Matthew Trueblood

Five years ago, the Milwaukee Brewers used defensive shifts as much as any team in baseball. Under the 2023 MLB rules changes, though, they shouldn’t suffer much, because they’ve phased out shifting as a primary run prevention tool over the last two seasons. It's one way they've stayed ahead of the pace of change in baseball, even as that pace has quickened. The Brewers front office and the field staff under Craig Counsell have always tried to optimize their choices and strategies in areas like fielder positioning, and for a long time, that meant using shifts. Not by accident did they briefly utilize the 1,000-pound infield of Mike Moustakas, Travis Shaw, Jonathan Schoop, and Jesús Aguilar, using shifts to make Schoop a passable shortstop and Moustakas and Shaw cromulent at second base. As you can see, though, they’ve veered sharply toward more traditional alignments on the dirt since the start of 2021. In fact, few teams are better prepared for the new rules preventing imbalanced infields or infielders playing on the outfield grass than are the Brewers. That’s not merely a matter of the team getting out of those alignments proactively and training their defenders to make the plays. It’s something they’ve addressed via their offseason moves. By trading away Kolten Wong and letting Jace Peterson walk as a free agent, the team ended up getting younger and more athletic, not only because those choices created more room for incumbents, but because new additions Abraham Toro and Brian Anderson are considerably younger than the men whom they’re replacing. Anderson and Toro also help in another way. It receives little attention, but infield throws are likely to get much tougher under the new rules. Strong and accurate arms are more vital to good infield play if a fielder is more likely to field the ball on the run, or heading away from their desired target, and that’s exactly what will happen in a post-shift world. Peterson has a very strong arm, but in Anderson, the Brewers got one every bit as good. Wong, on the other hand, had the weakest infield arm in baseball in 2022, according to Statcast, while Toro, Luis Urías, and Mike Brosseau all rated around average. The linchpin of the infield defense, of course, is shortstop Willy Adames. That’s another bit of good news, because he’s as unlikely to suffer disproportionately from positioning constraints as any shortstop in MLB. Some shortstops who are especially tall will have to show the ability to bend and make plays more often, but Adames is only six feet in height. Those with fringy arms, as we’ve already discussed, will be stretched, but Statcast measured Adames’s arm as the fifth-strongest among infielders last year. Older, slower guys who depended on their savvy and the extra step afforded them by shifts will struggle, but Adames is only 27 and is an above-average runner. Brice Turang only deepens the collection of good options on defense, and the scouting report on him from FanGraphs lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen highlights his utility under the new rules. “Turang is so defensively gifted that he is almost certain to have a significant and lengthy big league career, especially now that shifting is banned,” Longenhagen wrote in December. “He has plus feet, range, and actions, and will make throws from all kinds of odd platforms, including when he’s backhanding balls to his right and throwing on the run.” With Adames as the anchor and Anderson, Urias, Brosseau, Toro, and Turang as the supporting cast, the Brewers don’t need shifts to defend the infield well. That’s part of why they used them less over the last two years, and now that none of their rivals can use that tactic, the Crew gains a comparative advantage. They have one more edge, too. Only the Dodgers induced weaker ground balls, on average, than did the Brewers in 2022. There are no guarantees that they can sustain that skill, of course, and we can explore the chances of that another time. For now, though, it’s safe to say this much: the Brewers’ overall run prevention infrastructure is as well-suited to the new constraints teams will face as any team in MLB. View full article

Do we think they view the Hader trade as something negative, on the whole? The vibes that created were a problem; they’ve admitted that much. But Burnes is slightly less of a clubhouse linchpin than Hader was. The return would have to be gaudier anyway. And most of all, after turning Ruiz into Contreras, I would bet they take a pretty favorable view of their own decision-making there. I think the chances of them letting even two of those guys get as far as free agency are virtually nil. If I’m guessing, I’m guessing one extension, one trade, and one walks for a draft pick comp, but I’d sooner bet on two trades OR two extensions than two getting to FA—let alone all three.

That’s a perfectly reasonable preference, and the CBA (with its built-in help to small-market teams in terms of compensation when a free agent walks) does make it plausible. I would note that it’s not really how the Brewers prefer to do things, as evidenced by the Josh Hader trade. They think they get more value by trading or extending in situations like these, and they don’t like missing any opportunity to maximize value.

A fortnight before spring training begins, the Milwaukee Brewers and their ace, Corbin Burnes, seem unlikely to reach agreement on a contract extension. Their only hope of doing so might be to look to an extension signed at a similar career stage in 2019, by then-Mets superstar Jacob deGrom. Corbin Burnes, 28, is set to hit free agency after the 2024 season, and while it’s been a topic of conversation all winter, the fact is that extensions with two years of team control remaining are rare. Most team-friendly extensions, with big discounts for the team and club options at the end, come sooner than this in a career, when the club can apply more leverage. Most big extensions, the kind that mark a player as a franchise cornerstone, come a year later, when the potential value of a free-agent deal has begun to crystallize and the sides can negotiate more evenly. A player’s penultimate year of team control is, contractually, an awkward phase. That’s especially true for elite starting pitchers. In fact, in the last decade, only one hurler of anywhere near Burnes’s caliber has signed an extension with between four and five years of service time. It was Jacob deGrom , who signed a complicated and fascinating four-year deal with the Mets in 2019. That contract guaranteed him as much as $137.5 million, with a club option that could have taken its total value as high as $170 million. However, deGrom also had the ability to opt out after the fourth year, making the deal worth $107 million. (He did just that, of course, and signed a new pact for $185 million over five years this winter with the Rangers.) At that point, deGrom was better than Burnes is now. Because he had been eligible for arbitration for two years before that, to Burnes’s one, he was also set to make more in 2019 than Burnes can make in 2023. However, he was two years older than Burnes is, and had significant known injury risk attached to him already. It’s not unfair to use the deGrom deal as a reference point for a potential Burnes extension. What, then, would that look like? Well, the Brewers could pay Burnes $31 million over the first two seasons, roughly matching what he’d be projected to get via arbitration, anyway. In 2025, his salary would need to climb substantially, to somewhere just south of what a pitcher of his caliber commands on the open market. Three guaranteed years at a total of $100 million is a fair estimate. Again using deGrom’s deal as a guide, the team could add an option for a sixth year at $35 million. Burnes, though, would have the right to opt out after 2026. Assuming a small buyout would be part of the club option, this deal would guarantee Burnes $136 million over six seasons, with the option taking it to $166 million over seven. If Burnes opted out, he would do so with $40 million left on the deal, having made $96 million in four years and with plenty of time left to sign a deGrom-like megadeal. I know what you’re thinking. This isn’t how the Brewers do business, and they’re not going to sign him to such a contract. That’s probably true, although it’s worth pointing out that the deGrom deal included a huge chunk of deferred money, as does Christian Yelich’s current deal, so one tool for managing the budgetary implications of such a deal is already at hand for Mark Attanasio and Matt Arnold. This exercise merely helps us see a couple of important things. Firstly, there is still some discount to be had by moving now on Burnes, using a structure that has already worked once elsewhere. He needn’t be viewed as having a $200-million price tag, unless Milwaukee waits another year to make a decision. Secondly, though, it reminds us that the decision and action points on Burnes are getting closer than we might otherwise think. If he’s still a Brewer next winter, everyone will know for sure that he’s not going to sign an extension, and the team’s leverage in any trade talks will decline. That doesn’t mean they should trade him now, though, because with him alongside Brandon Woodruff atop the starting rotation, they still have a fine chance to win the NL Central in 2023. View full article

I really do love this topic, and I’ll probably do a full post on it soon, but in short: he uses a circle-change grip, which is really the screwball grip, as much as anything is. Christy Mathewson, Carl Hubbell, Warren Spahn—the screwballs for which these guys were famous were thrown with pretty much the same grip Devin uses. There are still differences, in mindset and arm action, and even subtle ones in grip of course, but I do think you can call it a screwball even though it’s gripped like what we now tend strongly to call a change.

Hi, Brewers fans! I’m Matt Trueblood. I wanted to take a minute to say hello, because hopefully, we’ll be seeing a lot of each other in the coming weeks and months. I’m joining Brewer Fanatic in a writing and semi-editorial role, with the goal of helping this community continue to grow and thrive as the best Brewers destination online. I have to lead with a confession, which might not be news to those of you who already know me from past endeavors: I grew up a Cubs fan. I mostly did so in Appleton, Wis., though, going to Timber Rattlers games and soaking up the Brewers by osmosis and exposure. I usually watched the Cubs, not the Brewers, and I would listen to Pat Hughes calling Cubs games on our car radio while I played basketball on summer afternoons. At bedtime, though, and in defiance thereof, it was always Bob Uecker and (most often) Jim Powell to whom I would tune in, trying to keep the radio just loud enough to hear the game without my parents hearing it, too. My first big-league game was a Twins-Brewers tilt at County Stadium. My first treasured big-league autograph was that of Jeff D’Amico, on a battered ball I got at that game. (I remember him being gigantic, which surely everyone seems to be when one is seven years old, but it’s also objectively true. That guy was massive.) All of this is to say that I feel deep roots in the Brewers community, even if it’s not my native tribe. After high school, I moved away from Wisconsin, but in national writing gigs at Baseball Prospectus and elsewhere, I’ve covered the Brewers, and I still consider them one of my baseball intimates. If you picked up the team-specific Brewers edition of the Baseball Prospectus 2021, almost every word you read therein was mine, from the team essay to the player comments to the top 10 lists of the best position players and pitchers in franchise history. I intend to bring all of that background and that understanding of what the Brewers are and what they mean to my work here. I also think this team is as perennially interesting and as rich a topic of conversations and good analysis as any in baseball right now. I have just two principled stands I want to carve out, and then we can be done with the pleasantries and get on to baseball. Firstly: it’s Miller Park. No American Family Field or AmFam nonsense from me. I don’t intend to impose a unilateral editorial standard or anything, but Miller Park was a lovely, fitting name, even if it was only officially applied as part of a craven financial transaction. Not having gotten a cut of either that old deal or the new one that has the team calling its longtime home by a clunky new name, I feel no fealty toward the latter. When I write “Miller Park,” I’m not forgetting anything. I mean what I say. Secondly: Devin Williams throws a screwball. We can get into more about why it’s important to me to acknowledge that fact in a separate post, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a screwball. Let’s have some fun. View full article

This week, a massive controversy erupted, when Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic wrote an article that focused on a sensitive subject and appeared to treat it insensitively. Where did he go wrong? By not just filing the idea away. Image courtesy of © Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports By Friday, even Rosenthal himself admitted that he had erred in the choices he made when building the article that ran earlier in the week. To summarize (lest you missed it), the piece argued that the heinous crimes that seem likely to lead to prison time and the obliteration of an MLB career for the Rays' Wander Franco were an especially egregious example of the risks teams assume by signing players to massive contracts at very young ages. He got massive blowback for that, both because of the nature of those crimes (Franco is accused of sexually abusing a teenage girl and bribing both the girl and her family for their silence) and because of the perspective from which he seemed to write. That backlash was justified. While Rosenthal's position in the industry and role at his place of employment requires him to write from a vicarious front office point of view at times, the human empathy filter always needs to be interleaved with any other layer of analysis we apply to anything. That's the remit of readers and of writers, and belonging to the latter fraternity doesn't absolve one of the responsibilities that fall on both groups. Rosenthal is only human, himself, and it's fine that he was unable to turn off the part of his brain that is trained to see big stories from the angle of an executive making some theoretical future decision. The great dual mistake was that he elected to let that thought out, and that his editorial team then allowed that thought-turned-column to see the light of day. Somewhere beneath the firestorm lies a perfectly fine point. In suggesting that people barely out of their teens are risky propositions for nine-figure investments, he was only updating a frequent refrain of none other than Branch Rickey. The notion comes off as paternalistic, self-serving, callous, or some combination of the three, almost no matter when you say it, but saying it about a player who was involved in something so unforgivable and aberrant felt especially so. We ought never to turn off our critical thinking centers, and it's fine for highly visible moments like the Franco situation to serve as occasions for the kinds of closer reflection we too often neglect between crises. Rosenthal needed to pause longer and think harder about the impact it would have on readers, on victims of sexual abuse and pedophilia, and on the baseball community, though, before externalizing those reflections. My favorite novel is The Witch Elm, by Tana French. Like any good literature, it's not about any one thing, but rather, it works in layers and levels. Fittingly, perhaps, it centers quite a bit on the seemingly innocent but often lethally dangerous failures of young people to see beyond their own experience or past the thin masks put up by the others near them. For my money, though, the most important theme it advances is even simpler: We don't really know each other. We barely know ourselves, and then, we only know the fragile versions of ourselves that our life experience has created. We're so ignorant, we often fail even to notice the fragility of the aspects of ourselves we consider essential. That's something close to what Rosenthal wanted to communicate, I think. He might not want to say this, but it's pretty clear (not just from this instance, but from past writings and comments he's made) that he's uneasy with the massive wealth (and the inextricable power that comes with that wealth) given so freely to players who have barely reached adulthood. I share that unease, on a level deeper than any tangible risks I could articulate. It's a reasonable position. It might even be a noble one, and stating it aloud is worthwhile, sometimes. Timing is everything, though. Talking about such risks is hard in the wake of a thing like what Franco did. Choosing to talk about it specifically through the lens of what Franco did was a glaring and easily avoidable error of judgment. Rosenthal faced a dilemma familiar to any columnist who has ever wanted to make a point. If you don't attach a specific case or example to an argument, it will often be either dismissed or wasted, because people will fail to connect with it or fully understand it. He wanted to make what he probably believes (in an earnest, human way; Rosenthal is not an unfeeling guy) to be a worthwhile point. However, examples and news pegs have to be well-chosen. This one wasn't. It is sometimes the maddening, deflating duty of a good columnist to risk that vagueness or ineffectuality, in order to preserve their humanity and serve their readers and their community better. You might have to write some variation on a column a handful of times over a handful of years, in order to slowly bring more people around to the idea that the point you're making matters and that the side you're taking is the side of the angels. That's not ideal, but it's better than accidentally making smaller something so huge and ugly that it should never be thus downplayed. We don't really know each other. I certainly don't know Rosenthal. When I read his article this week, and when he made his appearance Friday on a web show to make amends for it, I was reminded of that in forceful terms. I refuse to impute any real malice to his choices in this case, but it seems to me that he needed to keep the lesson closer to the center of his own mind when he sat down to write. The fundamental conclusion we should draw from the premise that we don't know each other is that we need to proceed with greater empathy. We're all moving in the dark, so we should take care not to step on each other. Sometimes, that means putting an article idea in a tickler file for later. View full article