Wednesday, April 02

Christian Yelich has been through enough Spring Trainings to know that predicting the course of a coming regular season is a fool’s errand. 

Leave it to others to prognosticate whether the Brewers can sustain their recent relief excellence after trading away Devin Williams. Or how the loss of Willy Adames’ leadership – not to mention his team-leading 32 home runs – will impact Jackson Chourio and the rest of Milwaukee’s budding hitters. Or whether Freddy Peralta, newcomers Nestor Cortes, Jose Quintana & Co. can hold together a starting rotation stretched paper-thin at the moment by spring injuries. 

There’s even the matter of Yelich himself. Coming off back surgery, can he be the same hitter who started the All-Star Game and led the National League in batting average and on-base percentage before going down with a back injury that required surgery? 

Yelich is finished with predictions. The game, he’s learned, always has surprises. 

“You guys have watched enough baseball, too, to know you just never know what you're going to see in the six months -- good, bad, in-between,” Yelich said while wrapping up his eighth spring camp with the Brewers. “There's going to be amazing stretches. There's going to be some tough stretches. There's going to be times where everyone thinks we're horrible, and then times that you think you're going to run the table and win the World Series, you know?

“Usually, the truth is somewhere in the middle there, and you see how it shakes out.” 

Brewers manager Pat Murphy said he smells doubt among his club’s outside observers. Whether or not that was true, he is sure of a couple of things. 

“We’re going to be scrappy,” he said. “We’re going to show our inexperience at times, I’m sure, but I think you’ll see a similar competitiveness every time out.” 

What needs to go right?

They get power from new places.

The Brewers are built on pitching, defense and speed, but sometimes, it takes a three-run homer to win a ballgame. Adames hit 13 of those last season -- matching Ken Griffey Jr.’s MLB record -- but Adames and his team-leading 32 home runs are gone via free agency, and Milwaukee might need new sources of power. There are plenty of candidates, starting in the outfield. Second-year star Chourio is coming off a 20-20 season as a 20-year-old, and it would be natural for him to eye 30-30 next. Garrett Mitchell has plenty of power potential if he can stay healthy; he’s been limited to 116 Major League games in three seasons. And Sal Frelick added 25 pounds of muscle, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see him top last year’s home run total -- two. 

Great unknown

Which versions of Brandon Woodruff and Yelich will they get? 

Two of the three players (with Peralta) who have been with the Brewers for all six of their postseason entries in the past seven years, Woodruff (right shoulder surgery) and Yelich (back surgery) are coming off major procedures. Yelich has been active all spring and homered three times in the Cactus League -- encouragingly, all to center field or left. Woodruff hit a milestone when he started a Major League game this spring, but he’ll need a slow buildup in the Minors at the start of the season. If his velocity holds up as his pitch count grows, Woodruff could be a second-half weapon.

Team MVP will be …

William Contreras

Perhaps it’s Chourio’s time to take the mantle. But until someone proves otherwise, the Brewers’ most valuable player in every sense of that word is Contreras, who finished fifth in NL MVP balloting last season and worked maniacally all spring to position himself to move even higher. Voters will judge him on his offensive statistics and WAR, but there’s another, more ethereal job ahead: Can Contreras help hold together a Brewers pitching staff that’s been hit once again by injuries and change?

“Some prospects asked me, ‘Why are you here so early?’” said Contreras earlier in camp, who responded, “Because I want to be one of the best in The Show.”

Team Cy Young will be …

Bryan Hudson

Let’s go outside the box instead of making the obvious choice -- Peralta -- or a sentimental one like Woodruff. The Brewers’ publicity department was pumping Hudson as an All-Star Game candidate last June and July as he compiled some silly statistics, dropping his ERA to 0.82 and his opponents’ average to .129 at the end of June. But the increased workload of high-leverage relief wore Hudson down as July progressed, and he was sent down in early September just as Milwaukee entered the most important stretch of the season. Instead of sulking, Hudson focused over the winter and this spring on conditioning, including as part of a group of pitchers with Trevor Megill and Jared Koenig, who loosely incorporated the “Brewers running club.” 

Hudson isn’t the only pitcher critical to the team’s success. With Tobias Myers, Aaron Ashby, DL Hall, Nick Mears and JB Bukauskas joining Woodruff and Robert Gasser on the Opening Day injured list, “We’re going into New York undermanned on the mound,” Murphy said.

Bold prediction

A 30-30 season for Chourio

Why not? When he stumbled to a .575 OPS as of June 1, who saw a 20-20 season in the end? Who saw a third-place finish in rookie balloting? Chourio has defied doubters at every turn, so we should probably believe him when he says his confidence, on a scale of 1-10, sits at 20 as the regular season begins. 

It was announced last week that streaming service Roku had acquired the exclusive distribution rights to “Just a Bit Outside,” meaning that the documentary film about the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers that showed in theaters across Wisconsin last fall is coming to your home. 

Fans cam stream the film on The Roku Channel from April 11-June 30, a thrill for the two Wisconsin-born men behind the project: director and producer Sean Hanish and producer Kelly Kahl, the former head of CBS Entertainment. Viewers can stream the documentary on The Roku Channel for free, with no subscription or signup required. The Roku Channel can be accessed on Roku devices and TVs, as well as online at TheRokuChannel.com, through the Roku Mobile app, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TVs, and Google TV and other Android TV OS devices.

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