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Baseball bat hitting ball
Somewhere beyond all of this winter’s distractions, the Milwaukee Brewers are experiencing something of a golden era. They’ve made as many postseason appearances (four) and won as many division championships (two) in the past four seasons as they did in the nearly five decades that came before. Their recent successes include two of the five winningest seasons in franchise history. Their roster boasts both a former National League Most Valuable Player and the reigning Cy Young Award winner.
Instead of celebrating this team, however, fans have largely been left to wonder when they might see them again. After a brief flurry of transaction activity in November, MLB owners locked out the players when their collective bargaining agreement expired in December and the work stoppage wiped out all of the game’s normal winter and spring milestones: The Winter Meetings, Brewers on Deck, pitchers and catchers reporting to spring training, the first Cactus League games and, eventually, Opening Day. The work stoppage cast a cold shadow over the sport’s proverbial “hot stove” season.
There are two small elements of good news: The first is that history suggests that early season work stoppages, while frustrating, aren’t particularly damaging to the health of the sport in the long run. Many fans may not recall, for example, that a brief player strike delayed Opening Day in 1972 and abbreviated the Brewers’ season from 162 to 156 games. It’s even harder to find any lasting legacy of the 1990 lockout, which also delayed Opening Day and led to the season being extended by a week to make up the missed contests.
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The other bit of good news is that when this Brewers team returns, assuming they do eventually return, they have another opportunity to continue their recent run of success. The 2021 Brewers had 10 position players and pitchers that Baseball Reference estimated were worth two or more wins above replacement, and nine of them remained under team control for 2022 (with Avisail Garcia as the only exception).
There’s also reason to hope that some of the players who aren’t in that group can regain past form in 2022. It’s possible that turnover in the Brewers’ coaching ranks will help Christian Yelich, for example, rebound toward the level of production that nearly allowed him to win back-to-back MVP awards in 2018 and 2019. Adding the designated hitter rule to the National League might allow the Brewers to temporarily or permanently stop worrying about Keston Hiura’s defensive position and focus on getting him back to posting numbers like the .303 batting average, .368 on-base and .570 slugging he had in his 2019 debut.
Similarly, it’s hard not to wonder what some of the Brewers’ recent acquisitions might be able to do given a full (or only slightly abbreviated) season in Milwaukee. Rowdy Tellez was a frequent spark in the Brewers’ lineup in 56 games after coming over from Toronto, and the designated hitter rule might directly or indirectly allow him to get into games more often. Hunter Renfroe, who the Brewers acquired via trade in November, has hit more than 30 home runs in each of the last two full MLB seasons. He’s one of just 17 hitters who can make that claim.
With all of that potential combined with the rest of the division’s relative inactivity before the transaction freeze, it’s not hard to be optimistic about this team’s potential. In mid-February Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA system projected the Brewers to win 97 games, which would be both a franchise record and the most wins of any National League team.
Instead of having all winter to get excited about the upcoming season, though, fans have been subjected to an offseason focused on economic issues, increasing hostility and the unanswerable question of how much is enough for billionaires. Baseball has come back from similar challenges before and it probably can again, but it’s going to take some work from all involved to remind the fans why they watch and get them past the anger over what they’ve lost this spring.
