2024 Team Previews: Milwaukee Brewers
Going through all 30 teams, looking back at 2023 and ahead to the 2024 season through a fantasy baseball lens.
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Brewers Intro
Plenty of these team intros have centered on my history as a Pirate fan, and this one will be no different. At one point sometime between 2005 and 2015, the Pirates lost something like 967 consecutive games in Miller Park. There was no team I hated more than the Brewers for most of my childhood. Bill Hall, Rickie Weeks, Corey Hart, J.J. Hardy, Ryan Braun… I couldn’t stand those guys.
I also think back to playing MVP 05 and whenever you’d start a season on that game with the Pirates, they’d play the Brewers on Opening day and I’d always get shut out by Ben Sheets. The Pirates lead-off hitter in that game was Tike Redman… memories, man.
Every time I even hear the words “Opening Day” I just get a little butterfly in my stomach. What a beautiful day that is. We are 45 days away from it now, which is a long time. But football season is in the books, which sort of kicks off fantasy baseball season. That’s exciting because it brings more attention to ME!
It also means all of the fantasy football bro’s who also do baseball will be coming out of their cocoons and posting baseball stuff. Which is all fine and well, you can certainly do both sports and do them both well, but for some irrational reason when you write baseball stuff non-stop through the entire off-season you feel like entitled to the February and March content producing as well. Makes no sense, obviously, but that’s a real thing. Anyways, welcome back to anybody turning your attention to baseball, it’s going to be the best season yet!
We have five team previews to go. I have just one left to actually write, which will be a doozy because it’s the Braves. The best teams in the league always take forever to write up because they all have at least a dozen fantasy relevant players, it seems. That’s not the case with the Brewers as much, but they do have plenty of young guys that at least need looked at. It’s pretty wild that this team won the fifth-most games in baseball last year. It’s easy to forget since they did it pretty quietly in a boring NL Central division and then quickly exited the playoffs.
Now they have lost Brandon Woodruff and shipped away Corbin Burnes, but made a couple of key additions on the offensive side. Interesting strat! The Brewers are trying to play both sides here, being financially conservative while still competing in the short-term. That’s an respectable enough move, and it makes sense. The Woodruff shoulder stuff feels like a landmine, so it makes sense that teams don’t want to promise him a bunch of money right now. And for Burnes, it would seem that there was just a knowledge that he wasn’t going to re-sign with them after this year when he hits free agency, so a trade made a lot of sense there. The return for him was… questionable… but hey, it’s still better to get a return for him instead of risking injury and seeing him walk for nothing.
Let’s get into it here.
Hitters
Christian Yelich
Age: 32
Pos: OF
The stolen bases came back in 2023 and that made for Yelich’s best fantasy season since BC (before corona):
2023: 632 PA, 106 R, 19 HR, 77 RBI, 28 SB, .278/.370/.451, .821 OPS
106 runs and 28 steals made him a valuable roto player right away, and then the 19 homers, 77 RBI, and .278 AVG didn’t hurt anybody’s team either.
The stolen base attempt rate came up six points to 17%, and maybe that falls a couple of points in 2024 but I don’t think it’s going back to the 11% prior to the rule changes.
He also raised the barrel rate up to 9.2%, up one point from 2022, and that’s pretty significant. His GB% was still brutally high at 57%, but that was an improvement from the 59% prior.
He’ll always hit a few more homers just because he plays every day and hits lead-off. He’s gone for 671 and 632 PAs the last two years, so that helps a lot.
Yelich is a really talented hitter, so when he was able to get a ball in the air he crushed the ball - he was in the 94th percentile in fly ball exit velo. So even though the 55% or so GB% is here to stay, there’s not really any chance he comes out with single digit homers or anything like that.
He also dropped the K% down this year to 22.2% and maintained a high walk rate at 12.3%.
Yelich is a very good fantasy contributor, and who knows, maybe there’s still 25-homer upside if he has a year where he suddenly goes for just a 48% GB% or something like that. His projection makes him a $14.40 player on average, similar to Bryan Reynolds and Teoscar Hernandez, but he’s a pretty good pick in the 70-90 range if you’re short on runs and steals.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Bryan Reynolds
JA: 651 PA, 93 R, 18 HR, 65 RBI, 23 SB, .259/.357/.416, .773 OPS
BatX: 631 PA, 86 R, 17 HR, 68 RBI, 23 SB, .264/.365/.420, .785 OPS
Rhys Hoskins
Age: 31
Pos: 1B
The 2023 season was lost to injury for Hoskins, who tore his ACL in spring training. That was very unfortunate for him as it was a contract year for him, so he entered the market without playing a meaningful baseball game in more than a year.
2021: 443 PA, 27 HR, .247/.334/.530, .864 OPS, 24.4% K%, 10.6% BB%
2022: 671 PA, 30 HR, .246/.332/.462, .794 OPS, 25.2% K%, 10.7% BB%
He manages the strikeouts while walking a good bit. His Brl% in 2022 was 11.1% and he went for a good 33% FB%.
So the power is real, and I think we can pretty much assume he’s 100% physically for this year. He’s not young, but 31 isn’t a big deal. The Brewers felt good enough about him to give him a two-year contract, but notably it was just $17 million per year, so that shows that the league was a little bit hesitant to throw big money at him.
Hoskins isn’t a fantastic roto bat with no/low steals and a middling batting average, but I think there’s 35-homer upside in Milwaukee and he shouldn’t have any trouble reaching 90+ RBI if he stays healthy.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Christian Encarnacion-Strand, Vinnie Pasquantino
JA: 590 PA, 78 R, 27 HR, 90 RBI, 5 SB, .242/.328/.460, .788 OPS
BatX: 567 PA, 74 R, 27 HR, 82 RBI, 4 SB, .241/.344/.464, .808 OPS
William Contreras
Age: 26
Pos: C
Contreras burst onto the scene in 2022 with the Braves, smashing 20 homers in just 376 PAs. That was on the back of a 35% HR/FB that was obviously never going to happen again. That number came down to 20% last year, and he kept hitting the ball on the ground a ton - which we’ll see.
First, the stats:
611 PA, 86 R, 17 HR, 78 RBI, 6 SB, .291/.369/.459, .828 OPS
Playing time is half the battle with catchers, and by my count he and Adley Rutschman were the only catchers over 600 PAs last year.
He’s pretty good at everything with the bat, but doesn’t blow us away anywhere.
He’s a lot like Yelich here with the super high GB% and the low average launch angle, and that does cause some hesitation about if he can really hit 20+ homers again.
The projection will answer a lot of the questions for us, I think, but first, the percentiles:
The projection systems all make him the #1 catcher:
But drafters do not agree:
We’re not going to get hung up on the rankings here, it’s clear that Contreras is in the top tier at the catcher position. Nobody but Rutschman projects to play more, the raw power is there, and he hits at the top of the lineup.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Yainer Diaz, Will Smith
JA: 598 PA, 85 R, 24 HR, 75 RBI, 6 SB, .259/.341/.455, .796 OPS
BatX: 583 PA, 72 R, 22 HR, 78 RBI, 3 SB, .266/.341/.447, .789 OPS
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