Heading into the season, the Milwaukee Brewers were a popular pick to win the NL Central, with half of the writers here at FanGraphs expecting them to emerge victorious. The strength of the team is its pitching, with a rotation spearheaded by Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes as well as an excellent bullpen anchored by Josh Hader and 2020 NL Rookie of the Year Devin Williams. But there was a good deal of uncertainty about where the offense would come from and how much run support the strong pitching would receive. The shortened season saw Lorenzo Cain opt out and underwhelming performances from perennial MVP candidate Christian Yelich and infielder Keston Hiura. ZiPS (along with many other models) projected bounce-back campaigns for both Yelich and Hiura. These two sluggers’ ability to produce is critical to the Brewers’ success this season.

Yelich has not gotten off to a great start and has already missed 12 games due to back issues, which he’s dealt with previously in his career. But it’s Hiura that I want to put the spotlight on. In his rookie season, Hiura took the National League by storm, slashing .303/.368/.570 while hitting 19 home runs; he was second on the team to Yelich with 140 wRC+. Hiura entered the 2020 season expected to hold down the keystone and contribute as a key power bat in the lineup. Yet as was the case for so many hitters in the pandemic-shortened season, Hiura took a step backwards from his prior year’s performance. He managed a disappointing but still respectable 87 wRC+ and 13 home runs, but he struck out more. He walked less. His hard hit rate plummeted from 47.1% to 39.6%.

Nearly a month into the 2021 season, Hiura’s offensive performance has fallen short of even last season’s paltry marks. Through last weekend’s action, he is slashing .145/.264/.242 with a wOBA of .240 and 50 wRC+. One area that is a complete disaster for Hiura is his contact rate. To truly capture the magnitude of his issues, one must look beyond his strikeout rate (34.7%, which is really bad) to Z-Contact%, which is the percentage of balls a hitter makes contact with when he swings at pitches in the strike zone. So far in the early going, Hiura has the worst Z-Contact% in baseball, lagging behind Javier Báez by about 2.5%. Recently, Brewers hitting instructor Andy Haines mentioned Hiura’s timing is off but that he’s “getting closer every day.” While his coaches may express some optimism, any progress has yet to find its way onto the field. Here’s a sample of some swings and misses against the Cubs’ Kyle Ryan. Read the rest of this entry »

Position: Data Engineer

Job Description:
The Data Engineer will work closely with the Data Architect and the Baseball Systems team to maintain, enhance, and extend the Brewers data pipelines. You will be responsible for collecting and transforming data from various sources as well as preparing and distributing data for consumption by the department’s systems and analysts. The ideal candidate is an experienced data pipeline builder who excels at automating and optimizing data systems, with a strong preference for cloud experience.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Other duties may be assigned:

• Create, maintain and optimize data ETL pipelines
• Document, troubleshoot, and resolve issues with data processes
• Collaborate with the Development and Research teams
• Extend the Brewers’ AWS cloud platform initiative
• Identify, design, and implement internal process improvements
• Work with stakeholders to utilize data to create innovative solutions to baseball operations problems
• Prepare data sets for processing and research

Qualifications:
To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.

• Experience with programming languages such as Python, Java, C#
• Experience working with relational databases such as SQL Server and PostgreSQL
• Experience with SQL, including writing and maintaining queries
• Experience with SDLC, especially Agile or Kanban concepts
• Experience with source control and issue management, such as JIRA, Bitbucket, Github or similar
• Familiarity with advanced statistical baseball concepts, including advanced statistics and player evaluation metrics

Preferred Skills:
The skills listed below will help an individual perform the job, however they are not all required.

• Experience building visualizations with tools such as D3.js or similar
• Experience with data analysis tools including Tableau, Chartio or similar
• Experience with cloud services including AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or similar
• Experience with DevOps concepts such as Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment, using TeamCity, Jenkins or similar
• Experience with job orchestration tools such as Airflow, Luigi, Hangfire or similar
• Experience with Docker or other containerization technologies
• Familiarity with Linux and non-Windows operating systems

Education and/or Experience:
Bachelor’s degree (B.A.) in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field from four-year college or university; and one to three years related experience and/or training; or equivalent combination of education and experience.

To Apply:
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Milwaukee Brewers.

There are two things that jump out to me about Freddy Peralta’s start to the 2021 season. The first is that the man once known as Fastball Freddy is throwing said fastball at a career-low rate. The second is that he’s added some new moves into his windup that may be increasing his deception. Amidst all that change are some underlying command issues that suggest he still has things to work on.

Let’s start with his windup, which I’ve become absolutely fixated on. It’s not at all the windup I remembered him having, and I’m mesmerized by it.

Like an alarm clock going from a restful existence into a blaring beep that jiggles itself off the nightstand, Peralta has added some chaos to his delivery. What once was a fairly normal over-the-head windup and cross-body release has gotten more complicated. The leg kicks up higher, his feet are more caffeinated, and he starts in a more hunched position as if to make his over-the-head motion easier to attain. His new windup is nearly a half a second faster from start to release. And did I mention his feet? His feet!

Read the rest of this entry »

With apologies to Jacob deGrom, no pitcher in baseball is as hot as Corbin Burnes right now. Through four starts, the Brewers’ 26-year-old righty has allowed just one run and eight hits, and has yet to walk a single batter in 24.1 innings, that while striking out an eye-opening 40 hitters. His outings have quickly become appointment viewing — not too shabby for a pitcher with just 17 big league starts under his belt — and he’s already carved himself a small niche in the record books.

Burnes didn’t exactly come from nowhere — he was a Top 100 Prospect here and elsewhere three years ago — but his setbacks have made his rise to dominance all the more dramatic. Between pitching in a small market and thriving under pandemic conditions, he’s flown a bit beneath the radar until now, though a guy carrying a 0.37 ERA and 0.68 FIP can do that for only so long. The short version of his tale is that the 2016 fourth-round pick out of St. Mary’s College made a solid debut out of the Brewers’ bullpen in ’18, but his attempt to get a foothold in the rotation went disastrously the following year, as he was pummeled for 21 runs in 17.2 innings over four March and April turns. In between detours to Triple-A and the Injured List, he made 28 more appearances out of the bullpen but was lit for an 8.82 ERA and 6.09 FIP in 49 total innings.

Last year, however, he ditched a too-straight four-seam fastball that in 2019 had averaged 95.2 mph but had been lit for a .425 batting average and .823 slugging percentage, a malady Ben Clemens detailed during his examination of Burnes’ expanding repertoire as part of our Thursday Burnesday package. In its place, Burnes opted for a sinker/cutter combination that was utterly filthy, with the former averaging 96.0 mph and the latter 93.1. Both had elite spin rates, a common thread across Burnes’ arsenal. Via The Ringer’s Michael Baumann, “Out of 209 pitchers with enough playing time to qualify for the Baseball Savant leaderboard last year, Burnes had the third-fastest-spinning slider and cutter… the second-fastest-spinning sinker, and the eighth-fastest-spinning curveball.” Read the rest of this entry »

I had a hard time writing the introduction for this article. Actually, strike that — I had one in mind the whole time, but I kept trying to come up with alternatives. Here’s the deal, though. I’m obsessed with Corbin Burnes (in a wholesome, “I love watching this guy pitch” kind of way), and I’ll use any excuse possible to write about him. His seeming transformation into a pitching demigod? Yeah, that certainly qualifies.

If you’re looking for the origins of both my Burnes obsession and his journey from prospect to ace, look no further than his first start of 2019. Burnes threw a gem, from a strikeout perspective at least, notching 12 K’s against a single walk. He also gave up three home runs and lasted only five innings — seems bad! The culprit was a fastball that spun ineffectively, some unholy blend of four-seamer and cutter that hitters had no trouble timing and obliterating.

Think “obliterating” is an extreme word choice? Burnes had an 8.82 ERA in 2019 and a 6.09 FIP. He gave up 17 homers in 49 innings, leading to a two-month trip to the minors. Batters barreled up 13.7% of the fastballs they put in play, which produced 10 of those homers. They whiffed on less than 20% of them, a poor result for such a hard, high-spin pitch. And he simply didn’t get the ride that four-seamers need, a prerequisite for missing bats. Read the rest of this entry »

Corbin Burnes was still flying below the radar when he was featured here at FanGraphs in June 2017. He’d come into the season ranked No. 18 on our Milwaukee Brewers Top Prospect list, and Baseball America was even less bullish, slotting him 24th on their own. When I talked to him for the article, the 2016 fourth-round pick out of St. Mary’s College had yet to throw a pitch above the A-ball level.

He’s not under the radar anymore. Burnes broke out in last year’s pandemic-shortened season, and two weeks into the current campaign he’s the hottest pitcher on the planet. Over his first three starts, the 26-year-old right-hander has allowed four hits and one run in 18-and-a-third innings. Moreover, he has 30 strikeouts and has yet to issue a free pass. In a nutshell, hitters have been helpless against his five-pitch mix.

Burnes has much the same mindset as four years ago. He told me at the time that he considered himself a power pitcher, and that his M.O. was missing bats. Each time he took the mound, it was with the belief that he was better than the person standing in the batter’s box. He was out there to dominate.

Which isn’t to say that nothing has changed. Burnes had a four-seamer with natural cut when we first spoke, and now he’s sans the four, and in possession of baseball’s best cutter.

I asked Brewers pitching coach Chris Hook about the righty’s meteoric rise. Read the rest of this entry »

Spiritually, the Orlando Arcia era in Milwaukee came to an end when the team acquired Luis Urías from San Diego in a four-player swap back in November 2019. Urías, then 22, had been one of the top prospects in the Padres’ farm system before his rookie eligibility expired the season prior and was expected to take over as the Brewers’ starting shortstop. Such a move would likely mean benching Arcia, a former top prospect himself who had put up rather anemic numbers in his first four big league seasons. Alas, Milwaukee’s starting infield hit a number of road blocks in the year that followed that trade, and when all was said and done, Arcia appeared in all but one of the team’s games last year, as well as each of the first four in 2021.

Now, it would appear that era has formally come to a close once and for all. On Tuesday, the Brewers traded Arcia to the Braves, who immediately optioned him to the team’s alternate training site as the infielder undergoes necessary COVID protocols. Two pitchers, Chad Sobotka and Patrick Weigel, were sent to Milwaukee to complete the deal.

Braves acquiring Orlando Arcia from Brewers, source tells @TheAthletic. First on talks: @JonHeyman and @ByRobertMurray.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) April 6, 2021

When word first got out that the Brewers were discussing a deal involving Arcia, there was naturally speculation that the team on the other end might be San Diego. After all, just night before, the Padres had watched in horror as franchise shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. crumpled to the ground after injuring his left shoulder following through on a swing, and as of Tuesday morning remained unaware of how much time he was likely to miss. San Diego has ready replacements for Tatis in-house, but for a team as committed to accumulating depth as the Padres are, the timing of the news seemed all too convenient. Read the rest of this entry »

This is Matthew’s first post as a FanGraphs contributor. Matthew is a staff writer and podcast host at Lookout Landing, where he ponders great existential questions like, “Why would anyone be a Seattle Mariners fan?” and, “What dark curse did the Mariners conjure to make Mark Canha such an annoyance in their life?” He has written about the lack of Black players in Major League Baseball, recorded parody songs about the Astros’ banging scheme, and interviewed several minor leaguers. In addition to his current role at Lookout Landing, Matthew was previously a writer for Baseball Prospectus and a marginally successful open mic comedian. After a public school and Subaru childhood, Matthew attended the University of San Diego before bravely becoming the first FanGraphs writer to ever live in Seattle.

The first full week of the 2021 season is upon us. To avoid getting trampled in the avalanche of games, let’s focus in on the ones with the juiciest matchups, funniest storylines, and richest histories of batter vs. pitcher ownage. Here are the best pitching matchups in the week’s early going.

Monday, April 5, 7 PM ET: Jacob deGrom vs. Matt Moore

A team’s first game of the season almost always pairs their best starter versus the top of the other team’s rotation. But with a COVID-19 postponement pushing the Mets’ opener back, they get to unleash Jacob deGrom’s fury against a Philadelphia reclamation project. This NL East showdown sets the game’s most dominant pitcher against a guy who hasn’t pitched stateside in two years.

Unable to convince an MLB team to give him a job after knee surgery ended his 2019 renaissance, Matt Moore signed in Japan with the Fukuoka Soft Bank Hawks. He’s back after posting a 2.65 ERA in Nippon Professional Baseball. That’s certainly impressive, but Moore’s ERA in NPB was still not as good as the 2.38 deGrom ran last season (his 2.26 FIP was somehow better), or his 2.43 before that, and especially not the 1.70 from the year before that. Monday’s tilt is a classic story of an established, hegemonic force meeting a redemptive arc on its final curve. Read the rest of this entry »

For fans of dominant pitching, Saturday evening’s Twins-Brewers contest set a high bar for the season. At American Family Field (ugh), Minnesota’s José Berríos and Milwaukee’s Corbin Burnes both turned in electrifying performances, each pitching six complete innings of no-hit ball and reaching double digits in strikeouts. At one point, the pair combined to strike out 10 batters in a row. Burnes carried his no-hit bid deeper into the game, getting one out in the seventh before serving up a solo homer to Byron Buxton and departing. Berríos, meanwhile, became the latest pitcher to be removed with his no-hitter intact. Twins reliever Tyler Duffey finally gave up a hit to Omar Narváez in the eighth, but Minnesota held on to win 2-0.

The two 26-year-old righties offered contrasting styles for their dominance. Berríos, the more established of the pair, averaged 95.3 mph with his four-seam fastball and went as high as 96.9 mph, but racked up strikeouts largely by getting hitters to chase low curveballs. Burnes, the harder thrower and the better hurler last year — his 2.4 WAR tied for sixth among all starters — overpowered hitters with a befuddling cutter that averaged 96.3 mph (3.2 mph faster than last season, when only Dustin May outdid him) and reached 97.9 mph. He paired that with a sinker that averaged 98.0 mph and maxed out at 98.8.

The tone for the matchup was set on the first batter of the game. Burnes, whose 36.7% strikeout rate last year was the majors’ fourth-highest among pitchers with at least 50 innings, struck out Twins leadoff hitter Luis Arraez swinging at a 97.6 mph cutter in the middle of the zone — no small matter given how tough he is to punch out. Last year, Arraez had the majors’ fourth-lowest swinging-strike rate among batters with at least 100 PA last year (3.5%) and the third-lowest strikeout rate (9.1%).

That was the only batter Burnes struck out in a 10-pitch first. Berríos notched his first strikeout by getting Christian Yelich to chase a low curveball to close the first inning, which started the two pitchers’ streak. Burnes returned to strike out Max Kepler, Miguel Sanó, and Jake Cave in the second, with Berríos doing the same to Keston Hiura, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Lorenzo Cain. Then Burnes mowed down Ryan Jeffers, Andrelton Simmons, and Berríos himself, batting under National League rules. The stretch of 10 straight strikeouts finally came to an end when Narváez, who would do double duty in his spoiler role, grounded to third base to start the third inning.

Berríos went on to strike out the side (Kolten Wong, Travis Shaw, and Yelich again) in the fourth. No batter reached base for either side until the fifth inning, when Burnes hit Cave and Berríos hit Hiura in their respective halves. Still, neither team had a hit (or a walk) through six innings, with a 103-mph third-inning flyout by Orlando Arcia to the deepest part of center field the only batted ball with an expected batting average higher than .240 (it was .790). Here’s the highlight reel from the first six innings:

Read the rest of this entry »

Ethan Small’s success comes largely from his heater. Which isn’t to suggest he throws smoke. As Eric Longenhagen wrote when profiling the 23-year-old southpaw for our 2020 Brewers Top Prospects list, Small is “blowing fastballs with mediocre velocity past opposing hitters because he hides the ball well and creates pure backspin.” Velocity-wise, the former Mississippi State Bulldog typically sits in the low 90s.

Professional hitters haven’t seen much of him due to the pandemic — Small’s curriculum vitae comprises 21 A-ball innings — but Southeastern Conference opponents are another story. They had plenty of opportunity to be impressed with the 28th-overall pick in the 2019 draft, particularly in his junior year when he went 10-2 with a 1.93 ERA, and 176 strikeouts in 107 innings.

A pair of fellow 2019 first-rounders sang Small’s praises when I asked which SEC pitchers they’d faced stood out the most.

Braden Shewmake, whom the Atlanta Braves drafted 21st overall out of Texas A&M, began by citing Casey Mize. The second pitcher he mentioned was Small. Read the rest of this entry »