As has been written ad nauseum both before and during the season, the Milwaukee Brewers went all-in for 2011, particular with respect to upgrading their pitching rotation. The Brewers have won a divisional title for the first time since 1982 and are going to the playoffs for the first time since 2008, so it worked. In 2010, the Brewers starters compiled 7.7 WAR, the third-worst in baseball. In 2011, the remade rotation accumulated 12.7 WAR, which only put them in the middle of the pack, but five wins is a nice improvement. How does the rotation stack up against the others in the playoffs?

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Players who combine power and speed are fun. There, I said it. I know, shocking stuff. Most of the time such players are good, but not always. I didn’t find any bad offensive seasons with 30 or more home runs and steals, but once I lowered the standard to 20-20, well, let’s just say some guys could stand to take a few more walks. It’s a bit of a random collection, overall, so let’s take a look at the worst individual offensive seasons with at least 20 home runs and 20 steals.

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What would it take for a pitcher to win the National League MVP award?

Really there are two questions here: What would it take for voters to vote a starter into the award? And what would it take for a pitcher to be worth more than a position player?

First, a bit of history. Twenty-one pitchers have won the award since 1911, meaning it happens about once every 10 years. The last time it happened for a starter was 1986, when Roger Clemens won the award with a 24-4 record and 238 strike outs. Those benchmarks won’t be hit this year, but is it possible that some of the conditions will be met? Could Roy Halladay or Clayton Kershaw find themselves with two pieces of mega-hardware after the season?

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This past offseason, the Milwaukee Brewers took a risk that has paid conspicuously excellent dividends for the 2011 season, trading away the young and (generally) talented Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar, Jeremy Jeffress, Brett Lawrie, and Jake Odorizzi for the slightly older and more reliably talented Zack Greinke and Shaun Marcum.

Greinke and Marcum, worth about six wins between them thus far in 2011, have been essential contributors to a Brewers team that, as of publication, is 7.5 games up in the NL Central and has something better than a 95% chance of making the postseason. It’s an extraordinary turnaround for a team that finished below .500 in 2010 and featured one of the NL’s worst starting-pitching staffs.

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It all came together for the Milwaukee Brewers on July 26th. After trailing the NL Central by a half game, something clicked. Since that period the Brewers have gone 18-2; propelling themselves into first place by seven games. With their recent streak, the Brewers have over a 95% chance at making the post-season (per Baseball Prospectus). Over the past twenty games, the Brewers have been unbeatable. Let’s take a look at their current hot streak.
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Earlier this summer, I took an easy (but deserved) shot at the Florida Marlins’ ownership for never really putting out the effort to win despite having a solid core of young talent for years and a large profit margin thanks to revenue sharing. I’m not taking it back now, but while it is admittedly fun to be negative (kudos on the handling of the Logan Morrison situation, boys!), I come today not to bury two more teams, but to praise them. The Detroit Tigers and Milwaukee Brewers are both currently winning their respective divisions. Whether or not it lasts, they deserve credit for going for it when they easily could have justified playing it safe. They are the anti-Marlins of 2011.

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We often roll our eyes when announcers cite a player’s stats over the past 15 days. We’ll groan when they tout how many home runs he’s hit since the All-Star break. We’ll throw the remote when a pitcher’s last five starts are mentioned. And yet, when we attempt to analyze a player here, there’s nary a blink if ‘last season’ is mentioned.

Well, guess what. Seasons are also arbitrary endpoints. Yes, they are arbitrary endpoints that allow for easy analysis, and ones that we have all agreed to use. And, if we didn’t use them, statistical analysis would be rendered fantastically difficult. Our record books would look very strange. We’d have to phrase things very carefully.

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…since 1974, when our play-by-play database begins.

On Monday, I posted about the three worst double plays ever according to Win Probability Added (WPA). From 1974 through yesterday’s games, there have been 89072 double plays caused by groundouts (I’m leaving out other sorts of double plays as, from the hitter’s perspective at least, they have more to do with dumb luck). Of those, only 51 have a positive WPA. However, it does happen from time to time, and while the shifts aren’t as dramatic in terms of WPA, the circumstances make them more interesting (at least to me) than the negative WPA occasions.

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Whence we last examined yonder batting orders, we came away with several expected observations (Jose Bautista plays baseball like a video game, the Oakland Athletics do not care much for scoring runs, Rick Ankiel and Ian Desmond are not feared hitters, and so forth) as well as a number of curious findings (the Cubs lead-off combo was tops in the majors, the 7th hitters on AL teams were worse than the 9th hitters, NL managers effectively managed the bottoms of their lineups, and such).

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Brewers GM Doug Melving might have been diplomatically non-committal when discussing Francisco Rodriguez’s role, but it’s clear to just about everyone that he will not be the team’s closer. He’s qualified, to be certain. Although his stuff has diminished a bit he still strikes out more than a batter per inning and for the second straight year is walking fewer batters than in the past. The Brewers, however, have two strong reasons to keep him in the setup role: the presence of John Axford, and the $17.5 million 2012 option that will vest if Rodriguez finishes 21 more games this season. But if something goes wrong with the former, it could lead to the latter.

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