Archive for Brewers

Okay, I’ll grant that now isn’t the best time to talk about the National League MVP Award, with just weeks to go in a closely competitive regular season. I’ll grant that now isn’t the best time to talk about a Brewer winning the NL MVP Award, with the team in a bit of a slide that recently knocked it out of first place. And I’ll grant that now isn’t the best time to talk about Jonathan Lucroy winning the NL MVP award, since he had a stronger first half than his second half has been to date. In a few senses, the timing here could be better. But the timing isn’t better, and we’re already here, so: how’s Jonathan Lucroy look as an MVP candidate?

His is an odd name to see in the running. I think we’re all still getting used to the idea of Lucroy being a really terrific player, and the NL is the league with Clayton Kershaw and Andrew McCutchen and Giancarlo Stanton in it. Last year, McCutchen won the league MVP. Kershaw won the league Cy Young. Lucroy’s never received a single down-ballot MVP vote. But then, before this year, Lucroy hadn’t been an All-Star, so things can change, and Lucroy has more than earned consideration. By no means is this a slam dunk and there are still a few weeks for the overall picture to shift, but we can run through the Lucroy argument point by point.

Jonathan Lucroy has an MVP case. What follows is why.

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With two losses in a row to the Cubs, the Brewers have fallen out of first place in the National League Central. The National League West looks a lot like the American League West: Whichever team of top two teams in the West does not win the division very probably will be a very good first Wild Card team. If the current standings hold, the Brewers would be the second Wild Card team.

The second Wild Card spot is not nearly as desirable as winning the division, of course, but it is still much better than sitting at home during the playoffs. Moreover, the Brewers are just one game behind the Cardinals. A roughly one-in-three shot at winning the division (and one-in-two of making the playoffs) is not bad at all.

Milwaukee was not projected to be terrible, so this year has not been totally out of nowhere. Like the Royals, for example, they projected to be a roughly .500 team in a division that was not terribly strong. Still, the Brewers’ long stand on top of the Central this season was pretty surprising. As with all teams, there have been various surprise performances (on balance good for the Brewers).

One particularly intriguing aspect of the Brewers’ success in 2014 is their lack of an obvious “ace” – which is sometimes said to be necessary for a team to be successful – in their starting rotation. Read the rest of this entry »

Three years ago, the BBWAA opened their doors to FanGraphs; currently, four of our writers are members, including David Laurila, Eno Sarris, Carson Cistulli, and myself. Having that access has allowed David and Eno to do really interesting work in combining data with comments from the players, including Eno’s piece on Jacob deGrom from this morning, but being in the BBWAA also comes with other privileges, including voting on postseason awards. For the first time this year, I’ve been selected to represent the Atlanta chapter in the NL voting, and I’ll be casting a ballot for both Manager of the Year and Most Valuable Player.

As part of the conditions of being invited to participate, this means that I won’t be able to talk about who I’m planning on voting for until after the ballot is announced in November. However, I can talk about the questions I’m going to have to answer for myself when deciding how to vote, and no player is going to force me to come to a decision on what I feel is an unanswered question more so than Jonathan Lucroy.

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Last night was about the pitchers. Nearly every game had at least one good starting pitcher performance, and many of them we’re not even going to talk about today. Max Scherzer’s 11 strikeouts? Nope. What about Tyson Ross‘ 11 strikeouts? Nope, not them either. We’re not even going to talk about Jeff Samardzija and Wei-Yin Chen, who combined to allow one run across 16 innings. No, we’re going to talk about the five pitchers who posted a Game Score of 75 or better last night — Corey Kluber, Marcus Stroman, Danny Duffy, Matt Garza and Cole Hamels.
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Major League Baseball’s signing period for international prospects kicked off on Wednesday and will continue until June 15, 2015. Teams may sign players residing outside the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico who have or will turn 16 by September 1 of this year. Just a few years ago, teams were allowed to spend as much as they wanted to develop and sign international prospects. That all changed with the current collective bargaining agreement, which went into effect in 2012.

The CBA imposes bonus pool limits on international signings. The team with the worst winning percentage in the prior year receives the largest bonus pool for the next year. The team with the best winning percentage receives the smallest. The remaining 28 teams fall in between, again according to their winning percentage from the prior season. International players who are 23 years of age or older, and have played professional baseball for five or more years, are exempt from the bonus pool limits. Click here for the list of bonus pools by team, with the Houston Astros on top with $5,015,400 and the St. Louis Cardinals at the bottom with $1,866,300.

In additional to the bonus pools, MLB also assigns slot values for international prospects, even though there is no international draft. But the slot values are tradeable, and are therefore valuable for teams looking to spend more on international prospects than their assigned bonus pool would allow. A team can trade for up to 50% of its bonus pool, but it must trade for a specific slot value. For example, a team with a $4 million bonus pool can trade for up to $2 million in pool space, but it must receive in return specific slot values that add up to $2 million, or less. Click here for the list of 120 slot values assigned to each team. The Astros have the top slot value of $3,300,900 and the Cardinals have the lowest at $137,600.

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Way back at the beginning of May, the Diamondbacks were preparing to play the Brewers, and Kirk Gibson warned his pitchers about Carlos Gomez. He tipped them off about his aggressive tendencies, making clear that the pitchers would need to be careful. On Monday, May 5, Arizona got out to a 1-0 lead in the top of the first. In the bottom of the first, Mike Bolsinger started with a cutter, and Gomez swung, and the score was 1-1. One pitch, one swing, one dinger. It was exactly what Gibson warned against, and it’s just one of those things that Gomez does.

Said Gibson:

“We didn’t execute pitches from the first pitch of the game,” Gibson said. “I talked to you guys about Gomez. He’s a first-pitch fastball hitter and we threw one there and hit he it out of the park.”

Admitted Bolsinger:

“I knew he was a first-pitch guy, but I didn’t know he’d swing like that on the first pitch of the game,” he said. “I thought I could (sneak it by him), but I guess I didn’t.”

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We’ve known for some time that the best catcher in baseball plays in the National League. There’s only been a small pool of candidates, and for a long time, the debate was more about No. 2 than about No. 1. No. 1 was thought to be a virtual given — it doesn’t get much better than Yadier Molina. But every so often, a position needs to be revisited. Players and player pools are always changing, and right now there’s an extremely compelling argument to be made that the best catcher in baseball is Jonathan Lucroy. Hell, the way Lucroy’s been playing, he doesn’t want there to be an argument at all.

For years, people aware of pitch-framing research have been plugging Lucroy as underrated. He’s among the game’s most anonymous stars, as evidenced by the probability you might not have considered him a star in the first place. From analysts, he’s drawn attention for his defense, so perhaps not enough attention has gone to his offense. And his offense has been very good. At the moment he’s got an average starting with 3, an on-base percentage starting with 4, and a slugging percentage starting with 5. This is the build of an MVP candidate. In the 2007 draft, Lucroy was considered the second-best offensive catcher, behind the allegedly god-like Matt Wieters. It’s Lucroy who’s been the better hitter each of the last three seasons.

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It’s fairly safe to say that Arizona manager Kirk Gibson doesn’t care for Ryan Braun that much. Braun torched Gibson’s Diamondbacks in the 2011 LCS, just before Braun was found to have been taking some form of PEDs. The suspension, repeal fiasco, and Braun’s name coming up in the Biogenesis scandal never sat right with Gibson and he’s been a vocal critic ever since.

This fact and this fact alone could be the reason D-Backs reliever Evan Marshall threw at Ryan Braun twice in a row, hitting him the second time and earning an ejection. It could have been compounded by the fact that Brewers starter Kyle Lohse hit two batters himself earlier in the game. It could have to do with the two batters that were hit the night before. There could be a lot of reasons for it, but one thing is clear; the Diamondbacks playing tough-guy baseball was a bad move as far as the numbers go and ended up costing them the game in this case. Read the rest of this entry »

You think about a playoff-contending team that really needs help at shortstop, and your mind immediately goes to the Detroit Tigers. Jose Iglesias‘ shin injury took him out of the mix before the season even started, and since Detroit never did go and get Stephen Drew before he returned to Boston, they’ve attempted to get by with a collection of odds and ends. They tried the ancient Alex Gonzalez, who quickly proved he was past his sell-by date. He gave way to Andrew Romine, acquired from the Angels during camp, with a touch of Danny Worth now and then. Romine’s wRC+ of 49 is the highest of that trio, so earlier this month they DFA‘d Worth and went with Eugenio Suarez, who has impressed in limited time and should hopefully prevent them from any further thoughts of asking first base coach Omar Vizquel to come out of retirement.

Maybe Suarez works out. Maybe he doesn’t, and the Tigers end up going out and getting Jimmy Rollins or Everth Cabrera or Ben Zobrist or Didi Gregorius or whatever shortstops become available. Either way, when the trade deadline gets a little closer and you start thinking about team needs, you’re likely going to think about the Tigers and their shortstops.

What you’re probably not going to think about are the Milwaukee Brewers, because they have a 24-year-old shortstop who made the All-Star team last year. They have playoff hopes, and they have Jean Segura. What they also have is a considerable issue.

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As we creep up on the beginning of May, the Milwaukee Brewers have the best record in baseball. At 19-7, they’ve thrust themselves squarely into playoff contention, even if the pre-season projections mostly saw them as a third wheel in a difficult division; their early success combined with the struggles of their direct competition have opened the door for the Brewers to make a real run at the postseason. As Jeff noted two weeks ago, it doesn’t even matter all that much that our projections still aren’t that bullish on their future performance, because the cushion they’ve created with a strong first month of the season gives them plenty of room to regress and still be in contention.

Which is a good thing, because there’s almost certainly some pretty harsh regression coming the Brewers direction; one of the core foundations of their strong start has been a remarkable performance from their bullpen.

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