2021 ZiPS Projections: Milwaukee Brewers

After having typically appeared in the hallowed pages of Baseball Think Factory, Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections have now been released at FanGraphs for nine years. The exercise continues this offseason. Below are the projections for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Batters

Milwaukee’s approach to replacing Yasmani Grandal (.848 OPS in 2019), Mike Moustakas (.845), and Eric Thames (.851) took the form of, well, nothing. That’s possibly a little too cruel, but it wasn’t reasonable to expect Justin Smoak, Avisaíl García, and Eric Sogard to make up for that production. Losing Lorenzo Cain due to his opt-out — and let’s be clear that nobody should fault him at all for this — caught the team by surprise as well, necessitating Garcia as the center fielder. Overall, from 2019 to ’20, the Brewers saw improved offense at one position (shortstop), held serve at a second (center), and lost ground everywhere else. Sum up everything, and the lineup combined for an 89 wRC+, the 10th-worst in team history and a 10-point drop from 2019. To put this into context, this was only slightly better than the Brew Crew did in their one season as the Seattle Pilots.

Thanks to 16 teams qualifying for the playoffs, that still wasn’t enough to prevent Milwaukee from October baseball. Like the rest of the NL Central, the Brewers were quietly dispatched in the wild-card round. With a 16-team playoff structure unlikely for 2021, a repeat performance would likely doom any quest for a postseason appearance.

Christian Yelich’s 2020 was wildly successful in one sense, in that he returned from an extremely painful broken kneecap that prematurely ended his 2019 season and played in 58 of 60 possible games. But outside of the health factor, the season was a forgettable one, with the former MVP hitting .205/.356/.430 for a wRC+ of 112 and 0.7 WAR. It says a lot about the Brewers that he led the hitters in WAR. He came back an extremely passive hitter, swinging at far fewer pitches than ever before, which was unfortunately combined with the worst contact numbers of his career. But ZiPS isn’t a doomsayer on Yelich, projecting a solid bounceback campaign in 2021. ZiPS sees Yelich’s peripheral numbers in 2020 supporting a .321 BABIP, not even in the same galaxy as his actual .259, and he’s 29, not 39.

The Brewers will need that rebound year from Yelich because the lineup is projected to continue to be underwhelming. Cain’s return will help, but there’s not a single position, outside of left field and center field, that ZiPS gauges as clearly better than league-average. And in most cases, it falls short of even that unambitious threshold. That’s not to say this roster is without upside — it would be a really bad idea to throw in the towel on Keston Hiura based on his 2020 — but run scoring looks like it will be a challenge. The Brewers would be wise to bring in someone like Justin Turner at third and perhaps Joc Pederson with a suitable platoon partner, but I don’t expect the team to make any more waves than that. It’s a pity, too, given that nobody in the NL Central looks like they’re going to chase wins this offseason.

Pitchers

The offensive magic was gone, but the pitching sorcery continued in 2020 and was the primary reason the final record was as close to .500 as it was. You may think it was driven only by the bullpen, a dependable and deep group headed by Josh Hader, Rookie of the Year Devin Williams, and the usual supporting cast of overachieving castoffs and fringe prospects. Not to say the relief corps wasn’t solid, but there were some real bright spots in the rotation. At the top was Brandon Woodruff, who continued to display ace potential and showed little residual issues from an oblique injury he suffered in 2019. I was mildly surprised he didn’t pick up a stray vote or two at the back of Cy Young ballots.

Another huge contributor was Corbin Burnes, who many might have given up on after he allowed 17 round-trippers in just 49 innings in 2019. A better year should have always been expected (ZiPS projected an ERA around four in 2020) given the extreme volatility of home run numbers for pitchers, but Burnes didn’t just rely on regression toward the mean. He revamped his repertoire, mostly abandoning his traditional fastball for a 96-mph sinker combined with a 93-mph cutter. That was enormously successful, as he struck out 13 batters per nine and saw the average exit velocity against his pitches drop by three miles per hour season-over-season. Unlike his rotation-mate Woodruff, Burnes did snag a couple boxes in the Cy voting.

ZiPS is also more optimistic about Adrian Houser and Josh Lindblom than their 2020 performances. Now, the computer isn’t saying the either is a hidden diamond in the rough — though Houser gave some indications in 2019 that he could be — but if they each could eat 150 innings with an ERA in the mid-fours, they’ll be real contributors. I do think that this roster could use one more starting pitcher, especially if Freddy Peralta isn’t given another go at the rotation in 2021. If the Brewers can fix Jordan Lyles on two separate occasions, I’d be interested to see them work with a more talented reclamation projection, like Chris Archer. Lefties have always struggled to hit for power against Jake Odorizzi, so that would be another fun player to bring in and unlikely to be a huge expense for the team.

What can you say about the bullpen? I’m disappointed that Corey Knebel isn’t returning, but of the teams ZiPS has tackled so far this offseason (Milwaukee is the 17th), this group has the fourth-best projection overall, even with Williams falling back from his phenomenal rookie campaign. There’s still space at the back for another arm or two, however, as ZiPS is not crazy about Justin Topa or Ray Black. I had hoped that Alex Claudio was going to be tendered, as he still has enough upside to be interesting as depth, but the Brewers cut ties with him for the second straight offseason.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

 

 

 

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned, players who will miss 2021 due to injury, and players who were released in 2020. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Finnish industrial death metal fourth-wave ska J-pop band, he’s still listed here intentionally.

Both hitters and pitchers are ranked by projected zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those which appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR. ZiPS is assuming that the designated hitter will continue in force in 2021; if it does not, there will be widespread minor adjustments across the board come April.

ZiPS is agnostic about future playing time by design. For more information about ZiPS, please refer to this article, or get angry at Dan on Twitter or something.