After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for eight years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Batters

There’s been quite a bit of turnover in the Brewers’ starting lineup, but the team has avoided opening any serious holes.

ZiPS was a fan of Orlando Arcia, but it’s hard to avoid the fact that he’s backslid developmentally at ages when he should have been breaking out. Even worse than not improving offensively, Arcia is probably a worse hitter than he was two years ago. Add to that that his glove hasn’t matched up to his minor league reputation, and good on the Brewers for seemingly moving on to Luis Urías, who ought to be a significant improvement. Read the rest of this entry »

The Brewers have reached a one-year deal with first baseman Justin Smoak, according to multiple reports Thursday morning. The former Blue Jay will receive $4 million for the 2020 season with a club option worth $5.5 million. The option comes with a $1 million buyout, guaranteeing Smoak will at least $5 million from his new deal.

Milwaukee opened the 2019 season with an infield of Jesús Aguilar, Mike Moustakas, Travis Shaw, and Orlando Arcia. Of that quartet, three are no longer in the organization. The fourth, Arcia, now seems ticketed for a utility role after failing, for the second straight season, to show any progress from his 2017 campaign. Milwaukee’s new middle infield of Keston Hiura (called up midseason) and Luis Urías (acquired from the Padres) are expected to anchor the key defensive positions for a decade, but the Brewers do not have equivalent talent ready to take over at first or third. Brice Turang and possibly Lucas Erceg may shake up the infield in coming seasons, but neither will help in 2020. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last week or so, several players who had been playing pro ball in Korea or Japan (some originally from those countries, others former big leaguers kicking back to the States) have signed contracts with major league clubs. I had notes on several of them in our Top 50 Free Agents post, but wanted to talk about them at greater length now that we know their employers and the details of their contracts.

LF Yoshitomo Tsutsugo, Tampa Bay Rays
(Two years, $12 million, $2.4 million posting fee)

Tsutsugo’s deal came in a bit beneath what Kiley predicted on the Top 50 Free Agents post (Kiley had two years at $8 million per), where we ranked him No. 42 in the class, but multiple public reports have confirmed that Tsutsugo had more lucrative offers from other teams and chose to sign with Tampa Bay because of comfort with the org.

In addition to regular DH duty, Tsutsugo seems like an obvious platoon partner for Hunter Renfroe in one of the two corner outfield spots. The Rays have indicated he’ll see some time at third and first base, positions he hasn’t played regularly since 2014, and the notes I have from pro/international scouts and executives indicate he’s not athletically capable of playing there, though there’s no harm in seeing whether or not that’s true during spring training. Yandy Díaz isn’t good at the hot corner (he used to be, but he’s just too big and stiff now), but still played third situationally, so perhaps Tsutsugo can be hidden there, even if it’s for a few innings at a time. Read the rest of this entry »

The last time Eric Sogard was on the Brewers, he was bad. Not just run of the mill bad, but really bad! He hit .134/.241/.165 in 113 plate appearances for them in 2018, good for a 14 wRC+. That was all the team needed to see to send him to Triple-A Colorado Springs — where he hit .225/.297/.270 at altitude. So it was hardly surprising when they parted ways, with Milwaukee opening up playing time for their packed infield and Sogard seeking an easier path to the majors in Toronto.

What a difference a year makes. Sogard was excellent in 2019 over 442 plate appearances with the Blue Jays and the Rays. He hit 13 home runs, more than he’d previously hit in his 1800 career plate appearances. He slashed his strikeout rate, put a few more balls in the air, and was handsomely rewarded; not only were the homers a career high, but he hit 23 doubles and two triples as well, leading to easily his best single-season production. A .316 BABIP didn’t hurt, either — in all, he produced a 115 wRC+ on the year.

There were reasons to be skeptical, of course. Those home runs were largely of the “hey, that got out?” variety. The average home run in baseball last year was hit at 103.5 mph. Sogard’s baker’s dozen dingers averaged 96.7 mph. If you’re more of an xwOBA person, combining angle and speed, his home runs had an expected wOBA of .701. The league average was a robust 1.359, and among players with five or more home runs, only Sandy León had worse expected results on homers.

In fact, if you want to be skeptical, you could say that Sogard didn’t even have a particularly impressive 2019 despite the surface numbers. His overall wOBA of .346 was excellent, but it vastly outstripped his xwOBA of .307, driven largely by his home run luck. None of this is surprising or hard to tease out from watching him play; he simply doesn’t hit the ball that hard, and even though lots of players ran into some extra home runs in 2019, Sogard really ran into some extra home runs. Read the rest of this entry »

The Milwaukee Brewers acquired two thirds of a world class outfield before the 2018 season, trading for Christian Yelich and signing Lorenzo Cain in free agency. Yelich has been one of the best players in baseball since joining Milwaukee, and Cain was excellent in 2018 before injuries and age slowed him somewhat in 2019. Few teams in baseball would take their center and right field pairing over Milwaukee’s.

But as I learned in third grade math, two thirds is less than one. Left field has been a hodgepodge over the last two years. In 2018, the team relied on a combination of Ryan Braun, Eric Thames, Domingo Santana, and even Hernán Pérez to fill innings. That was mostly okay, though the team wasn’t satisfied; they sent Santana to Seattle in the offseason in exchange for Ben Gamel in an attempt to patch up the outfield.

In 2019, it was more of the same. Braun and Gamel got the majority of the playing time and were fine. Trent Grisham had a late-season cameo replacing Yelich and looked to be the left fielder of the future, but the team sent him to San Diego to shore up other holes in the roster earlier this offseason. The team also cut ties with Thames (and traded Jesús Aguilar during the season), so Braun will be covering first base in 2020. Put it all together, and the team was sorely in need of outfield help. Read the rest of this entry »

Milwaukee has arguably been the biggest beneficiary of the league’s austerity on the free agent market in recent seasons. A damp market gave the Brewers an opportunity to sign Lorenzo Cain to a team-friendly five-year deal in January of 2018, and their new center fielder’s 5.7 WAR campaign proved instrumental in a season Milwaukee won the NL Central by a single game. General manager David Stearns turned an even tidier trick last winter, inking Yasmani Grandal and Mike Moustakas to one-year pillow contracts in January and February respectively. Both made the All-Star team and they combined for 8 WAR as the Brewers again narrowly clinched a playoff berth.

Critically, the Brewers haven’t succeeded by aggressively courting free agents, but rather by waiting out the competition and swooping in with palatable offers to desperate players at the dawn of spring training. Cain surely entered his recruitment period thinking a nine-figure offer was a strong possibility, and neither Grandal nor Moustakas hit the market hoping for anything less than a multi-year deal. As prices fell, Milwaukee pounced. In capitalizing on a cool market, the Brewers were able to meaningfully augment their ballclub without incurring significant costs, and the result was a rare breakthrough to the playoffs.

Milwaukee won’t be able to run it back with the same strategy in 2020. As we’ve covered elsewhere, the free agent market has rebounded significantly this offseason. Unlike in recent years, many of the marquee players are already off the board, and for pretty big money, too. The league has already committed approximately $1.5 billion to players: That’s nearly a billion more than this time last year, a free agency period that ended with around $1.8 billion in total commitments. With plenty of mid-tier free agents still on the board, the pattern has been established: Good players are getting more money and more years than they have over the two previous seasons. Read the rest of this entry »

Just as an earthquake can send shockwaves across a region for days, a high-magnitude free agent signing can create ripple effects for other teams around baseball.

On Tuesday, the Yankees agreed to sign Gerrit Cole to the richest pitching contract in history, getting their man for $324 million over nine years. While the top free agent is now officially off the board, the decision-makers in front offices across the league aren’t resting quite yet. In fact, the Yankees began preparing for the reality of signing Cole before the deal was even completed, with Joel Sherman reporting on Monday that the team is “actively” trying to trade J.A. Happ.

Happ is entering the second year of a two-year, $34 million contract, meaning that he will count for $17 million for luxury tax purposes. We currently project the Yankees’ 2020 payroll to be approximately $250 million, already putting them above the $208 million tax threshold. Even if the Yankees clear Happ’s salary in a trade, Cole still puts them well above the threshold, but at that point, it’s more than worth it. For New York, the key isn’t as much getting below the tax as it is getting below $248 million. For every dollar spent up to $248 million, the tax is solely monetary. Beyond that point, however, a team’s highest draft selection is moved down 10 slots. That’s why the Yankees (or any team) can blow pretty far past the tax without having to worry about impacting anything other than their owner’s checkbook. Read the rest of this entry »

On Monday, no other team non-tendered more players than the Brewers. In addition to the 10 free agents lost from their roster, the five players let go earlier this week add to the mass exodus from Milwaukee. Those 15 players accounted for 14 WAR in 2019. More than a third of those wins were accumulated by Yasmani Grandal, their All-Star catcher. The Brewers failed to bring him back on a long-term deal after he signed a four-year pact with the White Sox worth $73 million.

With plenty of holes on their roster and division-rivals gearing up for next year, the Brewers entered this offseason with plenty of work to do. Trading for Luis Urías and Eric Lauer was the first step towards rebuilding their roster. Now they have their replacement for Grandal in hand. Early Thursday morning, Ken Rosenthal reported that the Mariners had struck an agreement to trade Omar Narváez to the Brewers. Greg Johns later reported the return from Milwaukee: RHP Adam Hill and the Brewers’ Competitive Balance draft pick (currently slotted in at 71 overall).

With the catching market rife with buyers and few quality catchers to be had, a number of teams moved quickly to secure a deal with a new backstop. Grandal, Travis d’Arnaud, Tyler Flowers, Yan Gomes, and Stephen Vogt all signed new deals or re-signed with their previous club in November, leaving the free agent market rather bare. With the Mariners basically telegraphing their intent to move Narváez this offseason, the only question was which contender would partner up. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2020 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2015 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Wherever Gary Sheffield went, he made noise, both with his bat and his voice. For the better part of two decades, he ranked among the game’s most dangerous hitters, a slugger with a keen batting eye and a penchant for contact that belied his quick, violent swing. For even longer than that, he was one of the game’s most outspoken players, unafraid to speak up when he felt he was being wronged and unwilling to endure a situation that wasn’t to his liking. He was a polarizing player, and hardly one for the faint of heart.

At the plate, Sheffield was viscerally impressive like few others. With his bat twitching back and forth like the tail of a tiger waiting to pounce, he was pure menace in the batter’s box. He won a batting title, launched over 500 home runs — 14 seasons with at least 20 and eight with at least 30 — and put many a third base coach in peril with some of the most terrifying foul balls anyone has ever seen. For as violent as his swing may have been, it was hardly wild; not until his late thirties did he strike out more than 80 times in a season, and in his prime, he walked far more often than he struck out. Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Lauer is a Brewer now, Milwaukee having acquired the 24-year-old left-hander from the Padres on Wednesday as part of a four-player swap. He remains a work in progress. Two years into his big-league career, Lauer is still refining a five-pitch mix that was good enough to make him a first round pick. San Diego drafted the Elyria, Ohio native 25th-overall out of Kent State University in 2016.

Lauer leaned heavily on his fastball and his cutter this past season. The former, which he threw 53% of the time, is a four-seamer that averaged 92.1 mph. The latter, which he threw 22.2% of the time, is four ticks slower and delivered without undue effort. Unlike his other secondaries, it comes naturally.

“The angle my hand is at when I deliver a pitch is very cutter-y,” Lauer explained. “It’s on the side of the ball, so I can cut it easily. That’s why my changeup has never been a great pitch for me; I throw on the outer side of the ball, rather than the inner side, or directly behind it.”

His changeup is a two-seam circle he used just 4.4% of the time. He wasn’t tinkering with the grip when I spoke to him this summer, but he was trying to find the right release point to consistently get the angle he wanted. As he erstwhile Golden Flash put it, “Changeups and sliders come out of your hand two completely different ways. I have to focus on different keys for each.”

Laura’s slider is a pitch that has required continual tinkering. He told me that he used to grip it loosely, but on the suggestion of since-replaced pitching coach Darren Balsley, he’d begun putting it deeper in his hand. The result is a slider that “spins harder, but is a little harder to control.” In other words, it is a pitch that has remained, frustratingly, a work in progress. Last year’s usage rate dipped to 6.5% Read the rest of this entry »