Crowd-Sourced OOTP Brewers: Allen a Day’s Work

When we last checked in on our partially crowd-run Out Of The Park Baseball team, the season wasn’t yet underway. We spent the offseason building pitching depth after a nightmarish injury season left us with a bullpen made of duct tape and late-season callups. In an effort to avoid a recurrence of that problem, we came into this season with pitching depth that could best be described as excessive.

Even after trading Eric Lauer (more on that in a second), the team went seven deep on starters: Brandon Woodruff, Kevin Gausman, Collin McHugh, Freddy Peralta, Adrian Houser, Corbin Burnes, and Brent Suter are all at least candidates for a rotation spot. Surely, I (and you) reasoned, that depth will sustain us even if injuries become a problem again.

Good news: through 42 games, injuries haven’t been a problem. Our top five starters have made all 42 starts, though virtual Adrian Houser is headed for the bullpen unless he turns things around quickly; his 10.64 ERA isn’t reflective of his true talent, but his 9.25 FIP isn’t exactly a great sign. He’s become a two-pitch pitcher in this simulation, so a swap with Suter might suit both.

Unfortunately, the rest of the team hasn’t held up so well on the injury front. Let’s turn our focus to the infield. Lauer was part of a deal that netted us a prospect I’ve had my eye on for quite a while, both in real life and this game. Nick Allen is a glove-first shortstop who put up an excellent offensive season in High-A in 2019. In our alternate history version of the 2020 season, he stormed through the minors: a 139 wRC+ in a repeat of High-A, a 121 wRC+ in 37 games of Double-A, and finally an 82 wRC+ and 1.1 WAR in 46 games in the majors.

Allen’s glove cemented him as our everyday shortstop, but the team was hardly short for infielders. In fact, our infield depth looked a lot like our pitching depth going into the season. As an added bonus, many of these infielders are positionally versatile. Here’s a visual description of the modularity:

Kingery and Holt stand out as the most flexible, and it’s a good thing: to get everyone enough playing time, Holt and Kingery have both taken turns in right field, even with a DH. The logjam looked severe enough that I considered giving Brice Turang, the team’s top prospect, extended time in the outfield to fit him onto the roster in 2021.

I needn’t have bothered, because the injury woes that hit our pitching staff in 2020 have migrated to the infield in 2021. Kingery was the first casualty; a sprained ankle cost him two weeks at the end of April. No problem, though: Holt and Sogard made the infield work seamlessly. Urías and Allen are fixtures at second and shortstop, and the rest of the infield can fit in around them. Easy peasy — good thing we had all this depth.

Five days later, digital Hiura broke his wrist. He was mashing to start the season — .300/.370/.608, good for a 146 wRC+. The depth was starting to look thin, but Belt and Holt can both handle first base, so there were no spots where the team desperately needed assistance despite two key players missing. Again — good thing we had all this depth.

Three days later, Urías was diagnosed with knee tendinitis. He’d been playing out of his mind as well, hitting .354/.447/.449 with phenomenal second base defense. His injury will only cost him two weeks — he’s currently three days away from returning — but the situation was becoming dire. Kingery only overlapped with Urías on the IL by two days, but I did what I’d considered unthinkable at the start of the season: I added Turang to the 40-man roster and he made his major league debut at third base.

It was supposed to be nothing more than a glorified cameo, but the injury gods haven’t cooperated. Two days after Urías was injured, Sogard too fell foul of our poor luck. He fractured his wrist and will miss several months recovering, a tough break that will likely squeeze him off the roster in the meantime.

Luckily, the team’s construction has allowed us to weather these storms without fielding any truly dire lineups, though more tests are coming: Lorenzo Cain, now in a platoon with Corey Ray, left the game today with an undisclosed injury and might be out for a while. At 20-22, the team is still in the hunt in a characteristically mediocre NL Central, but our margin for error has declined significantly.

In roughly three weeks, the team should have everyone except Sogard back. That leads me to the question I’d like to put to the crowd today. You see, my prospect crush on Allen hasn’t exactly panned out so far this year. He’s hitting a woeful .182/.248/.223, and all the baserunning value in the world can’t turn that into an acceptable offensive line. He’s been roughly replacement level (-0.1 WAR) despite defensive value that’s second only to Andrelton Simmons among all shortstops.

The offense is failing for exactly the reason you’d expect when you look at our scout’s evaluation:

With no power to speak of (these grades are all on the 20-80 scale), his eye and contact haven’t been able to pick up the slack. An ISO of .041 is unsustainably low, and he managed a mark of .087 last year, but however you feel about his true talent and long-term potential, the fact remains: he’s been replacement level so far this year despite sterling defense, and our top prospect plays the same position. Perhaps sending Allen to Triple-A to reboot while Turang starts would be a better move for the team.

Turang, for his part, hasn’t disappointed. In the 10 games he’s played so far, he’s hitting a beastly .296/.424/.593, good for a 166 wRC+ and 0.4 WAR already. He’s not the defender that Allen is at short, and his long-term home will be either second or third, but he’s no slouch there either; he checks in as a 60 per our scouts, with 65 range portending an ability to stick at the position if there weren’t a better player waiting in the wings.

His batting potential is walk-focused:

Quite frankly, he’s not that different from Allen at present, at least as far as these ratings go. He’s trading a bit of contact for some walks and a handful of home runs. Both are plus baserunners. Neither will knock the cover off the ball. Again per our scouts, both would be marginally below-average regulars today.

Given their age (Allen is 22, Turang 21), a pit stop at Triple-A would hardly be a disaster. Turang started his season there after only 104 previous plate appearances above A ball. Allen could easily have been there; my high valuation of defense and his scintillating 2020 combined to earn him a shot, but he’s hardly written into the lineup in stone despite his defensive prowess.

What will it be, fellow managers? Should we stick with Allen’s superlative glove and wait for his batting line to improve? It wouldn’t take much — he’s a true terror on the basepaths, which gives him a tailwind, and even with his disastrous start he’s been replacement level by dint of his defense.

Alternatively, should we let Turang cook? He’s done nothing but hit since the start of the 2020 season; the last time he posted an OBP below .380 at any level was in 2019, and heck, he was at .384 in his main minor league stop that year. He’s moonlighting at third base at the moment while Kingery mans second, but he’s a plus defensive shortstop. He might struggle offensively at the big league level, but not to the same extent as Allen; his walk rate alone gives him a higher floor.

If neither of those excite you, should we make some kind of trade? We could trade one of these shortstops, though I’ll warn you that I’m opposed to this course of action; the infield carnage the team has faced so far this year has me hesitant to trade versatile fielders. We could also try to move either Urías or Kingery to open up the space for both phenoms, though again, I’m not a big fan of this option, merely presenting it to the group.

What will it be?

Regardless of what the crowd decides, we’ll have a few weeks to mull over our options. Health isn’t a given, and ours particularly so; trainer Scott Barringer is probably updating his resume as we speak, though he appears to be better than any of the alternatives I could replace him with. The future left side of our infield is in Milwaukee ahead of schedule — it’s up to us to determine which part of the future stays.