Last year the Brewers won 89 games and were a couple of outs away from winning the Wild Card game. So far this offseason the biggest notable losses to their roster are Yasmani Grandal, Mike Moustakas, Jordan Lyles, Drew Pomeranz and Eric Thames.
Despite being a small market team, they’ve been buying undervalued assets/players. In the past week the Brewers have quietly made under the radar moves, at the position level, that could have a big impact on their ability to win in 2020: Eric Sogard, Justin Smoak and Avisaíl García. (They also traded for Omar Narváez who should be a really good offensive catcher.)
Based on what the top seven free agents have signed for the Market is valuing one WAR at about $5.4 million per one WAR (image below). Numbers are in millions and using WAR at FanGraphs.
Now let’s look at the three players the Brewers just signed:
In terms of WAR there is room for upside for both Sogard and Smoak. The Garcia signing looks like an overpay. Also, I don’t think there is any profit potential for Garcia on draft day which is why I’m not discussing him.
Sogard had a WAR of 2.6 last year, the best of his career at the age of 33. Most of his value came from offense. The biggest change was his hard-hit rate: 35.1%. Let’s put that number into context. There were 207 hitters with at least 400 plate appearances and Sogard is 166th on the list or in other words the bottom 20%. Now, 35% hard-hit rate may be low, but it’s a vast improvement compared to his career beforehand. From 2011-17 his hard-hit rate was 19.7%.
Sogard has always been a high contract hitter; he’s always had contact rates 89% and higher. Last year his contact rate was 89.3% and that puts him at fourth among hitters last year. When you combine the contact rate and hard-hit rate it’s not surprising to see how well he hit last year. The Brewers are banking he can have a repeat season. I think he regresses a little, but I think he hits .277 with 16 home runs and 5-6 stolen bases. It’s too early to tell but I think Sogard leads off and if that happens, he could score 90-plus runs, which would make viable in 12-team mixed formats.
When I look at Smoak’s 2019 season I see someone who was extremely unlucky. He had the lowest BABIP of his career last year (.223) compared to .270 for his career before 2019. Last year he had the highest hard-hit rate of his career and his contact rates and strikeout rates look the same as prior years. I’m projecting a .245 batting average with 25 home runs. I am not a believer in Keston Hiura. I think he was extremely lucky last year and he’s one of my biggest regession candidates. If that happens it’s very possible Smoak hits cleanup, which, like Sogard, makes him a sneaky play in 12-team mixed leagues.
What’s the most interesting is they have too many players and not enough positions. This leads me to believe the Brewers are going to constantly rotate players in and out of the lineup (except for Christian Yelich and Hiura). With Lorenzo Cain and Ryan Braun it makes sense to give them more days off; to use overused clichés it should keep them fresh and most importantly, healthy to play a full season. The constant rotation of players means it’s going to be frustrating to own Brewers hitters, but it looks like the Brewers are A) creating one of the deepest benches in the National League and B) acquiring undervalued hitters with low financial risk.
