When we were previewing the division matches in spring training, I thought the NL Central was a win-or-lose game for anyone, which also probably meant that our NL Central winning streak over the last two seasons would end. Milwaukee BrewersMy thoughts are as follows:
If they win again in 2024, it would be a bit of an upset, because they look to have sunk to the bottom again after the offseason. Corbin Burns is now in Baltimore, and Brandon Woodruff will likely miss the entire season as he recovers from shoulder surgery. They also lost their manager to their north Chicago rivals when the Cubs scooped up Craig Counsell shortly after his contract with the Brewers expired. In a division as mixed as the NL Central, that’s a big loss.
Well, we’re halfway through June and the division isn’t looking as close as I expected it to be. There are still questions about whether the other four teams in the NL Central will perform well enough to make the postseason, but it’s pretty clear who the overwhelming favorites are right now when it comes to winning the division. After all, the more things change, the more things stay the same. Pat Murphy’s Milwaukee Brewers look to be the top team in the NL Central again.
Coming into this season, the Brewers were rated by Fangraphs as having the third-highest probability of winning their division at 18 percent, and their chances of making the postseason were rated at 30 percent, which is a good probability in any season but obviously a bit low for a team that has made the postseason in five of the past six seasons.
Now, Brewers fans can’t complain that the odds are against them, as the team has emerged as the overwhelming favorite to win the championship. Heading into the June 20 game, the Brewers have a 73% chance of winning their third straight division title and an 86% chance of making the playoffs either way. Most importantly, the Brewers are 44-30, 7.5 games behind the Cardinals for the Central Division lead and holding the second-place lead in the National League.
That may have something to do with the fact that both the Cubs and Cardinals teams haven’t come together as well as most observers expected, but it may also have something to do with the fact that the Brewers themselves didn’t get the memo that they were supposed to fade into the pack — at the very least, Willy Adames and William Contreras certainly didn’t get the memo, as they’ve both been excellent in Milwaukee’s lineup so far this season.
Especially Willy Adames. At bat But he’s also a fine fielder. Adames currently has a 118 wRC+, .336 wOBA and 12 home runs. If he continues to perform at this rate at the plate, he’ll be celebrating the best year of his career at the end of the season. Combine that with the fact that he’s in the 98th percentile among all fielders in outs made and you’ve got a perfect fit for the Brewers in 2024. Adames hasn’t had many seasons where he’s produced with both the bat and the glove, so it’s definitely encouraging for Milwaukee that everything seems to be working in his favor this year.
Meanwhile, William Contreras has been hitting the ball like crazy this season. If he makes contact, the ball will fly far and is very likely to reach its destination in no time. Contreras ranks in the 95th percentile of all hitters in both average exit velocity (93.1 mph) and hard-hit rate (53%). Combined with an average exit velocity of 89th percentile, it’s easy to see how Contreras has come to boast a 134 wRC+, second-best among qualified catchers, just one point behind first-place Salvador Pérez. Wild Bill’s defense has regressed from last season, but no one in Milwaukee will be complaining about that. What has he done with the bat this season?
Adames and Contreras weren’t the only players to have big plays for Milwaukee this season. Joey Ortiz struggled in his first 34 major league at-bats as a member of the Orioles in 2023, but has had great success as a breakout candidate with the Brewers. He may be having success in strange ways (more on that here). Check out this article (Via FanGraphs’ Ben Clemens) But you won’t hear any calls to “fix” him after posting a .369 wOBA and 140 wRC+ thus far. Bryce Turan has also made a big change, but he didn’t change the environment the way Ortiz did. Instead, he seems to have found his footing in the majors, currently posting a .328 wOBA and 112 wRC+ after struggling with a 60 wRC+ in 137 games in 2023. It also helps that Turan is also a scary force to deal with on the basepaths, having already stolen 26 bases this season.
The Brewers also get positive contributions in the outfield from players like Blake Perkins (97th percentile OAA) and Christian Yelich. After all, his resurgent 2023 season wasn’t just a blip, and Yelich seems poised to improve even more from a season where he started to look like the old dynamo playing MVP-caliber baseball a few years ago. Yelich’s wOBA is now high at .394, and his wRC+ is 157, his highest since his golden days of 2018 and 2019, when he was truly one of the game’s elite players. Yelich will never quite get back to that level again, but the Brewers don’t need him to be a world-beater. All they need is for him to continue to be what he is now. A reliable hitter He’ll be part of a great lineup that Milwaukee has had so far this season.
Milwaukee is getting a high level of production from their impact players, and given the fact they already have a big lead in the division, it’s hard to imagine the Brewers screwing up going into the second half of this season. Additionally, the Brewers are currently the fifth-easiest team with a .492 SOS remaining, but division rivals Chicago (.508 SOS remaining) and St. Louis (.514) each have tough roads ahead of them. The Pirates have a similarly tough SOS remaining (.507), and the Reds have a slightly easier road (.491), but they’ll need to hang in there as well unless Ellie De La Cruz plays cool every night.
What this means is that the Brewers overcame all odds and are in a very favorable position heading into next season. Everything is going well for the Brewers, and the only thing that really went wrong for them here in 2024 is that one of their employees attempted an assassination as a sideline job, failed miserably and got caught. That last sentence, and not a single word of it, was made by me. I’m not going to blame the Brewers for this crazy news because I believe this team is smart enough. do not have It’s an incredible upset. Either way, Milwaukee is back in the postseason conversation this season and you should be paying attention.
