And That

This is pretty clearly not true.

Wilson has at least plus raw power, long limbs, and at times shows above average plate discipline. He’s a decent defender at third and the outfield corners. His swing does get long and he doesn’t often get to that plus power in game. He’s been one of my under the radar guys since he was drafted and absolutely has a shot at making it to Milwaukee at some point. I don’t know that it would be in anything more than a utility role at this point, but we’ll see what kind of adjustments he makes in Biloxi next year.

And yes, Paxton is an obvious target but he turns 30 literally today and has not pitched more than 160 innings in a season on a big league mound. He'll cost an arm and a leg to get, and there's a lot of injury risk to take on. Especially for only 2 years of control.

Peralta throws strikes. Using Pitch Info data from Fangraphs, had he qualified for the ERA title, he would have been 16th amongst MLB starters in Zone% (percentage of pitches thrown in strike zone). His Zone% was 50.8%; MLB starter average was 48.1%. There might be a question about quality strikes or that he relies so heavily on one pitch, but he fills the zone pretty well.

Mike Zunino is a pretty fascinating player. Has turned into a good defender with plus power but the batting average has mostly been atrocious. If you think you can get him to hit .250-.270, he's a borderline All-Star level player. The Brewers could certainly do worse than Jean Segura at second base. Has full no-trade protection though and not sure what terms he left Milwaukee under. Dan "Quadzilla" Altavilla throws hard as hell and still has big upside as a reliever. Alex Colome has a lot of value in the bullpen as well, though he's a FA after 2020. Lefties Roenis Elias and James Pazos (a clancy favorite, IIRC) quietly had nice seasons out of Seattle's pen and either might be better than Xavier Cedeno.

What makes you think that? It's a combination of Framing Runs + Blocking Runs + Throwing Runs, and I would find it very hard to believe that "Blocking Runs" doesn't include passed balls and wild pitches. Yes, Blocking Runs absolutely include passed balls. It's based on BL_CHANCES which is defined as "pitches the catcher received that could have resulted in a wild pitch or passed ball; this is when runners are on base or a dropped third strike is possible." Grandal was +0.8 in Blocking Runs in 2018, which is not superb, but was a net positive. Pina and Kratz were both +1.3.

I prefer DRS for most everything, but BPro seems to have catcher defense nailed down a little more tightly. At least from what I can gather from publicly available information. Manny Pina didn’t play much in 2016 so with that caveat here is his FRAA for ‘16-‘18: -.8/1.4/7.0 And Realmuto: -.1/16.1/4.2 Realmuto has been better overall, but Pina was better in ‘18.

He worked with Christian Yelich as a coach in the Marlins’ minor league system. That seemed to turn out ok.

Haines is very progressive from an analytics standpoint. Seems like a good hire/good fit. To wit, here’s the last thing he retweeted:

The 22 players listed in this thread became free agents at 4pm yesterday. viewtopic.php?f=64&t=37102 At least for the time being, the San Antonio roster features only 8 players.

I’m about to add “Mazieka” to the cuss filter.

And maybe the Brewers don't really have any payroll room at all. (I haven't dug into this and that doesn't seem right, but nonetheless, it's data.)

It's basically paying FA market price for 2 wins (though not necessary paying SP FA market price for 2 wins, in that respect the Cubs overpaid by a pretty good amount). If you think Hamels is a 2 WAR pitcher (whichever version of WAR you want to use), then it's an even deal in terms of value. The difference between the Brewers and Cubs is that the Cubs can afford to pay some players $10 mil per win. They can pay their way to extra wins. The Brewers can't. The Brewers need to find value propositions to add extra wins. So this is something that can make sense for the Cubs, but would not make sense for the Brewers.

$20 million is probably fine for Hamels from a value standpoint and the Cubs can afford it, but that's about the extent of how it helps them. He's very unlikely to outperform the contract and as a 35yo, there's certainly some age-based performance risk. He can also continue to monitor the likelihood of a rivalry evolving between the Brewers and Cubs.

If Atlanta lands Realmuto, Milwaukee should be all over Tyler Flowers as a one or two year stopgap until Nottingham is ready.

Which was great for the Brewers then and great for the Brewers now if it knocks $10-$20 mil off of his market value. He’s one of the best all around catchers in the game. And compared to Realmuto, super cheap to acquire.

Flipping through these, the contracts that stood out as potentially most valuable to me were: -Josh Harrison (always been a fan, but depends what you think of his D and whether his offensive skills declined last year) -Yasmani Grandal (would be a STEAL at 3/$39MM) -Andrew Miller (a bullpen with Miller and Hader would be pretty great) -DJ LeMahieu (probably limited to second base but has produced year after year) -Craig Kimbrel ($60 mil is a lot for a reliever, but he's one of the ones worth it) -AJ Pollack (Does lots well, but nothing great so maybe not necessary) -Andrew McCutchen (If he's somehow about the same price as Pollack, or even a little more, I'd go with McCutchen)

There's a lot of noise at the team level for DRS, so it's not accurate to say, "x player plays on crappy defensive team y, therefore he might be good on good defensive team z." Looking at Daniel Murphy, for example, the Cubs had the 6th best team DRS in 2018, yet he was terrible for them. They were a better team by DRS than the Dodgers, who "fixed" Machado. DRS doesn't have a ton of correlation year to year either, for whatever reason. Arizona was +118 this year, +13 last year. Milwaukee was +91 this year, +23 last year. Boston was -44 this year, +71 last year. So if players tend to be crappy over time, which is why I used 3-year data, that tells me that lo, they may be crappy regardless of what team they're playing on. As always, when painting with broad strokes it's important to look at finer detail (Machado did get better and the Mets have been poorly rated by DRS in '17/18), but dismissing its usefulness for individual players due to current year data is not wise, IMO. I do find DRS to be the most thoughtful indicator of defense publically available, followed by FRAA and then UZR as a distant third. I'm looking forward to MLB providing more Statcast data with regard to defense as they've provided peaks into some really exciting defensive tools. As for Cabrera specifically, he has a negative value for his career defensively via Fangraphs. As shown, DRS has him as a bad defender and FRAA backs that up. And from what limited amount I've seen of his play, specifically at shortstop, I'd tend to think his lack of mobility and declining arm strength would be hinderances regardless of what team he plays on.

Here is the three-year DRS for all of these guys: [pre]RANKED BY DRS/Year BY POSITION w/INNINGS PLAYED SECOND BASE Player (Age) 3YR DRS/Year INNINGS PLAYED ----------------------- ------------ -------------- DJ LeMahieu (30) +29 3,660 Ian Kinsler (36) +27 3,528 Tyler Saladino (29) +26 562 Marwin Gonzalez^ (29) +22 399 Hernan Perez (27) +12 418 Jonathan Schoop (27) +4 3,755 Travis Shaw* (28) -4 268 Brian Dozier (31) -8 3,895 Jed Lowrie^ (34) -15 3,047 Neil Walker^ (33) -22 1,965 Asdrubal Cabrera^ (32) -51 1,069 Daniel Murphy* (33) -66 2,747 THIRD BASE Player (Age) 3YR DRS/Year INNINGS PLAYED ----------------------- ------------ -------------- Adrian Beltre (39) +48 2,358 Manny Machado (26) +46 2,511 Travis Shaw* (28) +29 2,941 David Freese (35) +26 1,998 Josh Donaldson (32) +9 2,421 Marwin Gonzalez^ (29) +8 316 Neil Walker^ (33) +8 181 Hernan Perez (27) +3 711 Jung-ho Kang (31) -2 736 Mike Moustakas* (30) -2 2,410 Asdrubal Cabrera^ (32) -7 470 Tyler Saladino (29) -7 265 Jose Bautista (38) -8 177 Jed Lowrie^ (34) -19 128 Danny Valencia (34) -59 918[/pre]

Based on what I saw out of him in Chicago, Murphy is bad defensively at second. Looking at his defensive stats, I'm honestly a little shocked they aren't much worse than they are. Assuming he won't get any better there as he gets older, he's pretty much a first baseman in my book at this point. Edit: Well, DRS does agree with me after all. It has him as a -18 defender at second base this year in just 535 innings in the field. Over a full year, that's -40 (!). And actually, -18 managed to be the worst in baseball despite Murphy's lack of playing time. That's astoundingly bad defense. Second-worst was Asdrubal Cabrera, who clocked in at -17. LeMahieu, incidentally, was +18. Nearly 4 full wins better on defense than Murphy. Second-best in baseball behind Kolten Wong. Marwin Gonzalez was +1. Travis Shaw was -1. So while he wasn't great at second, the posters on here who have said Shaw has no business playing there and that the Brewers were stupid for playing him there... sorry, you're wrong. The Brewers actually might have a handle on the whole defensive self-scouting thing.

Well done - kudos on using 3-year data, which is absolutely preferable to "OMG last year" in many cases. E.g., Wade Miley. LeMahieu is interesting in that he seemed to be unlucky to some degree in 2018 with a BABIP drop juxtaposed against his barrel % and hard hit% going up from 2017. Then again, his xwOBA has usually tracked well with his wOBA, so maybe it's a true skill decline showing. And while he's really good defending at second base, he's only a second baseman (probably), which doesn't lend itself to the Brewers' defensive versatility credo. I'd still prefer Marwin Gonzalez over LeMahieu, but if DJ is a lot cheaper, which may well be, maybe the better value is to get the guy who can only play the one position.

The Brewers have also released RHP Jim Henderson and catchers Fidel Pena and Natanael Mejia. Same as with Burgos, the trio were on player contracts but served as coaches. Hopefully, they did good work and will be brought back as full-time coaches.

If it's truly a salary thing, insert amount of money Brewers have spent for crappy pitchers under Mark Attanasio here: Then insert whatever salary Derek Johnson got from the Reds here: And ponder.

So to summarize, the following players will reach 5 years of service time in 2019 if they spend the entire season on the active roster up to: Chase Anderson: 4/22 Erik Kratz: 4/14 Jimmy Nelson: 5/31 Hernan Perez: 6/28