Can the Brewers Overcome a Weak Outfield?

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Photo via Facebook / Brewers

The Milwaukee Brewers’ struggles at a variety of positions in 2021 make it hard not to look back and wonder what could have been.

After being a point of strength for years, the outfield has become a pretty significant offensive weakness for the Brewers. Pressed into near-everyday service while Christian Yelich has been out, Jackie Bradley Jr. has just five hits in a span of 49 plate appearances over his last 15 games and is batting .156 with a .229 on-base percentage for the season. Lorenzo Cain’s three hits on Sunday finally brought his batting average above .200 for the first time in ten days, and Avisail Garcia also endured a long slump early in the season.

The Brewers signed Bradley and Garcia at least in part to fill a playing time gap left two years ago when they traded young outfielder Trent Grisham to the Padres (along with Zach Davies, getting Luis Urias and Eric Lauer in return). Grisham has been a big addition in San Diego, where he played in 59 games in 2020, won a Gold Glove, hit ten home runs and stole ten bases in a short season. In 2021 he’s batting .301, and the 24-year-old looks like he might be a future star. There’s still time for Luis Urias to develop into a solid and steady infielder, but at the moment it looks like the Brewers would be better served to have Grisham back.

Grisham is not, however, the only recent former Brewer that might look good back at American Family Field at this point. Here are a few of the other players who are thriving after leaving Milwaukee:

Jesus Aguilar

While the Brewers struggle to find consistent production at first base, a player they gave up is hitting the cover off the ball in Miami. A 2018 All Star as a Brewer, Jesus Aguilar is making a bid to return to the Midsummer Classic with a season where he’s leading the National League in RBI and recently homered in three consecutive games in Arizona. He also went deep in back-to-back games against the Brewers in April.

The Brewers traded Aguilar to the Rays in July of 2019 and received reliever Jake Faria, who struggled in nine appearances for Milwaukee that season (an 11.42 ERA in 8 2/3 innings) and hasn’t pitched in the majors since. He’s no longer in the Brewers organization.

Eric Thames

Thames hit 72 home runs across three seasons in Milwaukee from 2017-19, and his performance in that final season was a big part of the reason the Brewers felt Aguilar was expendable. His performance was not good enough, however, to convince the Brewers to exercise his $7.5 million club option for 2020. In his place the Brewers used seven different first basemen in a 60-game season and the group combined to bat just .229 with a .303 on-base and .467 slugging.

Thames was available again as a free agent last winter and did not find the market to his liking, so he opted to sign with Japan’s Yoimuri Giants. He had a .606 on-base percentage with four home runs in his first ten games before an Achilles injury prematurely ended his season.

Ji-Man Choi

The first casualty of the Brewers’ playing time logjam at first base wasn’t either Aguilar or Thames, however: It was Korean first baseman Ji-Man Choi. Choi had played just a handful of games in the majors the previous season but hit his way onto the 2018 Brewers’ Opening Day roster, where he scored the winning run in a dramatic victory over the Padres and then was immediately returned to the minors. His tenure in Milwaukee lasted just 12 games across two stints and ended when he was traded to the Rays for infielder Brad Miller and cash. Miller played in just 27 games as a Brewer and was released six weeks later.

2021 is Choi’s fourth season with the Rays, where he’s played in the postseason each of the last two years and appeared in all six games in the 2020 World Series. He’s a career .257 hitter with a .359 on-base and .461 slugging for Tampa Bay, and had three hits in his 2021 season debut on Sunday.