Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Tuesday and Friday I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

It’s understandable to want to blame injuries when your favorite team underperforms expectations. But every team deals with them, and the truly great ones are able to weather that storm and succeed when their best players aren’t in the lineup. The Brewers sure look like a great team right now, with a commanding seven-game lead in the NL Central even after dropping Monday night’s game in Philadelphia. They are where they are despite having a whole rotation’s worth of starters on the injured list, getting zero innings from star closer Devin Williams, and losing important position players Christian Yelich, Rhys Hoskins, and Garrett Mitchell to injury at various points this year.

How has Milwaukee thrived under less-than-ideal circumstances? The answer is one of my favorite topics: depth. For the most part, it’s fairly easy to look at a team’s Opening Day roster or offseason RosterResource page and prognosticate how things will play out if everyone stays reasonably healthy; it’s much harder to go two or three players deep at a position and figure how good a club will be if it has to depend on those guys. The Brewers have assembled a team that may not be as top heavy as some of the other contending clubs, but when it comes to the entire roster, few teams are deeper. So let’s run through some of the unlikely contributors for the Brewers this season.

All stats are updated through the start of play Monday.

Position Players

The Brewers haven’t been terribly unlucky in this department: Yelich missed 25 days with a back strain, Hoskins 17 with a hamstring strain, and Joey Wiemer 16 with knee discomfort. Mitchell has missed the entire season thus far with a fractured finger suffered in the final days of spring training, but if there’s anywhere the Brewers could’ve afforded an injury, it was out on the grass.

Still, the names covering for Mitchell aren’t exactly as expected. Top prospect Jackson Chourio has struggled out of the gate, batting .214/.257/.345 with a 71 wRC+ over 180 plate appearances. While his fielding (2 OAA, 1 DRS) and baserunning (1.7 BsR with seven steals in eight tries) have kept him above replacement level, he obviously hasn’t lived up to the hype thus far.

Fortunately, Blake Perkins has basically been what Milwaukee hoped Chourio would be. The switch-hitter was elite on defense in his rookie year last season, with 11 DRS and 7 OAA in just 400 innings in the outfield, though his bat lagged behind (88 wRC+). This year, his fielding has remained excellent while he’s taken a big step forward at the dish (98 wRC+), especially against righties (114 wRC+).

Perhaps overshadowed by Yelich, William Contreras, and Willy Adames, infielders Joey Ortiz and Brice Turang have both broken out in meaningful ways, lengthening a lineup that looked a little light entering the season. Ortiz leads all rookies this season with 2.0 WAR and his 155 wRC+ is the highest among all big league third basemen with at least 150 plate appearances. He’s also a slick fielder who can also hold his own at second and short. Turang has more than doubled his wRC+ from his rough rookie season last year. He’s also swiped 20 bases in 21 tries and has flashed an elite glove at the keystone. (If you’re noticing a trend here, yes, the Brewers have great defense across the diamond.)

Lastly, I’d be remiss if I failed to mention Gary Sánchez: He’s only caught 11 games so far behind the iron man that is Contreras but is getting plenty of plate appearances at DH. His seven home runs and 116 wRC+ make him one of the game’s best backup catchers, and he’s played some backup first base, too.

Pitching

Here’s where things could have gotten ugly for Milwaukee. Corbin Burnes is an Oriole. Brandon Woodruff and Wade Miley are both out for the entire year. Jakob Junis, Joe Ross, and DL Hall are all on the injured list as well. (Junis and Hall appear to be nearing returns, but they’ll likely pitch out of the bullpen when they’re back.)

How the heck have the Brewers stayed afloat with what’s basically been Freddy Peralta and a second-string cast of other starters? It’s twofold: The replacement arms have filled in more than admirably, and the bullpen has been excellent despite the loss of Williams.

Peralta and Colin Rea are the only arms who remain from the season-opening starting five, and they actually have the highest ERAs in the current four-man rotation (the team has been bullpenning every fifth game). Formerly a failed starter, Bryse Wilson has made a triumphant return to the rotation after working entirely in relief last year. Across seven starts he has a 2.76 ERA and a 3.35 ERA over his 15 total outings this season. (Wilson served as the bulk man in Monday night’s loss to the Phillies, tossing 5.2 innings and allowing three runs.) Robert Gasser, who despite failing to achieve nominative determinism (his fastball averages just 93 mph), has been excellent in his first five starts, walking just one (!) of the 114 batters he’s faced. Unfortunately, the beat will have to go on without Gasser, just as it has without Burnes and Woodruff: The rookie lefty has elbow tightness and soreness and is scheduled to get a second opinion sometime soon; it’d be hard to see him dodging the IL at this point. In the interim, the Brewers could turn to Aaron Ashby or Tobias Myers — both of whom have made starts this year — or perhaps righty Chad Patrick, who’s not exactly a prospect but has pitched well at Triple-A Nashville this year.

Papering over the ragtag rotation has been a well-performing bullpen, belying its 16th-ranked FIP with a sixth-ranked ERA. Going through a handful of closers by June isn’t usually a recipe for success, but the Brewers have kept on chugging despite pulling the plug on Abner Uribe (now in Triple-A) and Joel Payamps as primary closers. The guy right now is Trevor Megill; a concussion and bruised elbow have limited him to just 15 innings, but they’ve been 15 excellent ones, with 21 strikeouts compared to just three walks and a one homer allowed. It’s a continuation of Megill’s breakout 2023 in which he struck out 35% of the batters he faced over 34.2 innings. Before last year, he had a woeful 6.03 ERA in 68.2 combined innings for the Cubs and Twins.

Even more anonymous is Bryan Hudson, who was acquired in a minor trade with the Dodgers over the offseason and is now pitching to a 1.13 ERA (four runs in 32 innings). The 6’8” lefty is tough on both sides of the plate, but he’s been especially lethal against lefties, with a sub-.200 wOBA. Joining him off the scrap heap and pitching well are Enoli Paredes, Jared Koenig, and Kevin Herget, none of whom made the Opening Day roster but have stepped in and pitched like they belong. Like many good bullpens, the Brewers’ is defined by the performances, not the names.

All in all, Pat Murphy’s Brewers are much like the clubs of previous Milwaukee manager Craig Counsell: a whole team that is greater than the sum of its parts, creating a Voltron of a limited number of stars and mostly unheralded names who just get the job done.

The Mariners Add Victor Robles

As first reported by Locked on Mariners’ Ty Dane Gonzalez, former Nationals outfielder Victor Robles will be headed to the other Washington, joining Seattle as backup outfielder who will start primarily against lefty pitching.

Sources: The #Mariners will be filling their open 26-man roster spot with former Nationals OF Victor Robles.

— Ty Dane Gonzalez (@TyDaneGonzalez) June 3, 2024

Robles obviously hasn’t lived up to his prospect billing that plateaued with a fourth-overall ranking in 2018, but with the Mariners, he doesn’t really have to be the guy the Nationals were expecting. He’ll earn the prorated league minimum (under $500,000) while being paid the balance of the $2.65 million the Nationals owe him, and he’s not going to be relied upon to put up big numbers. Instead, he’ll spell Luke Raley or Dominic Canzone against lefties in the corner outfield. His main job will be to catch fly balls, a skill of his that cratered in center field last year but remains strong in left and right.

Last month a piece titled “Player’s View: Tales From the Minor Leagues” ran here at FanGraphs. Comprising a collection of current and former major leaguers relating stories from their time on the farm, it was equal parts entertaining and informative of life below the big league level. What you’re reading now is a followup, albeit with a notable twist. The storytellers here are all broadcasters: two who picked up a microphone after their playing days were over, and three more who never played professionally. As was the case with the earlier piece, many of the stories will leave you laughing, if not shaking your head.

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Jeff Levering, Milwaukee Brewers broadcaster:

“There are a lot of great stories. One I’ll always remember is from when I was [broadcasting] with Springfield, in Double-A. We played a night game in Little Rock and needed to get to Tulsa for a game the next day. There was a torrential downpour — the worst rain I’ve seen in my life — and I was in charge of getting the movies for the bus. Our manager at the time was Pop Warner, who is now the third base coach for the St. Louis Cardinals, and he was staunch about no comedies. It was all horror movies, all the time, and the gorier the better — for him. Anyway, most of the guys were asleep in the back, but some of us were watching and it’s getting to be one of the scariest parts of the movie. This was in the middle of a torrential downpour in rural Arkansas.

“Up ahead we see a pair of headlights, but the headlights are sideways in the middle of the road. Our driver doesn’t see it until the last moment and we missed this car, which had spun out in the middle of the road, by a foot — no less than a foot. We ended up going into the left lane and down into the embankment, and right back up. That woke everybody up. From that point on everyone was awake. It was a really bad accident that could have happened but didn’t happen, and it was the middle of the night. Again, we were in the middle of Arkansas. No one would have found us until the next day. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. I’m not sure that Zach Lowe, the progenitor of this format and an incredible NBA writer, ever thought that it would get spun off into baseball. I’m certain that he didn’t think it would get spun off into baseball by someone who likes both popups and bunts an unhealthy amount. But here we are. Speaking of which, I know what you’re thinking: What does Ben think about the two catcher’s interference infield flies from this week? I thought they were more annoying than amusing, and that’s not what we’re about here at Five Things. So let’s talk about a far more delightful popup, plus some infield hits, pretty pitches, and exciting series.

1. A Schwarbloop
Kyle Schwarber hits majestic home runs. Sometimes they hang in the air for an improbable length of time. Sometimes they get out of the park before you can blink. Not only is there a name for them – Schwarbombs – but Wawa even makes a drink named after them. You can’t get any more Philadelphia than that.
Read the rest of this entry »

Robert Gasser was flying mostly below radar as a prospect when he was first featured here at FanGraphs in July 2022. Pitching in the Midwest League one year after being drafted 71st overall out of the University of Houston, he was putting up solid but by no means eye-catching numbers with San Diego’s High-A affiliate. Earlier in the season he’d been assigned a 40 FV and a no. 14 ranking on our 2022 Padres Top Prospects list.

Shortly after that first piece about Gasser was published, the Padres dealt him to the Brewers as part of the Josh Hader trade, which at the time was widely panned by Milwaukee fans. While the consternation was understandable, the criticism is increasingly abating. Nearly two years later, Gasser is four starts into his MLB career and boasts a 1.98 ERA and a 2.52 FIP over 23 innings. In three of his outings he’s gone at least five frames and surrendered one run or fewer.

How has he gone from a low-profile prospect to a pitcher getting good results at baseball’s highest level? There has been no magic bullet, Gasser said, and he hasn’t made any especially notable adjustments since we first spoke in 2022. Read the rest of this entry »

William Contreras stopped being an unheralded star a while ago. He was merely “the backup catcher” in Atlanta, but he smashed last year as the undisputed starter in Milwaukee and he’s backing it up with another spectacular season. He’s the face of one of Statcast’s new bat speed metrics. He’s a shoo-in All-Star and one of the betting favorites to win NL MVP. So this isn’t a “hey, have you heard he’s good?” article, because of course you have. The real question is, what has he changed this year?

Contreras’ standout skill is his thunderous raw power. He cracked 20 homers in just 376 plate appearances during his breakout 2022 and is one of the hardest swingers in the game. As you might expect, he has swing-and-miss issues, with his 13.4% swinging strike rate the price he pays for trying to crush everything he swings at. But that’s ok. His hard-hit rate, barrel rate, maximum exit velocities, and HR/FB rate are all gaudy.

Here’s the thing, though: While power might be his most obvious carrying tool, Contreras has quietly developed into much more than just a one-note power hitter. You can’t see it in the surface numbers – he’s walking about as much as he always has and striking out as frequently as he did last year – but he’s completely revamped his approach at the plate, and it’s downright sterling these days. In fact, maybe we should be talking less about how Contreras compares to Juan Soto in squared up contact, and more about how he compares to Soto in strike zone mastery. Read the rest of this entry »

Brice Turang grew up swinging a bat, and the fruits of those labors are coming to fruition in his second MLB season. Following up on a rookie campaign in which he logged an abysmal .585 OPS, the 24-year-old Milwaukee Brewers second baseman is flourishing to the tune of a .301/.366/.428 slash line and a 128 wRC+ over 188 plate appearances. Showing that he can be more than a threat on the bases — he swiped 26 bags a year ago and is 19-for-20 so far this season — Turang also has 15 extra-base hits this season, as many as he had in all of 2023.

The son of former big league outfielder Brian Turang, Brice Turang was drafted 21st overall by the Brewers in 2018 out of Santiago High School in Corona, California. He was ranked no. 65 on our Top 100 Prospects list entering last year. At the time, Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin wrote that Turang was “almost certain to have a significant and lengthy big league career,” albeit someone who “has never been a sure bet to do enough offensively to be an impact everyday player.” Two months into his sophomore season, one in which the Brewers are surprisingly atop the NL Central standings, Turang is looking like a hitter — small sample size acknowledged — who you just might not want to bet against.

In the latest installment of my Talks Hitting series, Turang discusses his gap-to-gap approach to his craft, which is driven more by competing than data.

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David Laurila: How have you developed as a hitter over the years?

Brice Turang: “A lot of it is that I hit basically every day. My dad owned a facility and I would go with him from three o’clock to nine o’clock every night. I loved it. I loved going to work with him. I’d be in the cage all the time, hitting, [developing] hand-eye coordination. Then, as you get into pro ball, the work you do is more of a quality-over-quantity type of thing.”

Laurila: There wasn’t nearly as much hitting data available when your father played. How does the way you learned from him relate to the present day?

Turang: “I don’t look at the data. I’m up there to compete and hit the ball hard. I mean, the data is what it is. You can put a number on anything, so I don’t really even think about it. I just compete and try to hit the ball hard up the middle, hit a line drive up the middle.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Portland Sea Dogs roster includes three Top 100 prospects, but neither Roman Anthony (15), Marcelo Mayer (42), nor Kyle Teel (83) has been the Double-A affiliate’s best player so far this season. That distinction belongs to a 23-year-old, shortstop-turned-left-fielder whom the Boston Red Sox drafted 69th overall in 2019 out of the Carlos Beltran Baseball Academy. Along with playing stellar defense at a new position, Matthew Lugo is slashing .306/.404/.653 with 10 home runs and an Eastern League-best 191 wRC+.

Markedly-improved plate discipline has played a big role in his breakout. Last year, Lugo logged a 5.9% walk rate and a 27.6% strikeout rate. This year those numbers are 13.4% and 22.5%.

The key to his newfound ability to dominate the strike zone?

“Timing,” explained Lugo, who takes his cuts from the right side. “Last year, I had a lot of movement with my hands, which made me inconsistent being on time with the pitcher. My hands were very low, and then when I got to the launch position they were very high; there was a lot of distance for my hands to go through. This year, I’m closer to my launch position before I swing. I also had a [bat] wiggle and this year I just get to my spot with no wiggle. I’m getting into my spot early and have more time to see the pitch, so I’m making better swing decisions.”

The decision to move Lugo off of his natural position and into an outfield corner wasn’t based on defensive shortcomings, but rather on the arrival of Mayer. The high-ceiling shortstop was promoted to Portland last year on Memorial Day weekend, and given his first-round pedigree, he wasn’t going to be the one moving. Read the rest of this entry »

This article isn’t really about Joey Ortiz. Or, well, it is, but it’s also about how numbers will fool you. Let’s start with a few numbers, then. Ortiz is walking 12.9% of the time so far this year, far more than average and far more than he ever did in the high minors. He’s chasing pitches outside of the strike zone only 24% of the time, a huge change in approach. Last year in the minor leagues, that number stood at 34.5%. As a result, he’s swinging and missing far less often. There’s the story of how Ortiz has improved.

Just one problem: That story doesn’t hold up to closer examination. Let’s break the strike zone up into four parts the way Baseball Savant and the Statcast team do it. There’s the heart of the plate (heart), the edges of the plate and the area just off of it (shadow), the area where good breaking pitches often end up (chase), and the land of non-competitive pitches (waste). You’d expect Ortiz to swing less frequently than average at chase and waste pitches. You’d be wrong:

That’s baffling. For comparison’s sake, teammate Rhys Hoskins has similar chase and zone swing rates, and he’s swinging at 17% of chase pitches and 1% of waste pitches. He’s also swinging more frequently than Ortiz at pitches over the heart of the plate.
Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome back to Top of the Order, where every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll be starting your baseball day with some news, notes, and thoughts about the game we love.

I don’t love to evaluate teams just by watching them and feeling the vibes, but in deciding what to write about for this morning, I kept coming back to the feeling that the Giants have played a lot of ugly, soulless, lopsided losses. They’re not horrible overall, but they definitely haven’t been good, which puts them in a purgatory of sorts. Fortunately, we’ve got have a good encapsulation in statistical form to prove how disappointing they’ve been. Connor Grossman, a former Sports Illustrated baseball editor who writes “Giants Postcards” on Substack, noted something interesting in Tuesday’s newsletter: That the Giants are 1-20 in games when they give up four or more runs.

I hopped over to Stathead to get a look at how San Francisco compared to other teams in such games, and it’s certainly not a pretty picture. Entering play Tuesday, only seven teams have allowed at least four runs in a game more often than the Giants, and no other team has performed worse when they do. To be clear, these are hard games to win; only the Orioles are breaking even in such games, and the league as a whole is a ghastly 143-425, winning just over 25% of the time. But the Giants’ pitifulness in these situations is setting them further back than any other team; the lowly Marlins, Angels, White Sox, and Rockies are the only other teams with at least 20 losses when they allow more than three runs in a game, but they’ve won more than one of those games. The Giants, of course, had visions of contending this season. Instead, it looks like whatever they were seeing was a mirage.

Here’s the thing: It’s true that the San Francisco offense isn’t good, but it really isn’t bottom of the barrel, either. The problem isn’t so much that the Giants can’t score; it’s that they just can’t score enough runs when they need them. They are scoring 4.8 runs per game when their pitchers give up three or fewer runs, but they are averaging a putrid 2.9 runs in the games when they allow at least four.

San Francisco’s lineup, as it has been for the entirety of the Farhan Zaidi era, was constructed to have the whole be greater than the sum of its parts, even with the additions of everyday bats Matt Chapman, Jung Hoo Lee, and Jorge Soler. Sure, these aren’t Gabe Kapler’s Giants with platoons seemingly all over the diamond, but the team still uses tandems at first base (LaMonte Wade Jr. and Wilmer Flores) and right field (Mike Yastrzemski and Austin Slater). This strategy could have worked, except Flores and Slater aren’t pulling their weight against lefties and the three new guys have all been somewhere between underwhelming and bad. That puts a lot of pressure on the pitchers to be perfect, and this rotation sure isn’t that, even with Logan Webb.

As if to provide further support that they can score, but only when they get good pitching, the Giants beat the Rockies on Tuesday night, 5-0. They’re now 15-1 in games when their pitchers allow no more than three runs.

Rhys Lightning Is Sparking With the Brewers

After missing all of last year recovering from ACL surgery, Rhys Hoskins signed a two-year, $34 million contract with the Brewers that affords him the opportunity to opt out at the end of this season. It’s too early to tell if he’ll decide to test free agency again this offseason, but so far, he’s fared quite well in his new digs.

Over 33 games, Hoskins is batting .218/.324/.437 (118 wRC+), down from his Phillies norm of .242/.353/.492 (126 wRC+) but still solid. Considering he just came back from a serious knee injury, it’s not surprising that he isn’t running well, both by the eye test and the statistics (his sprint speed is down 0.4 feet per second), or that he’s required more maintenance (15 DH days to 18 games at first base), but at the plate he’s been about as good as Milwaukee could’ve hoped.

Hoskins is a far more selective hitter this season, with a swing rate under 40% for the first time since 2019, and his 20.8% chase rate is the lowest it’s been since 2018, his first full year in the big leagues, according to Statcast. More interesting, though, is what happens when he actually does pull the trigger: He’s running the lowest in-zone contact rate of his career, yet he’s connecting more often than ever on pitches out of the zone. His 68.3% contact rate on pitches outside the zone is over six points above his previous career high and a staggering 10 points higher than it was in 2022.

While “hit fewer pitches inside the zone and make more contact outside of it” doesn’t seem like a sound strategy, it hasn’t affected Hoskins’ underlying numbers and may counterintuitively be helping them. The righty thumper’s xSLG and xwOBA are both markedly improved from 2022 and much more in line with his stronger 2021, and he’s also hitting fewer groundballs than at any point in his career. That’s important because the Brewers signed him to slug, not to try and beat out infield singles, and so far, slug is what he’s done. In Tuesday’s 6-5 win over the Royals, Hoskins hit his seventh home run over the season, tied for the most on the team.

Quick Hits

• The Cubs’ streak of scoreless starts ended on Tuesday when Craig Counsell extended Shota Imanaga to the eighth inning, only to watch him give up a two-run homer to Jurickson Profar that gave the Padres the lead. The Cubs came back and won, 3-2, on a Michael Busch walk-off home run to maintain their virtual tie with Milwaukee atop the NL Central.

• The Yankees pounded Justin Verlander for seven runs in their 10-3 win over the Astros on Tuesday. The highlight came when Giancarlo Stanton led off the fifth inning with a 118.8 mph home run; that’s the hardest ball hit off Verlander since at least 2015, when Statcast started measuring exit velocity.

Pat Murphy is nominally in his first season as a full-time MLB manager, having previously helmed the Padres for a 96-game interim stint in 2015. But it’s not like he just fell off the turnip truck; he started coaching so long ago I’m not sure they even had trucks or turnips back then. Murphy had been Craig Counsell’s bench coach for eight seasons when he got promoted this past winter. When he took that job, he’d already been working in baseball for 33 seasons, all but one of them as either a minor league manager or college head coach.

Murphy’s seen some stuff.

About halfway through spring training, when Murphy named Brice Turang his starting second baseman, he accompanied the announcement with some glowing praise: “I think this kid’s gonna make a quantum leap… His swing decisions will be better, his contact will be better, and his damage will come.”

At the time, it seemed like puffery, an attempt to build confidence in a former first-round pick who’d been sub-replacement level in his first major league season. Now, it looks like Murphy, endowed with the wisdom of four decades’ experience, can predict the future. Read the rest of this entry »