The Brewers’ Offense Might Be Past the Point of No Return

[Jason Wang]

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images

I’m a pretty optimistic guy. Every year, I place three small and separate wagers on Anthony Rendon, Kris Bryant, and José Abreu to win MVP awards. Of course, these bets must be placed with a somewhat shady, unofficial bookmaker, because no gambling platform worth their salt would allow someone to risk money on events with such astronomical odds. I persist in my dogged faith that one of those bets will eventually pay off. Despite my tendency to look on the bright side of life and remain in good spirits about most things, though, even I can say that the Milwaukee Brewers are probably not going to do much of anything this year.

This has never been a perfect team, and the budget has rarely come close to eclipsing the league average, but David Stearns's and Matt Arnold’s uncanny abilities to build a winning roster out of a box of scraps has pushed the team to consistent success over the past several years. In 2025, that luck seems to have run out. It was another year of doing barely anything in the offseason, and outside of the Devin Williams trade, the most notable move on the Brewers’ list of transactions may have been Jared Koenig changing his number back to 47.

What has been the result of this inaction? The Brewers’ lineup has combined for a .652 OPS, 28th in MLB and better than just the Pirates and White Sox—two teams you hardly want in your peer group. Only three players have more than 100 plate appearances and an wRC+ better than average, while the players who are struggling are doing so with gusto. William Contreras is putting up numbers far worse than his past two years with the team, playing through an injury. Jackson Chourio was making so many mistakes in his approach that he was bumped down in the lineup. In stark contrast with the scorching start he got off to last year, it seems that Christian Yelich’s back problems have returned as a significant impediment to his abilities.

But perhaps no one has been as disappointing as Joey Ortiz, who has hit a brick wall after being moved back to his native role of shortstop. Willy Adames left big shoes to fill, but Ortiz initially seemed primed for the task. He had been a top prospect in a stacked Baltimore system, and while imperfect, his first year in Milwaukee was good, culminating in a 104 wRC+ and 3.1 fWAR. In 2025, his wRC+ sits at just 29, and he has been worse than replacement-level overall. Fellow Brewer Fanatic writer Jack Stern did a deeper dive on what might be going wrong (and how the team might address it) in this recent piece.

It’s tricky to even skew the stats in a way that would give the lineup any sort of credit. Outside of leading the league in stolen bases, the offensive numbers are pretty lackluster across the board. Here is where they rank in several major hitting statistics compared to the other 29 MLB teams.

BA	.229 (25th)
OBP	.306 (22nd)
SLG	.346 28th
R	193 (16th)
H	347 (23rd)
2B	59 (25th)
HR	37 (26th)
SO	379 (16th)
OPS vs. LHP	.611 (25th)
OPS vs. RHP	.672 (25th)

These problems are now more apparent than ever, with the Crew scoring in just one of their last five games. In fact, they’ve scored more than five runs in just 12 of their 46 contests thus far this season. Not only are they currently trying their best to avoid a sweep at the hands of the Twins, they’re trying to avoid being totally shut out for the entire weekend.

Sometimes, a team can compensate for a lack of offense with stellar pitching and defense. The Seattle Mariners had a bottom-bucket offense last year, but their top-tier pitching and good defense carried them to being just a few wins short of a Wild Card spot. Unfortunately, the Brewers can’t really lean on that, either. While these two characteristics have been a strength of the roster in recent years, their combined ERA of 4.19 is 21st in MLB and they rank 16th in total Defensive Runs Saved, with 6.

While the Cubs have maintained the strong pace they set to start the season and the Cardinals recently went on a nine-game winning streak, the Brewers have fallen further and further down the NL Central, slipping to fourth. They’re now as many games ahead of the Pirates as they are behind the Cubs. Baseball Reference gives the Crew just a 21.9% chance to crack the playoffs, and FanGraphs is even more bearish, with a 9.7% chance. If there has ever been a time to sound the alarm, it’s now.

At this rate, Milwaukee will almost certainly head into the deadline as sellers. This isn’t a situation where a new bullpen arm and platoon bat can be the difference between success and failure; it really looks like the whole situation is just beyond repair. The team still has more than 100 games to prove me wrong, but so far, they haven’t demonstrated the ability to do so.

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[Brian]

What could be the top four reasons?  Not in any particular order because it could be all four. 

1) Hitting Coach - In charge of plate discipline, batting mechanics, adjustments and opposing pitcher perperation.

2) Manager - In charge of lineups for games hitting success against opposing pitchers, in game stratagies. 

3) Injuries.

4) (GM, Owner) - Players themselves just not that good. 

Anything Missed? 

[Jason Wang]

5 hours ago, Brian said:

What could be the top four reasons?  Not in any particular order because it could be all four. 

1) Hitting Coach - In charge of plate discipline, batting mechanics, adjustments and opposing pitcher perperation.

2) Manager - In charge of lineups for games hitting success against opposing pitchers, in game stratagies. 

3) Injuries.

4) (GM, Owner) - Players themselves just not that good. 

Anything Missed? 

opening an umbrella indoors

[Team Canada]

15 hours ago, Brian said:

What could be the top four reasons?

Mostly it's just players not executing.

[gregmag]

I want to make clear that I’m not bumping this to rag on Jason, who wrote a very reasonable pessimistic article. Around the same time, I think I said in one of the forums that I was kind of relieved to have a low stress year when I could just watch our prospects and let the Cubs have their little moment.

The interesting question this raises is: what did we miss? It’s not like anything deeply weird has happened. No one is wildly exceeding a reasonably optimistic expectation. Freddy has been the best version of himself, but not a perfect version. Woodruff came back later than expected. Yelich found his form, but not his MVP form. Megill has been a solid closer and Uribe a solid setup man. Turang and Frelick have continued to develop, but they haven’t taken PCA-level leaps. Even Miz is just doing what we all hoped Miz could do. None of these things is shocking. So how did most of us, at least many of us, not see these good times coming?

The best I can come up with is that the team set up an array of solid plausible outcomes, and almost nothing has gone very wrong. The fate of a major league baseball team in any given season turns on a bunch of variables – let’s say 40 variables. It’s relatively easy to imagine complete failures or amazing successes. I think it’s probably hard for most of us to imagine 35 of those 40 variables landing around the 70th percentile outcome. The Brewers are really good at making incremental gains while screwing up almost nothing.

On top of that, the kind of success the Brewers build for often takes some initial churning. You have to wait for Durbin to get some reps at third base while you suffer through some Capra-Dunn faceplants. You have to figure out which relievers don’t have their stuff together and get rid of them. You have to wait for the Red Sox to make Priester available, and  then you have to let him take his lumps while you get his pitches right.

The Brewers’ formula is subtle, and right now we’re seeing it come together in all its nuanced glory. 
 

 

[Jason Wang]

22 hours ago, gregmag said:

I want to make clear that I’m not bumping this to rag on Jason, who wrote a very reasonable pessimistic article. Around the same time, I think I said in one of the forums that I was kind of relieved to have a low stress year when I could just watch our prospects and let the Cubs have their little moment.

The interesting question this raises is: what did we miss? It’s not like anything deeply weird has happened. No one is wildly exceeding a reasonably optimistic expectation. Freddy has been the best version of himself, but not a perfect version. Woodruff came back later than expected. Yelich found his form, but not his MVP form. Megill has been a solid closer and Uribe a solid setup man. Turang and Frelick have continued to develop, but they haven’t taken PCA-level leaps. Even Miz is just doing what we all hoped Miz could do. None of these things is shocking. So how did most of us, at least many of us, not see these good times coming?

The best I can come up with is that the team set up an array of solid plausible outcomes, and almost nothing has gone very wrong. The fate of a major league baseball team in any given season turns on a bunch of variables – let’s say 40 variables. It’s relatively easy to imagine complete failures or amazing successes. I think it’s probably hard for most of us to imagine 35 of those 40 variables landing around the 70th percentile outcome. The Brewers are really good at making incremental gains while screwing up almost nothing.

On top of that, the kind of success the Brewers build for often takes some initial churning. You have to wait for Durbin to get some reps at third base while you suffer through some Capra-Dunn faceplants. You have to figure out which relievers don’t have their stuff together and get rid of them. You have to wait for the Red Sox to make Priester available, and  then you have to let him take his lumps while you get his pitches right.

The Brewers’ formula is subtle, and right now we’re seeing it come together in all its nuanced glory. 
 

 

dude they gotta be cheating it's gotta be black magic somebody check the milk formula 

[Jason Wang]

On a more serious note, I will say that a couple of things may have made it more difficult to see the forest from the trees

• Getting mollywhopped by the Yankees to start the year
• May was the worst month for a couple of key players like Caleb Durbin, Isaac Collins, Christian Yelich
• The bullpen was pretty bad in May and has since turned over quite a few pieces like Joel Payamps, Elvin Rodríguez, and Tyler Alexander 

On 5/19/2025 at 7:55 PM, Team Canada said:

Mostly it's just players not executing.

This is a pretty accurate assessment of the situation at the time. It's not that these players weren't able to be productive, they just weren't productive at the time. Now that they've had more time to figure it out, and we've gotten some major pitching help, the Brewers are, as the kids might say, "so back."

That said let's hope they don't flip the switch and go 0-10 at some point later this year 😬