Yankees Series Confirms It: Jake Bauers is the Future of the Milwaukee Brewers

[Jason Wang]

Move aside Shohei Ohtani, there’s a new two-way player in town.

Image courtesy of © Brad Penner-Imagn Images

On March 29th, the Yankees brutalized the Brewers with their new, sacrilegious bowling pin-shaped bats. Nestor Cortes, Connor Thomas, and Chad Patrick all found themselves bruised and bloody from the seemingly unstoppable offense mustered by the Bronx Bombers. Fortunately for Milwaukee, one man stepped up to stop the bleeding and shut out the Evil Empire while he toed the slab. He did it again in yet another rout of the boys in blue on March 30th, pitching a scoreless inning to put an end to the unjust massacre. It's a blessing that he's on the team, but if the Brewers hadn’t kept their ears to the ground, they may have missed out on the greatest baseball talent of the modern era.

A couple of years ago, Shohei Ohtani signed a somewhat large deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers under the idea that his value as a two-way player warranted a contract of that magnitude. Milwaukee was, intelligently enough, not in on this deal, and after the first year saw Ohtani pitch exactly zero innings, it seems that Mark Attanasio and company were on the right side of history once again. While everyone’s eyes were on Ohtani heading into 2024, the Brewers turned to their own two-way star. His first and middle names are Jakob Christopher, but you can just call him Jake Bauers.

You may already know him as an outstanding first baseman who currently holds a 1.250 OPS—a better figure than the best seasons of Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani. He’s on pace for 54 home runs, 54 doubles and 162 RBIs, figures that would place him among the league’s best hitters. However, you may not know about his work on the mound. It has been a storyline that has been actively obfuscated, by the same cabal that has also gradually made the hot dogs across America simultaneously more expensive and less girthy.

He was drafted by the Padres back in 2013, and after spending time with six different organizations, he finally arrived at one with the vision and ambition to utilize his maximum potential. Milwaukee deployed him out of the bullpen as soon as he joined the team in 2024, and he posted an ERA+ of 101, better than average and not a bad start for his pitching debut. His first three outings of the year were scoreless, and in an effort to keep his pitch count low, he let opposing hitters beat themselves, posting zero strikeouts. How did he do this, you ask? That’s a great question, and probably why you’re one of the top employees at your place of work.

Bauers uses a wide variety of pitches from the left side. Unfortunately, Statcast is not yet as advanced as Bauers, and lumps all of his pitches from 2024 into two buckets: fastball and eephus. With a deep understanding of the prevalence of pitching injuries, he limits his own power and velocity, choosing instead to maximize longevity. After all, Cy Young averaged 334 innings pitched a year and they named an award after him. Even in his diminished form, his Stuff+ grades out to an indeterminately large value. It's yet to be defined (at least publicly), but you can take a look at what he’s working with for yourself.

Just look at this heater at the top of the zone, beating a former MVP in Giancarlo Stanton.

Few arms have ever possessed the ability to paint corners with this authority.

Not even Aaron Judge could outcompete him in a fair one-on-one.

So far, he is the only Milwaukee pitcher to have a perfect ERA with more than one inning pitched. Remember, this is an organization known for developing outstanding arms and getting the absolute most out of their pitching talent, effectively making him the best of the best. Combined with his current offensive pace, there’s no ceiling on what he’ll be able to do for this team.

Many thought the next great Brewers arm would be Jacob Misiorowski, Craig Yoho, or Dallas Keuchel, after he signed with the team last year. If you had actually done your own research (instead of ingesting the “lamestream” media's fairytales), you’d know the truth and bow down to Bauers. When it's all said and done, Robin Yount, Paul Molitor, and Kolten Wong will finally have another member to welcome onto the Brewers' Mount Rushmore.

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[Michael Trzinski]

Haha, good piece, Jason. 🤣

[Matt]

Excellently done. 

[duewizard]

Cy Bauers!

[Team Canada]

At this point, would you rather have Bauers or Anderson/Thomas pitch?

[Joseph Zarr]

I needed this.