Archive for Brewers

The list of guys with new pitches every spring runs deep (27 last year on Jason Collette’s excellent list). The list of those that continue to throw those pitches during the regular season is a little bit shorter (23 last year). And the group that see real success from adding that extra pitch is even shorter — ten pitchers added more than a percentage point to their swinging strike rate thanks to a new pitch last year.

This year, the Spring Training list was once again full. Brewers’ starter Jimmy Nelson is on there, and he’s often been called a two-pitch guy since his changeup is not a plus pitch. Now he’s added a spike curve to his mid-90s fastball and above-average slider. He used it plenty in his first start, so he’s already made the jump to the second list. Can his new pitch mean continued success this year?

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We’ve already previewed the two western divisions, the NL and the AL. Today, we move into the middle of the country, and look at perhaps the most interesting division in baseball.

The Projected Standings

It’s a three team race at the top, with a couple of teams not quite willing to rebuild but also probably not good enough to contend. Let’s go team by team.

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Earlier today, Kiley McDaniel published his consummately researched and demonstrably authoritative prospect list for the Milwaukee Brewers. What follows is a different exercise than that, one much smaller in scope and designed to identify not Milwaukee’s top overall prospects but rather the rookie-eligible players in the Brewers system who are most ready to produce wins at the major-league level in 2015 (regardless of whether they’re likely to receive the opportunity to do so). No attempt has been made, in other words, to account for future value.

Below are the top-five prospects in the Milwaukee system by projected WAR. To assemble this brief list, what I’ve done is to locate the Steamer 600 projections for all the prospects to whom McDaniel assessed a Future Value grade of 40 or greater. Hitters’ numbers are normalized to 550 plate appearances; starting pitchers’, to 150 innings — i.e. the playing-time thresholds at which a league-average player would produce a 2.0 WAR. Catcher projections are prorated to 415 plate appearances to account for their reduced playing time.

Note that, in many cases, defensive value has been calculated entirely by positional adjustment based on the relevant player’s minor-league defensive starts — which is to say, there has been no attempt to account for the runs a player is likely to save in the field. As a result, players with an impressive offensive profile relative to their position are sometimes perhaps overvalued — that is, in such cases where their actual defensive skills are sub-par.

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Evaluating the Prospects: Rangers, Rockies, D’Backs, Twins, Astros, Cubs, Reds, Phillies, Rays, Mets, Padres, Marlins, Nationals, Red Sox, White Sox, Orioles, Yankees, Braves, Athletics, Angels, Dodgers, Blue Jays, Tigers, Cardinals, Brewers, Indians, Mariners, Pirates, Royals & Giants

Top 200 Prospects Content Index

Scouting Explained: Introduction, Hitting Pt 1 Pt 2 Pt 3 Pt 4 Pt 5 Pt 6

Draft Rankings: 2015, 2016 & 2017

International Coverage: 2015 July 2nd Parts One, Two & Three, 2016 July 2nd

The top of this list is muddled; I could see the top eight guys in almost any order by midseason and I predict I’ll be changing some of these 45 and 50 FV grades in-season. The Brewers haven’t had a great farm system in recent years, but the big league club had a mini-rebuild and the amateur talent acquisition has seem positive early returns from a more aggressive approach. Gilbert Lara is the consensus best player in last summer’s July 2nd crop and he took a notable step forward after signing with an impressive showing at instructs.

From the 2014 draft, I think 3B Jacob Gatewood is a little too risky for $1.83 million, but the early returns on CF Monte Harrison are excellent and there’s plenty to like about LHP Kodi Medeiros, even if he was a bit worn down after signing. All of these three were part of an aggressive approach, so I’d expect one to work out in a big way. The depth is drastically better now than the past few years and the arrow is pointing up in general.  There isn’t a super elite prospect in the system and this is still a system in the bottom third of baseball, but the Brew Crew are deep in that second tier of talent and there’s plenty of depth and upside here to see a higher ranking in next year’s list as a likelihood.

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Doug Melvin, a few days ago:

Melvin wouldn’t comment on the state of possible talks with the Phillies, but acknowledged the lines of communication have remained open with “K-Rod.”

“I don’t know if it’s active, but we still have conversations,” Melvin said. “Mark deals more with that. (Agent) Scott (Boras) keeps calling Mark.”

You know how this goes. Sometimes, Boras has problems finding the right level of demand among 30 baseball front offices. But he’s skilled enough to know that he’s always got more options, as, above 30 baseball front offices, are 30 baseball owners or ownership groups. Said executives are easier to persuade, as they’re in charge of the money, and they tend to know a little less about roster management. So, long story short, Boras has gotten the Brewers to make another commitment to Francisco Rodriguez, this one for at least two years and $13 million. It happened above the general manager’s head, but it’s not a nightmare; Rodriguez remains a useful pitcher, and the Brewers remain on the positive side of the be-a-seller threshold. This is an example of ownership caving, but it’s not a godawful fit.

As is often the case, what I find interesting here is less about the contract, and more about the player. The contract is fine. Maybe a little heavy, I don’t know. But Rodriguez himself has had a particularly fascinating career. So this is a good opportunity to call attention to the transition he’s largely been able to pull off. Rodriguez is still just 33 years old, yet he debuted when he was 20, and his career has had two distinct stages. Rodriguez, at least as a player, has evolved.

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Yesterday, we gave you a little bit of a tease, giving you a glimpse into the making of FanGraphs Top 200 Prospect List. This morning, however, we present the list in its entirety, including scouting grades and reports for every prospect rated as a 50 Future Value player currently in the minor leagues. As discussed in the linked introduction, some notable international players were not included on the list, but their respective statuses were discussed in yesterday’s post. If you haven’t read any of the prior prospect pieces here on the site, I’d highly encourage you to read the introduction, which explains all of the terms and grades used below.

Additionally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you towards our YouTube channel, which currently holds over 600 prospect videos, including all of the names near the top of this list. Players’ individual videos are linked in the profiles below as well.

And lastly, before we get to the list, one final reminder that a player’s placement in a specific order is less important than his placement within a Future Value tier. Numerical rankings can give a false impression of separation between players who are actually quite similar, and you shouldn’t get too worked up over the precise placement of players within each tier. The ranking provides some additional information, but players in each grouping should be seen as more or less equivalent prospects.

If you have any questions about the list, I’ll be chatting today at noon here on the site (EDIT: here’s the chat transcript), and you can find me on Twitter at @kileymcd.

Alright, that’s enough stalling. Let’s get to this.

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Let’s talk about release points. Are you ready to talk about release points? Of course you are — there’s no preparation necessary. If you’re on FanGraphs, there’s no becoming more ready than you already are. Good news!

Among all the things PITCHf/x keeps track of, release point is one of them. Or should I say, two of them; the system tracks both horizontal release point and vertical release point. For our purposes here, we’ll focus on the horizontal release point tracking. On this scale, which is shown in units of feet, 0 corresponds to the middle of the pitching rubber. A negative number means the ball was released more toward the third-base side, and a positive number means the ball was released more toward the first-base side.

Right-handed pitchers have negative horizontal release points. Their arms, after all, hang off from the sides of their bodies, nearer to third base than first. Left-handed pitchers are just the opposite. With side-armers, you’ll see extreme release points, three or four feet from the middle of the rubber. Occasionally you get someone even more extreme than that. A more ordinary pitcher will have a release point separated from the middle by a foot or two. This is only a little bit interesting, but let’s get into some information. Last year’s Brewers were mostly right-handed. Let’s examine those same Brewers.

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We can say some things about how Mike Fiers went astray in 2013, and how changes to his pitching mix, pitches, and spot on the rubber contributed to his return to relevance in 2014. Those things show up just by looking at the different stats and heat maps we have at our disposal. The harder thing to figure out (if it’s at all possible) is *why* these changes worked.

First, the how.

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Back in September, Jeff Sullivan wrote on this very weblog about The Three Most Distinctive Team Philosophies. On Tuesday, I published a piece exploring why Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Wily Peralta fails to record significant strikeouts totals despite possessing elite velocity. This is the result of those posts colliding.
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The Milwaukee Brewers traded a mainstay of their rotation in Yovani Gallardo to the Texas Rangers last week, as you by now are well aware. When a team trades a mainstay of its rotation, it’s natural to look to the rest of the rotation in an attempt to find who will pick up the slack. Literally, that person will be Jimmy Nelson, who is likely to fill the now-open spot in the rotation. But Nelson’s a fifth starter who is 26 has thrown just 79 innings in the MLB, so the expectations of him are somewhat tempered.

You look to the rest of the rotation and you see Kyle Lohse and Matt Garza, two guys whose career trajectories appear to be going down rather than up. Mike Fiers is an interesting case, but believe it or not he’s only a year younger than Garza and since he hasn’t been a big part of the rotation the last two years, the bar isn’t set too high for him, either.

This brings us to Wily Peralta. Peralta is young — he’s just 25. Peralta has been a fixture of the rotation the last two seasons — he’s made 32 starts in each year and racked up 382 innings in the process. Peralta legitimately improved last season — he dropped his ERA-, FIP- and xFIP- while throwing more innings per start. And Peralta is exciting, because he throws really, really hard. But that’s the part I want to talk about.
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