The Giants begin a three-game set tonight with Milwaukee, an extraordinarily interesting team. Rany Jayazerli
recently penned a fantastic article on the Brewers over at Grantland, in which he discussed their neglect of defense:
Doug Melvin managed to assemble one of the best pitching rotations in baseball while also preserving a lineup that included Prince Fielder, Ryan Braun, and Rickie Weeks, who were all among MLB's best hitters at their positions. But Melvin had to compromise on something, and that was defense.
In recent years, the emphasis on the value of defense has increased throughout the majors, with the Mariners, A's and Rays as examples. As Rany describes it, "Over the past few seasons defensive specialists may have swung from undervalued to overrated."
It's subtle yet brilliant. Milwaukee has emptied its farm system to the point where it's completely barren in order to build a team that will contend this year. They acquired a couple top-notch starters in
Zack Greinke and
Shaun Marcum, and have ultimately compromised their defense to build a strong offense. I love it.
So that's who the Brewers are:
- Really good offense
- Decent pitching
- Awful defense
The matchups in the series will be as follows:
Game one: Shaun Marcum v.
Matt Cain
Game two:
Randy Wolf v.
Ryan Vogelsong
Game three:
Yovani Gallardo v.
Madison Bumgarner
Shaun Marcum is one of my favorite pitchers. He's no ace, but he's a great number-two starter, and succeeds without overpowering stuff. He's a changeup pitcher,
as he throws the pitch 32% of the time, and it's one of the best changeups in the bigs: though pitch values are a little iffy, as they aren't adjusted for luck on balls in play,
his changeup has been worth 33.7 runs above average since the start of 2010, which ranks second in the majors (
Tim Lincecum ranks third). Whereas the average changeup induces a swinging strike 12.6% of the time, Marcum's changeup gets a whiff 19.9% of the time. In addition to the changeup, Marcum throws an 87-MPH four-seamer (yeah, not overpowering stuff), a cutter, a two-seamer, and an average curve. In addition to the excellent change, Marcum succeeds by virtue of his plus control: in 2010, he walked just under two hitters per nine innings, and he's kept his BB/9 below 3 in 2011. So yeah, not your typical star pitcher....which I guess is why I like him. I think he's one of the most underrated arms in the game.
Randy Wolf, on the other hand, is a fairly-below-average starter at this point in his career. Slightly above-average walk rate, but he's a flyball pitcher that doesn't induce a lot of whiffs. In general, he strikes me as a pretty unremarkable pitcher.
In game three, Yovani Gallardo will face off against Madison Bumgarner,
who I wrote about last night. There's an interesting pattern in Gallardo's numbers over the last three years:
| Year | K% | BB% |
| 2009 | 25.7% | 11.9% |
| 2010 | 24.9% | 9.3% |
| 2011 | 20.4% | 8.2% |
He used to be an erratic pitcher that got tons of strikeouts, but seems to have moved in more of a pitch-to-contact type direction, or so to speak. Fewer K's, as well as fewer walks. In any event, he's been slightly worse than last year, but is certainly still an elite starter (xFIP of 3.44 puts in top 30 among qualified MLB starters).
--
Of note: Milwaukee pitchers
can hit.
Their bats have already been worth a couple wins above replacement on the season, and they're OPSing nearly .500; for comparison, their .496 OPS on the season is better than that of
Emmanuel Burriss (.493).
Lastly, keep an eye on Rickie Weeks. I toss this word around a lot it seems, but there's an argument to be made that he's the most underrated player in baseball. A solid defensive 2B with his kind of on-base skills and power is
extremely special.
Henry Schulman