Milwaukee’s squad has as many positive contributors as any in team history
The 2024 Milwaukee Brewers were not a team with high outside expectations. Most national pundits had them finishing fourth or even fifth in the division; we’ve heard this story a lot at this point in the season, but it was thought that the loss of the team’s two ace pitchers (Corbin Burnes to trade and Brandon Woodruff to injury) and their leader, Craig Counsell, would lead to the team taking a step back.
It hasn’t happened. It’s about to be September, and the Brewers have the league’s biggest division lead by a comfortable margin (Milwaukee is 10 games ahead of Chicago and St. Louis, and the second-biggest division lead in the majors is Philadelphia’s 6.5-game lead over Atlanta). But the Brewers didn’t just lose Burnes, Woodruff, and Counsell: they also got only 73 games from Christian Yelich before he was lost for the season, and Devin Williams, as of today, hasn’t pitched 10 innings yet. How is this possible?
Well, yes, the Brewers are in a bad division, but that doesn’t make for much of a story! The answer is balance. At the start of play on Aug. 27, with 32 games remaining, the Brewers already have 10 different players with at least 2.0 bWAR on the season, and they have three more with at least 1.5. (The 10 players: Brice Turang, William Contreras, Jackson Chourio, Willy Adames, Joey Ortiz, Yelich, Bryan Hudson, Colin Rea, Tobias Myers, and Blake Perkins.)
Now, I know that 2.0 WAR isn’t exactly a high bar. Baseball Reference describes a 2-WAR player as a “starter,” and a 5-WAR player as “All-Star quality.” It makes sense that a team would have about 10 players who fit the bill of “starter,” between their starting lineup and their pitching staff, right?
Well, not exactly. Injuries, trades, and platoons all mess with those numbers. Starting pitchers, due to limitations on their innings, are earning less WAR than they ever have before. I was curious as to how this stacked up historically for the Brewers. Here’s what I found:
Year: Players with 2+ bWAR
1992: 12
1982: 11
1979: 11
1978: 11
2024: 10
2022: 10
2021: 10
2011: 10
1987: 10
So, only four seasons in Brewers history have more players with 2+ bWAR, and three of those were in the five-year window that culminated in their 1982 World Series appearance.
But the season that most catches my eye here is the one at the top: the 1992 Brewers. That’s a really interesting team, for a lot of reasons. They didn’t really have a super-duper star that year: they were led in WAR by Paul Molitor and Bill Wegman, who both had 4.8. But they had 12 players with at least two WAR, and nine with at least three, which is a huge number. They did this with an interesting mix of mostly young players—of the 12 players on the list, seven of them were 28 or younger. Two, of course, were rookies, who finished first and fourth in Rookie of the Year voting: Pat Listach and Cal Eldred.
That ’92 team won 92 games, the most for any Brewer team between their 1982 World Series appearance and their 2011 division title. Unfortunately, the 1992 Brewers didn’t build on their success: Molitor and veteran Scott Fletcher left in free agency, Eldred couldn’t stay healthy, Listach just wasn’t any good after his rookie year, Wegman and Jaime Navarro were never as good again. Milwaukee was 23 games worse in 1993 and they didn’t even make it back to .500 for another 13 years.
So, when I say there are some comparisons to be drawn, I hope I’m not saying that this team will flame out for the next 13 years. But the 2024 Brewers are led by a cadre of young players (of their 10 two-WAR players, only Yelich and Rea are over 28 years old), at least four of whom are worthy of Rookie of the Year consideration (Chourio will get votes; Ortiz, Myers, and Hudson may not, but they would in some years). Like the ’92 team, there’s not one player that is carrying the squad: Yelich performed like a superstar while he was on the field but that wasn’t often, Contreras has had his moments, Chourio has had a huge second half, and Turang has contributed in a lot of different ways, but barring a serious hot streak, it doesn’t look like anyone is going to hit five WAR.
That’s how a team like the Brewers needs to build a team. Through youth and balance. Players who earn five or seven or nine WAR in a season are expensive. 24-year-olds who earn two WAR are not. I once read a book about what our European friends call football, and the main idea I took away from it was that it’s not necessarily about how good your best players are, but rather how good your worst players are. A team fielding eight great players and three bad ones will more often than not lose to a team with 11 merely “good” players.
Obviously, baseball is not soccer, but it’s interesting to think that the Brewers might be taking that kind of approach in team building. It makes some sense when you look at the profile of many of the team’s players: a bit of offense, a lot of defense, solid baserunning. Adames and Yelich both fit this bill when they were acquired: players who did a bit of everything and didn’t do anything poorly. We have no idea who the Orioles offered for Burnes, but you get the appeal of Ortiz: excellent defense and a bat with a decent floor, whereas someone like, say, Heston Kjerstad is more offense-only. Perkins (2.0 WAR) and Sal Frelick (1.9) have their offensive limitations, but they both play excellent defense and aren’t complete zeroes with the bat. Garrett Mitchell (1.0 WAR in 42 games) is the same.
This year, it’s working. In addition to the 10 players with at least two WAR already, there are three, maybe four more within striking distance: Frelick (1.9), Freddy Peralta (1.6, but he’s already got 2.0 fWAR), Jared Koenig (1.5), and Mitchell (1.0). If two of those players reach the two-WAR plateau and no one else falls back, Milwaukee will equal 1992’s team, and if three make it, they’ll set a new team record.
It’s an interesting little quirk, and I think it gives a peek into the process of how this team goes about acquiring players. They are obviously not trying to avoid superstars, and there could be one or two within this group if Chourio continues his ascent. But the Brewers in 2024 seem to be trying to just not play anyone who isn’t contributing, and they’ve done an excellent job of fielding a team full of players who can make a positive impact even when they might be struggling with the bat.