All things considered, the start of the 2023 season could not be going much better for the Milwaukee Brewers. They are 7-3 after a loss in Monday's series opener against the Arizona Diamondbacks, but won seven of their first nine games despite facing the New York Mets and St. Louis Cardinals in six of those games and ace Corbin Burnes allowing 10 runs in 9 1/3 innings in his two starts.
"It's time for me to step up and help these guys out instead of (them) having to carry me around," Burnes told MLB.com last week after allowing six runs in 4 1/3 innings against the Mets, and being picked up by his offense. Rookie center fielder Garrett Mitchell won that game with a walk-off home run, his third homer of the three-game series with New York.
The hot start combined with the Cardinals scuffling out of the gate has essentially flipped the NL Central title odds. According to FanGraphs, St. Louis came into 2023 with roughly a 50/50 shot at the division title. The Brewers were at close to 40%. Now it's the Brewers at 50/50 and the Cardinals at 40%. It's still extremely early, but I'd rather be at 50% than 40%, wouldn't you?
Milwaukee entered the season with a $118.8 million Opening Day payroll per Cot's Baseball Contracts, down from $131.9 million last season. They were criticized (including in these internet pages) for cutting payroll at a time when there was good reason to go in the opposite direction. This is not a mea culpa -- cutting payroll is bad! -- but, to date, it has not hurt the Brewers in the standings.
With the caveat that reading too much into two weeks of games (especially the first two weeks of games) is a recipe for bad takes, the Brewers look like a team built to, at minimum, stay in the race all year, if not win the NL Central and make some noise in the postseason. Here's what you need to know about the team right now, and some decisions that are a few months away.
The kids are more than all right
It's hard not to notice how much more lively and athletic the Brewers are this year. They have three rookies in the starting lineup just about every game (Mitchell, Brice Turang, Joey Wiemer) and they swapped out Omar Narváez for William Contreras behind the plate (the Contreras trade was my favorite move of the offseason). Gone from last season's roster are Narváez and fellow 30-somethings Andrew McCutchen, Hunter Renfroe, and Kolten Wong.
"I think it brings a different type of energy when you have young guys," Mitchell said last week (video). "We're going out there and not only are we trying to play, we're trying to stay here. Nothing's ever guaranteed in this game."
Mitchell, the No. 20 pick in the 2020 draft, made his MLB debut last August and impressed in limited time, and he's been even better this season, including hitting three homers in two games against the Mets last week. Turang made the Opening Day roster out of spring training and Wiemer joined the club after Luis Urías hurt his hamstring on Opening Day. All three have performed in the early going. Their numbers entering Monday's game:
CF Garrett Mitchell
30
.286/.333/.714
172
1
3
0-0
2B Brice Turang
27
.304/.407/.478
138
1
1
2-0
RF Joey Wiemer
31
.296/.387/.481
133
2
1
1-0
TOTAL
88
.295/.375/.564
148
4
5
3-0
It hasn't been even two full weeks yet so I don't want to get too hung up on the numbers. We can say the three rookies have been great to date -- that production is in the bank and has helped the Brewers win games -- while also acknowledging they're unlikely to be this good all season. The league will adjust, then it'll be on the kids to adjust back. It is the way of the world.
What is clear though is Mitchell, Turang, and Wiemer have brought an energy level to the Brewers that wasn't there last season. It's refreshing, and the Brewers have more touted youngsters on the way. Sal Frelick, the No. 15 pick in the 2021 draft, reached Triple-A last year and is back there to start this season. He's a phone call away. Milwaukee also has stud 19-year-old Jackson Chourio, who began the season in Double-A and is arguably the best prospect still in the minors.
The only problem -- and this is a "problem," not an actual problem -- is Chourio, Frelick, Mitchell, and Wiemer are all outfielders. It seems unlikely Christian Yelich is going anywhere, so the Brewers have more talented young outfielders than outfield spots. At some point, possibly even later this year, Milwaukee will have to figure out how to squeeze all these guys into one lineup, or whether to use one (or more) as a trade chip to address needs elsewhere on the roster.
"I'm not really worried about it," Brewers GM Matt Arnold told MLB.com about the looming outfield logjam. "You like to have a lot of guys who can do a lot of things, and often it works itself out. If you have four awesome outfielders, you can still get 550 plate appearances for all of them. That's very possible."
For now, the Brewers have three rookies in their everyday lineup, plus the 25-year-old Contreras behind the plate in his second full season as a big leaguer. A year ago, Milwaukee had the eighth-oldest group of position players at 29.1 years, on average. This year they're the fourth youngest at 27.1 years, and the team is much more athletic and dynamic as a result, and much more fun.
A good defense has gotten better
Depending on your metric of choice, the Brewers were anywhere from a good to comfortably above-average defensive team a year ago. Defensive Runs Saved, which includes pitch-framing, had them as the seventh-best defensive unit in the game in 2022. Outs Above Average does not include framing and had them a little lower at 13th. Solid but not amazing.
To keep it simple, we can look at Defensive Efficiency, which is nothing more than the percentage of batted balls turned into outs. A year ago, the Brewers were ninth in baseball at 70.4%. This year they're tops in the game at 74.3% (the league average is 68.9%). Up until this point in the season, the Brewers are turning more batted balls into outs than they did last season (even without extreme shifts), when they were a better than average defense.
This ties back into the rookies. Lorenzo Cain was one of the great center fielders of his generation, but he slowed with age before getting released last May, and Mitchell has been an enormous upgrade in center. Wong, long a standout defender at second, had a very poor season in the field a year ago. Turang has been an upgrade there. Wiemer in particular has been fantastic defensively. He has effectively replaced Renfroe, whose defensive value is tied up in a strong arm rather than ballhawk skills.
"I was so impressed with how Brice plays defense ... I think he's an exceptional defender at second base," manager Craig Counsell told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at the end of spring training. "I think he's just really good, and he showed us this camp that he is going to win games playing defense. There's not necessarily a number by it as much, but I think he's going to do that. That was one of the things to me that really stood out and I think helped him make the team, frankly, on my end."
The impact of a good defense transcends outs on the scoreboard. A good defense means your pitchers are throwing fewer pitches to get through innings, which means they can go deeper into games, which means the bullpen doesn't work as hard, on and on. A good defense alone won't win you a championship but a bad defense can really sink your season. A year ago, the Brewers were a solid defensive team. In the early going this year, they're one of the best defenses in the sport, thanks largely to the kids.
A way-too-early look ahead at the trade deadline
The Brewers have some difficult decisions coming and that was going to be the case no matter how well (or poorly) they started the season. Several core players are two years away from free agency, most notably Burnes, Willy Adames, and Brandon Woodruff (also Eric Lauer and Rowdy Tellez, among others). Given Milwaukee's perpetually small payroll, signing all these players to extensions is so very unlikely. That means trade speculation is inevitable. In fact, it's already begun.
"We get phone calls on these guys all the time, and that's a great thing," Arnold said during an MLB Network radio interview over the winter. "That being said, this is a group we're excited about. We want to put a really good product on the field in 2023, and those guys have to be part of that if we're going to do that."
A year ago, Josh Hader was in the same place Adames, Burnes, and Woodruff are now: two years away from free agency but also an integral part of the team. The Brewers ultimately traded Hader at the deadline despite being in the wild-card race, a move that was not popular in the clubhouse. "It had a more pronounced impact than I thought it would at the time, and the surrounding moves didn't adequately fortify the team in Josh's absence," president of baseball operations David Stearns said after the season.
The fact of the matter is Adames, Burnes, and Woodruff will have maximum trade value at this summer's deadline, like Hader last year. The acquiring team will get them for two postseason runs and that extra October is very valuable. Hang on to them and trade them in the offseason and the Brewers won't get as much in return. Remove all emotion and the smart baseball move is trading, say, Burnes this summer for a Godfather package that keeps the team flush with young talent and in contention long-term.
You can't remove emotion though. The Brewers did that with the Hader trade last year and Stearns himself admitted it was a mistake. Doing it a second year in a row, especially if the team continues to play at something close to their early season pace, and forget it, the players (and fans) would be even more unhappy. The better the team is, the more difficult it will be to trade away a core player at the deadline, even though you could argue it would be the best move from a big picture perspective.
Burnes is the player to watch and not just because he said there is "no denying that the relationship is definitely hurt" from his arbitration hearing with the Brewers a few weeks ago. He's looking at a $200-plus-million contract in free agency after next season. The chances Milwaukee will sign Burnes long-term are tiny. It's not often they swim in that pool financially (and when they have, like Yelich, it hasn't always worked out great).
Last summer's Luis Castillo trade is a reasonable benchmark for Burnes at this year's deadline (Castillo was also traded two years prior to free agency) and gosh, that's quite a haul. Burnes could fetch multiple top prospects plus a few close-to-MLB pieces who could step onto the big league roster in the near future. It would be difficult to turn down a Castillo-esque package, though navigating the clubhouse politics would be tricky, as the Hader trade showed.
There's a case to be made that, if this strong start continues and the Brewers look like a legitimate World Series contender come July, they should just keep everyone and make a run. Forget about the big picture and go for it, even if it means not getting maximum value out of Burnes in a trade. Good players win games, not good value, and a pitcher like Burnes is a balance of power player who can swing a postseason series. The 2023 Brewers will be better with Burnes than whatever he can get in a trade.
The trade deadline is a long ways away and the Brewers will worry about the future of their upcoming free agents when the calendar presses them into action, and not a second sooner. They have a suddenly young and exciting team, and they're off to a strong start with reasons to believe they really are this good, not just having a nice stretch. The Brewers are much more athletic and well-rounded now. They have all ingredients of a contending team.
