Brewers aim to win with defense, pitching

Can the Brewers win the National League Central with pitching and defense?

They are about to give it a shot.

The biggest changes from the shortened 2020 season are up the middle for Milwaukee, which is essentially adding three Gold Glove winners with the return of center fielder Lorenzo Cain and the free-agent additions of second baseman Kolten Wong and outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr. Left fielder Christian Yelich gives the Brewers four Gold Glove winners in their regular defensive rotation to chase down balls in play for a pitching staff led by starters Brandon Woodruff and Corbin Burnes and ace relievers Josh Hader and Devin Williams.

“This is a team that I think is a pretty balanced team,” president of baseball operations David Stearns said. “It’s going to be led by run prevention. I think we know that. That probably puts a little bit of added pressure on the pitching staff, and I’m pretty confident that if our pitchers and our run prevention as a whole does what I think it’s capable of doing, we’re going to be pretty good. So, it all works together. Each area of the team needs to carry its weight. But if you’re asking me which unit might need to carry a heavier portion of the weight, it’s going to be the pitching staff, based on how we’ve constructed the roster.”

What needs to go right?
We ran that question by Stearns, and this was his answer:

“This may be a cop-out, but it’s the truth, and it’s health,” Stearns said. “Health is always paramount, and there is so much unknown about what we’re heading into this year, coming off a very unusual and truncated season last year. So, health is important. We’ve got to keep our guys healthy. If that means extra off days early in the year, if it means conservative playing time early in the year, that’s what we have to do. The team or teams that are healthiest in August and September are probably the team or teams that are going to be looking pretty good at the end of the year.”

Great unknown
In 2018, Cain was an All-Star and finished seventh in NL MVP balloting. In 2019, he won his first Gold Glove Award. But in 2020, Cain elected to step away one week into the season over concerns about COVID-19 and a desire to rekindle his faith. That means he’s something of an unknown heading into 2021, especially since Cain missed the bulk of the Cactus League with a strained right quadriceps. He returned with about a dozen games left on the Brewers’ exhibition schedule and began a quick ramp-up toward the regular season. If Cain can get his legs back under him, if he can reacclimate to Major League pitching and if he can fend off the presence of another Gold Glove center fielder in Bradley, then Cain could prove to be one of the players most critical to the Brewers’ success this season. That’s a lot of ifs for a player who turns 35 on April 13.

Team MVP will be ...
Yelich. Let’s not overthink this, right? Even in the worst year of his career (or at least the worst of his recent years), Yelich’s 113 wRC+ means he was 13% above average in 2020. His 12 home runs represent a 32-homer pace in a full, 162-game season. Yelich is going to be the Brewers’ best hitter again in 2021.

Team Cy Young will be ...
Woodruff. What did we say about overthinking? Burnes was a NL Cy Young candidate in 2020 and one of baseball’s best comeback stories. But Woodruff was quietly solid, making all 13 of his available starts and ranking among the league’s Top 10 in innings, WHIP, strikeouts to walks, strikeouts, strikeouts per nine innings and ERA. John Smoltz told The Athletic’s Will Sammon this spring that Woodruff is his dark horse pick for the ’21 Cy Young. Former Brewers assistant scouting director and Mariners special assistant Tony Blengino, writing for Forbes, ranked the game’s fastballs and had Woodruff and Mets ace Jacob deGrom at the top. Woodruff is 28, right in his prime. He appears to be getting better.

Bold prediction
Yelich will hit 60 homers, new baseballs be darned. (Hey, the instructions said “bold” and I’m going for it.) Yelich is at his best when he plays with a chip on his shoulder. From the rumblings about “regression” going into 2019 to this spring, he is bidding to bounce back from a .205 average and otherwise pedestrian -- by his standards -- production during the pandemic-shortened season. He went deep with Andy Haines, Yelich’s first full-season manager in the Minors who is now Milwaukee’s hitting coach, during a multiday workshop over the winter, talking through 2020 and working extensively in the batting cage. The result this spring? “He looks like Christian up there,” Haines said midway through camp. Maybe he won’t hit 60 homers, but with the league’s best pitchers watching their workloads this year, there’s every reason to believe Yelich’s numbers will be impressive.