The team that eventually signs Neil Walker will be getting a player who has been consistent and dynamic over the course of his career. Those descriptions come courtesy of the 32-year-old free agent himself — and they’re pretty accurate. In his eight full big-league seasons, Walker has averaged 2.7 WAR annually, with the ebbs and flows remaining within a reasonably narrow range. Ditto his OPS, which has always been higher than league average, but never north of .823.
A first-round pick by his hometown (give or take a few miles) Pirates in 2004, Walker was Pittsburgh property prior to being traded to the Mets in December 2015, and then to the Brewers last August. Along the way, he’s remained steady-as-she-goes productive, as well as a positive influence in the clubhouse.
“I’ve been able to fit into many roles with the teams I’ve been on,” Walker told me at the tail end of last season. “I’ve hit at the top of the order and the middle of the order. I’ve been a run producer and a run scorer. I’ve played pretty decent defense. I feel I’ve been a fairly dynamic and consistent player.”
You might remember Rob Mains from the work he contributed to this site’s Community blog. More recently, he’s been doing great things over at Baseball Prospectus. Just this past month, he was nominated for a SABR award.
Mains wrote a piece over at BP in the middle of January that I found to be of interest. It came shortly after the Pirates shedded Gerrit Cole and Andrew McCutchen, with Pirates owner Bob Nutting claiming he couldn’t afford to keep star players around at market rates.
Asked Bob Nutting what it will take for #Pirates to break cycle of "develop, then sell when gets too costly." Answer: "I think you'd have a fundamental redesign of the economics of baseball, that's not what we're going to have."#Pirates
Mains’ piece is, in part, a meditation on what we ought to expect of a pro sports team’s ownership — and, in particular, if there should be a moral obligation, or civic responsibility, inherent to holding such an asset.
Even after adjusting for park, Christian Yelich hit better away from Marlins Park than at it. (Photo: Corn Farmer)
We all love Christian Yelich the baseball player. Or, at least, we all should love Christian Yelich the ballplayer. He’s coming off back-to-back 4.5-win seasons and is just entering his age-26 campaign. ZiPS calls for him to produce just slightly more than 20 wins in the next five seasons. He is, in short, one of the game’s great young stars.
The Brewers certainly made their love for Yelich evident recently, shipping off a rich prospect package to Miami in order to acquire him. No doubt part of their interest in him is due to the fact that he’s also signed to one of the most club-friendly deals in the sport. If he produces wins at the sort of rate that ZiPS suggests, the Brewers will be quite happy no matter what becomes of Lewis Brinson and company.
You might’ve noticed that, even after adding Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain, the Brewers don’t project very well. That would seem to provide a pretty convincing argument against adding Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain. The Brewers, obviously, think they’re better than Steamer does. Steamer just doesn’t like them, just as it didn’t a year ago. And, to be fair, ZiPS is higher on the Brewers, and that’ll be reflected when we get everything uploaded into our system. Between today and opening day, the Brewers’ team projection will improve, unless something catastrophic takes place.
But let’s spend a minute talking about the state of the team. To narrow down, let’s talk about the state of the pitching staff. Why is it that the Brewers believe they’re competitive, even while the projections are, shall we say, less convinced? The Brewers are signing free-agent reliever Matt Albers for two years and $5 million. He doesn’t explain anything, since that news just emerged Monday, but Albers is representative of something else. The Brewers believe in the breakouts.
Lewis Brinson, CF (60 FV) – It’s important to note that Brinson opinions among scouts and executive vary pretty widely, especially for a player who has performed at the upper levels of the minors. Some people just don’t think he’s going to hit, but Brinson has made relevant swing adjustments multiple times as a pro and his strikeout rate has dropped every season. It’s been a very reasonable 20% over the last two years and he has monster complementary tools in plus power and plus speed.
The most recent World Series, of course, was won by the Astros, and the previous World Series, of course, was won by the Cubs. Those teams have had the most successful examples of recent rebuilds, and although things don’t always go that well, the ideal rebuild goes through three phases. First, you tear down, exchanging shorter-term players for longer-term players. Then, you develop, with more talent accumulation along the way. Finally, there’s the push, the re-investment in trying to win. That’s when the rebuild is basically over. That’s when a team has climbed back in the race.
I don’t know what marked the Astros’ transition to phase three. Perhaps it was trading for Evan Gattis. Perhaps it was trading for Scott Kazmir, or for Carlos Gomez. On the Cubs’ side, there was the signing of Jon Lester, and there was the acquisition of Dexter Fowler. When the Astros and Cubs decided they were ready to win, the change was unmistakable. And now, hoping to follow in their footsteps, we have the Brewers. The Brewers have entered phase three.
To their credit, the Brewers didn’t let the process bottom out. After finishing above .500 in 2014, they spent just two years out of the hunt. Last season, they were an overachieving surprise. And now they’ve pulled off a major one-two punch. Thursday afternoon, they traded for Christian Yelich. Only a short time later, they signed Lorenzo Cain. Yelich cost four prospects. Cain got five years. But there’s no missing the message: The Brewers are ready.
Cain returns to the team by which he was originally signed. (Photo: Keith Allison)
Two days ago, this author politely asked a major-league team — really any major-league team — to sign free-agent outfielder Lorenzo Cain. Tonight, Brewers general manager David Stearns and team ownership obliged.
#Brewers in agreement with free-agent outfielder Lorenzo Cain, sources tell The Athletic. Deal is pending a physical.
This author — and others, too, including former FanGraphs editor Dave Cameron — tabbed Cain as the top value play in free agency, assuming the terms of his contract emerged as expected. The crowd and Dave each predicted a four-year, $68-million deal.
At a reported five years and $80 million, Cain is a bit less of a bargain than expected. There was no New Year’s discount for his services, for example. Nonetheless, the Brewers on Thursday night added two impact outfielders in Christian Yelich (about whom Jeff Sullivan is writing at this moment) and Cain, the top position-player free-agent available.
Christian Yelich has five more years remaining on his contract.
(Photo: Corn Farmer)
Despite recording 86 wins and finishing just a game out of the Wild Card in 2017, the Brewers have been pretty quiet this offseason. Of course, a lot of teams have been pretty quiet this offseason. Milwaukee added Jhoulys Chacin, which helps, and they’ve brought back Yovani Gallardo, which might help. But little more than that.
We expected that the package would be significant given Yelich’s talent and a contract that will pay him around $10 million a year for the next five seasons. It is big with Brinson as the headliner. The young outfielder just appeared 18th on Baseball America’s recently released top-100 list, while Eric Lohenhagen placed a 60 future-value grade on Brinson, making him one of the best prospects in baseball.
The deal isn’t just Brinson and filler, either. Longenhagen listed Monte Harrison as the third-best prospect in the Brewers system, with Isan Diaz close behind at the six spot. All three profile as average regulars at least. Yamamoto is more of a project, but he has an above-average curveball.
What the Brewers have assembled is a cheap, young foundation. They have dozens of would-be major-league contributors, average starters or plug-in role players. Everyone has his own share of upside. But looking at the 2018 Steamer projections, the Brewers don’t have a single player in the top 150. By WAR, you find Jimmy Nelson ranked at No. 156, and Nelson seemed to break out last season as an ace, but he’s also going to miss the start of the regular season, because he’s coming off major shoulder surgery. And Nelson, it turns out, is the Brewers’ only player in the top 300. I don’t mean to suggest that Steamer is flawless, and I don’t mean to suggest that Ryan Braun or Domingo Santana or Chase Anderson are bad. But this isn’t a club with an obvious star. The best player is a question mark, because of his health. Stars aren’t everything, but good teams tend to need them, which could explain the Brewers’ pursuits. They know they already have plenty of upside, but it’d be good to also have some higher-end certainty.
The Brewers have that higher-end certainty. They might still do more.
People are always going to talk about baseball, even when there isn’t much baseball to talk about. Lately, people have been talking about the fact that there isn’t much baseball to talk about, and a recurring theme is that, in this current league environment, there just aren’t enough teams showing a commitment to winning. Now, that’s a belief supported by questionable evidence, and we can only truly evaluate this offseason after it’s finished, but let me say this right now for the Brewers — the Brewers are trying. Emboldened by the success of 2017, the Brewers don’t want to take a step back.
We’re talking about one of the smaller-market clubs in the league, and the Brewers shouldn’t get too much credit for anything until something actually happens. For the time being, the Brewers’ roster remains the same. But from the sounds of things, a decision has been made that the time could be right. As the Brewers emerge from their own tear-down process, they’re ready now to bring in some stars.
I noticed an underlying theme in both pieces I’ve written since coming back, along with many others written this offseason at FanGraphs. If you are a fan of a small- or medium-market team that will never spend to the luxury-tax line and thus always be at a disadvantage, do you want your team to try to always be .500 or better, or do you want them push all the chips in the middle for a smaller competitive window? In my stats vs. scouting article I referenced a progressive vs. traditional divide, which was broadly defined by design, but there are often noticeable differences in team-building strategies from the two overarching philosophies, which I will again illustrate broadly to show the two contrasting viewpoints.
The traditional clubs tend favor prospects with pedigree (bonus or draft position, mostly), with big tools/upside and the process of team-building is often to not push the chips into the middle (spending in free agency, trading prospects) until the core talents (best prospects and young MLB assets) have arrived in the big leagues and have established themselves. When that window opens, you do whatever you can afford to do within reason to make those 3-5 years the best you can and, in practice, it’s usually 2-3 years of a peak, often followed directly by a tear-down rebuild. The Royals appear to have just passed the peak stage of this plan, the Braves hope their core is established in 2019 and the Padres may be just behind the Braves (you could also argue the old-school Marlins have done this multiple times and are about to try again now).
On the progressive side, you have a more conservative, corporate approach where the club’s goal is to almost always have a 78-92 win team entering Spring Training, with a chance to make the playoffs every year, never with a bottom-ten ranked farm system, so they are flexible and can go where the breaks lead them. The valuation techniques emphasize the analytic more often, which can sometimes seem superior and sometimes seem foolish, depending on the execution. When a rare group of talent and a potential World Series contender emerges, the progressive team will push some chips in depending on how big the payroll is. The Rays have a bottom-five payroll and can only cash in some chips without mortgaging multiple future years, whereas the Indians and Astros are higher up the food chain and can do a little more when the time comes, and have done just that.
What we just saw in Pittsburgh (and may see soon in Tampa Bay) is what happens when a very low-payroll team sees a dip coming (controllable talent becoming uncontrolled soon) and doesn’t think there’s a World Series contender core, so they slide down toward the bottom end of that win range so that in a couple years they can have a sustainable core with a chance to slide near the top of it, rather than just tread water. Ideally, you can slash payroll in the down years, then reinvest it in the competing years (the Rays has done this in the past) to match the competitive cycle and not waste free-agent money on veterans in years when they are less needed. You could argue many teams are in this bucket, with varying payroll/margin for error: the D’Backs, Brewers, Phillies, A’s and Twins, along with the aforementioned Rays, Pirates, Indians and Astros.
Eleven clubs were over $175 million in payroll for the 2017 season (Dodgers, Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays, Tigers, Giants, Nationals, Rangers, Orioles, Cubs, Angels), so let’s toss those teams out and ask fans of the other 19 clubs: if forced to pick one or the other, which of these overarching philosophies would you prefer to root for?
