Photo via Brice Turang - Instagram
Brice Turang leading off
Brice Turang
As an offseason winds down without major additions to the Brewers’ offense, their hopes of success in 2026 may hinge on the continuation of a trend that, at least on the surface, seems improbable.
The Brewers collected 1423 hits during the 2025 season, and 225 of them were fielded by an infielder. The latter number was the most by any MLB team since 2007 and the second most by any team this century. On average, during the 2025 season National League teams batted .081 on balls hit to infielders. The Brewers hit .110, accounting for about 60 hits above average on balls hit to infielders in a single season.
In a related note, the Brewers collected 509 hits during the 2025 season on batted balls classified as grounders. That was also the most in the majors last season. The Brewers batted .268 on ground balls as compared to a league average of .244, and over 1901 at bats that amounts to about 40 extra hits across the 2025 season.
Speed-Forward Team
On the surface this fits a narrative about the team. The Brewers had a reputation for being one of baseball’s most speed-forward teams in 2025 and the data backs it up. Baseball Savant’s Statcast data has the Brewers’ average sprint speed at exactly 28 feet per second in 2025, a full foot per second above the MLB average. Savant also tracks “Bolts,” the number of times a player is clocked running faster than 30 feet per second. The Brewers had 197 of those, second most in the majors. The nine bottom teams in baseball combined for 198 of them.
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Team speed by itself, however, is not enough to guarantee more infield hits. The Brewers’ average sprint speed mentioned above was the second highest in baseball in 2025. The fastest team was the Phillies, at 28.1 feet per second and with 239 “bolts,” over 40 more than the Brewers had. Despite all that extra speed, however, the Phillies were still only average at collecting infield hits, and they batted eleven points below the Brewers on ground balls.
The Brewers’ beneficiaries of these infield hits also show that the factors at play must extend beyond pure speed. Jackson Chourio and Brice Turang combined for 77 infield hits in 2025, and they were among the fastest players on the team. William Contreras also had 21, however, and his sprint speed was below the MLB average at 26.2 feet per second.
More Luck than Skill?
If the Brewers’ ability to turn weakly hit balls into hits was more luck than skill, then that doesn’t bode well for their success going forward. There are other fast teams in baseball, but the Brewers were unique in 2025 in their dependence on it. As noted above, the Phillies were the fastest team in baseball last year but also had an average exit velocity of 89.4 miles per hour on batted balls, the third best mark in the National League. The Brewers, meanwhile, were last in the NL at 87.6. They were also in the bottom half of the NL in hard hit rate, line drive percentage, ground ball percentage, and batted balls pulled. Brewers’ TV broadcast announcers were all too happy to claim that “exit velocity is overrated” when a ball dropped in or rolled between fielders in 2025. The Brewers’ long term success with their current group of position players might be dependent on that being true.
It’s also possible, however, that the Brewers have intentionally or unintentionally been capitalizing on a leaguewide trend. As cited on a recent episode of the podcast Effectively Wild (about 1:07:00 into the linked episode), FanGraphs writer Michael Baumann has found that defender positioning has changed in recent years with virtually everyone besides the pitcher and catcher playing further back than they did a decade ago. In concept this shift causes teams to give up more singles but have a better chance at turning harder hit balls into outs. In theory, a team that makes a lot of weak contact would benefit from this as infielders and outfielders alike would have farther to move in to field softly hit balls.
Whether it was strategy, skill or simply luck, the Brewers offense got a significant boost from better-than-usual results on softly hit balls during the 2025 season. Without a significant change in personnel this offseason, at least on paper it would seem like their ability to repeat last season’s success is at least partly dependent on their ability to do it again.
