Slanted Sabr: Just How Real Are the Milwaukee Brewers?

 The general consensus before the beginning of the season was that the Milwaukee Brewers would be a better team than they were last year. Superstar Ryan Braun would be returning from suspension, Aramis Ramirez would be healthy. Sensational rookies Jean Segura, Scooter Gennett and Khris Davis would be entering their first full seasons. Matt Garza would strengthen a solid rotation. And NL WAR champion Carlos Gomez showed no sign of slowing down.

Yet almost nobody could envision the absolutely torrid pace with which the Brewers have began the season at. The Brew Crew has jumped out to a 10-2 record, the best in baseball. While the Brewers still have 150 games left to play, what does this record truly reflect? Obviously the team is over-performing, but by how much? Andrew Sacrider wrote about this recently, but I want to take a statistical look at it.

In this article I will examine the production of the Brewers’ most active players thus far, and see how far from their career norms the numbers are. For those of you who lay in bed awake at night fearing numbers and charts, turn back now, for here there be monsters. Statistics were pulled from Fangraphs.com.

The Pitching

Below is a table detailing the starting rotation’s performances to start the season, based on five statistics; innings pitched, WHIP (walks+hits divided by innings pitched), earned run average, FIP (fielding independent pitching), and strikeout to walk ratio. The latter four statistics are displayed twice. A stat with “s” at the beginning represents the pitcher’s performance for the season. A stat with “re” at the beginning represents the pitcher’s performance recently, being the last three seasons. For Wily Peralta, who only entered the league in 2012, this will represent his career until this season. For Marco Estrada, I will only also include his performance as far back as 2012, when he became a starter full time.

[highlight color=”eg. yellow, black”]…[/highlight]

The highlighted numbers indicate the player is outperforming his average numbers from the last three years (or whenever they began starting at the major league level). The Brewers rotation has been very good thus far, as evidenced by all five ERAs being lower than the recent norms. Four of the five WHIP marks are also better than normal, and Marco Estrada’s is only .02 off the mark.

The most damning marks are the Left On Base percentages, which are at least 3 points higher than career marks. Yovani Gallardo’s is the most wild. He’s been leaving nearly 90% of runners on base, while over the last three years he’s near 75%. While I like the pitching staff as this group, they’re not this good, and the numbers show it. Expect some serious regression in the coming weeks.

The Hitting

Counting stats mean nothing at this juncture, even when compared to their quantity at the current point in past seasons (streaks and slumps happen). Therefore, we’ll look at percentages and ratios. For those of you not totally familiar with this stuff besides batting average (the first two columns); BABIP is batting average on balls in play, OBP is on-base percentages, OPS is OBP plus slugging percentage, and BB/K is the player’s walk to strikeout ratio. I used the same “s” and “re” system that I did with the pitchers. Over-performers are also once again highlighted.

A number of the recent stats don’t tell the full story. Gomez broke out in a big way last year, and was better in every one of these categories last year than the aggregates say. Segura, Davis, and Gennett made their rookie debuts last year, so their recent stats are their lines from last year. Segura played nearly a full season, but Davis played 56 games and Gennett 69, so take everything in those columns with a grain of salt.

The main over-performances are in the categories of BABIP and OBP, and the first probably feeds the second, as well as some marks in the BB/K rate. I don’t expect to see lots of walks out of this team, especially out of someone like Carlos Gomez who hacks at pitches like his life depends on it. The torrid clips at which Ramirez, Lucroy and Gennett should fall back down to Earth, yet that should be offset by a boost in production from Braun.

Troubling for the Brewers, however, are the numbers associated with heralded youngsters Segura and Davis. Segura famously fell apart in the second half of 2013, but was offset by the emergence of Davis. However both are off to slow starts in 2014. Segura is striking out more, walking less, hitting for smaller average, and is maintaining a smaller BABIP. While that may rise a bit more to where it was last year, his smaller walk rate (1.6% to last year’s 4%) and increased BB/K tells us he’s hacking a lot more.

Meanwhile, Davis is hitting less with a higher BABIP. A .361 mark in that category is almost certainly unsustainable unless you’re Mike Trout, which means it will regress. That means his batting average, OBP and OPS will all fall too, unless he can hit more to offset his balls finding defenders again. This means cutting down on strikeouts, which he’s finding at a prodigious 29.6% of the time. With a lower K rate will come more walks, and an increase in value. Otherwise, the Brewers traded Norichika Aoki to Kansas City for a relief pitcher and a whole lot of nothing.

So, are the Brewers a good team? Probably, yes. But we’re already beginning to see the signs of reality set in, as they just dropped two games to the Cardinals as well as the opener with Pittsburgh (at press time, Friday’s game of Lohse vs. Charlie Morton has not begun). However, I picked the Brewers to be a much better team this year and I stand by that.

They’re just not that good.

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