Jake Bauers Made Big Changes in 2025, and His Roster Spot Should Be Safe for 2026

[Jake McKibbin]

Image courtesy of © Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images

Jake Bauers's hitting profile has always been a fascinating one. Bat-tracking models love him for how he can do damage on pitches on which he connects. He generates steep, dangerous attack angles and above-average bat speed. He consistently elevated the ball with hard contact to the outfield, but he never made enough of that contact to take advantage of that swing, especially inside the strike zone.

In 2025, he came in with a different approach, sacrificing some of those pulled fly balls for a little more contact inside the strike zone. He succeeded, as you can see above, lowering his swing-and-miss substantially against all pitches inside the zone. Even better, these continued to improve as the season went on, finishing September with just a 14% whiff rate against fastball variations and a 16.7% whiff rate against offspeed pitches, either in or out of the strike zone. His zone contact in September against all pitches was 91.2%, and it was 85% in October, against some of the best pitching the game has to offer.

Bauers did see a reduction in his pulled balls, taking a more all-fields approach while also coming up with a few more ground balls. The exchange worked, but how did he do it? Well, first of all, he changed his stance in 2025, becoming more closed and slightly closing the gap between his feet. That being said, his actual stance at the point of contact was consistent year to year, as you can see below (2024 vs 2025):

The key change is the way in which he gets there. Bauers no longer requires as much effort in his setup. He's coiling his hips a little bit less into his backside, creating a simpler motion forward within which it's easier to maintain balance and seems to be easier for him to time up the pitch. On top of that, he's unlocked serious bat speed:

Above are Jake Bauers in 2024 compared to 2025. He found ideal attack angles on the baseball 50% of the time in 2025 (and 77% of the time in September), while seeing his average bat speed jump from 73.8 mph to 76.5 mph—a monumental difference. He's swinging harder, making more contact on both fastballs and off-speed pitches, and making the most of that contact by "squaring it up" more consistently.

Some might question how important that bat speed is. Justin Sartori put it through a model at Driveline and came to this conclusion in regard to Junior Caminero:

If you need further evidence, a crude Baseball Savant overview may help win you over. You can see how Bauers's exit velocities, expected slugging and expected weighted on-base average (xwOBA) are considerably higher. The strikeout and whiff rates still don't look pretty, but both are considerably improved, and would look even more promising if you isolated the form he showed in September/October (18.6% strikeout rate in September, 21.4% in October).

Bauers also swung less this season, which is part of how he achieved better results when he did swing. A more selective and intelligent approach boosted his walk rate to elite territory, and locking in on specific locations let him use a flatter swing and achieve that increased bat speed. An improved approach unlocked some of his improved physical indices, which only buttresses the argument that he can sustain the production he managed in 2025.

The upside with Bauers is why the Brewers traded for him in 2023, and why (after initially cutting him) they brought him back last winter. It might finally be here. He's produced in small samples before, and it's not clear whether he could carry over what he did in 2025 if burdened with a larger role and a tougher overall array of matchups, but the underlying signs suggest that Bauers is going to be a real handful next season. His quality of contact has usually been electric. If he's making more of that contact and drawing more walks, to boot, you have an incredibly potent bat in the Brewers lineup on a part-time basis. It would seem, at least, as though the Crew has an easier call to retain Bauers this fall than they had last year.

 

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[Jim French Stepstool]

........And solid defensively, too.

Considering how the 1B situation looked early in the season & especially after the Hoskins injury, a Bauers/Vaughn tandem in '26 suddenly looks like a nice segue to the Adams/Burke portion of the odyssey.

[SocalBaseball]

Watched Jake as a senior at Marina HS in Huntington Beach, CA.  He had that great swing back then too and now it appears as if he has taken it to the next level and is a true up and comer.  If he is not an every game player next year I will be disappointed.  Best defensive 1B also.  If not Brewer, he will be picked up probably for more than the predicted 2m arbitration. 

[Jake McKibbin]

An additional item that I've just gotten into digging up. Of all players with 100+ competitive swings in each of 2024 and 2025, Jake Bauers ranked 5th in average bat speed increase, a category led by Brice Turang (IYKYK: pivot tables are fun)

 

Unlike Brice Turang, whose swing lengthened on average by 0.75 ft per swing to gain that extra 4.48mph bat speed, a co-efficient of 0.17 ft per extra mph of bat speed. Jake Bauers' swing length only increased by 0.25 ft, a co-efficient of 0.09 ft in swing length per extra mph of bat speed, suggesting he's leaning less on a longer swing to generate that additional power and is perhaps less likely to incur additional penalties in the swing and miss department

[CheezWizHed]

13 hours ago, SocalBaseball said:

Watched Jake as a senior at Marina HS in Huntington Beach, CA.  He had that great swing back then too and now it appears as if he has taken it to the next level and is a true up and comer.  If he is not an every game player next year I will be disappointed.  Best defensive 1B also.  If not Brewer, he will be picked up probably for more than the predicted 2m arbitration. 

Prepare to be disappointed.  His LHP/RHP splits are way too wide for him to play every day. Plus with Vaughn on the team, a RH version of Bauers with better numbers, they are destined to split the starts 60/40 or 75/25 with Vaughn getting the lion share of starts. 

[Jake McKibbin]

8 minutes ago, CheezWizHed said:

Prepare to be disappointed.  His LHP/RHP splits are way too wide for him to play every day. Plus with Vaughn on the team, a RH version of Bauers with better numbers, they are destined to split the starts 60/40 or 75/25 with Vaughn getting the lion share of starts. 

Wouldn't that mean, with the majority of pitchers being right handed, that Bauers would face more as the strong side of a platoon?

[Outlander]

Bauers traditionally has been disappointing against RHP but that changed in 2025. If Bauers can repeat what he did against RHP in 2025 and Vaughn what he did against LHP then the Brewers should have a solid tandem in 2026. I don't think the Brewers want to pay Vaughn $7 million to be a weak side platoon however so would expect Vaughn to still get more playing time than Bauers.

[Michael Trzinski]

1 hour ago, Jake McKibbin said:

Wouldn't that mean, with the majority of pitchers being right handed, that Bauers would face more as the strong side of a platoon?

Unless they are reverse splits...I didn't look.

[Jake McKibbin]

1 hour ago, Outlander said:

Bauers traditionally has been disappointing against RHP but that changed in 2025. If Bauers can repeat what he did against RHP in 2025 and Vaughn what he did against LHP then the Brewers should have a solid tandem in 2026. I don't think the Brewers want to pay Vaughn $7 million to be a weak side platoon however so would expect Vaughn to still get more playing time than Bauers.

I think this may mean a little into sunk cost fallacy, in that if you spend the money you have to use them, when in reality whoever is performing better (and likely to perform better) should get the role. It's one of the advantages the Brewers have, chopping and changing players who aren't working which you can't do with large contracts as easily

I would ask a question (as Devil's advocate, I believe the Brewers will want both in 2026 for depth as much as anything, as both have been streaky even in 2025):

If Bauers is likely to take more of the playing time, should they tender Vaughn a contract of that size?

[CheezWizHed]

1 hour ago, Jake McKibbin said:

Wouldn't that mean, with the majority of pitchers being right handed, that Bauers would face more as the strong side of a platoon?

Both players have LH/RH splits, but they aren't equally good/bad vs the opposite handed pitching. 

• Jake was 769/561 OPS vs RH/LHP. 
• Vaughn was 661/859 vs RH/LHP. (including time with CHI-SOX)
• 2025 stats only for both

Clearly Vaughn is going to get every start vs LHP.  Going simply by numbers that gap might lead you to think he should be starting against every RHP, but that wasn't the case. He only had 52 starts last year (LF and DH included - too lazy to split out those numbers).  

2026 was significantly better than previous years for Jake (career splits are 688 and 611 OPS vs RH/LHP), so maybe he gets more chances this year.  But I tend to expect more of what we saw in Aug-Oct (avoiding Vaughn's crazy-hot streak in July)... which is Vaughn getting 60-70% (estimate) of the starts.

 

[endaround]

Collins had somewhat large splits as well, with a wRC+ 131 vs LHP and 106 vs RHP.  I could see a world where Bauers splits time with Collins and Vaughn. Now if they think Collins can handle 2B, that would change.

[Jake McKibbin]

36 minutes ago, CheezWizHed said:

Both players have LH/RH splits, but they aren't equally good/bad vs the opposite handed pitching. 

• Jake was 769/561 OPS vs RH/LHP. 
• Vaughn was 661/859 vs RH/LHP. (including time with CHI-SOX)
• 2025 stats only for both

Clearly Vaughn is going to get every start vs LHP.  Going simply by numbers that gap might lead you to think he should be starting against every RHP, but that wasn't the case. He only had 52 starts last year (LF and DH included - too lazy to split out those numbers).  

2026 was significantly better than previous years for Jake (career splits are 688 and 611 OPS vs RH/LHP), so maybe he gets more chances this year.  But I tend to expect more of what we saw in Aug-Oct (avoiding Vaughn's crazy-hot streak in July)... which is Vaughn getting 60-70% (estimate) of the starts.

 

Apologies, I thought you were talking strict platoon! I do think form will come into this, and either can force their way into more starting time, but I'd agree that your split is more likely to be where they'll at least start the season from a time-share standpoint

[Jim French Stepstool]

3 hours ago, CheezWizHed said:

 

2026 was significantly better than previous years for Jake (career splits are 688 and 611 OPS vs RH/LHP), so maybe he gets more chances this year.  But I tend to expect more of what we saw in Aug-Oct (avoiding Vaughn's crazy-hot streak in July)... which is Vaughn getting 60-70% (estimate) of the starts.

 

Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if the starts for Vaughn was even north of 70%. And another consideration is that I think Murphy has a comfort zone w/being able to bring Bauers off the bench, be it 1B, corner OF or PH. His OBP coming off the bench was .379 which is very solid.

[Stubby66]

He will start the year in Milwaukee but honestly I think by mid-season you will see Burke take over the first base job and not only that but probably Conteras starting to learn some first if Quero forces some time behind the plate.

[SocalBaseball]

17 hours ago, CheezWizHed said:

Prepare to be disappointed.  His LHP/RHP splits are way too wide for him to play every day. Plus with Vaughn on the team, a RH version of Bauers with better numbers, they are destined to split the starts 60/40 or 75/25 with Vaughn getting the lion share of starts. 

But Jake can play RF, LF as well as pitch, :) 

[CheezWizHed]

10 hours ago, SocalBaseball said:

But Jake can play RF, LF as well as pitch, :) 

I thought about adding that, but got wrapped up in his offense numbers and forgot! He is no Bill Hall, but... 😂