Doug Melvin Made All The Right Moves
“Progress always involves risks. You can’t steal second base and keep your foot on first.” — Frederick B. Wilcox
Prior to the 2011 season, the Milwaukee Brewers were largely viewed as a team in flux.
Prince Fielder was rumored to be on the trading block for the right price. The starting rotation was coming off a collective 4.65 ERA in 2010, and the free agent market provided little hope for a small-market team like the Brewers.
Many folks favored a quasi-rebuilding season. Trade a couple impending free agents and acquire some valuable, cost-controlled pitching to build for 2013 and beyond.Fortunately, Brewers’ GM Doug Melvin had an ace or two up his sleeve that nobody in the baseball world saw coming.
He transformed the second-worst starting rotation in the National League into a legitimate strength after he traded top-prospect Brett Lawrie to Toronto for right-hander Shaun Marcum and a package of four prospects to Kansas City for former Cy Young winner Zack Greinke (and, unfortunately, Yuniesky Betancourt).
Marcum compiled a 3.54 ERA and 3.73 FIP during the regular season, which translated to a +2.7 WAR season. One could easily argue that the Brewers surrendered too much to acquire Marcum – Brett Lawrie is terrific, but scouts were not 100% agreed upon Lawrie’s ultimate usefulness in the big leagues. And certainly, no one saw him bursting onto the scene with a .293/.373/.580 triple-slash line as a rookie.
You must give something significant up to acquire quality starting pitching in this league, and the early return for both sides is positive. Obviously, six years of cost-controlled production from Lawrie would be a benefit to Milwaukee, but Marcum has been instrumental in changing the quality of pitching in Milwaukee. It’s easy to forget that he had a 2.21 ERA in April while Greinke was injured and Yovani Gallardo struggled.
Greinke has been the best pitcher of the bunch, even if his ERA was fourth-best on the team. His 2.98 FIP and 2.56 xFIP, along with his ridiculous 10.54 K/9 strikeout rate, illustrate just how talented and productive he is for Milwaukee.
The best part of the Marcum and Greinke acquisitions for the Brewers is that both will return for the 2012 season. Neither are rentals, which should help the club sustain postseason contention past this year.
Those two moves were the high-profile ones for Doug Melvin, but the Brewers’ GM has hit home runs across the board.
Prior to the season, he acquired the much-maligned Nyjer Morgan for Class-A utility man Cutter Dykstra. Morgan’s big personality meshed with the Milwaukee clubhouse right away. The production was better than expected, too. The 31-year-old “Tony Plush” hit .304/.357/.421 with plus-defense in center field.
In short, Melvin picked up a +4.0 WAR player for a throwaway piece in the minors. That cannot be seen as anything other than an unequivocal “win.”
The final big trade that Melvin made did not come prior to the season, but it also shocked the baseball world. The New York Mets have struggled with their finances all season and needed to unload Francisco Rodriguez and his troublesome contract. No one was talking about the Brewers because they already possessed a fantastic closer in John Axford, but Melvin slipped in and acquired K-Rod for peanuts to lock down the set-up role in Milwaukee.
Rodriguez has a 1.86 ERA and 2.23 FIP since joining the Brewers. He stabilized the bullpen and allowed Takashi Saito and LaTroy Hawkins to move to the middle innings, where they have thrived.
Aside from the high-profile trades, Melvin has also acquired other quality talent that largely goes unnoticed:
RHP Takashi Saito: 2.03 ERA
INF Jerry Hairston Jr.: .274/.348/.379 — and now starting at third base during the playoffs
In a baseball culture that is ultimately judged after-the-fact, Doug Melvin has done a tremendous job transforming the Milwaukee Brewers from a 77-win club to a 96-win club that won the NL Central pennant.
It was not without considerable risk, though. The Brewers traded away quality talent in Brett Lawire, Jake Odorizzi, and Alcides Escobar (amongst others). It is talent that should spent plenty of time in the major leagues.
But, as the Brewers sit in the NLDS ahead 2-0 over the Diamondbacks, Doug Melvin appears to have won the jackpot for now.
J.P. Breen is a graduate student at the University of Chicago. For analysis on the Brewers and fantasy baseball, you can follow him on Twitter (@JP_Breen).
Melvin has done a terrific job, and it’s good that someone noticed that. It never seems like anyone has anything good to say about the Brewers, which is unfortunate, they’re as deserving as anyone to win it all.
I hope they do, it might encourage more teams to make trades to improve themselves in a more major way than getting a LOOGY or something.
I hope they do well as the playoffs churn onward. The risk of perhaps a few years in the wilderness is totally worth it if you can just win the World Series one time. If the Braves hadn’t won the World Series, that otherwise ridiculous tenure at the top of the East would not have mattered. It’s about winning it all.
And if Fielder is smart, he’d realize that he could be a fixture in a dominating NL Central team for years to come instead of running to play with a team that might not be able to field the complimentary pieces after breaking the bank on him.
have the k-rod prospects to the mets been named yet?
Yes.
RHP Adrian Rosario, a young reliever who has more stuff than production at this point, and LHP Daniel Ray Herrera, a lefty reliever who has LOOGY ceiling (at most).
Nothing of significance.
As a Jays fan, I’m happy for Marcum and the Brewers. Their organization went all in this year and it paid off. It’s also nice when a high profile trade works out for both teams involved.
Congrats on your first post! Only issue is this line:
“He [K-Rod] stabilized the bullpen and allowed Takashi Saito and LaTroy Hawkins to move to the middle innings, where they have thrived.”
I’m pretty sure we don’t actually believe that it matters what inning a reliever pitches in. I haven’t been paying attention to this, but would it be more accurate to say that the move gives the Brewers more flexibility to take advantage of matchups and less vulnerability to LHers? After-all, the Brewers pen is quite right-handed and it helps to add a player who can be effective against hitters of either handedness.
The bullpen was ALL right-handed (the playoff bullpen has 5th starter Narveson in the pen for the playoffs), and Roenicke didn’t seem to work match-ups at all.
Good article Jim.
The Brewers do deserve a lot of credit. I appreciate that they went for it, and that still may pay off with even bigger rewards.
In the NLC, we’ve seen GMs come in and put together a team that puts it all together for one year (Cubs, Reds, and now Brewers).
The problem has been sustaining it. Injuries, regression, roster losses, etc have a way of taking their toll.
This is where quality GMs (or payroll capacity) seem to really separate themselves from the rest.
Marcum has been a good pitcher and likely will be again in 2012, but having Lawrie once Fielder leaves might have been even better. Based on my reading experience, I’d imagine FG authors are split on whether Marcum is worth Lawrie. A lot of authors seem to really value prospects, especially the 6-year team controlled variety, while others favor making a move when you’re in the right spot.
I think the case could be made that the two NLC playoff teams made the best moves over the off-season and during the season and it shows.
I give Axford a lot of credit for righting his ship, he looked like he was “pitching scared” against the Reds early in the season.
The Brewers weren’t exactly “obstacle free” with Greinke early in the season and Weeks late in the season.
Great job Jim. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out in 2012 and beyond. There is great risk in giving up young talent, but so far so good. Brewers haven’t been able to develop young starters, and he did his best to get the starting pitching needed to compete.
It wasn’t easy dealing Lawrie, but this season proves (to me, at least) that it was the right deal. Six years of team control of a good, young player is nice. But MKE needed pitching to push it over the top, so they traded something of value to get something a value–a division championship an a slot in the post-season.
Ordorizzi could prove to be a bigger loss, but not worth missing a serious shot at the playoffs. Escobar? Pffff… I liked Cain better.
Sure, he made the right moves to cover his debacles. If he could actually draft a couple of pitchers he wouldn’t have had to make those trades. If he doesn’t have to trade for Marcum, he could have had Lawrie at third base instead of the woeful Casey McGee. If he does’t have to trade for Greinke, he would have Escobar at short instead of Bentecourt.
That’s pretty much everybody’s problem.
Why can’t more GMs just draft a Shawn Marcum and Zach Greinke?
Drafting pitchers and have them be successful at the MLB level is the most difficult thing to do in terms of player development.
Then once you get them successful att he ML level, then you gotta keep them healthy.
This is the most ridiculous comment I have heard. Young, untested pitchers are the biggest crap shoot in all of baseball. The Brewers have had great success in selecting, developing and keeping position players.
DM used this developmental strength to go after proven pitching. We’ll see what happens with Prince and the Brewers ability to sign Marcum and/or Greinke to longer term deals. He has done a tremendous job of managing roster risk.
In the meantime, all of Brewer nation loves this team. Our pitching rotation is set for 2012…..how many teams can say that?….and Prince hasn’t left the building yet.