The Brewers coasted to an NL Central crown in 2023 and were again projected as favorites in the division at the start of the offseason. With a core of veteran difference-makers and exciting young players and weakness from others in the division, it was exactly the type of forecast you would expect to spur the front office to bolster the team’s chances of success in 2024. However, this winter had been full of nothing but mixed signals as to the team’s priorities this season and beyond.

Milwaukee Brewers
2023 record: 92-70 (1st, NL Central; lost in NLWCS)
2024 FanGraphs projection: 81-81 (3rd, NL Central)

When the Brewers inaugurated their offseason by signing Rhys Hoskins to a two-year, $34 million deal, it felt like precisely the type of veteran reinforcement that a team looking to improve on the previous year’s finish would make. Despite missing 2023 with a torn ACL, he had been a top-ten slugging first baseman since his debut in 2017 and projected to approach that production in 2024.

But then just six days later, Milwaukee traded Corbin Burnes to the Orioles for DL Hall, Joey Ortiz, and the 34th overall pick in the 2024 MLB Draft. Nothing says “mixed signals” like making a significant signing only to trade away your ace and 2021 NL Cy Young winner in the span of a week. Sure, Hall and Ortiz could play substantial roles for the big league club this year, but it almost certainly will not come close to replacing the roughly four-and-a-half wins Burnes is expected to produce now for Baltimore.

It’s been quite a precipitous fall for arguably the best starting rotation in baseball across the last three seasons. Not only do they lose a top-five starter in Burnes, they also will be without Brandon Woodruff for most if not all of the season. They brought him back on a two-year rehab deal, the 31-year-old expected to use 2024 to recover from surgery to repair a torn shoulder capsule. This leaves Freddy Peralta as the projected Opening Day starter — by no means a weak candidate for that distinction. He’s been a top-30 starter over the last three seasons by ERA (3.35) and fWAR (9.0) and projects to do the same in 2024, ZiPS predicting a 3.86 ERA and 2.8 fWAR across 28 starts totaling 151.2 innings.

Things look pretty bleak behind him in the rotation, with Hall only projected for 110 big league innings and guys like Wade Miley, Jacob Junis, Colin Rea, and Robert Gasser projected for worse-than-fifth-starter value and with ERAs in the mid-fours. At least they can rely on a strong bullpen much as they have in recent seasons. Even though Josh Hader is long gone, Devin Williams is a more than able candidate to take his place as the team’s closer. He has accrued the most value of any reliever since his breakout in 2020 and again projects as a top-15 bullpen arm by ERA (3.00) and FIP (3.41). He heads a deep relief unit that Depth Charts projects as the third-best by ERA (3.99) and fourth-best by FIP (4.17) and fWAR (4.0).

Turning our attention to the offense, all eyes are on uber-prospect Jackson Chourio. The 20-year-old signed as a teenager out of Venezuela for $1.8 million in 2021 is now a consensus top-three prospect in baseball and has a serious case as an Opening Day starter. He is seen as a legitimate 30-30 threat in the future, though ZiPS does not believe that impact will be instant, projecting him for 17 home runs, 35 stolen bases, a 92 wRC+, and 2.0 fWAR across 612 plate appearances while capping his 80th percentile ceiling at a 114 wRC+ and a hair over three wins.

It must be noted that Chourio will have an intriguing cast of under-the-radar talent around him. William Contreras moved to the Brewers as part of the three-team swap that sent Sean Murphy to the Braves and Esteury Ruiz to the A’s and almost immediately established himself as one of the best catchers in the game, leading all backstops with 5.4 fWAR and placing seventh in wRC+ (124). Interestingly, ZiPS does not believe he can replicate that performance, projecting him to regress by two wins as his offense and defense take a step back. It’s still enough to place among the top five catchers in 2024, though it is perhaps telling that ZiPS’ 80th percentile projection still has him falling almost a full win short of his marvelous 2023 campaign.

I’m not sure anyone could have predicted the leap in ability Willy Adames made upon his swap from the Rays to Milwaukee, the shortstop grading as the seventh-best player at the position by fWAR (11.4) since the day of his trade. ZiPS is confident in the changes he’s made to his game — he’s been the second-best defensive shortstop in the game over the last two years by Outs Above Average (+26) — and projects him for another top-ten finish among qualified shortstops with 4.1 fWAR. Christian Yelich also experienced something of a mid-career renaissance, finishing with his best season (122 wRC+, 4.1 fWAR) since he put up almost 15 wins and won the NL MVP in his first two years with the club. However, ZiPS is less certain that he can maintain this newly-rediscovered production, going as far as to slash his fWAR in half in their projection of his 2024 campaign.

Even in an offseason that saw the team lose their ace, perhaps the biggest blow to the organization came on the non-player side of operations. They saw longtime team president David Stearns jump ship to head the Mets before watching manager Craig Counsell poached by the rival Cubs. In the span of a little over a month, the Brewers lost the architect of many of their overachieving rosters as well as the skipper who managed to extract those top-percentile outcomes to drive such success. How the franchise will fare without the pair of guiding hands that made them perennial division contenders remains one of the intriguing mysteries as the season approaches.

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