Harvesting Opinion: Milwaukee Brewers–The Post-Fielder Cold Corner

Harvesting Opinion is a regular feature on Seedlings to Stars. Each week, six of FanSided’s team blogs send S2S a question relating to their team’s minor league system, and we answer them in this space–each question gets one article devoted to answering it. In this way, we make sure we regularly get to discuss hot-button issues relating to the systems of every team, as these go on a five-week cycle. 

Please note that any statistics used may be a day or two out of date, as we prepare our answers over the course of a week.

In this edition, we tackle a question sent to us from our Milwaukee Brewers site Reviewing The Brew:

When Prince Fielder leaves the Brewers, is there enough depth at 1st base in the minor league system to fill those very pudgy shoes? 

Nathaniel says:
Before I get around to answering this, I do want to note one important thing: you can’t just look at an organization’s first base prospects and say the organization does or does not have a first baseman of the future. Just to show why, let’s look at the positions some of the everyday first basemen today initially played in pro ball:

Albert Pujols: 3B
Joey Votto: C
Adrian Gonzalez: 1B
Prince Fielder: 1B
Ryan Howard: 1B
Miguel Cabrera: 3B
Paul Konerko: C
Michael Morse: SS
Gaby Sanchez: C/1B/3B
Carlos Pena: 1B
Freddie Freeman: 1B
Daric Barton: C
Mark Teixeira: 3B

As you can see, roughly half of these players started out playing somewhere else and wound up sliding over to first base later on. For this reason, there are very few high-level “first base prospects,” because all the first basemen in the minors are really competing for ~10-15 everyday gigs in the big leagues, in addition to holding down a few of the 14 DH jobs.

So, it’s quite likely that the Brewers’ next first baseman, if they stay in-house, would be somebody moving from another position. The obvious solution would be to move Ryan Braun over, but the team could also move erratic third baseman Casey McGehee to first.

More likely, however, is that one of McGehee’s backups, Taylor Green and Mat Gamel, would slide over to first. Gamel, in particular, has been on the horizon for seemingly half a decade now, as he’s on his third tour in Triple-A. Gamel’s defense has never been rated well, so a move to first would remove the defensive problems while filling a position of need.

Humongous outfielder Brendan Katin has been in Triple-A for four years straight, and he’s flashed a ton of power, so perhaps a platoon of Katin or Green with Gamel would be the best way to keep Milwaukee’s first base position producing at an above-average rate.

In terms of the immediate post-Fielder situation, the Brewers have about half a dozen reasonable routes to take with the first base position–I would think one of them should work out.

They do have some depth in the lower minors with players like Khris Davis, Brock Kjeldgaard, Hunter Morris, Sean Halton, Chris Dennis, and Cody Hawn, but they all need plenty of development time for various reasons and likely won’t make an impact until many of Milwaukee’s stars have departed and they’re forced to rebuild.

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Wally says:
The first thing that people need to accept is that, short of signing Albert Pujols, the Brewers will not be able to adequately replace Prince at 1B.

As Nathaniel mentioned above, the team could shift Ryan Braun to 1B, but that opens a huge hole in their OF and amounts to little more than moving around the deck chairs. Further, while Braun isn’t anywhere close to an average major league fielder, he’s not in the class of butchers with the glove either.

Casey McGehee has had a disappointing year at the plate, but he’s hit better since a dreadful May and June. Beyond that, he’s been above average defensively this season – according to his 8.0 UZR/150 – and has shown steady improvement with the glove the last 3 seasons. Whether he’s really the hitter we saw in 2009-2010 or the hitter we’ve seen for part of the summer, he’s likely going to be that guy whether he plays at 3B or 1B.

That leaves the Brewers to consider their options in the minor leagues, and that discussion has to start with Mat Gamel. He’s hit just 0.222/.309/.374 in his major league career, but that comes in just 194 PA, and he’s got far more ability than that. One way or another, Milwaukee needs to see what Gamel can do sooner rather than later. He’s now played 289 G for Nashville and has hit 0.311/.374/.543 with 29 2B and 28 HR in 540 PA this season. Considering Gamel has played 102 games at 1B this season, after playing just 5 games there in the previous 6 years, it seems pretty clear that he’s their “Prince contingency plan.”

Other than Gamel, their top two 1B prospects coming into the season were Hunter Morris (#17) and Cody Hawn (#20). As Nathaniel mentioned in his response both are still a ways away from the majors and both are products of the 2010 MLB draft. Morris is hitting 0.271/.299/.461 with 28 2B and 19 HR for Brevard County (A+), but his 84 to 18 SO-to-BB is a bit of a concern. Hawn is hitting 0.295/.381/.408 with 24 2B and 6 HR for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers (A). He has far better plate discipline than does Morris, and though Hawn hasn’t flashed the in-game power that he did last season, it is a part of his game.

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For more on the Brewers, check out Reviewing The Brew.

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