The projections don’t like the Brewers; is there anything to it?

Last week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s JR Radcliffe caught up with Baseball Prospectus’ Jonathan Judge to discuss the recent PECOTA projections. Those rankings, which I covered here, somewhat notoriously projected the Brewers for just 80.5 wins (it has since been inched up to 81.1), and Radcliffe wanted to give Judge a chance to explain in a little more detail.

There were a few things that Judge mentioned that I rolled my eyes at, and a few things that did give me pause. I wanted to look into some of the concerns that Judge raised about the Brewers and see whether I thought there was any credence to them.

The Brewers led the league — by far — in errors committed against them

This is true — teams committed 0.69 errors per game against the Brewers in 2025 (though the only source I was able to find on this was something called “teamrankings.com,” so take that for what it’s worth), which is about 12% more than against any other team. The gap of 0.08 errors against per game between the first-place Brewers and second-place Rays was as big as the gap between the Rays and the 10th-place Astros. I’m not sure exactly what that’s worth for the Brewers — Judge says “seven wins” but it’s not clear if he’s saying that casually as an offhand remark or not.

That might be a sign of good fortune on the Brewers’ part, and there’s no real indication that it’s a repeatable skill (the Brewers ranked 14th in the league in 2024 and 18th in 2023). But there might be something to the Brewers forcing a lot of errors — they’re a team full of speedy, aggressive baserunners who put the ball in play (as a team, they were tied with Miami for the fourth-lowest strikeout percentage in the league), and that’s going to put pressure on defenses.

In any case: the Brewers were third in baseball with 806 runs scored in 2025. PECOTA projects them for 699 runs. I don’t think a regression in errors against is going to make up 107 runs.

They don’t have enough slug

Judge also notes that the Brewers’ slugging percentage was “not good.” The Brewers slugged .403 in 2025, which was essentially exactly league average (.404) and 12th in MLB. Judge was perhaps referring to isolated power, which takes batting average out of the equation and looks purely at “power,” in which case the Brewers did considerably worse, and ranked 25th in the league (.145, against a league average of .159, or about 8% worse than average).

But the Brewer offense was hardly bad even by more advanced measures: by OPS+, they ranked 11th with 105 (5% better than league average), and they were even better via FanGraphs’ wRC+ measure (107, ninth in the league). We’ve already established that they scored a bunch of runs. Yes, the Brewers of 2025 didn’t hit a ton of homers (166, 22nd in the league), but they were able to make up for that in a variety of ways.

This is still a topic of conversation for the Brewers, and the question of where the slug comes from is a persistent one. But the Brewers might very well take a step forward in this area in 2026 anyway: yes, their leading home run hitter from 2025, Christian Yelich, will be a year older. But they’ll have a full season of the Andrew Vaughn/Jake Bauers platoon — their combined home run pace on a per-600 PA basis as Brewers was just over 20, but I’m optimistic they’ll outperform that — and we’re all waiting on a jump in power from Jackson Chourio. There are other places on the roster that could very plausibly outslug what the Brewers got in 2025, too: Gary Sánchez is gonna hit a few dingers, Brice Turang could see a jump if his late-season power surge lasts for closer to a full season, William Contreras could jump back to 2024 levels (he hit six more in 2024 than 2025), Luis Rengifo could get back to being the 16-17 homer guy he once was.

But we have a proven track record of the Brewers being able to score runs without the benefit of huge homer numbers, and I just don’t see a big reason to think that’s going to dramatically change in 2026. Maybe this isn’t the third-best offense in the league, but I don’t see them suddenly scoring 13% fewer runs.

Certain players without long track records are unlikely to repeat 2025 success

Two specific players who came up in this category were Turang and Quinn Priester. Both players struggled to varying degrees in their first two big-league seasons and then found success last year with Milwaukee.

Judge, in line with projection systems, is a bit skeptical of that success. To understand why, it’s important to understand how these projection systems tend to work: they typically look at three years of results and base the following season on how the previous three went, with allowances for aging arcs. That gives a larger sample.

Turang was quite bad in 2023, and as Judge says, “there’s simply no way a projection system is going to forget that.” Later, when talking about Priester, Judge explains that one could just look at last season with the Brewers, in which he was good, and ignore the previous two years, but “we just don’t do that because that’s a bet you’re just not going to win most of the time.”

Here’s the thing about Turang and Priester, though. Both were first-round picks. Both were once top 100 prospects. Both are young — Priester turned 25 in September, and Turang turned 26 in November. They are in the period of their careers where you would expect them to improve every year, and they were both expected to be good players based on where they were drafted and rated as prospects.

Yes, both players struggled upon reaching the majors, and that “record” still exists for the projection systems. But both players improved rather dramatically, and especially in Turang’s case, in a fashion that seems to follow a pretty logical, if steep, arc. PECOTA projects Turang to be worth just 1.8 WAR in 2026. By Baseball Reference’s WAR, Turang had 1.5 WAR even when he was a brutally bad offensive player in 2023; he outperformed 1.8 WAR by 260% in 2024 and by 310% in 2025. Even if you use FanGraphs’ lower numbers, Turang had 2.6 WAR in 2024 and 4.4 in 2025.

If Turang earns only 1.8 WAR in 2026, it would be massively disappointing. He’s still pre-prime in terms of age, so it’s reasonable to hope that players will continue to improve each year. The other thing about Turang, though, is qualitative: anyone who watched him regularly the last few seasons and in spring training this year can see that he is not remotely the same hitter he was in 2023.

Priester, perhaps, has more reason for concern — he significantly outperformed his FIP last season (3.32 ERA to 4.01 FIP) and there’s not much in his Statcast profile to suggest that he should be one of the best pitchers in the National League, which he was for much of 2025, at least in terms of results. But there’s also not much in that Statcast profile to suggest that he’s not, at least, a pretty solid starter. And the Brewers have clearly been strategic in acquiring groundball pitchers while they put out one of the best defensive middle infields in the league, and Priester’s groundball bona fides are legitimate.

Putting players in situations that are tailored to their strengths and set them up for success might not give a “fair” reflection of that player’s true ability, but it’s also just… smart. Sure, if Priester were pitching for a bad defensive team, he probably wouldn’t be nearly as valuable. But he’s not, so he will have value.

Conclusions

I am not by any means saying that Judge and PECOTA have no idea what they’re talking about. But for the third straight year, projection systems are down on the Brewers, and they’ll have a good chance of outperforming those projections, perhaps dramatically so. The last two years, Milwaukee caught everyone off guard, but now this is becoming a trend, and if the projections are wrong again, then there’s clearly an issue with the process.

This might be making some of the people behind those projection systems a little bit defensive, perhaps understandably so. But they should also understand that when those systems vastly underrated the Brewers in 2024 and 2025, fans are going to be up in arms when they appear to again be vastly underrating the Brewers in 2026.

Maybe the Brewers take a significant step back in 2026. I don’t really expect them to finish with the best record in the league again. But each of the last two years, I looked at the NL Central and thought the Brewers had the best chance at winning it, and both seasons I was right. I’d like to think I’m a fairly rational fan, and if I thought there was a team to take the mantle from the Brewers, I’d admit it. Maybe the Cubs do that this year. They have a talented team with a track record, which is why they outperform the Brewers in projections.

But I also think it’s just as likely that the team that won 97 games with a team filled with pre-prime players and seems to have creatively replaced the production it lost via Freddy Peralta, Caleb Durbin, and Isaac Collins is still going to be a darn good team in 2026. Excuse me for thinking so.