What was expected?

The Brewers had a balancing act of roster moves in the offseason to try and stay competitive after winning the NL Central crown in ’23. They traded away their ace in Corbin Burnes, veterans Mark Canha and Tyrone Taylor along with veteran pitcher Adrian Houser as they saw slugging first baseman Carlos Santana leave as well.

But they also brought in Rhys Hoskins to replace Santana, secured the injured Brandon Woodruff, brought in vets like Colin Rea, Wade Miley, Jakob Junis, Gary Sanchez and Joe Ross. They landed Jake Bauers and Joey Ortiz along with DL Hall in their wheeling and dealing as they tried to remain competitive while getting the most for players running out of team control.

They also extended the 20 year old Jackson Chourio on an eight-year, $82 million deal before he made an MLB at-bat.

They also brought in a new manager by promoting bench coach Pat Murphy to replace long time manager Craig Counsell, who went on to manage the Cubs.

How did it go?

They did a great job of bringing in just enough help to ease the loss of Burnes and co. but lost in the Wild Card round to Grimace and the New York Mets after winning their third division title in four seasons and two years in a row.

Offensively they finished top 10 in wRC+ and wOBA as they scored the sixth most runs. From the mound, they were fifth in ERA but 22nd in FIP and 16th in SIERA. They walked and struck out hitters at a rate that ranked 15th in the league.

Three starters made 25 starts or more for the Brew Crew as trade acquisitions Aaron Civale and Frankie Montas rounded out the rotation with Freddy Peralta, Colin Rea and Tobias Myers.

Peralta was ninth in K/9 but the rest of the rotation returned modest numbers.

An injury to Devin Williams propelled Trevor Megill to the closer’s role and he fulfilled it beautifully. In fact, the bullpen had four arms make at least 40 appearances and have an ERA below 3.00 (Jared Koenig, Elvis Peguero, Megill and Bryan Hudson). That excludes Joel Payamps whose turned in a 3.05 ERA.

They were a solid ball club but lacked overall upside to make it in the postseason.

Fantasy Stud?

The Brewers had a few names I could make a justification for: Willy Adames hit 30 homers and stole 21 while driving in 112. Brice Turang stole 50 bases with a solid batting average.

But the top catcher in fantasy baseball, William Contreras, deserves this distinction and prestigious honor.

He led the team (of qualified hitters) in wRC+, wOBA, SLG, OBP, BB% and runs scored.

He hit 23 homers, drove in 92 and even swiped nine bags.

He was THE DUDE.

Fantasy Dud?

I know he wasn’t a Brewer for the whole season but Aaron Civale is the dud on this team. .

A quick by the way, kudos to this Brewers squad as there really were not any other options to choose. I really don’t want to be lazy and name someone who was hurt and/or missed games as those that played mostly returned solid value.

Another late arrival to the team, Frankie Montas, was the other candidate but I feel like more was expected of Civale headed into 2024.

Most of the ‘dud’ occurred while he was in Tampa as he had a solid back half of the year with the Brewers.

After returning a 3.46 ERA in ’23 with a 1.16 WHIP, he regressed in ’24 with a 4.36 ERA and a 1.30 WHIP.

The strikeout rate dropped from 23.0% to 21.6% and the walks went up as well but a 7.5% walk rate isn’t terrible but if K:BB is a category for you then he took a step back there, too.

Fantasy Surprise?

Devin Williams missed significant time in 2024 and Trevor Megill ended up out performing the rest of the bullpen and earned the role full time while Williams was out.

He converted 21 saves en route to a 2.72 ERA, 1.01 WHIP with 50 strikeouts in 46.1 innings, while walking just 14.

Megill was solidly off fantasy radars, especially in standard 5×5 leagues.

But he was rostered everywhere as soon as he nailed down the closer’s role, offering managers elite saves production off their wire.

Player Breakdowns:

Hitters

William Contreras – C

Our ‘Fantasy Stud’ was incredible in 2024 as he was the top catcher in fantasy baseball.

He set multiple career highs this year. He made 679 plate appearances as the Brewers used him at designated hitter when he took a break from behind the dish.

He hit 23 homers, drove in 92, and scored 99, all of them were career highs.

His slash of .281/.365/.466 is right along his career marks as is his .359 wOBA and 131 wRC+.

A minor criticism for him is his ground ball rates are a bit higher than we’d like to see as that does limit his power potential as his ISO was just at .185. This is also evident by his low launch-angle at 6.1 degrees (MLB average was 12.3 degrees).

However, he consistently barrels the ball with another season of at least 10.0% on the barrel rate (exactly 10.0% this year) and he scorches the ball with a 92.8 MPH avgEV and a 49.5% hard-hit rate.

Contreras has also gotten better quality at bats over the last two seasons. The strikeout rate went from 27%+ down to 20.6% in ’23 and 20.5% in ’24.

In ’23 he dropped his first pitch swing rate from 32.3% to 28.7% . He also swung a tad less in ’23 at a 43.2% rate (44.6% in ’22).

Now what is interesting is in ’24 we saw him be more aggressive with a 37.3% first pitch swinging rate and a 47.4 swing rate. But he was able to maintain excellent strikeout to walk numbers and similar good chase and whiff rates.

It’s like he spent a season learning to patient then he added the aggression back this year and returned his best season yet.

Willy Adames – SS

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