9 Bold Predictions for the 2024 Milwaukee Brewers

[Matthew Trueblood]

It took one extra sleep, but we made it. It's Opening Day, and since that's true, it's a great time to take a close look at the 2024 Milwaukee Brewers. Here are some bold predictions for the season that finally gets underway in a few hours.

Image courtesy of © Allan Henry-USA TODAY Sports

Boldness is part of the privilege of spring. You get to be bold when the season is not yet underway--when the snow is still smooth and unpunctured by footprints, and everyone's ankles and elbows feel (almost) 100 percent. Let's embrace that privilege, before it's gone.

1. Freddy Peralta will be the runner-up in the NL Cy Young voting.
I don't quite believe that Peralta will be the best pitcher in the National League this season, but I think he's got a legitimate shot at it. Without some folks noticing, Peralta has gotten steadily more consistent and more durable over the last few years. As our Jake McKibbin expertly showed yesterday, his slider shape change last summer really helped him find a new gear. He's a savvy, competitive, brilliant four-pitch pitcher at this point, and I think he's going to overwhelm opposing hitters in 2024.

2. William Contreras will have 180 or more hits.
This is a triple prediction, collapsed into a single sentence. The component predictions I'm conveying are:

1. Contreras is going to play a lot. Like, a LOT.
2. Contreras is going to continue to be very good at the plate, but
3. He won't increase his average launch angle and start hitting for the maximal power possible within his profile. He prefers to keep maximizing strikeout avoidance, instead.

Because it's so rare to hit for average in the modern game--let alone to do so as a catcher--and even more rare to carry a heavy catching workload, no catcher since new Hall of Famer Joe Mauer's magical 2009 campaign has exceeded 180 hits in a season. The highest was 178, by future Hall of Famer Buster Posey in 2012. Contreras will get there, thanks to a desperate desire to catch as much as anyone in baseball and to the availability of DH at-bats for him. (And, of course, thanks to his tremendous hit tool.)

3. At least 14 pitchers will start a game for the Brewers.
As we've already discussed at length this spring, Pat Murphy takes a pretty open-minded, flexible approach to starting pitching. Mix that mindset with a roster that lacks anything like a traditional, five-starter cabal, and we're going to see a team record threatened. Seven times in franchise history, the Brewers have used 13 different starting pitchers. Only once, in the Gas Leak Season of 1969 in which they weren't even the Brewers yet, did the team use more, at 17. They last used 13 of them in 2017.

That'll change this year. For fun, I'll even try to predict 14 of the guys who will get the ball to begin a contest. Here we go:

• Peralta
• DL Hall
• Colin Rea
• Wade Miley
• Jakob Junis
• Joe Ross
• Aaron Ashby
• Robert Gasser
• Bryse Wilson
• Taylor Clarke
• Janson Junk
• Carlos Rodriguez
• Jacob Misiorowski
• Chase Anderson

If I get that last one right, I get double the points. I don't make the rules. [Ed. note: Ok, yes I do. But come on.]

4. Sal Frelick will start at least 54 games at third base.
This one would have sounded very bold a month ago, but I believed it firmly then. It would have sounded like a lock 10 days ago. After Garrett Mitchell's injury, though, it feels just right for a bold predictions piece again. I think Frelick has taken well enough to third, and demonstrates sufficient comfort with the versatility required to play both the outfield and the infield, that Murphy will still have him play much of the season at the hot corner, once they get Mitchell back. This was never, despite the speculation and skepticism of many, a gimmick.

5. A Brewers hurler will win the Trevor Hoffman NL Reliever of the Year Award again.
Alas, this one is awfully bold, given Devin Williams's prolonged absence to open the season. Someone else will have to not only step in, but do so extremely effectively. Still, by now, you should have enough faith in Chris Hook and the Brewers' operation to make it feel plausible. Josh Hader and Williams have combined to win five of the last six of these awards, and while Williams will miss most of the first half with stress fractures in his back, the Brewers have multiple guys who could take up his mantle.

The most obvious candidate is Abner Uribe, in whom the franchise has invested so much--emotionally, not monetarily. His stuff is the nastiest and most dominant, and he might have added a bit of a cutter this spring. If Trevor Megill stays healthy, though, he's a dark-horse candidate to be the one, instead.

6. Rhys Hoskins will opt INTO the 2025 portion of his contract.
Effectively, everyone is treating Hoskins's deal as a one-year affair. Murphy said as much more than once this spring. Hoskins can opt out of his deal after 2024, and most of the time, Scott Boras clients end up exercising their opt-out clauses.

The market climate remains frigid as the season begins, though, and that casts a pall over the quintet of high-profile Boras clients who signed deals that allow them to become free agents in the fall. In Hoskins's case, the extra variables are that he lacks defensive value and is creeping into his mid-30s, and that the Phillies didn't attach a qualifying offer to him on the way out the door last fall. As such, he has less hope of benefiting even if there's a market rebound next offseason, and would need to have a better season than most players in his position to be convinced to opt out.

I don't think Hoskins will be bad, but I foresee a bit of missed time and some inconsistency for him this year, and I think it'll be enough to keep him from wanting to get back into the free-agent waters.

7. Miley, Rea, and Ross will combine for fewer than 270 total innings pitched.
This would hurt. The Brewers need more than this from their trio of veteran starters. I just don't think they're going to get it. It wouldn't shock me if Rea pitches 140 innings, but I don't think Miley will get past 120, and I don't know that Ross will survive April on the Milwaukee roster. As good as he occasionally looked this spring, neither his health record nor his arsenal suggests that he's going to get outs at the requisite rate over any kind of serious workload in MLB this year.

8. Jackson Chourio will become the second-best power-speed rookie ever.
Last season, Corbin Carroll of the Diamondbacks became the first player ever to hit 25 or more home runs and steal 50 or more bases as a rookie. Carroll also added 30 doubles and 10 triples, for good measure. Chourio can top him. He might not quite hit 25 homers, but 20 is a fair projection, and eclipsing 50 steals will only be a problem if Chourio struggles to get on base. For the sake of our format, I'm dispensing with my own concerns about how consistently he'll be able to do that for the time being. The explosiveness of Chourio on the field is Carrollesque, and dazzling. I don't believe at all in Joey Wiemer, so I don't think the Brewers will have much choice but to ride Chourio hard throughout the season.

9. Tyler Black will finish the season in the outfield, one way or another.
There are plenty of scouts and evaluators--from notable prospect pundits in public, to decision-makers in other organizations in private--who believe Black is better suited to the outfield than to the spots (second base, third base, first base) where he's spent the most time and projects to play to begin this year. Black is fast, lacks natural infield actions, and has a bat you want to get into the lineup. He's the prototype of a player you move to the grass to get their career in gear.

Obviously, so far, the Brewers have resisted that temptation, thanks especially to their existing logjam in the outfield. They're in no hurry to make that squeeze tighter. With Mitchell's injury issues piling up, Wiemer struggling to adjust to the big leagues, and Frelick now a viable infield option, though, I think that will change this summer. If the team really doesn't see him as an outfielder, though, I think they end up trading him, because some other team who does think that's his best future will end up putting a higher grade on him than they do, and they'll have holes to fill at the deadline. Black will be an outfielder by mid-August, even if it has to be because he's a newly minted Cleveland Guardian.

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Some of the above are bolder than others. Some are relatively tame. The Brewers are a fascinating team for 2024, though, and even if these don't come true, some wild things will happen for them this season. I have them winning the NL Central, but in an absolute mud fight, with an 82-80 record. That sounds sloppy, and at times, it will feel that way, but such a tight division race is also a lot of fun. Call it my 10th bold prediction, in honor of the designated hitter: This is going to be a very entertaining season.

Which of these seem plausible to you? Which are nuts? What are your own bold predictions for 2024? Join the conversation below. Happy Opening Day!

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[eddiemathews]

Bold indeed! I've got one...the Brewers will have 3 players with 30 or more dingerz.

[GasserFace]

Interesting and bold picks, Matt.  My bold prediction is ‘Billy Bob’ DL Hall will make 25+ starts 160+ IP and have a sub 3.75 ERA.

and a player named Willy, Adames or Contreras, will be an All Star 😂

[Trax]

Like has been said, you weren't kidding about bold!   Well thought out.  1 and 5 pretty tough ones, all interesting....

[sportsquestionmark]

4 hours ago, eddiemathews said:

Bold indeed! I've got one...the Brewers will have 3 players with 30 or more dingerz.

Hell 3 players even hitting 20 I'd be happy with!!