Projections Versus Reality for the Brewers

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Image courtesy FanGraphs - fangraphs.com

FanGraphs 2023 Milwaukee Brewers projections

FanGraphs 2023 Milwaukee Brewers projections

It’s still possible they could make another move in the weeks ahead, but around baseball it largely looks like the dust has settled on the 2022-23 MLB offseason and most fans can largely presume that the team their favorite club will put on the field on Opening Day will bear a strong resemblance to their projected depth chart right now. After a few unusual winters, this year the top free agents mostly signed early, and the hot stove has all but burned out in January.

For the Brewers, that suggests that the door could remain open for some longtime top prospects to finally break through and see significant MLB playing time. That also means, however, that the preseason projection models are going to show some weaknesses around the diamond until or unless those prospects step in and prove themselves.

For example, in his annual projection Dan Szymborski of FanGraphs projected second base to be a weak point for the 2023 Brewers, with former first round pick Brice Turang expected to get most of the playing time there. Turang batted .286 with a .360 on-base and .412 slugging for AAA Nashville last season but Szymborski has him projected for .236/.306/.336 in those same stats in the majors, an on-base plus slugging about 80 points below what a league average second baseman hit in 2022. Similarly, the Brewers still have question marks in center field (where former first round picks Garrett Mitchell and Sal Frelick appear poised to compete for the job) in right (some combination of Tyrone Taylor, Jesse Winker and prospects), at DH and in the bullpen, where things look pretty thin behind Devin Williams.

Those preseason weak spots don’t always stay that way for a full season, however. Here are the Brewers’ projected worst positions from each of the last three seasons, as graded by FanGraphs’ annual positional power rankings series:

2022: First Base

Last spring FanGraphs projected the Brewers to have the game’s 26th best collection of first basemen, predicting that Rowdy Tellez and Keston Hiura would be the primary occupants of the space but projecting them for just 1.2 Wins Above Replacement as a duo. Tellez ended up playing much more than the preseason projections suggested he might, appearing in 153 games, but his offensive numbers were actually a little worse than expected, as he batted just .219 with a .306 on-base and .461 slugging, light overall numbers that were somewhat overshadowed by his 35 home runs.

After the season FanGraphs estimated Tellez’s value to the 2022 Brewers at 0.8 WAR, a value that was dragged down significantly by his performance defensively.

2021: Shortstop and Catcher

Two years ago, the weakest position in the Brewers’ projections was a tie, with catchers and shortstops both ranked 24th out of 30 MLB teams.  Privately the Brewers may have agreed with the projection at short: They traded incumbent Orlando Arcia to the Braves just five games into the season, and after briefly experimenting with Luis Urías there, a little more than a month later they made another trade to get Willy Adames. Adames hit .285 with a .366 on-base and .521 slugging in 99 games down the stretch for the Brewers and turned a projected positional weakness into an organizational strength.

At catcher the projections had playing time split three ways, with Omar Narváez expected to play most often but Manny Piña and Jacob Nottingham both expected to fill in behind him. Narváez was coming off a dreadful 2020 season where he had played his way out of the Brewers lineup down the stretch. He bounced back, however, with a first half that earned him the first All Star appearance of his career. FanGraphs estimated his value for the season at 2.8 wins above replacement, which is twice the value they had projected the Brewers to get from all of their catchers combined.

2020: Third base

With the abbreviated 2020 season FanGraphs didn’t release positional power rankings until July, but when they did, they had strong concerns about the Brewers’ expected performance at the hot corner. They had Brewers third basemen as the 28th best in their positional group, with the collection of candidates to play there led by Eric Sogard but also including Brock Holt and Jedd Gyorko.

That collection of players all played third base, but none did it very well. Holt was released during the season, Gyorko played just nine games at the spot and Sogard did end up getting the most playing time but batted just .188 with a .233 on-base and .263 slugging. The bright spot in all those struggles, however, was the emergence of Luis Urías. The short season was his first extended look at third base, a position he has occupied more often than not since.