As October and a Rhys Hoskins Return Loom, Jake Bauers is Still Showing Glimpses of How He Can Help the Brewers

Most hitters across baseball are at least somewhat streaky. It’s a reality of attempting perhaps the hardest task in professional sports nightly throughout a 162-game season. Even so, the Jake Bauers experience is a rollercoaster. In his two seasons with the Brewers, the part-time first baseman has typically bounced between ice-cold slumps and red-hot stretches without many spans of okay offense.

Bauers is seemingly emerging from the low point of his performance cycle into one of those hot streaks. Entering the Brewers’ series against the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park, he was 3 for his last 41, a stretch that was interrupted by a month-long stay on the injured list. Given more starts lately while Christian Yelich nurses a back flare-up, he has since gone 5-for-8 with a home run. Two of those swings were pivotal in Milwaukee victories – a go-ahead sixth-inning single on Friday night, and a two-run blast to open the scoring on Saturday.

Those performances were a reminder of Bauers’s potential when things are clicking and why the Brewers have continued to roster him, even as his overall output has been unremarkable. His 2025 slash line now sits at .205/.324/.363 (95 wRC+), and his .347 xwOBA and 109 DRC+ indicate he’s performed like an above-average hitter process-wise.

Swing-and-miss issues – including vulnerabilities to high fastballs and low-and-in breaking balls – remain the greatest wart in the veteran’s profile and partially why he’s so streaky. However, his swing decisions, bat speed, and raw power compensate for the whiffs so long as he keeps his strikeouts from ballooning out of control.

Because he rarely chases outside the strike zone, Bauers’s 14.5% walk rate this season has carried him to an above-average 0.47 walk-to-strikeout ratio despite a 30.6% strikeout rate that borders on just enough balls in play to make his profile work. He swings hard and hits the ball sharply and on a line when he makes contact.

It’s a recipe that can carry a lineup for a couple of weeks, just as Bauers did with an .841 OPS through June 1 while much of a struggling Milwaukee offense searched for its footing. It can also be useful off the bench in the right matchups and produce a big swing at a moment’s notice – his pinch-hit go-ahead home run in Game 3 of last year’s Wild Card Series was not as improbable as it may have seemed.

There’s a reason why the Brewers are letting Rhys Hoskins’s rehab clock run its course in Triple-A, even as Hoskins has looked ready to return for at least a week. It’s because they still see a role for Bauers, who cannot be optioned to the minor leagues, and do not want to cut ties with any of their depth until roster rules force their hand. Bauers could be the casualty when Hoskins returns later this week, but it would not be surprising if the club optioned Anthony Seigler or even a slumping Andrew Vaughn to keep him around through the regular season and into the playoffs.