Assessing the Brewers' 2023 Outfield Strategy

If you're an everyday Milwaukee Brewers fan, it's no secret that Senior Vice President & General Manager Matt Arnold cut payroll in his first offseason leading the club. Cot's Baseball Contracts shows that while the Brewers finished 2022 with a 40-man Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) payroll around $153 million, the club entered 2023 with a 40-man CBA payroll around $139 million. There are arguably two major culprits that drove down the team's spending, depending on how you look at it; either the absence of Lorenzo Cain ($18 million contract slot) or Hunter Renfroe ($11.9 million arbitration victory against the Angels) in the outfield account for the bulk of the missing payroll.

But there's good reason for Brewers fans to be excited, too. After the perceived failure or fan disappointment of top infield prospect Keston Hiura, the Brewers entered 2023 with the chance to simultaneously graduate a trio of highly-regarded outfield prospects: Garrett Mitchell (a consensus Top 100 prospect for Baseball America, Major League Baseball, and Baseball Prospectus); Joey Wiemer (a Top 50 prospect according to Baseball Prospectus); and Sal Frelick (a consensus Top 50 prospect according to these sites). This list also excludes lightning-fast riser Jackson Chourio, arguably in the top tier of the club's prospects in the last generation, whose future MLB path I will promptly stop writing about so as not to curse. It's easy to look at this relatively high-floor group of prospects, who give the Brewers loads of speed, great defense, and maybe even some chances at hit tool impact here or there, as reasonable insurance policies against losing Renfroe. 

Yet, it is possible to push against the club's strategy, to discern whether a contending club working on limited time with an elite pitching core properly allocated its payroll resources in the 2022-2023 offseason.

The first issue is the matter of role expectations for each of these outfielders. If the Brewers truly believed that each of these outfielders (Chourio, Frelick, Mitchell, and Wiemer) have future starting roles, they arguably missed an opportunity by failing to sell high on at least one of thei four. So long as Christian Yelich remains with the club (and his contract spans at least six seasons including 2023), there's a logjam in the outfield: Yelich / Chourio / Frelick / Mitchell / Wiemer. The last two certainly look like they'd be overqualified as backups.

The second issue is a matter of role attrition: according to Baseball Reference, in 2022, Major League Baseball clubs needed 395 outfield slots to complete the season. Baseball Reference shows that the median games started (GS) for MLB outfielders in 2022 was 20, and there were only 44 outfielders who started 100 or more games. The Brewers have plenty of space to develop their youngsters and maintain a roster spot for another impact bat on the MLB club, simply by virtue of the laws of attrition. The season-opening injury to Tyrone Taylor underscores this issue, prior to the Luis Urías injury making Brian Anderson the most important offseason acquisition for the club's roster depth.

Thus far, the Manager Craig Counsell's own management of the roster demonstrates additional lost opportunity, and highlights the role that having an additional serviceable starting outfielder could bring to the club. The offense itself is starting out on solid ground, having scored 62 runs in 13 games entering Friday night's game in San Diego. This offensive output is already four runs better than the 2023 National League average, which means that (prorated to a full season of 162 games) this offense might turn an 81-win (.500 Winning Percentage) club into an 86-win club before pitching is even considered. Not bad!

However, that production is mostly coming from places outside of the outfield, with the exception of Mitchell's hot start. Mitchell is opening the season with a .316/.366/.632 slash line, which is substantially better than both Yelich (.245/.339/.327) and Wiemer (.222/.333/.361) in this young season. The real issue demonstrated by injuries to Tyrone Taylor and Luis Urias to immediately start the season is that the club has no choice but to rely on Yelich's bat in the outfield. This is now an issue because Counsell is showing a willingness to start Wiemer at all three outfield slots. Presumably, on a club where more players were healthy, Yelich's bat would have more days off from left field.  Instead, Yelich leads the outfield in games started (11 in left field), followed by Mitchell (9 in right field) and Wiemer (7 in right field, 3 in center field, and 1 in left field).

It might be easy for the reader to suggest that injuries happen and should not be used as post hoc evidence for or against certain offseason moves, but I think the opposite argument could be easily made. The Brewers front office had the knowledge and awareness of the game's trends in terms of the number of outfielders needed to complete a season, and certainly the fragile injury balance that every MLB roster faces. There was no reason to enter the season expecting Taylor to serve as the primary right field option while awaiting all of these exciting prospects. Having an additional outfield bat on this club would not have blocked either Mitchell or Wiemer, especially given the flexibility Counsell has demonstrated with both players.