Monthly Archives: January 2018

Quick take: Projecting Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain

4 Replies

The Milwaukee Brewers are going for it. They’re all in. They almost got a taste of October baseball in last season, and now, in 2018, they want everything. But, unlike in past seasons, they’re building up for long-term success. General manager David Stearns isn’t messing around, and he proved that by executing two high-profile moves almost simultaneously on Thursday night.

The Brewers brought highly coveted Christian Yelich (4.5 WAR in ’17) from the Miami Marlins to Milwaukee in exchange for Lewis Brinson, Monte Harrison, Isan Diaz and Jordan Yamamoto, while also signing free agent outfielder Lorenzo Cain (4.1 WAR) to a five-year, $80 million deal. In an instant, the Brewers lost their top prospect in Brinson while substantially upgrading their outfield, not only offensively, but on the defensive side as well. In fact, they have a chance to own one of baseball’s most improved defensive outfields when it’s all said and done. With Cain’s lightning speed and Yelich’s career 20 defensive runs saved, hitters are going to have a tough time finding gaps in the outfield grass.

Yelich, who just turned 26, is under team control through 2021 with a club option for 2022. He’ll make $7 million in 2018 before seeing his salary rise every year until the end of his deal. He’s coming off back-to-back 4.5 WAR seasons and produced a 115 wRC+ in 695 plate appearances last year. Moving away from Marlins Park to a hitter-friendly stadium in Miller Park should only help his production at the plate, and we could see a huge breakout season from the young left-handed hitter.

Here’s what RW23 projects from Yelich in 2018:

PA AB AVG OBP SLG OPS ISO wOBA K% BB% BABIP HR
RW23 672 580 .300 .386 .502 .889 .203 .382 20.2% 11.8% .349 26

RW23 absolutely loves Yelich, predicting that he’ll set career marks in numerous categories. This may be a little optimistic — especially considering what I’ve seen from ZiPS — but it’s encouraging nonetheless.

Lorenzo Cain will be in his age-32 season when 2018 commences, and while Yelich figures to be more valuable with the bat, Cain projects to be the better outfielder. He saved five runs in 2017 after posting a 29 DRS in 2015 and 2016 combined. Cain is known for his speed, and even if that skill begins to decline with age, there’s reason to believe it won’t be that big of a problem. He immediately helps the Brewers in every facet of the game, and his $80 million contract is fair shake for both sides.

Here’s what RW23 projects from Cain in 2018:

PA AB AVG OBP SLG OPS ISO wOBA K% BB% BABIP HR
RW23 610 553 .292 .350 .417 .767 .125 .334 17.6% 7.7% .338 14

Not surprisingly, RW23 is enamored with Cain as well. I didn’t include stolen bases in the table above, but RW23 has pegged Cain for 23 stolen bases, though I see that number being considerably higher.

Now, I’ll have more on these two moves early next week — like where this leaves Domingo Santana and Brett Phillips — but I wanted to at least get RW23’s projections out to the world tonight. And the projections are optimistic as heck, so take them with a grain of salt. But also be excited as Brewers fans.

And the last thing I wanted to say is this: The Brewers aren’t throwing everything into the ring for 2018. No. These two moves are intended to, yes, help the team win this season, but to also set them up for a run of numerous competitive seasons. Stearns knows exactly what he’s doing, and he’s nowhere close to being done yet. Expect them to add a starting pitcher very soon.

Advertisement

A stat Yovani Gallardo dominated in 2017

Leave a reply

This offseason has been so mind-numbingly slow and boring, I’ve had little else to write about than Yovani Gallardo. When the Milwaukee Brewers inked him to a one-year deal in mid-December, I published a piece on the alterations he’s made and the transformations he’s gone through since being traded away from Milwaukee. And now, about a month later, I’m back at my computer writing words about Gallardo once more. On a totally unrelated note, it’d be nice if the Brewers could make a big acquisition soon. I really don’t want to be forced to write about Boone Logan and J.J. Hoover.

But that’s enough complaining. Let’s get back to Gallardo.

Per usual, I was fooling around on FanGraphs looking for article ideas when I stumbled upon a statistic that not only jumped out at me, but also surprised me. It has do with the exciting world of pop ups.

There were 105 pitchers who finished with at least 130 innings last season, with Gallardo being one of them. And of those 105 pitchers, no one induced a higher percentage of pop ups than the right hander. The former Brewers’ ace induced 25 total pop ups — or infield fly balls as FanGraphs describes them — for a percentage of 16.6 percent. That means that 16.6 percent of the 151 fly balls Gallardo allowed were classified as pop ups. Here’s the infield fly ball rate leaderboard chart from 2017 (minimum 130 innings).

Name IP IFFB IFFB%
1 Yovani Gallardo 130.2 25 16.6%
2 Marco Estrada 186.0 46 16.6%
3 Dan Straily 181.2 38 15.9%
4 Matt Boyd 135.0 27 15.9%
5 Ariel Miranda 160.0 34 14.0%
6 James Paxton 136.0 15 13.0%
7 Kenta Maeda 134.1 19 12.9%
8 Danny Duffy 146.1 21 12.2%
9 R.A. Dickey 190.0 24 12.2%
10 Ervin Santana 211.1 32 12.2%

Pop ups, as you probably know, are essentially guaranteed outs, making them a dear friend to pitchers and a nasty enemy to hitters. To Gallardo, they were the Shawn to his Cory. And this was a detour from the Gallardo’s usual path. Even though the 31 year old hurled just 130.2 innings, the 25 pop ups he allowed were the most in his career that began in 2007 and that has spanned over 1700 innings. In fact, he’s allowed just 32 pop ups combined in the past three years combined before 2017 began.

It’s been well-documented that Gallardo regained some of his lost velocity at some point during the 2017 season, and that just may have contributed to his increase in pop ups. Fast pitches up in the zone are tougher for hitters to get on top of, and if weak contact is made, it’s likely to result in a pop up. Let’s take a look at where in the zone Gallardo pitched that induced the most pop ups.

Note: Baseball Savant classifies infield fly balls differently than FanGraphs, which is why the chart above shows more pop ups than what I had previously stated.

The majority came from the upper corner of the zone, and like I said earlier, his improved velocity surely made it harder for hitters to make solid contact on those types of pitches. General manager David Stearns has already mentioned that Gallardo intrigued him because of his renewed velocity, so hopefully the latter’s new relationship with pop ups will continue.

In the grand scheme of things, however, I’m not sure this means much, if anything at all. Gallardo was still a rather poor pitcher last year. But at the very least, this should be viewed as some sort of silver lining for those who don’t understand why the Brewers wanted Gallardo back on their team. And if that doesn’t do it for you, well, you learned an interesting stat about one of the best pitchers in Brewers franchise history.