MILWAUKEE — Brewers officials will travel to Orlando for next week’s MLB Winter Meetings with in-house answers for every position on the diamond, more depth of young starting pitching than many clubs and multiple options to close games.
All of which presents something of a good problem for a club coming off a franchise record (and MLB-best) 97 wins, which ranked third in the Majors in runs scored with a mix of discipline, contact and speed — and fell short of the ultimate goal of getting back to the World Series for the first time since 1982.
Here’s one familiar aisle in which president of baseball operations Matt Arnold can shop: Power. Teams that outhomer the opponent in playoff games since the start of the 2020 postseason are 160-32, for an .842 winning percentage, according to MLB.com stats guru Sarah Langs. That’s compared to a .765 winning percentage in the regular season over the same span. In the 2025 postseason, teams outhomering opponents were 30-5 (including the Brewers’ 2-0 mark against the Cubs in the NLDS).
The reasons for that reliance on the long ball are fairly clear, starting with the quality of pitching in the postseason — in other words, teams with lousy pitching have a hard time making it that far — and the urgency with which managers deploy their top arms in October. It’s not impossible to string together rallies the way the Brewers had a knack for doing during the regular season, as Mike Petriello wrote going into the playoffs, it’s just more difficult.
Unfortunately, adding slug to the roster is easier said than done. One, big power is not particularly plentiful on the market. Two, it’s expensive. If you rank free agents by barrel rate, as Petriello did for MLB.com last month, then Kyle Schwarber (20.8%) and Pete Alonso (18.9%) are at the top of the list. The Brewers won’t be shopping in that aisle.
Next are Rowdy Tellez (15.3%), Eugenio Suárez (14.3%) and Yoán Moncada (14.3%). The Brewers cut Tellez loose, opted against pursuing Suárez at last year’s Trade Deadline and would absorb significant health risk in the case of Moncada.
There’s another big hurdle for the Brewers: Where would a power bat fit?
William Contreras is entrenched at catcher for now, with two more years of club control while prospect Jeferson Quero develops behind him. Around the diamond, the Brewers have signaled a willingness to move forward with an Andrew Vaughn/Jake Bauers platoon at first base and are set at second with rapidly improving Brice Turang. Caleb Durbin just finished third in NL Rookie of the Year balloting, and it would be a bold move to punt him off third base. And while Joey Ortiz had a miserable offensive season (his 67 wRC+ was third-worst among MLB qualifiers), he plays elite defense and every indication from Arnold and manager Pat Murphy is that Milwaukee will keep Ortiz at shortstop.
“You’re talking about a guy that has made every single play and most plays that nobody can get to, honestly,” Arnold said in October. “I thought he was tremendous on the defensive side of the ball, and think he can still grow because he has some really good offensive tools.”
The outfield is similarly well-populated.
The Brewers are likely to use Christian Yelich as the primary designated hitter, as he’s due $26 million in each of the next three seasons. That leaves an outfield of Jackson Chourio in left, Sal Frelick in right and Garrett Mitchell and Blake Perkins in center, with Isaac Collins bouncing around as needed after finishing fourth in NL Rookie of the Year balloting. If Mitchell can get healthy and stay healthy, that unit has a chance to be one of the team’s strengths.
Some of those players are positioned to add power as they develop, like Turang has done in growing his slugging percentage from .300 to .349 to .435, respectively, in his first three years in the Majors. Frelick slugged .405 last season after posting a .339 mark over his first two seasons with the Brewers, and he hit 12 home runs in 2025 after three in the regular season in ‘23 and two in ‘24. Chourio, still just 21 years old, still has excellent power potential after hitting 21 homers in each of his two seasons in the Majors. A full season of the July and August version of Vaughn would help. As would any degree of production from Ortiz, who has the bat speed to slug.
Will maturation from those players be enough? Are the Brewers better served to stick with their pesky identity rather than forcing a slugger onto the roster?
Those are the questions Arnold and his team will be asking in Orlando.
