Milwaukee Brewers: Another small but savvy move in signing Justin Smoak

On Thursday, the Milwaukee Brewers added 33-year-old veteran switch hitter Justin Smoak, signing the first baseman to a one-year, $5 million contract.

With a $135.8 million final payroll in 2019 (per Spotrac), the Milwaukee Brewers are currently running at about 55% capacity (payroll-wise) as they’ve continued to make small but somewhat impactful moves this offseason.

After the team’s challenge trade with the Padres back on November 27 — an arrangement that landed them a PTBNL and two prospects, pitcher Eric Lauer and Luis Urias — the Brew Crew have been steadily hitting the mid-grade bin for players.

Keeping with their offseason trend, the Brewers signed first baseman Justin Smoak to a one-year, $5 million contract on Thursday, the third first baseman the team has added so far this winter:

More from Call to the Pen

• Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
• Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
• Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
• Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
• 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals

• Justin Smoak — signed on Thurs.
• Luis Castro — signed Nov. 7 (MiLB contract)
• Chad Spanberger — acquired Nov. 4 (via trade)

With the Milwaukee Brewers declining Eric Thames’ 2020 option earlier this offseason and the two other recently-acquired players directly above not yet fit for major-league duty, it looks as if Smoak will provide Milwaukee with a one-year stop-gap at first this coming season (though, the even more recently acquired Ryon Healy, from Tuesday, has extensive playing time at the position; and last offseason the team thought about Ryan Braun as an option).

When looking at Smoak’s 2019 slash-line, it’s understandable to feel quite skeptical about him actually contributing in a meaningful way in 2020. The former first-round pick (2008) slashed just .208/.342/.406 this past season and finished with a barely-above average 101 wRC+ (a two-year low) as the Toronto Blue Jays first baseman.

Some of his misfortune in 2019 can be blamed on his uncharacteristically low BABIP (.223), which wound up being more than 40 points below his career mark (.266), not to mention nearly 75 points from his BABIP in 2018.

However, it’s the underlying numbers that show a player perhaps on his way back to performing at a respectable pace; and for $5 million it’s certainly worth finding out.

Since 2017, Smoak has apparently learned what it takes to consistently hit for above-average power, slugging 20+ homers in every season since then, including a career-high of 38 in 2018. In these last three seasons, Smoak’s batted-ball profile has mostly followed that of his previous years, but beginning in that ’17 campaign he drastically cut back on his swing-and-miss rate, lowering his SwStr% from 12.7 to 8.9 percent, compared to the previous year.

The last three seasons — other than in 2018 — it has been more of the same, allowing him to run a much more acceptable strikeout rate, which in turn has resulted in more balls in play.

Smoak’s walk rate has also been on the climb these past three seasons, topping out at 15.8% this past season, up from 11.7% in 2016 and 8.8% the year before that, resulting in the highest on-base percentage of his career in each these last three years.

Defensively, it’s a mixed bag for Smoak. At 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds it would be unrealistic to expect the guy to be flashy with the glove; being a first baseman also doesn’t help his numbers on defense, either.

However, using more traditional methods, Smoak has a .997 fielding percentage over his last three seasons, with just seven errors in 3,000+ innings (374 games) at first during that span. He has never posted a positive Def (FanGraphs defensive WAR) in his career, but per UZR he finished at 3.0 in 2017, -0.7 in ’18 and -2.0 this past season. It’s rather difficult to properly rate a player at first base, but given the eye test, I’d say Smoak is fine on defense.

In the end, the Milwaukee Brewers are looking at a very low-risk commitment here, as we’re talking about a few million dollars for a player that’s easily capable of 25-30 home runs and 60-70 RBI. And Steamer agrees, considering the projection system sees Smoak tallying 27 and 76, respectively, along with a .239 AVG (about average for him) in 128 games; that’s a 1.2-WAR season and an absolute bargain, considering today’s cost for 1 WAR is roughly $9 million.