The Jesse Winker Gamble

[sveumrules]

Winker’s career high for PAs is 547 in 2022 and his career high for wRC+ is 147 in 2021.

Last year Ohtani had 569 PAs with a 146 wRC+ as a DH and was credited with 3.3 WAR.

If Winker can match or top his career bests in both PAs and wRC+, while playing as little as possible in the field to drag down his value, that is around his ceiling.

Short of going off for like 600 PAs at a 160 wRC+ (that’d be cool) or something crazy like that, I don’t see a QO in Winker’s future.

[igor67]

The positional adjustment for DH just seems too strong on that WAR total. That bias against DHs seems very long standing over the decades of the DH very few regular DHs have ever hit comparable to All-Star first basemen so given that spot in the line-up has to be filled  penalizing them even more than first base is not well justified. I stand by the assessment that if Winker is getting over 500 PAs and has a wRC+ in the 140 range on a 1 year deal you find the cash or make the offer and swing a deal if you see some compelling offer. 

[MVP2110]

Just now, igor67 said:

The positional adjustment for DH just seems too strong on that WAR total. That bias against DHs seems very long standing over the decades of the DH very few regular DHs have ever hit comparable to All-Star first basemen so given that spot in the line-up has to be filled  penalizing them even more than first base is not well justified. I stand by the assessment that if Winker is getting over 500 PAs and has a wRC+ in the 140 range on a 1 year deal you find the cash or make the offer and swing a deal if you see some compelling offer. 

WAR is a counting stat and when you are a DH you are getting 0 WAR from your defense. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

26 minutes ago, MVP2110 said:

WAR is a counting stat and when you are a DH you are getting 0 WAR from your defense. 

While also competing against above average hitters.

[owbc]

40 minutes ago, igor67 said:

The positional adjustment for DH just seems too strong on that WAR total. That bias against DHs seems very long standing over the decades of the DH very few regular DHs have ever hit comparable to All-Star first basemen so given that spot in the line-up has to be filled  penalizing them even more than first base is not well justified. I stand by the assessment that if Winker is getting over 500 PAs and has a wRC+ in the 140 range on a 1 year deal you find the cash or make the offer and swing a deal if you see some compelling offer. 

There's no bias, it's wins above a replacement DH calculated using the actual output at the DH position in the league. Anybody who can hit can play DH. You can't put Rowdy Tellez in center field. Additionally, the position penalty at 1B is worse than DH because the league average OPS at 1B is 25 points higher than DH. 

It has to be that way, there's huge variance between the average offensive output at different MLB positions. WAR and wRC+ are complimentary statistics. 

If you have a full-time DH, it also means that your crappy defenders have to play the field all the time to keep their bats in the lineup. In addition, you're obviously not generating any WAR when you're sitting on the bench while the rest of your team is playing defense. 

If Winker does miraculously put up a 140 wRC+ it means he got over his injuries which also means he's probably healthy enough to play better defense than he did last year. So maybe he will have some value in the field for us.  

 

[Thurston Fluff]

On 2/14/2023 at 9:43 AM, monty57 said:

To the three scenarios you listed:

1) Trade: If the Brewers are in the race, I think the only scenario in which he would be traded would be if all of our prospects/rookies were knocking the cover off the ball, and we were offered a huge return for Winker. We'd get the value back in trade, and Yelich could take over most of the DH duties with Frelick/Mitchell/Wiemer/Chourio manning the OF. That's a lot that would have to go right, so I doubt he's traded. 

2) Qualifying offer: This isn't out of the question, but will depend on what they're doing with guys like Burnes, Woodruff, and Adames. If they're trading those guys away, a one-year/$20M contract would probably fit into their payroll, and having his bat (assuming for sake of this thread that he's a .380/.550 guy) in the middle of the lineup in '24 would help alleviate the loss of the guys we traded. If we hold onto the arby guys for one last "go for it" year, we probably couldn't afford a $20M player, even on one year.

3) Walk for nothing: Right now, I think this is the odds-on favorite for happening. But, it will depend not only on his performance, but also the performance of other players (prospects) and other personnel moves that could be made that would lighten up the payroll.

$20M/year is a lot, but when it's only for one year, it could be palatable to the Brewers if they can fit it in the payroll. Plus, if we've traded away the other guys, we may have a down year even with a .380/.550 guy in the middle of the lineup. If that happens, teams would love to trade for him at the '24 deadline, so it would "only" cost up $10M and we'd get some young players back in trade.

I'd just add that if we do a qualifying offer hoping he declines but he accepts we can trade him before the season starts. Even if it's for a bag of balls we'd be no worse off than not offering it and we might end up with more than what a draft pick would have given us.

[brewcrewdue80]

QO was 19.65M this year so the increase is likely just past 20mil. Putting 20+ vs just 20-20.5mil is more appropriate.  That's if it reaches 20Mil.  

As to Winker having it offered to him. Man Fangraphs has his #1 season worth just 23M and the rest for his career below 12M value.  Surprisingly he played the most games last season in a year for his career. I don't know if that platoon stuff, or him being a bad Fielder that reduced his games played in a year. He's strictly a DH bat by the numbers and it's not one to date that puts QO tag next to it.  Pretty much if the Brewers gave him a QO they want him on a 1yr 20mil deal for 2024. Winker would be foolish to decline and test FA.  His history shows he's not a 162 game availability, but a guy you would want to sign for the games after the 2024 draft.  He has to put together a special year just to even get to this conversation. I'd expect it is more likely he is traded than finishes the year with Milwaukee. Just because the Ofs will push Yelich playing time away from the OF and to DH role occupied by Winker. It needs to be understood the talents on Frelick, Chourio, and Wiemer pushing in to the ML roster. They talked about Chourio prospect whispers being comparable to when Mike Trout was a prospect. There's no way barring injury that level is kept in the minors through all of 2023.  The other 3 already put time in AAA, while you can shuttle the best performing or fit on roster, they'll eventually be here to stay. They don't play IF positions(though Chourio did have 2b time played but read the talent needs to fit elsewhere on diamond)

 

 

[wiguy94]

2 hours ago, MVP2110 said:

WAR is a counting stat and when you are a DH you are getting 0 WAR from your defense. 

That's not true. You get negative WAR for your "defense" because of positional adjustments. Nelson Cruz played in 123 games last year all as a DH. His defensive value was -13.3 according to fangraphs. Ohtani had -16.4 defensive value so despite 31.8 worth of offensive value he only had 3.8 fWAR. For comparison Julio Rodriguez had 33.4 offensive value and -0.5 defensive value which combined for 5.3 fWAR. Playing DH basically wiped away 1.5 fWAR from Ohtani's value.

[sveumrules]

16 minutes ago, wiguy94 said:

That's not true. You get negative WAR for your "defense" because of positional adjustments. Nelson Cruz played in 123 games last year all as a DH. His defensive value was -13.3 according to fangraphs. Ohtani had -16.4 defensive value so despite 31.8 worth of offensive value he only had 3.8 fWAR. For comparison Julio Rodriguez had 33.4 offensive value and -0.5 defensive value which combined for 5.3 fWAR. Playing DH basically wiped away 1.5 fWAR from Ohtani's value.

Right, the idea is that historically DH have been players who were so bad in the field that the only way to get their bat in the lineup was via the DH. The large negative positional adjustment for DH is a means of accounting for that.

Take someone like David Ortiz, for his career BRef has him -16 in limited time at 1B plus -204 in position adjustment playing mostly DH for a total of -220 on defense.

Someone like Manny Ramirez was a horrendous fielder. He played mostly LF (-105 positional) badly (-129 fielding) for -224 of defense.

Sheffield would be another example. He played almost 4,000 innings at 3B plus another 800 at SS before becoming a corner OF so he only comes in with a -77 positional adjustment. He couldn't field any of them at -195 fielding runs for a total of -272 on defense.

Being able to DH his whole career and never see the field would have probably bought Sheff a half dozen wins despite the massive negative positional adjustment.

 

 

[monty57]

31 minutes ago, brewcrewdue80 said:

QO was 19.65M this year so the increase is likely just past 20mil. Putting 20+ vs just 20-20.5mil is more appropriate.  That's if it reaches 20Mil.  

As to Winker having it offered to him. Man Fangraphs has his #1 season worth just 23M and the rest for his career below 12M value.  Surprisingly he played the most games last season in a year for his career. I don't know if that platoon stuff, or him being a bad Fielder that reduced his games played in a year. He's strictly a DH bat by the numbers and it's not one to date that puts QO tag next to it.  Pretty much if the Brewers gave him a QO they want him on a 1yr 20mil deal for 2024. Winker would be foolish to decline and test FA.  His history shows he's not a 162 game availability, but a guy you would want to sign for the games after the 2024 draft.  He has to put together a special year just to even get to this conversation. I'd expect it is more likely he is traded than finishes the year with Milwaukee. Just because the Ofs will push Yelich playing time away from the OF and to DH role occupied by Winker. It needs to be understood the talents on Frelick, Chourio, and Wiemer pushing in to the ML roster. They talked about Chourio prospect whispers being comparable to when Mike Trout was a prospect. There's no way barring injury that level is kept in the minors through all of 2023.  The other 3 already put time in AAA, while you can shuttle the best performing or fit on roster, they'll eventually be here to stay. They don't play IF positions(though Chourio did have 2b time played but read the talent needs to fit elsewhere on diamond)

 

 

I agree with most of what you're saying, but to the bolded part, the opening premise to this thread was/is:

"Suppose the Brewers get lucky with Winker and he not only recovers from multiple operations but he bounces back to his prior production of .380/.550. "

A .930 OPS would put him up there with Goldschmidt (.981), Altuve (.921), Freeman (.918), Machado (.898), and Arenado (.891). I like the rookies as much as anyone, but Frelick, Wiemer and Mitchell aren't knocking a Freddie Freeman-caliber bat out of the lineup in '24.