3 Quick Takeaways from the Milwaukee Brewers' 2025 ZiPS Projections

[Jamie Cameron]

The 2025 ZiPS projections for Milwaukee dropped on Monday morning. While the Brewers’ offseason has been stagnant, they’re well positioned to retain their NL Central crown in 2025, with a projected record in the 86-90 win range. Let’s dive into three takeaways from FanGraphs’s projections.

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images

The Brewers Roster is Already Well Placed to Compete for the NL Central in 2025
While the Brewers' offense isn’t flush with star talent, it’s well-balanced. I’d argue that has an outsized impact in a competitive division, as they can absorb any lost production from various positions through injury or ineffective performance. The outfield and middle infield are set up for success, even with a slightly disappointing (surprisingly so?) 2.6 fWAR projection for Jackson Chourio.

The corner infield positions remain the major cause for concern. Joey Ortiz filling a Willy Adames-shaped hole at shortstop leaves third base for a group of players who are either unproven (Oliver Dunn, Caleb Durbin), not quite ready (Brock Wilken), or only moderately effective in a managed role (Andruw Monasterio). On the other side of the infield, Rhys Hoskins will be overpaid at $18 million. Given the Brewers' lack of financial flexibility, I’d argue solving for one of the corner infield spots (though not both) remains a realistic offseason need.

Further Rotation Depth is Needed
The starting rotation might not look that exciting on paper, but ZiPS likes it quite a bit. In fact, it’s the primary area where they have a leg up on the Chicago Cubs (14.5 WAR to 12.2). While that’s an exciting foundation, some of it feels tenuous. There’s a healthy projection for Brandon Woodruff, who's coming off a missed season due to shoulder surgery. The model also likes Tobias Myers and Nestor Cortes plenty. After Aaron Civale (who is just an innings eater), there’s not much starting pitching depth that has shown proof of concept at the MLB level just yet. I'd argue this group needs deepening before spring.

Trading Devin Williams was the Right Call
The Devin Williams trade seemed like an inevitable fulcrum of the Brewers offseason, and, per ZiPS, it was the right call. The Brewers have an edge over the Cubs with their bullpen projection (5.3 to 3.6). It’s not a top-heavy group either, with several options well suited to pitch in medium- to high-leverage roles. The bullpen is also an area where the Brewers have strong reinforcements on the way in the upper minors.

For one of several organizations who haven’t done much to bolster their MLB roster this winter, the Brewers have a strong foundation in place for 2025. Given their lack of financial flexibility and the strength of their farm system, trades seem like the most viable route to meaningful upgrades prior to spring training. Bolstering third base and adding starting pitching depth would be high-leverage paths to meaningful improvement.

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What do you make of the Brewers ZiPS projections? Where would you like to see them focus their remaining offseason energies and resources?

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[jay87shot]

I have never been a huge fan of zips, basically they have every player on our team regressing except Hoskins. It just seems like they don't predict anything other than average unless you are a superstar.

[Sugarrayray]

Yeah I’d love to know what they’re basing cutting Brice Turang’s WAR in half on. Do they think he’ll stop playing defense and running the bases?

[igor67]

I think it's useful in that regard, it basically gives you that if nothing goes really well, but nothing goes really wrong with a dose of trying to remove any prior luck factors with the regression. So for any particular team it is going to whiff on a lot of players because they won't all hit that mid range of performance, but it's an OK starting point for thinking about the team.

[Jacob Walsh]

5 minutes ago, Sugarrayray said:

Yeah I’d love to know what they’re basing cutting Brice Turang’s WAR in half on. Do they think he’ll stop playing defense and running the bases?

Zips projections go off fWAR instead of bWAR. LAst year, Turang only had 2.5 fWAR. 

[Sugarrayray]

2 hours ago, Jacob Walsh said:

Zips projections go off fWAR instead of bWAR. LAst year, Turang only had 2.5 fWAR. 

Ahh thank you. Makes a little more sense.

Still, surprised to see that big of a disparity between the two WARs. Is that bigger than usual?

[sveumrules]

2 minutes ago, Sugarrayray said:

Ahh thank you. Makes a little more sense.

Still, surprised to see that big of a disparity between the two WARs. Is that bigger than usual?

Guys whose value is heavily tied up in defense will see the biggest swings in WAR since BRef and FanGraphs use different inputs.

BRef uses DRS which had Turang +22, but FanGraphs uses StatCast’s FRV which only had Turang +4.

In general DRS values defense more and spits out a wider range of values (+102 to -87 top to bottom on a team level in 2024) where FRV has a much narrower view at +45 to -57 top to bottom on a team level in 2024.

For me personally I tend to come down closer to DRS. I figure if the Brewers are going to sell out for defense like they have since Stearns got here (& especially the last two years since Arnold took over), they are more likely doing it thinking they can save half a run or more per game on average versus only like a quarter of a run per game tops with FRV.

[Sugarrayray]

28 minutes ago, sveumrules said:

Guys whose value is heavily tied up in defense will see the biggest swings in WAR since BRef and FanGraphs use different inputs.

BRef uses DRS which had Turang +22, but FanGraphs uses StatCast’s FRV which only had Turang +4.

In general DRS values defense more and spits out a wider range of values (+102 to -87 top to bottom on a team level in 2024) where FRV has a much narrower view at +45 to -57 top to bottom on a team level in 2024.

For me personally I tend to come down closer to DRS. I figure if the Brewers are going to sell out for defense like they have since Stearns got here (& especially the last two years since Arnold took over), they are more likely doing it thinking they can save half a run or more per game on average versus only like a quarter of a run per game tops with FRV.

Hey thanks for all of that!

[gregmag]

Defensive metrics are important, fascinating, and tricky. I ‘d say when the collective “eye test” is so strong that a player wins a platinum glove, that makes a pretty heavy mark in the column of the metric that rated the player more highly.

[Jacob Walsh]

On 1/8/2025 at 12:07 PM, Sugarrayray said:

Ahh thank you. Makes a little more sense.

Still, surprised to see that big of a disparity between the two WARs. Is that bigger than usual?

Yes. Fangraphs and baseball reference grade defense and baserunning differently, which are the two things Turang excels at. So when you see a big gap in WAR for position players, it's usually players like Turang.