Brewers By the (Jersey) Numbers ’17 — #59 Carlos Torres

Again, we ride.

A host of new faces on and around the roster, coupled with a new location here at Medium.com leads me to a renewed effort to begin and complete a season of “Brewers By the (Jersey) Numbers” this year.

There are a host of players who will be in big league camp wearing jerseys higher than 59, all as non-roster invitees. I might do a catch-up article later in the process on an off-day from the countdown, but that remains to be seen.

For those of you new to my coverage of the Brewers thanks to the Medium.com footprint, allow me to explain what BBtJN is.

Each and every year I count down to Opening Day. I have reminders on my calendar at work and with the rise of social media there’s always something pointing it out. There’s also a bunch of coverage on the individual players, especially the new faces to a team. Well, a few years ago I had the idea to combine them. I decided to count down to Brewers’ Opening Day by way of jersey numbers. In other words, since this article is posting on February 3rd, there are 59 days until Opening Day for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Make sense? Another example with smaller math: Opening Day this year is April 3rd. On April 1st the game will be two days away. Scooter Gennett wears jersey number 2. On April 1, an article about Scooter Gennett will post in this space.

With that, let’s get to today’s profile about one of my favorite Brewers to talk to…

Carlos Torres.

A seriously late addition to the 2016 Milwaukee Brewers, Carlos Ephraim Torres was signed on April 2 last year after spending all of the Spring Training with the Atlanta Braves. It was a bit of a tumultuous beginning to 2016 for Torres who found himself on three teams within a couple of months.

Originally drafted by the Chicago White Sox in the 15th round of the 2004 amateur draft, Torres had spent the three seasons leading up to 2016 with the New York Mets. He was designated for assignment in a somewhat surprising move on January 22 after having just agreed to an arbitration-avoiding one-year contract a week earlier. He pitched to a 3.59 ERA overall in his time with the Mets, though 2015 saw that number inflated to 4.68 in 57.2 innings.

Having been unable to find a trade partner, the Mets waived Torres who passed through unclaimed. Torres elected free agency instead of heading to the Mets minor leagues. Several teams reached out to Torres but he ultimately signed a minor-league deal (with big league camp invite) with the Braves.

The Braves ultimately decided to not promote Torres to the 25-man roster so he opted out of his contract. The Braves released him on March 31 and he signed with the Brewers two days later, just two days ahead of Opening Day.

Torres was used in middle relief to begin his time in Milwaukee, no doubt in part because manager Craig Counsell needed to get a feel for him. But once he did? Torres appeared in 72 games for Counsell and the Brewers, one off his career-high set in 2014.

In those 72 games, all Torres did was post career bests in ERA (2.73), bWAR (2.2), RA9 (2.84), and WPA (1.47). Without getting too deep in advanced analytics here, suffice it to say that Torres improved in many areas and performed well against league averages in several categories.

As for his 2017 outlook, Torres projects to find himself in later inning situations like how he finished 2016. Neftali Feliz was signed as a free agent to be the closer, but Torres could absolutely settle in to a primary set-up role for Counsell and Pitching Coach Derek Johnson. There’s competition for those innings with holdovers Corey Knebel, Michael Blazek and Jacob Barnes as well as import Joba Chamberlain, but competition makes everyone better.

Regardless of which of the 27 outs he’s called on to record, I expect Torres to continue pitching his game and, when executing, pile up results.