Bad News Brewers

It's hard not to cheer for Brice Turang and Joey Wiemer. The dynamic duo from the Brewers' minor-league system offer a glimpse of hope for fans who love prospect hype, and a chance to see if the team's player development department can finally build an impact position player. Under former president David Stearns, the Brewers hardly used the draft and international amateur free agency to develop homegrown talent, and while the current club certainly relies heavily on trades and free agency, there is a contingency of fans who wish to see the team fit the mold of homegrown teambuilding. The arrivals of Turang and Wiemer (and Garrett Mitchell, prior to his injury) suggested that perhaps the club could get past the development woes of recent years and build the position player version of the Brandon Woodruff/Corbin Burnes pitching core. 

Unfortunately, it's not meant to be, at least not yet. Turang is currently slashing .215/.264/.315, good for a 76 Deserved Runs Created Plus (DRC+), which is a Baseball Prospectus statistic that uses contextual batting elements to estimate a player's expected offensive output. The bigger the number, the better, and a number above 100 means a player is average or better. Turang would be expected to produce at a level approximately 20 percent below league average. 

Wiemer's slash might look worse, with a .187/.249/.329 line, but his underlying elements suggest that he would be expected to produce around 12 percent below average (81 DRC+). It's hard not to look at Certified Large Man Hunter Renfroe's performance in Anaheim and wonder if the Brewers missed an opportunity to keep the most impactful pieces of their 2022 offense together, as Renfroe's current slash looks similar to last year's output and his DRC+ of 99 suggests that his bat is average. 

But it's not right to solely pick on Turang and Wiemer, who are merely rookies developing at the MLB level and thus far exhibiting traits that will help them keep work as suitable depth players. The trouble is that it's easy to look at the rookies as an indictment of a failed front office strategy, as even including injuries in the equation, it's arguable that General Manager Matt Arnold did not make enough moves to secure impact bats in the wake of losing Kolten Wong and Renfroe via trade (let alone losing Andrew McCutchen and Jace Peterson, who both provided a level of production in 2022 depth roles that the current club is missing).

The simple problem with the 2023 Brewers club is that their batting order is not as deep with quality options as previous iterations were. By DRC+, the Brewers currently have four bats who would be expected to produce at solidly better than average levels (Christian Yelich at 115; Owen Miller at 110; William Contreras at 110; and Brian Anderson at 109). Believe it or not, that's better than the 2022 club, who could only really boast Rowdy Tellez (123 DRC+) and Renfroe (113 DRC+) as notably better than average options. The difference, however, was that the 2022 Brewers had another five bats hovering right around average, in Willy Adames, Luis Urias, Yelich, Wong, and McCutchen (all 97 to 103 DRC+). In 2023, that group contains Adames (101 DRC+), Victor Caratini (93 DRC+), and Mike Brosseau (96 DRC+). In short, the very best 2023 bats are not as good as the most elite 2022 Brewers bats, and the near-average bats are not as good, either. Last year, Adames, Urias, Yelich, and Wong were all average or slightly better; the Urias injury has ensured that only two of those have reprised their success. 

The shape of the Brewers offense is also worse in 2023 than 2022. Last Thursday night, the Brewers offense spoiled the excellent Milwaukee debut for Julio Teheran, an emergency pitcher who pitched like a 2018 Brewers ace (five innings pitched, one run allowed, fastball around 89 to 90 MPH, throwing a slider more than any other pitch). That glorious pitching effort was met by the seventh Brewers offensive shutout, good for 14 percent of the club's games thus far. For all the whining about the (sometimes truly frustrating, it's true) 2022 Brewers offense, that group produced zeroes on the scoreboard in 7 percent of their games. So, the 2023 Brewers club is giving their pitching staff no chance to win twice as frequently thus far. If you look at all low-output games (0 RS, 1 RS, 2 RS, and 3 RS, each of which is a clearly below average run total in either the 2022 or 2023 runs environment), the 2023 Brewers club has produced low-output in 46 percent of their games thus far; the 2022 club did so in roughly 41 percent of games--the major difference being, of course, that the 2022 Brewers low-output games skewed heavily toward 2 RS and 3 RS affairs (24 percent of games), while the 2023 Brewers low-output games skew heavily toward zeroes and ones (24 percent of games). 

Stated simply, in low output games in 2022, the Brewers bats scored 122 runs. Prorated for the same number of low output games, the 2023 Brewers would score only 95 runs in such contests. Not only are the Brewers performing at a worse level more frequently, they are even scoring fewer runs when they have low output games. 

Perhaps the worst part about all of this is that Yelich is starting to put together a truly nice season at the plate, and the club appears to have hit on Contreras (fingers crossed). Given the club's reserve rights for Contreras and the long contract for Yelich, that's the start of an offensive core. Great! In the absence of Urias and Mitchell, who had stormed the MLB scene in an arguably surprising way compared to his advanced minor league scouting reports, no one else is stepping up. The club got Tyrone Taylor back, and he's not producing; Adames went ice cold after a nice start; and the Jesse Winker gamble looks ill-conceived (last year's ugly slugging percentage even looks preferable by comparison). Rowdy Rowdy Tellez is holding steady, and his production would be a nice depth option on a club where more of the expected producers actually produced.

So, here you have the Brewers offense. A few bad trades by management, leaning on player development that has not produced an impact position player in quite a while, bad timing with numerous simultaneous injuries, and a couple important veteran core bats going cold, and Brewers fans are being treated to an offense that not only looks bad, but does not appear to have many paths forward to good production.