’s made in that regard this season. For a player with his power, he strikes out shockingly little. He also accepts his walks. He’s going to force opposing pitchers into the zone, and when they come in there, he’s going to do damage. That should only become more true now that he’ll face less optimal infield alignments. Surely, teams will try out the loophole version of the shift the Red Sox deployed against Twins slugger Joey Gallo over the weekend (as documented by our Caswell Dommisse) on Tellez. It absolutely will not work, though. Gallo strikes out about half again as much as does Tellez, which makes the gambit theoretically viable when he comes to bat. Tellez can too easily drive the ball to all sectors of the outfield, and if the outfield is really just two very deep guys and one quasi-infielder, all of those balls will fall in for hits. The Backup Mishmash Thanks to the minor-league deal to which they signed Luke Voit just after camps opened, the Brewers do have a prototypical backup first baseman in the organization. It’s not yet clear, though, whether they can retain him for long without adding him to the 40-man roster and making him part of the active roster. As I wrote when Voit first signed, the fit between him and Tellez is even better than it might superficially appear, and while he does have the nasty strikeout bug that Tellez has so far staved off, he can make up for it with his sheer power when he gets hot. The question will be whether the Brewers view Voit as a good enough complement (not only to Tellez, but to presumptive DH Jesse Winker) to justify jettisoning Keston Hiura. If so, Voit is the backup first baseman, and that’s that. If not, it could be that Tellez will be buttressed by a mélange of players with some mixture of offensive thump and defensive versatility, including not only Hiura, but Mike Brosseau or Victor Caratini. Brosseau, the best prospective lefty masher in that group, is the best fit for the job, but might be needed more at second and third base, depending upon how other injury and performance questions turn out. Summary and Projected Value I’m a firm believer that, while the concept of replacement level is very valuable in the team-building process, it runs into major limitations when it comes to evaluating specific players and positions. By turning Thames, Aguilar, and now Tellez into above-average hitters with playable gloves at below-average salaries, the Brewers have hewed to the only really important principle imparted by replacement level thinking when it comes to first base, which is this: it’s not that hard to find a good hitter who can handle first. No team with limited resources (however voluntary those limits might be) should plunge dozens of millions into that type of player. Instead of grading first basemen against the replacement level, then, we should grade them against average. Tellez and the Brewers rank 15th on FanGraphs’s depth chart projections at first base right now, so they have zero value above average, but zero is a fine number, given that they’re spending less than an average regular’s salary on the position. Tellez could break out this year, for all the reasons given above, but even if he doesn’t, he sets a high enough floor that the team can be pretty sure they won’t lose wins at the position this year. That’s valuable. That inches them toward the postseason. If they go no further than that, the first basemen have done their jobs, given the way this team is constructed. However, their inability to actively carry the team up the standings puts a bit more pressure on the other positions we’ll preview as the week goes on. View full article

Three and a half weeks out from Opening Day, we’re ready to start previewing the Brewers for 2023 on an in-depth, position-by-position basis. That begins today, with the high floor and exciting upside of the team’s catching corps. Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-USA TODAY Sports With the acquisition of William Contreras, Matt Arnold filled the void left by the departing Omar Narvaez and then some. Last week, we broke down all of the work ahead for Contreras and the Brewers on being a better pitch framer and game manager, but that’s just about putting the finishing touches on an exciting profile. The Starter Obviously, if things go according to any of the team’s plans, Contreras will be the primary backstop in 2023. He’s 25 years old, now fully established as a big-leaguer, and they’ll want his bat in the lineup as often as possible. On the other hand, his career high in innings caught during any season was 799 in 2021, and that counts his time in the Venezuelan Winter League that year. If he goes past 100 starts at catcher, he’ll be in uncharted waters in terms of workload, and that could slow his bat down in September. Offensively, Contreras is delightfully dangerous, but it’ll be interesting to see to what extent he can manage his contact problems as he takes on a full-time role. Striking out 28.4 percent of the time, as he has done in MLB thus far, is fine if you’re a patient slugger who’s always hitting fly balls. If you’re pairing that figure with a 51.1-percent groundball rate, as Contreras has done, it’s much less tenable. Like his older brother, Contreras has a swing in which his hands get out away from his body early. That can help generate lots of bat speed and exit velocity, but it’s not good for maintaining a consistent bat path or making contact. As the Brewers know very well, Willson Contreras also gets eaten up on pitches inside, for this very reason. It’s something on which the team will have to work with William, in order to keep him producing the way he did in 2022. Summary Look for roughly a 60/40 division of labor from these two, at least during the early stages of the season. Catcher playing time is often a hot topic during spring training, especially in this era of teams trying harder to protect their guys from the vicissitudes of that position, but the reality is that the workloads of the starter and backup are rarely determined by some careful planning over the long run. Instead, injury and vagary tend to do the deciding. If Contreras’s defense doesn’t come along the way the team would like, or if Jesse Winker gets hurt and the team needs Contreras at designated hitter more often, then Caratini could start 80-plus games. On the other hand, if Caratini isn’t able to handle the increased prevalence of the running game or is having an especially brutal season at the plate, Contreras could be stretched further, to catch more like seven out of every 10 games. That the team has solid catching depth at Triple-A Nashville (not to mention fast-rising prospect Jeferson Quero, a little further down the ladder) makes all of that unpredictability a bit less scary. Projected Value As many have noted, PECOTA (Baseball Prospectus’s projection system) seems to hate Contreras this spring. As such, BP projects the team to get just 1.7 Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP) from their catchers this year. On the contrary, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS system likes both Contreras and Caratini a good bit, and the Brewers project for 3.2 WAR from the position. The latter seems much more correct, but the former does remind us to be cautious with Contreras. Even in that case, though, the team would be getting roughly average production from a position where clubs sometimes get virtually nothing. View full article

Way back in November, the Brewers signed outfielder Blake Perkins to a split contract, after he'd become a minor-league free agent at the end of the 2022 season. After his Cactus League homer Saturday, and in light of the injuries plaguing the team's outfielders, he might make the club,. Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports The definition of a minor-league journeyman, Blake Perkins is now on his fourth professional organization, all since being a second-round pick by the Nationals in 2015. He was traded to the Royals as part of a package for Kelvin Herrera in 2018, became a minor-league free agent for the first time after 2021, and signed with the Yankees. He first reached Double A in 2019, but scuffled there, played nowhere during the pandemic season of 2020, struggled again at Double A in 2021, and didn't make it to Triple A until the late stages of 2022. In his lone year with the Yankees, though, Perkins did discover something. His power shot up, thanks to a reengineered swing that yielded many more fly balls. Blake Perkins, Batted Ball Distribution, 2018-22 Season GB % LD % FB % 2018 48.4 17.3 34.3 2019 43.9 18.8 37.3 2021 48 20.9 31.1 2022 33.8 20.4 45.8 He showed off that newfound power with a homer in Saturday's rout of the Giants in Arizona. It was his first hit of the spring, and he's just 1-10 in the early going, but he also has three walks and just two strikeouts. The latter is characteristic of him: he's run high walk rates throughout most of his pro career. The Brewers love guys with a patient approach and good knowledge of the zone, and Perkins has that. Hitting the ball hard regularly will help him stay on fans' radar throughout the spring, but the reason he's an increasingly interesting candidate for the Opening Day roster is the same as the reason the Brewers gave him a 40-man roster spot when they signed him months ago: he can play solid defense at all three outfield positions. With Tyrone Taylor out for a while and Tyler Naquin scratched Saturday with a nagging shoulder issue, the path to the parent club is getting wider, especially for someone who can back up Garrett Mitchell in center field. Sal Frelick meets the criteria to some extent, but the World Baseball Classic might disrupt his audition too much to give the team sufficient confidence to bring him with them to open the season. More importantly, perhaps, Perkins could fit into the picture without requiring the team to clear a roster spot for him, as Frelick or Joey Wiemer each would. Split deals are a rarely-used tool in free agency, but they provide dual upside for the player. First, they usually involve a higher salary in the minors than a typical minor-league deal does, and indeed, Perkins's salary while in the minors on this one if a healthy $175,000. Just as importantly, though, they also give the player a better chance of spending significant time in the majors than a minor-league deal can, because of roster inertia. This spring camp has perfectly illustrated that principle for Perkins. As unexciting as he might seem, Perkins is the kind of complementary piece who can help a team win close games, with his solid glove and plus speed. His offensive emergence last year was encouraging, too, but even if he doesn't hit much, he could have good tactical value at the end of Milwaukee's bench. The odds that he gets to demonstrate that utility right out of the gate are steadily improving. View full article

We're inside four weeks from Opening Day, and the Brewers don't have a contract extension with either Brandon Woodruff or Willy Adames. That needs to change, and it needs to be an Adames deal that changes it, and it needs to happen now, to protect the fans from Matt Arnold and Matt Arnold from himself. Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports If there had been any lingering hope for a price drop on signing Willy Adames to a long-term deal, it disintegrated last week, when Manny Machado signed his 11-year, $350-million extension with the Padres. No, the Brewers aren’t using the Padres as their measuring stick, and no, Adames is not Machado, but remember, Adames had already been forthright and public about his awareness of big deals signed by free-agent infielders in recent years. There is a floor for Willy Adames, and it’s something akin to what the Cubs paid for Dansby Swanson this winter: $177 million over seven seasons, starting at age 29. That’s not to mention Adames, the person. He’s an extraordinary leader, an easy face for a franchise, and someone who can keep the clubhouse bilingual, communicative, and upbeat. He’s the guy for whom you overspend a bit, if it makes the difference between having him and not having him. View full article

All week, we’ve been trying to look a bit past the end of the projection systems, to see what factors beyond the talent on the roster could shape the Brewers’ 2023 season. To close out the series, we need to talk about the men who have built that roster. Image courtesy of © Angela Peterson / USA TODAY NETWORK Obviously, Matt Arnold does not represent a radical departure from David Stearns, in terms of the philosophy he brings to running a big-league team. If anything, we can guess that something close to the opposite is true. A long-time lieutenant of Stearns, Arnold has so far acted much the same way Stearns usually did while he was making the big decisions. He’s been proactive, and even aggressive, but that aggressiveness has taken the form of opportunism, not splashy spending. As Stearns nearly always was, Arnold seems to be focused on market value, not on specific players to whom he forms unique attachments. Perhaps the key thing to keep in mind, though, is that Arnold’s accession to Stearns’ vacated job at the top of the baseball operations ladder was still a choice by Mark Attanasio. The owner had a chance to use Stearns’ step back as an occasion to change directions on a philosophical level, but he didn’t take it. Attanasio clearly likes the front office he assembled under Stearns. He likes that they’re flexible and responsive to his input, while maintaining an independent and consistent concept of how to build a winning club. An owner is something like the President, in this way. They have the power not only to directly intervene and redirect things, but (much more important, though slower and subtler) also to shift things indirectly, by choosing their intermediaries. One way owners like Attanasio, John Angelos, Bob Castellini, and even the Ricketts family can sidestep criticism of their lack of spending on payroll is by truthfully telling reporters that their top executives didn’t want to spend any more money, anyway. They talk about their front offices being focused on player development and scouting, and about wanting to win with homegrown talent, and it’s all true. It’s just that it’s a cloaked lie, because the reason that their front office tells them those things is that they purposefully hired people who would think and behave that way. That’s not an indictment of Attanasio. It’s just the way a simple, universal human principle–that we choose our own sources and thus the signals we receive–applies to the complex, unique situation that is the operation of a billion-dollar sports franchise. We have to keep it front and center in our minds so that we can properly grasp what Arnold is likely to do. He’s managing down, negotiating with Craig Cousnell, his players, and the fan base, but he’s also managing up, treating Attanasio as a client. All of that is why it’s so hard to predict the year ahead, under Arnold. How will he try to thread the needle of contending for a title while he has the star power of Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, and Willy Adames against the mandate to stay competitive in the long run? How will the countdown toward free agency for that trio shift the circumstances of his job, and will the magnitude of that shift be enough to push him in a different direction than Stearns would have taken? After the team missed the playoffs for the first time in five years, and with the team’s greatest postseason success receding toward the horizon in the rearview, how safe does Arnold feel if this season doesn’t go the way Attanasio expects it to? Does the team’s surfeit of MLB-ready young outfielders give Arnold a path to a big mid-season acquisition, or will they remain so wedded to their mantra of consistent competitiveness that they might try another buy-and-sell deadline, spinning off a Burnes in a big trade that kicks the can a year down the road? New leadership always introduces new questions. New leaders under quickly changing parameters make for an especially unpredictable environment. Arnold faces a set of new rules, a newly rebalanced schedule, an increasingly tough NL playoff picture, and that ticking clock on Burnes, Woodruff, and Adames. That makes the way he will handle the coming season an unusually high-stakes and volatile factor in predicting the outcome of the season, overall. It might be the biggest, even on a team with a bevy of such questions. View full article

In a week of lousy injury news throughout the league, the Brewers caught a heavy blow Wednesday. Craig Counsell announced that Tyrone Taylor had to receive an injection in his injured elbow, and is likely to miss the first month of the season. How will the Brewers fill out their early-season roster without him? Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports The timing of this injury is less than ideal for the Brewers, but with at-bats to spread among Jackson Chourio, Joey Wiemer, and Sal Frelick (in addition to their regular outfielders) this spring, they won't feel the sting as deeply as Tyrone Taylor himself. For him, the timing is downright cruel. He was penciled in as a regular for this team, flexing between center and right field, and his hot September was supported by some mechanical changes that augured well for his 2023 campaign. Now, he has to reset himself physically; hope his elbow recovers smoothly from here (no guarantee, that); and try to carry over those improvements once he re-joins the team. In the meantime, let's dig into the question of whom the Brewers will take north with them, now that Taylor can be crossed off the list of candidates. There are 13 position-player spots available come Opening Day, and a fistful of them are locked down already. Catchers William Contreras Victor Caratini Infielders Rowdy Tellez Luis Urias Willy Adames Brian Anderson Outfielders Christian Yelich Garrett Mitchell Jesse Winker That's nine guys, already. As we've highlighted over the last couple of weeks, though, there are plenty of open battles for the remaining spots. On the infield, there's Abraham Toro, Brice Turang, Mike Brosseau, Keston Hiura, and Luke Voit. In the outfield, there are prospects Wiemer and Frelick, plus Tyler Naquin. Those seven were in an even tighter battle when we all assumed Taylor would be taking up one outfield slot, but having just four roster spots for the group of them is a sufficient squeeze to make things interesting. First, let's tackle Turang. So far this spring, Urías has gotten most of his reps at second base, and Turang has played a lot of short. That would tend to indicate that the team envisions sending Turang back to Nashville for some seasoning come April. Even if that hadn't been the case, though, the Taylor injury would nudge them in that direction. The most natural and likely replacements for Taylor in terms of outfield defense are Naquin and Frelick, both of whom are left-handed hitters. Yelich, Mitchell, and Winker are lefties. Tellez is a lefty, and Caratini is a switch-hitter. Assuming one of Naquin or Frelick slides into the picture now, the team needs a right-handed bat more than another left-handed one. Anderson will probably slide to right field much more often than previously planned, in the short term, so third base now opens up somewhat. With Urías looking awfully good at second thus far, though, and with Toro more natural at the hot corner than Turang, it seems more likely that Toro gets the newly available regular gig. At that point, things start to fall into place better. Mike Brosseau's right-handed bat is more valuable than ever, and his defensive versatility and comfort in a backup role make him an easy call over stashing Turang on the bench. Spring looks could still determine the winner of the battled between Frelick and Naquin for the final outfield gig, Neither is on the 40-man roster, so there's no advantage there. Neither is a good defensive center fielder, which is where Wiemer could theoretically assert himself. On balance, though, based on his experience in center in the majors and his demonstrated ability to hit righties for power, I'm betting on Naquin getting the nod. Add these three to the previous nine, then. Infielders Mike Brosseau Abraham Toro Outfielders Tyler Naquin That only leaves one spot to assign, and the remaining candidates are Frelick, Voit, and Wiemer. The loss of Taylor's glove makes it tempting to carry one of the rookies and juggle playing time in the outfield and at DH as needed, but it's likely that Voit has an opt-out in his minor-league deal. At the moment, Voit seems like the best fit. He can provide some of the right-handed punch the team has been lacking, and he can complement both Tellez and Winker at first base and DH. None of that is set in stone, of course. The Brewers have an unusual amount of uncertainty for a team of their caliber this spring, and Taylor's injury has only raised that level. View full article

The spirit and mission of our series on X-factors for the 2023 Milwaukee Brewers is to find places where there could be big impact from seemingly small things–where statistical projections don’t capture the breadth of possible outcomes. Today, we turn our attention to the gamble the team has taken on William Contreras as a defensive catcher–and the coaches who gave them the confidence to do so. Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports In yesterday’s installment of this series, a frequent theme was the irreducible uncertainty about whether any particular adjustment would help Christian Yelich regain his former glory at the plate. It’s hard to pin down precisely what is wrong, which makes it doubly difficult to identify any remedies. I’m happy to report that we’ll have no such difficulties this time. {Alas. The monkey’s paw curls.} For William Contreras, the defensive shortcomings aren’t subtle, layered, commingled or opaque. They’re obvious, and the fixes for them are pretty well-known and well-understood, too. The huge, looming question is whether the young slugger is capable of implementing those changes. We know what the rest of baseball thinks, because if there were many teams who believed the answer to be ‘yes,’ Contreras would not have been available for the bargain price of rookie outfielder Esteury Ruiz. Nor can you blame teams for their skepticism. Contreras, 25, has been a catcher for his whole professional career. He has a big-league older brother who plays the position, and who has the same weaknesses in his game. It’s reasonable to think that if Contreras were going to make major strides as a receiver, pitch framer, and handler of pitching staffs, he would have done it by now. The obviousness of the flaws in his defensive game argues against the idea that he simply hasn’t noticed them, and the fact that he’s been unable to resolve them in over a half-decade of work argues against the notion that he’s going to do so at all. Ah, but the Brewers have a secret weapon–or, rather, three of them. In catching instructors Charlie Greene, Nestor Corredor, and Walker McKinven, they have a triumvirate they think can help Contreras defy the industry’s expectations and take a forward leap, like a handful of other backstops have over the last half-decade. Let’s take a look at how they can do it. First and foremost among Contreras’s faults as a receiver is his framing, and that has everything to do with his setup and mechanics. Compare this clip of him losing a should-be strike: f4ab3fe2-1b46-4ea3-b339-2b0ef848e871.mp4 To this one, of Sean Murphy stealing a strike instead: ff61fe15-d282-45dc-a0ad-a63498609246.mp4 A few differences should jump out right away. For one, note the knee on which each is set up. Both guys were calling an inside sinker to a right-handed batter. For that offering, you want to have your left knee down and your right up, as Murphy does. That gives the umpire (operating in a tight space, perched between the batter and the catcher and watching the ball come right down that lane) a good look at the pitch. Contreras, however, sets up with the right knee down. (More on that shortly.) That's an easy fix. It's about attention to detail, and no catching gurus in MLB sweat that particular small stuff better than Greene, Corredor, and McKinven. It's just the tip of the iceberg, though. Contreras also fails to trust his hands and anticipate the pitch. In the style of framing he uses, the idea is to drop your mitt, track the pitch in flight, then meet it with a smooth action. If done correctly, this can make a pitch that barely nips the edge of the zone (or entirely fails to) look like a clear strike. Here's José Trevino doing it perfectly, even on a pitch that missed his target by the full width of home plate: 931ffed6-1ade-4fa2-9803-fe02b4ef7874.mp4 For clearer contrast, here's Contreras again, dealing with a similar pitch and location, but failing to match the movement or the result Trevino effected. 0ecac359-4fb3-4fec-b1bb-8e94f217756a.mp4 The mistakes Contreras made on these two pitches aren't the same. On the first, there's a hitch. He starts raising his glove too soon, and goes too far. Thus, he has to dip back down for the ball, making it look less like it caught the bottom of the zone. On this one, the error lies in waiting too long. He lets the ball get through the hitting zone and to his mitt before he starts coming up to meet it. The difference between doing this right and doing it wrong can be infinitesimal. Contreras was just late in his movement. It's a tiny thing that the best catchers consistently execute correctly, though. Fixing this issue is harder than fixing the setups. Teaching that anticipation--the familiarity it requires with the nuances of each pitcher's stuff; the delicate timing; and the forceful but fluid movement itself--is hard. It can be done, though, and Greene, Corredor, and McKinven have managed it before. The trio have been working exhaustively with Contreras already this spring, and it's a safe bet that these have been points of emphasis. In fact, you don't have to bet. We know for sure, from watching these clips. That leaves one more major problem, perhaps the toughest to address with regard to framing. Contreras's setup, regardless of on which knee, just wasn't balanced or flexible enough last season. Here's one more video of him losing a potential strike. This time, look especially at the distribution of his weight, and on the way he moves when the ball doesn't go where he and his pitcher had wanted. 3e46d26f-a7c2-4427-9cdd-4e2fa735232e.mp4 Look at the left leg here. It's outside Contreras's physical frame. His right leg is a little bit out from under him, too, on the other side, but the left leg is a bigger problem. He can't stay balanced out of this position. He can't move smoothly and powerfully, especially when a pitch misses its spot. Because of the way that left leg crowds his left elbow, in fact, he couldn't even have physically managed the proper movement on this pitch, which would have been to slide but not turn the glove and catch it low and strong. This problem plagued Contreras for much of the season. Go back and compare his setups to those of Murphy and Trevino. This isn't a size problem; Contreras isn't a huge guy for the position. What he needs to do is become more flexible and functionally strong, so that he can keep his legs active and underneath him, even in one-legged crouches. (In the tweet video of his spring work, we see that the Crew have already been working with him on that very thing.) The good news is that he is, at least infrequently, already capable of that. Let's finally give the man a break, and show a strike he stole for his Atlanta teammates. fc2705dd-41b1-4e55-a650-7d2e16b61202.mp4 This frame job has everything. He anticipates the pitch, and catches it smoothly. He's able to do that because his setup was more compact and agile. That's all within his reach, and Greene, Corredor, and McKinven will try to help him do it more often throughout this spring. Once the team heads north, of course, Greene will fall away from daily instruction, and McKinven and Corredor will be tasked with much of the maintenance of whatever adjustments they collaborate to create during spring training. That's a whole different challenge. A former pitcher, McKinven has put in tireless hours of focus on the very fundamental building block we discussed first: setups. He'll be able to remind and drill Contreras on how to set up for various pitches, based on the situation, the pitcher, the handedness of the opposing batter, and more. Corredor, one of the team's bullpen coaches, should be able to provide some occasional tips in the other two aspects, but there will be little time for those drills, anyway. By March 30, Contreras's major framing improvements for the year need to be largely locked in. Thereafter, McKinven, Chris Hook, and Jim Henderson will need more of Contreras's time, for the purpose of helping implement the team's complex run prevention plans. It was shocking, in watching the videos above and so many more from last year, how rough was Contreras's feel for the vital details and utility of his pitchers' repertoires during much of last season. He'll have to have a better handle on the Brewers hurlers if he's going to be the primary catcher this year. None of this is to mention that Contreras is also being counted on as one of the anchors of the team's lineup. He might get some run as a designated hitter, if Victor Caratini's bat and Jesse Winker's glove make that feasible, but the team needs him to produce at the plate, even as he takes on a formidable challenge to become a better defender at the most important position on the diamond. Greene, Corredor, and McKinven will do plenty for him, but the range of possibilities for Contreras is still wider than for just about any similarly important Brewers player in recent memory. View full article

I’m not sure how much real average he can add, unless he regains the contact skills he had a few years ago. That’s a skill that tends not to age well anyway, so I’m not holding my breath. His average might tick up just because of the shift restrictions, but I think the key to any major bounce back lies in the power. That said, even *without* a rebound, he can be a 3+ win guy, depending on your assessment of his defense. I think he’s better than he’s been regarded recently, so I’m bullish overall.

Yeah, we’ll see. There’s definitely something to the idea that what makes him tick is not the relentless pursuit of being the best. That can be ok though. Baseball is tough, the season is long, and it can be good to have a definition of success that is more inwardly focused and subjective. That said, I wish we knew better what that definition is in his case, and how he’ll fuse it with the goals of the team throughout this season.

That’s sound analysis of those particular swings, but as I noted, it’s not a consistent deficiency that’s developed. It’s a lack of consistency. I do think you’re right about the back being as limiting as the knee at this point. I kinda think the back stuff is also partially a consequence of the knee, though. He hasn’t been able to drive into the front leg and manage the force of the swing that way as well since the foul ball, so his back is bearing more of the strain to generate that force. Just a theory though. What do you think?

Our series detailing the Brewers’ X-factors for 2023 rolls on, and there’s no bigger X-factor on the team than the useful but enigmatic Christian Yelich. Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports By now, much of the story with Christian Yelich is too familiar to merit repetition. A return to his MVP-caliber form at the plate seems wildly unlikely. There are too many things between that Yelich and this one: a freaky and haunting knee injury; a global pandemic; and multiple flareups of back problems. Making his way back to where he has been would seem a Herculean feat of obstacle obliteration. As odd as it might feel, it just wouldn’t be that strange if 2018 and 2019 turned out to be extraordinary career years in an otherwise great but not elite baseball life. Roger Maris won back-to-back MVPs in 1960 and 1961, but was merely very good both before and after that. Dave Parker hit .327/.390/.546 from ages 26 to 28, during which span he won one MVP and finished third for another. Before that, he had also been great, but with notably less power. After that, injuries forced a long and gentle but unstoppable decline. There are plenty of precedents for this career arc. That’s not satisfying, though, and it doesn’t even offer us the thin comfort of certainty muted by a dearth of upside. Maris and Parker are median outcomes for their player types. There are plenty of less fortunate souls for whom injuries or other problems enforced an earlier, sharper, uglier decline. The error bars on Yelich’s performance still feed oddly wide and incompressible, despite high confidence ratings from all of the major projection systems. Because he’s on the field almost all the time and bats at the top of the order, those systems see a robust data set from Yelich. What they can’t see, but what we know so intimately, is that the challenge of predicting Yelich’s campaign lies in trying to find the needle’s worth of real information in that haystack of data, and in resisting the influence of a whole bunch of bad data masquerading as that needle. To wit: what should we make of the fact that Yelich still flashes maximum exit velocities just as high as he ever has? His raw power, surely, isn’t gone. It might have gone on vacation in 2020 and 2021, but it’s back. Christian Yelich, Batted Balls 110+ Miles Per Hour, 2018-2022 Year 110+ MPH BBE PA Percentage 2019 31 560 5.5 2022 24 666 3.6 2018 20 648 3.1 2021 11 470 2.3 2020 4 245 1.6 He hits far too many ground balls, but that was true in 2018, too. To be sure, he came to fly-ball Jesus in 2019, but otherwise, he’s always gotten his power primarily from creating exit velocity, not launch angle. There’s this, too: Those truly bashed balls in 2022 came almost exclusively on fastballs. Twenty of the 24 balls listed above came on some form of heater. His swing path is just a little more one-speed; he’s a little less able to save some juice for breaking and offspeed stuff. He’s also whiffing slightly more often, and even though he’s been hitting fastballs hard, he’s doing it at lower launch angles, for some of the same reasons. There’s no obvious mechanical fix for all of this. Yelich is a little less consistent about turning the toe of his front foot in as he strides, so he opens up fractionally earlier–sometimes. He pulls his hands in a bit sooner and has an infinitesimally greater hitch as he loads them, compared to 2018 and 2019–sometimes. Here he is in 2019: 4b96aebf-632e-4a67-a1c5-01ab377b22eb.mp4 And here's him in 2022: ad783bfa-8045-4199-87b9-564e4c3379b6.mp4 These are all microcosms of the bigger, maddening story: his big decline in production is an amalgam of six or seven small, inconsistent shifts in subtly sabotaging directions. A Whack-a-Mole game isn’t an adequate metaphor. It’s something closer to a swarm of gnats: a thousand tiny nuisances that amount to semi-debilitation. Yet, this is what makes Yelich a compelling X-factor. Even one or two of these things getting markedly worse would push him right over the cliff toward which he’s stumbled the last couple years, beyond which lies an abyss of non-production that would torpedo the Brewers’ hopes. That’s the nearer, more likely outcome, which is scary. Almost as plausible, though, is that he manages the small wins needed to get four or five of these small things back into line. Maybe his much-publicized offseason of getting off the grid will bring renewed confidence in his body and clarity in his mind. Maybe that will help his mechanics become more consistent. Maybe he’ll respond to the rules limiting defensive shifts by looking to pull the ball more often, and that will lead (almost, but not quite, by coincidence) to more elevation on his hard-hit balls. In that case, he could be the lifeblood of a playoff-caliber offense again, and the Brewers would instantly become heavy NL Central favorites. The stakes couldn’t be higher. They were set by the extension Yelich signed just a couple of weeks before the pandemic’s full scope came into view in March 2020. Most of his salary and most of the danger in the deal remains years away, but having him in ink on the books but pencil on the lineup card has made it harder for the team to build a clear winner for 2023. For that reason, and for the others above, their fate depends quite a bit on which way things break for Yelich, and there are too many variables to predict that with any confidence right now. View full article

Yeah. I mean even that ERA was a little soft, he didn’t truly turn a corner just by finding the splitter. But between that and the mechanical changes and the potential of the breaking ball and sinker combo, there’s something to dream on.