Much at Stake for Some Brewers

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Photo via Rowdy Tellez - Instagram

Rowdy Tellez

Rowdy Tellez

The final games of the 2023 regular season might not mean much for the Brewers as a team, but they could do a lot to determine the futures of a few players.

Even after Sunday’s loss the Brewers are very nearly locked into playoff position. Their “magic number” to clinch the NL Central is down to single digits, meaning just a handful more Brewers wins or Cubs losses will guarantee a division title. They’re also nearly guaranteed to be the NL’s #3 seed in the postseason, however, as they’re 12 games back of the NL East-leading Braves and 7 ½ back of the NL West-leading Dodgers. It’s possible the Brewers will know their postseason fate as soon as the end of this week.

For a handful of players who have had difficult seasons (or difficult stretches of seasons) the Brewers’ remaining games might be their last opportunity to show Matt Arnold and company (or the front offices of 29 other teams) that they have something in the tank going forward.

Tyrone Taylor is one such player, and he may need to extend his recent hot streak to help himself find an opportunity going forward. Entering the season, the Brewers had a surplus of outfielders and it looked like they might struggle to find room for Taylor, a one-time top prospect and career .241 hitter with a .757 on-base plus slugging. Instead, injuries opened a door for Taylor and he stumbled through it. By the end of July he had appeared in 36 games but was batting just .161 with a .177 on-base and .258 slugging. 

That awful start means that the numbers on the scoreboard do not reflect the performer Taylor has been recently. Before a rough day on Sunday Taylor was hitting .301 with a .346 on-base and .563 slugging since August 1. The seven-game hitting streak he took into Sunday’s game was the longest of his career and his double and home run in Saturday’s game both came in key spots.

Taylor’s hot stretch hasn’t changed the fact that the Brewers project to have a significant surplus of outfielders for their postseason roster and beyond: With Garrett Mitchell now on a rehab assignment, any playing time for Taylor this fall and a roster spot next spring might have to come at the expense of Christian Yelich, Sal Frelick, Mitchell or Mark Canha, who is also swinging a hot bat lately. With a lot of candidates battling for his opportunities, Taylor’s final weeks might determine if his next opportunity comes with the Brewers or someone else.

It’s been a similarly tough year for one-time fan favorite and 2022 Brewers home run leader Rowdy Tellez, whose production has declined from last season’s levels. Tellez has never been a high batting average guy but his on-base skills have declined this season and the slugging that is the primary source of his value has gone with it: He has just a .383 slugging percentage and likely won’t even hit half as many home runs as he did last year (13, as compared to 35 in 2022).

Tellez missed much of July and the first half of August due to injury but his numbers haven’t gained a lot of traction since his return. The Brewers have also added help at his position, picking up Carlos Santana at the trade deadline, but Tellez is under team control for 2024 while Santana is slated to become a free agent. A hot finish for Tellez could do a lot to give him the inside track to get his job back next spring. Barring that, however, the Brewers might have a hard time counting on him.

It’s possible Willy Adames has already done enough to lift himself out of this group, but perhaps not enough to reset the narrative around him. Adames was in the upper third of the Brewers lineup for large portions of the stretch where they struggled to score early in the year and he was a poster child for those struggles, batting .203 with a .285 on-base and .360 slugging across the Brewers’ first 74 games.  

Adames was already starting to look more like himself by the time the Brewers moved him back in the lineup around the trade deadline, though, and he’s gained some momentum since then. Even before he drew three walks on Sunday he had already posted a .761 on-base plus slugging in his last 72 games. Adames’ on-base percentage for the season as a whole is actually higher in 2023 (.303) than it was in 2022 (.298) when he was selected as the most valuable Brewer.

Like Taylor and Tellez, the depth of Adames’ early-season lows have meant that the numbers on the scoreboard have lagged behind as his performance has improved. Adames’ value is nearly back to where it was at this time a year ago, but it might take a hot finish or some big hits in the postseason to erase the narrative that the Brewers “dodged a bullet” by not signing him to a long-term deal.