Is PECOTA Unfairly Down on the 2024 Brewers?

PECOTA only foresees 78.8 wins for the Crew in their first season without manager Craig Counsell and erstwhile co-aces Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes. It pegs them as an above-average pitching staff, but still doesn't think the team has done enough to address an offense that was subpar throughout 2023.

Fans can point, of course, to the Rhys Hoskins signing last month, which does add needed power to the middle of the Milwaukee batting order. If we assume that Christian Yelich and William Contreras will bat somewhere in the top three, making Hoskins a regular in the cleanup spot (with Willy Adames just behind him, barring another trade) does seem to bolster the group. No one should underestimate the upside of this team, should they get the kind of explosive rookie campaign for which they're hoping from Jackson Chourio.

However, the bottom half of the lineup is pretty weak at the moment, and PECOTA is even lower on them than others. Light-hitting utility options Andruw Monasterio (93 DRC+, where 100 is average and higher is better), Brice Turang (81), and Owen Miller (87) were known weak points from an offensive perspective, but the system also doesn't like newcomers Eric Haase (80), Jake Bauers (94), Oliver Dunn (98), or Joey Ortiz (88) very much. Other than Christian Yelich, every single outfielder in the Brewers' deep mix (including Chourio) is projected on the wrong side of a 90 DRC+.

In all likelihood, the system is wrong about at least one of those outfielders. It's not projecting anything outlandish from Yelich, William Contreras, Adames, or Hoskins, either. The trick for the Brewers will be choosing which players from the mélange around those four cornerstones to give the most playing time to, and how best to shield each from bad matchups. If Pat Murphy does that well, the team will score 35 or 40 more runs than they're projected for, and they'll be on the right side of .500. If not, things could get ugly, as these data reflect.

The problem (to the limited extent to which there is one) on the pitching side of the ledger is much different. No fewer than 12 Brewers pitchers project to be better than average, with a DRA- under 100 (where lower is better). Even a couple of hurlers who are positioned for significant innings but don't quite clear that bar sit comfortably between the thresholds of average and replacement-level, including Robert Gasser and Colin Rea. If the system is right about DL Hall (90 DRA-), Aaron Ashby (93), and brand-new starting option Jakob Junis (97), and if they exceed the 251 innings they're projected to contribute, the team could have a better pitching staff than expected, too.

Some of the wide variability sketched above can be seen visually, in the distributions of simulated win totals the site uses to illustrate their forecasts' margins for error. Here's the NL Central:

That lumpiness--that second peak to the right of the .500 marker, for instance--shows that the system sees some of the big potential swings we all perceive as possible for this team. Still, as that malignant-looking hump on the lefthand slope of the distribution hints, there's also some huge downside here. That's why the average projection is low.

Before the Burnes trade, the draft standings had the Crew in a flat-footed tie with the Cubs, at 80 wins. They were still trailing the Cardinals, in that case, but it would have felt like a closer thing. Dealing Burnes, even if it be for two players the team hopes will chip in right away, was a blow, and exponentiated the damage of Brandon Woodruff's injury in the fall. There's a world in which Ortiz really does struggle the way the system expects, and in which Hall is consigned to relief work, and in which Chourio goes through growing pains and Sal Frelick never finds his power and Tyler Black turns out to be unable to acquit himself as a third baseman. In that world, the Brewers have a very bad season.

The system is not outfitted to give the team the benefit of that doubt. It doesn't give Matt Arnold extra credit for having a history of finding value, or do the same for the organization because they've enjoyed a streak of outplaying their projections and their expected records over the last several years. We can all decide for ourselves how to adjust our expectations based on those intangible factors, but it's good to have this concrete set of data points to ground all our opinions in facts.

What do you expect the Brewers to do in 2024? Do these projections make sense to you? Do any of them especially surprise you? Let's discuss.