Preps Alcove: Key points of intrigue for 2016 Brewers

This wasn't supposed to be Milwaukee's year, and it clearly wasn't. The Brewers are nowhere near the playoff chase, as anticipated, and while the player moves to bolster the organization's farm system look good on paper, the team struggled to develop quality Major League starting pitching and also saw many of its top prospects struggle in the minors.

Nobody will think of 2016 as a loss, of course. There were plenty of encouraging developments. Perhaps there were some -- good and bad -- that you hadn't noticed. Here's a few that most interest me:

Jonathan Villar's baserunning is suspect. It's exciting having a player so capable of stealing a base at the top of the lineup. As of Aug. 9, Jonathan Villar was tied for the Major League lead with 45 stolen bases. He also makes some frustrating outs on the basepaths from time to time, a definite throwback to Carlos Gomez. I suspected Villar, like Gomez, was unfairly criticized for the times he's been picked off or thrown out at third, largely because it's easy to overemphasize a small sample of mistakes when fans are only watching one team, not to mention that fans forget about the hidden value of baserunning. But Villar's baserunning may not be as good as I thought.

The Fangraphs metric of UBR takes all baserunning elements into account -- how often a player goes first to third on a single, for example, or advances a base on a fly ball or stays out of a double play. The more visible elements, such as stolen bases and pickoffs, are naturally also part of the equation.

Many elite base-stealers are in the top 20 on the UBR list among qualified Major Leaguers, including guys such as Rajai Davis (16th), Billy Hamilton (14th), Wil Myers (10th), Starling Marte (seventh), Jean Segura (seventh) and Mookie Betts (first). But Villar is 125th, with a value of negative-1.7 that suggests he costs his team runs on the basepaths more than he generates.

Moreover, in simple numbers, Villar gets thrown out stealing twice as often as Hamilton and, in fact, leads the league in caught stealing. Villar still has great value -- his .389 on-base percentage is strong for a leadoff hitter, and his OPS of .840 is quality for a corner infielder, let alone the middle infielder he's been most of the season. Baserunning is not as important as those measures, and I think the stolen bases value has been correctly downplayed over the years. But Villar's baserunning isn't as big an asset as I thought.

Keon Broxton is a quality MLB center fielder. Something just clicked for Keon Broxton in the second half of the season, and I think it dates back to the first home run of his career, a June 24 blast against Washington. Since then, Broxton clearly recognizes that he can play in the Majors. It's a small sample, but he's seen 55 plate appearances since then and has an eye-popping .463 on-base percentage and 1.122 OPS.

Obviously those are not sustainable marks, and the sample is so small that one five-hit night (Aug. 6 at Arizona) can skew it pretty dramatically. But considering Broxton started the year 0-for-18 with 12 strikeouts, it's pretty clear Broxton was acclimating to the big-league speed, and it may have taken a couple trips back to the minors to get him straightened out. Even if you consider all that early-season turmoil, his .709 OPS this year would place him right at the Jacoby Ellsbury mark in 2016, just below Andrew McCutchen (who's experiencing major struggles this year). Since it can be safely said he's better than that mark, this guy is someone who should be the starting CF in 2017, and maybe beyond.

Tyler Thornburg has been the Crew's best reliever all year. The Brewers were able to get some quality returns for trades that included setup man Will Smith and closer Jeremy Jeffress at the trade deadline, but, remarkably, Milwaukee held on to its best reliever. In FIP -- "fielding independent pitching," which essentially assumes most balls in play are at the mercy of a pitcher's defense and calculates how good a pitcher controls the things he can control -- rates Thornburg at 2.78, a value that can roughly be judged the same way we judge ERA, where 3 is good, 2 is very good, etc.

Jeffress (3.15) and Smith (4.27) haven't been as effective. Thornburg strikes out more than 12 batters per nine innings, a huge value that speaks to his effectiveness, and his 0.92 WHIP is by far best on the team. In his age 27 year, it makes sense that Thornburg is at his peak, but the Brewers should feel wholly comfortable using him as closer or in key late-inning situations.

Jimmy Nelson may not be a long-term answer. I don't like to assign pitchers as a "No. 1" or "No. 5" since a good team needs at least five quality starters, and who cares to what degree they get outs so long as they all can get outs? Maybe the postseason is a different story, but not over the long haul.

So I'm not disappointed that Jimmy Nelson, whose FIP of 4.88 is among the 15 worst of any starter in baseball, hasn't developed into a top-flight starter. It would have been nice, given how highly regarded he is relative to other pitchers in the organization, but that alone is not a worry.  However, considering he wasn't all that much better last year, and at age 27, we've only seen a backslide in WHIP, homers, walks and strikeouts, there is concern that he might not even be part of the next strong Brewers rotation.

Surely one of the season's greatest disappointments has been the disaster of the team's starting rotation, with Taylor Jungmann and Wily Peralta sent to the minors and Nelson seemingly unable to take a step forward. The worst part for Nelson is that he hasn't even been able to work deep in games, stopping short of seven innings in every start but one since the start of June (12 outings). He's better at that than, say, Chase Anderson, but Anderson didn't have the same expectations and isn't seen as a long-term option.

The Brewers have dealt players at the right time. Many fans wanted the Brewers to get Joey Gallo in the Jonathan Lucroy trade with Texas, believing the top-flight slugger was an essential return. I personally think this ties into the fallacy that fans feel their team needs to "win" a trade and "fleece" the opponent for overvaluing a player or two in desperation.

I disagree with that notion, but it's hard to dismiss that the Brewers have sold assets at the right time and "won" a ton of trades. Adam Lind in Seattle has 16 homers and reaches base at a dismal .270 with a .711 OPS at age 32 after a quality season with Milwaukee last year, before he was traded for young prospects. Chris Carter, a relatively cheap offseason signing at age 29, is reaching base at a .303 clip but has a .775 OPS, with 25 home runs putting him on pace for his second-best season in home runs.

Carlos Gomez has an OPS of .594 in Houston, which is close to the worst mark of his career, dating back to his 2007 season when he was a 21-year-old rookie seeing action in 58 games with the Mets. He's lost his power stroke (five homers) and has hit just one more homer in an Astros uniform since getting traded in mid-2015 than he did in the first half of the 2015 season alone with the Brewers. He's also stolen just 12 bases in 2016, though his .272 on-base limits chances.

Mike Fiers has been a below-average starter, though he did throw a no-hitter with Houston last year. The Brewers prospects in that trade have had an up-and-down year, but it's easy to feel like the Brewers came out ahead.

People were frustrated with Yovani Gallardo in Milwaukee, but his WHIP has outright ballooned since leaving, from 1.295 in his 2014 Brewers season to 1.416 and 1.645 in Texas and Baltimore, respectively. His ERA this season is 5.47, and he's only 30 years old, with a FIP of 5.18. Gerardo Parra, for whom the Brewers acquired breakout 23-year-old starter Zach Davies, is only collecting a .692 OPS in hitter-friendly Colorado, largely because he reaches base at a .273 clip.

Jean Segura has been the biggest breakout, with a career-best mark in OPS and on-base percentage with the Diamondbacks. There's a chance that one could end badly, though the Brewers did get rapid-rising shortstop prospect Isan Diaz in return. Truthfully, the only other offseason move that seems questionable is the trading of Francisco Rodriguez, who has been a solid closer for the Detroit Tigers, while the prospect in exchange (Javier Betancourt) has not been lighting it up at Double-A. However, there isn't a popular sentiment lamenting the departure of K-Rod, who had some off-the-field issues but, more visibly, became known for adventurous save opportunities.