For the 20th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Milwaukee Brewers.

Batters

The Brewers won 92 games in 2023, enough to coast to a division title with nine games to spare, though it didn’t really have much to do with their offense. After a respectable 2022 season, the team’s wRC+ dropped to 92, ahead of just six teams (four of which won fewer than 62 games). In a season that saw an upswing in baseball’s offensive environment, the Brewers only slugged .385, their worst showing in 30 years.

That’s not to say there weren’t bright spots, but of the four players who put up a wRC+ of at least 100 in a minimum of 100 plate appearances, two (Carlos Santana and Mark Canha) are no longer on the team. Of the two who still call Milwaukee home, William Contreras is the best bet to maintain his 2023 production, though one-year framing numbers did a lot of heavy lifting. Meanwhile, Christian Yelich had a nice little bounce back, but he’s still a 32-year-old coming off two-and-a-half far less impressive seasons. ZiPS is grumpier than Steamer with respect to Yelich, but even Steamer has him falling short of 3 WAR, and that’s in a scenario where he has nearly perfect health.

To compensate for some regression toward the mean from Contreras and Yelich (and for no longer having Canha or Santana), the Brewers have seemingly decided to… kind of just sit around and hope everything works out. There are some players for whom that strategy makes sense, most notably Willy Adames, who boasts an excellent projections for 2024. For some players, however, this approach seems less well conceived. ZiPS has Sal Frelick as the team’s third-most valuable offensive player, but it’d be a mistake to expect instant stardom. In his big league debut, he showed a solid glove but didn’t hit all that well, and after coming back from a sprained thumb, he hit quite poorly in the minors. Jackson Chourio has massive long-term projections, but ZiPS doesn’t see him going Acuña or Tatis on the league right away.

The less said about first base, the better, though ZiPS is cautiously optimistic at third. While Andruw Monasterio projects mostly as a stopgap, the computer is quite taken with Tyler Black’s potential.

All told, the Brewers would need a few breakouts and a repeat of 2023 from Contreras and Yelich just to be a league-average offense. As with last year, if they play baseball well into October, it probably won’t be the bats they thank.

Pitchers

Now we get to the good news. The Brewers aren’t really losing Brandon Woodruff; they only had about a third of him in 2023 and that didn’t keep them from leading baseball in ERA. As usual, Corbin Burnes projects to be one of the best starting pitchers in baseball, with Freddy Peralta an able number two. ZiPS is a good deal more positive about Robert Gasser than Steamer is, and if he and the returning Wade Miley match their projections, the Brewers won’t even need to worry that much about a fifth starter. That said, Aaron Ashby is the most interesting of the candidates for that spot, though it remains to be seen just when he’ll return from his year-long shoulder injury and whether he’s retained his upside. Failing a strong Ashby return, seeing who of Colin Rea, Janson Junk, and Joe Ross works out doesn’t make for that bad of a situation. ZiPS is a fan of Coleman Crow, who was recently acquired for Adrian Houser and Tyrone Taylor; if the Brewers liked him enough to trade for him, they may like him enough to see what he can do, assuming he comes back strong this summer from Tommy John surgery.

The Rays get all the press for bullpen wizardry, but the Brewers are arguably just as skilled at conjuring relievers out of nowhere. Once again, this bullpen projects as a strong and deep unit, with four pitchers projected with an ERA under four (Devin Williams, Trevor Megill, Hoby Milner, and Abner Uribe). You can add a fifth in the form of Bryse Wilson, who gets a 3.68 ERA projection from ZiPS when used solely as a reliever. Joel Payamps just misses my arbitrary line, mostly because ZiPS is still a tad concerned about him maintaining a nearly 50% bump in strikeout rate with only small positive movement in his swinging strike rate. The offense may not leave the late inning guys with as many leads as it should, but the Brewers should get to keep most of them.

Sum it up, and the Brewers look a lot like a mid-80s team in terms of wins. That’s not celebration territory, but every team in the NL Central has some serious flaws. I think the Cardinals will bounce back to have a slightly better season than the Brewers, and the Cubs seem to finally be getting their offseason up and running as they reportedly work to sign Shōta Imanaga, but as negative as I am about Milwaukee’s offense, it would be a mistake to simply dismiss the Brew Crew as contenders.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time.

Here are how the ZiPS percentiles worked out in 2023 for pitchers and hitters in in 2023.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2024 due to injury, and players who were released in 2023. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Belgian Death Metal Skiffle Band that only plays songs by Franz Schubert, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.33.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.

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