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Joey Ortiz
Joey Ortiz (2025)
The Brewers have held their own through the first quarter of the MLB season, but some players have played a bigger part in that than others. As has been the case in nearly every recent year, the lineups the Brewers put on the field in August and September will likely feature significant changes from the ones they’ve used in April and May. As the organization puts together their plans for the stretch, they’re going to have to make tough decisions on this trio of veteran players:
Luis Rengifo
There are only two regulars in the Brewers lineup at this point that both Baseball Reference and FanGraphs agree have been below replacement level and one of them is Sal Frelick, who the Brewers are likely to ride it out with. The other is a more interesting decision: Both models agree that Rengifo has cost the team about three tenths of a win this season, but they would have been even less positive about him a few weeks ago.
Rengifo started the season extremely cold, batting just .125 with a .173 on-base and .208 slugging in his first 14 games. His .606 on-base plus slugging since is nothing to write home about (it’s about 100 points below league average), but it’s much closer to “serviceable” than “must replace.” There’s not a lot in Rengifo’s peripheral numbers to suggest he’ll make major improvements: The biggest thing he’s doing well is pitch selection, where Baseball Savant has him in the top 20% of MLB hitters in strikeout percentage, whiff rate and percentage of batted balls “squared up.” He’s among the bottom third of MLB hitters in bat speed, however, so his elite pitch selection still isn’t leading to many balls being hit hard. He’s also only batting .232 on balls in play, though, which is extremely low for a player with decent speed and who hits to all fields. The upside here isn’t extremely high, but with better luck there’s probably reason to believe he could improve on his already-improved numbers somewhat.
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Blake Perkins
It’s been an early stretch to forget for one of the Brewers’ quiet contributors from recent years: Perkins was a late bump from the Opening Day roster, has been sent to the minors on a pair of occasions and hasn’t hit much at all in limited opportunities at the big league level, where he has just six hits and no home runs in 54 at bats. The Brewers have already used 10 players in the outfield this season but Perkins has not separated himself from the middle to bottom of that group. It hasn’t helped him that the Brewers haven’t had many opportunities for him to play center: Garrett Mitchell has been in the lineup most days, occupying the spot where Perkins provides the most defensive value.
Even during his most valuable season (2024) Perkins was a defensive star who occasionally hit, not a top offensive performer. He’s still one of the game’s fastest players, and if he played more frequently, he’d almost certainly be among the Brewers most likely to make a game-changing defensive play. Because he can be sent back to the minors without having to clear waivers, he’s likely to remain with the team, but he’s unlikely to see regular playing time unless something happens to force him into the lineup.
Joey Ortiz
It’s not a new question for the Brewers, but “what are they going to do with Joey Ortiz?” remains an unanswered one. Ortiz has a .525 on-base plus slugging, which ranks 250th among 263 MLB players who have batted at least 100 times this season. Those numbers are magnified by the fact that it seems like he’s always up in key spots (he’s batted 55 times with runners on base and 56 with the bases empty). At this point there’s a lot more evidence to suggest that Ortiz is a poor hitter who had a hot stretch in 2024 than a good hitter in a down stretch: Since the 2024 All Star break he’s batted 859 times and has a .221 batting average with a .278 on-base and .321 slugging.
Despite all of that, however, Ortiz’s defense at shortstop is valuable enough that both FanGraphs and Baseball Reference grade him out as above replacement level this season and also did so in 2025. This season Baseball Savant estimates Ortiz has cost the Brewers about eight runs on offense but has brought back four runs already on defense, with the latter putting him in elite company in the game. And as was also the case in 2025, the Brewers have left themselves without strong options to take his place. David Hamilton is the only other Brewer who has seen time at shortstop this season and his offense has been limited while his defense is a significant downgrade. Top prospects Jesus Made and Cooper Pratt are also shortstops, but thrusting them into an everyday lineup would feel like rushing them at this point. Ortiz’s defensive work almost certainly gives him MLB value, but the Brewers might have work to do to add pieces around him to limit the impact of his offensive shortcomings.
