Brewer win total in 2024 season?

[Sixtolezcano]

Sportsbooks (Vegas) has a Brewer win total at 76.5. PECOTA at 79 wins and FanGraphs at 80. I believe all of these are low and the Brewers will surprise at 84.5 with improved hitting and their superior bullpen. What do you think?

[Underachiever]

90 wins.

[Jastro]

85 wins

[eddiemathews]

80

[Frisbee Slider]

88 wins

No way did Milwaukee regress 15 wins compared to last year.

[KeithStone53151]

12 minutes ago, Frisbee Slider said:

88 wins

No way did Milwaukee regress 15 wins compared to last year.

It's not really quite that simple. One could think we were a bit lucky with variance, in part due to a bullpen that literally has no choice but to be at least a little worse than 2023 considering just how good it was in 2023. Also factor in other teams in the division have improved while the Brewers have lost a couple key pieces. I'm going with 74 wins. I think we take a bit of a step back this year unfortunately. We're relying on so much youth this year, coupled with other teams in the division I think being better than projections think they are.

[bigred]

82

[BrewerFan]

1 hour ago, Sixtolezcano said:

Sportsbooks (Vegas) has a Brewer win total at 76.5. PECOTA at 79 wins and FanGraphs at 80. I believe all of these are low and the Brewers will surprise at 84.5 with improved hitting and their superior bullpen. What do you think?

I bet with a friend each year...someone who's an incredibly pessimistic person. He's got them at 70. It's 100 bucks+10 for each win off(so if they win 80, I win 200). 

I'd say 86 though. I like the offense and I think they'll find enough pitching. 

It'll be interesting though. I think losing CC is a bigger loss than people realize...but hope I'm wrong on that. Burnes was a big blow, but Ortiz and Hall are ready to step in. 

 

It's ultimately kinda like the Packers season last year. I just want to see the young guys step up and improve. I don't have big expectations or hopes for the post-season, but I think the regular season will be up and down, but hopefully exciting and make the future look even better. 

[RobDeer 45]

I agree BrewerFan, I'm looking forward to seeing the young guys play and hopefully improve as the season goes on.  There will be a lot of ups and downs.  I'm guessing we will have a couple stretches that are very rough.  Ultimately my guess is we win 80 but I think it will be a very fun year.  I'm hoping I'm off in my prediction and they come out and surprise! 

[CheezWizHed]

So much variation in what could be this year.  It wouldn't shock me to see the team be under .500 given the youth we are leaning on and developing. But they could also be on par with last year's team if that youth adapts well.  Several starting pitchers are going to be inning limited and there isn't a strong depth at this point. 

I'll say 84-78

[Frisbee Slider]

1 hour ago, KeithStone53151 said:

We're relying on so much youth this year, coupled with other teams in the division I think being better than projections think they are.

I guess I do not see the meaningful external improvements made by other teams in the division. Aside from the Reds adding Brent Suter. Brewers added Hoskins, which could be a huge improvement.

All teams in the division will be relying on youth. Milwaukee’s prospects have just as good of chance to improve or regress as other team’s prospects.
 

[wiguy94]

82 wins

[Playing Catch]

85

[Brock Beauchamp]

I'm a little low on the Brewers this year with the hope that because the variance is so high with all the young players that I'm going to be wrong. I'm pretty bullish on the team for 2025.

I'd put the over/under at 79.5 wins.

[Brewin]

1 hour ago, KeithStone53151 said:

It's not really quite that simple. One could think we were a bit lucky with variance, in part due to a bullpen that literally has no choice but to be at least a little worse than 2023 considering just how good it was in 2023. Also factor in other teams in the division have improved while the Brewers have lost a couple key pieces. I'm going with 74 wins. I think we take a bit of a step back this year unfortunately. We're relying on so much youth this year, coupled with other teams in the division I think being better than projections think they are.

I certainly respect your opinion and know you are way more pessimistic than the majority of the board on the outlook for the season. However, I would be stunned if they were at 74 wins, in fact I have a futures ticket on season wins over 76.5 that I am quite confident in.  The pitching has more questions than were used to around here, but the offense should be significantly improved. In regard to the rest of the division, I don't see this improvement your referring to. I guess we'll see whose crystal ball is clearer in the next 6 months 

[Frisbee Slider]

We didn’t have Woodruff for most of last year. We lost Burnes (3.5 WAR) and Williams (2.6 WAR) is hurt. 
At a minimum, they will be replaced with replacement level production. Plus,  Hoskins, and other improvements on offense should minimize regression.

[Underachiever]

19 minutes ago, Frisbee Slider said:

All teams in the division will be relying on youth. 
 

St. Louis is an exception. Some young position players, but the rotation is Lance Lynn-36, Sonny Gray-34, Kyle Gibson-36, Miles Mikolas-35, and Steven Matz-32. Goldschmidt-36, Carpenter-38, Brandon Crawford-37, Arenado-32 are in the infield/DH mix. The only place that they are young throughout is the outfield. Winn improving at SS will be critical to their success.

[Frisbee Slider]

 

2 minutes ago, Underachiever said:

St. Louis is an exception

Good point, Saint Louis could also regress due to age and injuries.

[TURBO]

I just don't think our starting pitching is going to get the job done.  Freddy goes down, we are screwed.

I think we could win anywhere between 76 - 84 games, but for 84 to happen, a lot of things are going to have to go right.  A couple more key losses for any length of time could really hurt us.

Final prediction is 79 wins.

[Brock Beauchamp]

8 minutes ago, Underachiever said:

St. Louis is an exception. Some young position players, but the rotation is Lance Lynn-36, Sonny Gray-34, Kyle Gibson-36, Miles Mikolas-35, and Steven Matz-32. Goldschmidt-36, Carpenter-38, Brandon Crawford-37, Arenado-32 are in the infield/DH mix. The only place that they are young throughout is the outfield. Winn improving at SS will be critical to their success.

The Cardinals have the exact opposite problem. I'm way down on the Cardinals in both the short- and mid-term. It feels like their pitching development has slipped and they don't have an easy way out of that. Their hitting development seems okay but their roster as a whole is getting old.

[kestrel79]

My gut says around .500. Could be higher or couple be lower depending on how the young talent develops and injuries, trades. Should be exciting! Kinda feels like 2016-2017 to me. 

[Ignitor 4ever]

25 minutes ago, kestrel79 said:

My gut says around .500. Could be higher or couple be lower depending on how the young talent develops and injuries, trades. Should be exciting! Kinda feels like 2016-2017 to me. 

I feel the same.  This feels like a team that will hover around .500 all season.  I think putting the line at 79.5 (as was mentioned above) feels about right.  And the comparison to the 2023 Packers is appropriate.  This is a team that could surprise us and win 87 or 88 or they could drop down to 75.  I do not see them going below 75 or above 88 on the worst and best possible ends.

[KeithStone53151]

1 hour ago, Frisbee Slider said:

I guess I do not see the meaningful external improvements made by other teams in the division. Aside from the Reds adding Brent Suter. Brewers added Hoskins, which could be a huge improvement.

All teams in the division will be relying on youth. Milwaukee’s prospects have just as good of chance to improve or regress as other team’s prospects.
 

Well initially, I thought the public thought the Pirates were going to be far worse than money lines indicate. I figured I was way too optimistic on them when I figured they'd be in the 75 win range...but that's actually about their line.

My big concern honestly is simply the rotation, and quite honestly the bullpen. I think just about everyone is making a grand assumption that the bullpen is going to be good because it's always good and we didn't really lose anyone(except Williams). Bullpen pitchers are far too volatile to simply assume that all of Payamps, Megill, Peguero, etc are going to be as good or better than they were last year. Also, I'm probably as anti-Counsell as anyone on this board...but his absolute greatest strength as a manager was long term bullpen management. Will Murphy do as good a job? Maybe?

And as much as one really shouldn't think this way, I think the Brewers are due for a down year after a long stretch of pretty darn good baseball. This year would make a ton of sense as a transitory type of year, and I also don't think there's much chance we get reinforcements this year at the deadline even if we play a bit above our heads. I think this is a year to get the future guys some mlb experience and see what we have in Hall, Ashby, Gasser, maybe Miz, Chourio, Mitchell, Wiemer, Turang, etc.

[KeithStone53151]

1 hour ago, Brewin said:

I certainly respect your opinion and know you are way more pessimistic than the majority of the board on the outlook for the season. However, I would be stunned if they were at 74 wins, in fact I have a futures ticket on season wins over 76.5 that I am quite confident in.  The pitching has more questions than were used to around here, but the offense should be significantly improved. In regard to the rest of the division, I don't see this improvement your referring to. I guess we'll see whose crystal ball is clearer in the next 6 months 

I hope you hit, I hope I'm wrong. Fwiw, last year I predicted the Brewers record on the nose at 92 wins while everyone else was predicting 86-87. My thought was, we're going to add at the deadline and rattle off August/September wins while half of teams aren't trying to win. 34-20 in those 2 months.

[Lathund]

The Vegas o/u at 76.5 is perhaps the easiest over in baseball. Rotation is worse, offense is better, bullpen has the same players but obviously is volatile. The vast majority of players underperformed on offense last year, and the team still won 92 games. Like I don't expect them to match that win total, I just don't buy into the narrative that they're 15-20 games worse. Especially not as the rest of the division didn't really get much better. Reds added a bunch, but I also think their rookie group from last year will be quite a bit worse, for example looking at statcast data. So I don't think they'll overall be better. 

I'll go for 84 wins for the Brewers. Generally I expect the entire division to be between 75 and 85 wins. And the 4 non-Pirates teams are probably even closer than that.