Photo Via Christian Yelich - Instagram
Christian Yelich
While the All Star break, the somewhat-official “halfway” point of the MLB season, is still weeks away, the Brewers already passed the mathematical midpoint of their 2024 season on Friday when they played their 82nd of 162 scheduled games.
The Brewers wrapped up the first half of their season with a 48-33 record (they’ve since improved to 50-34 with a series win over the Cubs over the weekend) and seem well on pace to cruise past the 74 to 88 win range suggested by their preseason FanGraphs projections. After Sunday’s win over the Cubs they’re now on pace to go 96-66, which would match the franchise wins record set in 2011 and tied in 2018. If that happens Pat Murphy would have an extremely solid case to become the first Brewer ever to win his league’s Manager of the Year Award. The Brewers are one of just three National League teams on pace to win 91 games or more, and they’re the only member of that trio that didn’t enter the season as a projected top contender in the league.
The Brewers have gotten to this point with a combination of several star-level performances from their top contributors and breakouts from players who have never performed at this level before. Here are the paces some of them are setting with less than half the season to play:
Christian Yelich: .321 batting average
A batting average isn’t the best or even a good standalone metric to use to determine a hitter’s value, but nonetheless Yelich’s .321 mark stands out in a season where the National League is hitting just .244. He’s always provided value by being patient at the plate and drawing walks and he’s still drawing a free pass in over 11% of his plate appearances, but this season he’s also pulling the ball more often than he ever has in his career and he’s being rewarded for making contact, posting a .384 batting average on balls in play that suggests luck may be a factor here.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
Nonetheless, Yelich needs about 250 more plate appearances to qualify for the batting title (he set himself back of that pace a bit by missing 23 games in April and May) and if he gets there he’s on pace to be a real contender to win his third batting title. He would be just the 12th player to do that in the National League’s 150-year history.
Brice Turang: Seven Wins Above Replacement (Baseball Reference WAR)
While we both predicted and highlighted projections showing that second-year infielder Brice Turang could be a breakout candidate in 2024, his performance to date has greatly surpassed what almost anyone could have seen coming. Turang has played in 80 of the Brewers’ first 84 games with a .771 on-base plus slugging that is 67 points above league average and he’s on pace to become just the fourth Brewer ever to steal 50 bases in a season, plus his defense remains stellar at second base.
All told, Baseball Reference’s Wins Above Replacement statistic suggests Turang has been 2024’s most valuable Brewer at 3.5 wins, more than a full win better than any other player on the team. He’s on pace to be worth seven wins by that measure this season and the list of position players who have done that in a Brewers uniform is extremely short: Tommy Harper (1970), Robin Yount (1980, 1982 and 1983), Ryan Braun (2011), Carlos Gomez (2013) and Christian Yelich (2018 and 2019).
Brewers bullpen: 3.14 ERA
Relief pitching was expected to be one of the Brewers’ biggest strengths this season and it appeared likely they would need to rely on it, as the Corbin Burnes trade left them with few known commodities in their starting rotation. The Brewers relief corps have kept up their share of the bargain, although perhaps not in the way anyone expected. While Devin Williams has yet to pitch this season and many of last season’s top relievers have struggled to repeat their previous performances, the somewhat-unheralded trio of Trevor Megill, Jared Koenig and Bryan Hudson have combined to pitch in 86 games with a 1.33 ERA. As a unit the Brewers are nearly a full run below league average in ERA.
Entering play on Monday FanGraphs had the Brewers’ bullpen sixth in baseball with a combined 2.8 wins above replacement as a unit, but there’s a distinct difference between them and the game’s other elite bullpens: The Brewers have used theirs for more than four innings per game, while the best bullpen in baseball (the Phillies) has pitched about three. The Brewers have shown a clear knack for finding elite bullpen performers seemingly out of nowhere, but they’ll need that group to keep performing if they’re going to keep up their current pace.
