A little bit of a news dump this morning! Let’s start with some local awards for your favorite Brewers.
BBWAA Awards, Milwaukee Chapter
Today, the Milwaukee chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America announced the recipients of their end-of-season awards. A quick rundown below. How would you have voted?
Most Valuable Player: Brice Turang
No surprise here, as Turang was named a finalist for the NL MVP award earlier this week. The Brewer second baseman led the team in bWAR (7.3) and was second behind Jacob Misiorowski (more
on him in a second) in fWAR (5.9). He was announced as the National League’s Gold Glove winner at second base on Sunday, and figures to at least be on the edge of the conversation for the Platinum Glove as well. Combine that with his well-rounded offensive game and good baserunning, and Turang was one of the best all-around players in baseball this season.
Most Valuable Pitcher: Jacob Misiorowski
Once again, not surprising. Misiorowski is going to win the NL Cy Young, the only question is whether it will be unanimously or not. He led all pitchers with 6.6 fWAR, and was the major league leader in ERA (1.80), strikeouts (252), FIP (2.17), WHIP (0.802), strikeouts per nine (13.0), and with a mark of 4.9, had the lowest hits allowed per nine innings by starting pitcher in the history of AL/NL baseball. While modern workloads suppressed his WAR numbers, it was, by rate statistics, one of the greatest seasons ever by a starting pitcher.
Most Valuable Newcomer: Cooper Pratt
The definition of “newcomer” here is, presumably, a player who had never played for the Brewers before this season, meaning that a player like Logan Henderson, who held rookie status but had pitched in the majors before this season, wouldn’t be eligible. Pratt, when considering his World Series run, seems the obvious answer here—he was basically exactly a league-average hitter during 74 regular season games, a massive win; the Brewers likely did not expect him to be a very good hitter in his first season. Then he went off during the World Series, and made himself a legitimate candidate for World Series MVP. Pratt’s defense was a little shaky during the postseason run, but he played the position well in the regular season.
Other potential winners here include David Hamilton, who was solid if unspectacular during the regular season but then put together a monstrous postseason run of his own; Luis Lara, who struggled a bit at the plate but showed off his high ceiling as an outfielder and had a couple of very memorable hits; Kyle Harrison, who had a Jekyll and Hyde season but was outstanding in the first half; Shane Drohan, who struggled a bit down the stretch but ate a lot of important innings in a variety of roles for the Brewers this season; and JoJo Romero, who didn’t pitch a ton for the Brewers but became a reliable shutdown guy for the Brewers in the postseason.
Unsung Hero: Abner Uribe
Uribe had great numbers this season: in 59 1/3 innings, he had a 1.97 ERA and 2.68 FIP and saved six games. This went a bit under the radar as he was the number two guy to Trevor Megill in the bullpen, and Aaron Ashby’s brilliant postseason run overshadowed good postseasons from both Megill and Uribe. But having that solid Robin to Megill’s Batman all season made managing the bullpen easy for Pat Murphy and his assistants. We also got this:
This was kind of a team full of unsung heroes: others I might have considered include Henderson, who only made 18 starts but put up incredible numbers when he was in there; Robert Gasser, who was fourth on the team in innings pitched and then made three huge starts during the postseason run; Jake Bauers, who got plenty of attention but was the offensive metronome for the team all season; and, perhaps counterintuitively, William Contreras, who had—by his standards—a “just okay” regular season at the plate but did a great job managing the pitching staff before he kicked it into high gear in the playoffs.
Good Guy Award: Christian Yelich
One of the things I like best about this team is that there aren’t really players who are difficult to cheer for. Most of the team feel like good dudes who wouldn’t be hard to get along with.
Yelich is pretty clearly the leader (or captain, if you will) in that regard. He is generous with his time and money and has good rapport with all of the fan-facing Brewers media members who we see him interact with. It’s hard to know anything about the famous people we revere as heroes, but I’m pretty comfortable with Yelich getting this award.
Cam Castro named GM of the Athletics, Matt Kleine turns down Astros
Cam Castro, who was the Brewers’ senior vice president of player development and performance for the past two seasons, has been hired by the Athletics as their new general manager. Castro has been with the Brewers since 2019, where he started as a minor league pitching coach and quickly rose up the ranks. Before starting with the Brewers, Castro worked for Driveline Baseball, the well-known training program.
It’s not a surprise that other teams are looking to Milwaukee’s front office as they try to figure out some of their secrets for their own ballclubs; about a week ago, it was reported that Brewers assistant GM Matt Kleine was a finalist, perhaps the finalist, for the Astros’ opening at general manager. According to Adam McCalvy, Kleine turned down that job, while there are some whispers that it was partially a concern about whether Astros owner Jim Crane would meddle too much. Kleine may still be a candidate in Los Angeles, where the Angels have an opening for their top baseball ops job, though for now it looks like he’s staying in Milwaukee.
We’re going to have to get used to this as long as the Brewers are as successful as they have been. Hopefully the team can hang on to its most important pieces.
