New York Nine

Assuming that like myself most of you readers out there are from the East Coast, you probably haven’t given much thought to the Milwaukee Brewers lately (or ever for that matter).  Located in a small market with an owner who’s never shown willingness to make a splashy free agent signing, the Brewers often get overlooked as far as teams that have improved themselves or who seem poised to make the next “big step.”  Nevertheless, while many other teams have made the back page of the newspaper signing guys to astronomical deals, the Brewers have rather quietly gone about improving themselves this offseason in the area they need it most; pitching.  Indeed, despite having such a potent lineup that produced the 4^th most runs scored in the National League (11^th overall) the Brewers undoubtedly struggled on the rubber, coming in at 14^th in pitching in the NL with a very pedestrian 4.58ERA.  Clearly, if the Brewers ever hoped to make the playoffs again, especially with Prince Fielder set to hit the free agent market this coming offseason, Brewers GM Bob Melvin needed to move quickly to get some pitchers, and he clearly delivered.  Through a series of trades, this offseason the Brewers were able to acquire two excellent young pitchers, Zach Grienke and Shawn Marcum, without giving up much of their major league club, and as a result the Brewers appear to be poised to enter the national spotlight and possibly make their run into October.

As the Brewers rotation stands currently, Milwaukee is slated to have their rotation lineup something like Grienke, Yovani Gallardo, Shawn Marcum, Randy Wolf, and Chris Narveson, and this group, no matter how you line them up, is easily ten wins or more better than their rather abysmal 2010 counterparts.  Indeed, with the additions of Grienke and Marcum, the Brewers have been able to replace what was formerly a black hole of replacement-level performance to an undeniable strength of the team heading forward, but to fully appreciate how much of a step up they are we need to look first at whom they are replacing.   Starting first with arguably the worst of the bunch is 32 year old lefty Dave Bush, and even a cursory look at his numbers show him to be a complete non-entity, a pitcher who provides almost exactly what you could expect from any bum in their AAA system for a much higher cost.  For the 2010 season Bush tossed a respectable 174 innings last year, but only struck out 5.52 per nine innings, walked 3.36 per nine innings, while gave up an atrocious 1.45 home runs per nine innings to the tune of a 4.54ERA or a 0.1 Wins Above Replacement, 0.1!  Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Bush is a nice guy, and being a lefty he’s got at least one thing going for him, however for a contending team you simply cannot have a guy with a 4.54ERA in the National League as your third starter and expect to win any games.  The same is true for the other two bums, Manny Parra and Chris Capuano who put up almost equally horrible numbers.  For Parra, who tossed the majority of the two at 122 innings pitched, Manny showed signs of talent by being able to strike out guys at a much more acceptable rate at 9.52 per nine, however he also walked an unacceptable 4.65 per nine and coughed up almost as many long balls as Bush, at 1.33 per nine.  These numbers, along with his 5.02ERA and equally embarrassing 0.4WAR, is fine if he’s clearly the worst pitcher on the staff, but between Bush as we have seen and Capuano, it’s a neck and neck race.  Hampered by injury issues Chris was limited to only 66 innings, however he was actually the most effective of the bunch with a 3.95ERA and 0.5WAR in that time, but again he also fell prey to the longball at a rate of 1.23 per nine as well.  All and all, If you add up this sorry trio of lefties you get one measly Win Above Replacement for nearly 400 innings in a season; this sort of output may sound like a dream come true for the Pirates, but for a team with two talented young All-Stars like Ryan Braun and Fielder, production like this simply is not acceptable.

Now I don’t mean to impugn the good names of these three pitchers, but when compared with the production of the two pitchers who will be replacing them it’s very easy to fall into it because they’re just so much better.  Starting first with Grienke, winner of the 2009 Cy Young and still only 27, let’s first take a look at his ridiculous numbers that year to give an idea of what this guy is capable of.  In 229 innings, the precocious right hander struck out a tidy 9.5 per nine, walked only 2, and gave up the longball infrequently at a rate of .4 per nine, giving him a 2.16ERA in the American League.  Truly, Grienke’s 2009 season, along with his 9.4 Wins Above Replacement, was one for the ages, and in fact a close look at his 2010 season shows him to be not that far off from those numbers.  Indeed, in 2010 Grienke threw almost the same amount of innings and gave up the same amount of walks and home runs as he did before, but Zach saw a decline in his strikeout rates to 7.4 per nine and his WAR to 5.2.  To be sure, such a precipitous decline in strikeouts is disconcerting and its possible Zach may never reach those heights again, however by moving to the more pitcher-friendly National League the odds of that happening are slim.  In truth, virtually every projection system has Grienke’s numbers bouncing back up again, including Marcel Projections and Bill James who both have his K per nine back to 8 or above, and along with a big spike in his WAR to back to around seven wins.  In short, just by adding Grienke alone the Brewers will have made up the value of the trio of lefties and a lot more, and that’s only the half of it.

In addition, the Brewers also traded for the 28 year old righty Shawn Marcum for their top prospect Brett Lawrie, and again it seems clear that the Brewers made themselves better immediately.  After having Tommy John surgery in 2008, Marcum appeared to come back strong this year and with another year of recovery appears to be poised to be even better moving away from the tough AL East.  Pitching 195 innings last year, Marcum struck out 7.6 per nine and only walked 1.98 per nine during that span, giving up 1.1 home runs, resulting in a 3.64 ERA in the toughest division in baseball; not too shabby.  Like Grienke, I also expect Marcum to benefit enormously from being in the more pitcher friendly league, which should only boost his already expanding value that netted him 3.5WAR last year while really still recovering from major surgery.  The combination of those two factors could easily see Marcum’s value go up by a win or more next year, making both him and Grienke formidable opponents for the rest of the NL Central.

Along with the young fireballer Yovani Gallardo (9.73 K/9, 3.84ERA 4.6WAR), Randy Wolf and Chris Narveson, it’s easy to see the Brewers going from a 77 win team from last year to a possibly 87 win team or more and competing for the NL Central Title. Although the Brewers undoubtedly gave up a lot of talented prospects to do it, and with teams like the defending champion Reds and the perennial contender Cardinals will undoubtedly make life difficult for them all year long, it is clear that these moves have turned the Brewers from an afterthought to a tough day at the ballpark because both Grienke and Marcum are young and cost controlled for the next handful of years.  Unfortunately for Milwaukee, with arguably their best player leaving for free agency next year, this window may be smaller than hoped, but as San Francisco showed this past season great starting pitching and a little bit of hitting is more than enough to get you far into the postseason and beyond. 

Just a note, with baseball season starting I’m going to try to be posting more (as well as possibly a guest post or two in there), but of course that’s all contingent on how much time I have with class and how much I can get myself to write when I’m not in class.  Thanks again for reading.