Hogg: Let's talk about expectations for this Milwaukee Brewers team

PHOENIX – The final time Corbin Burnes stood in a Milwaukee Brewers clubhouse, the sound of packing tape filled the room. Blots of redness filled the corners of his eyes.

The Brewers, less than 60 minutes earlier, had just been blindsided. A 92-win regular season and division championship had ended in a thud in a matter of 27 hours and two losses to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League wild-card round.

Burnes, whose past four seasons formed potentially the best stretch by any pitcher in franchise history, openly pondered whether this was the end of the road with the franchise that drafted him in 2016. The star right-hander openly lamented his inability to pitch well enough in the first game of the series the day before. He, as did rotation mate Freddy Peralta, made a push to keep the room together and run things back next spring.

Deep down, though, Burnes knew the likely reality ahead of him in the coming months. He may not have said he figured he would be traded, but he didn’t need to. The eyes said it all.

In this day and age of Milwaukee Brewers baseball, it’s always about the present season. It has to be. That’s the bar you set for yourself with more division titles in the past six years than over the previous 49 combined. Call it the pressure of privilege.

The Brewers aren’t running from that, either. General manager Matt Arnold refuted that they were engaging in a rebuild when they traded Burnes to the Baltimore Orioles just before pitchers and catchers reported for spring training. First-year manager Pat Murphy undoubtedly believes the same.

Little about the Brewers roster as it stands screams out that this is a rebuild, too.

Shortstop Willy Adames is a free agent at year’s end, when he’s likely to price himself out of Milwaukee, yet he’s still here. Rhys Hoskins was signed to the largest free-agent contract the Brewers have doled out since Lorenzo Cain in 2018. Milwaukee was also in the top 10 in Major League Baseball in free-agent money committed this winter, and that doesn’t even include the Jackson Chourio extension.

Given the standards that have been set at One Brewers Way, as well as how the roster shapes up, the postseason should be the expectation. That much has not changed.

There is something that is different about this season in Milwaukee, however.

The postseason is the goal. Winning the division is the goal. Bringing home a World Series is the goal.

But none is the goal.

Is it a rebuild or has it been a slow shift the past few seasons?

The paradigm, you see, has shifted a bit in the Menominee River valley.

For the past few seasons, the clock was ticking down on a core of key players. Think about who started games on the mound for the Brewers in the 2021 NL Division Series against the Atlanta Braves. Three of the four – Burnes, Brandon Woodruff and Lauer – were set to become free agents after 2024. The team’s most valuable position player, Adames, was in the same boat.  Closer Josh Hader’s team control expired after 2023, and most expected him to be traded even before that.

When the Brewers flopped on offense for three straight games in that series and found themselves eliminated, they were one season closer to seeing that core dissolve. Then they traded Hader while in first place at the deadline in 2022, subsequently collapsed, and were another year closer.

When the highly successful 2023 season came to that jarring ending against the Diamondbacks, the Brewers weren’t only another year closer. They were likely at the end.

Burnes was traded. Hader was already gone. The best manager in franchise history, Craig Counsell, someone raised in Whitefish Bay, left them for a new, rival suitor in Chicago. The Brewers even traded away two more of the longest-tenured members of the organization, right-hander Adrian Houser and outfielder Tyrone Taylor. Of the 2020 Brewers, only Christian Yelich, Freddy Peralta and Devin Williams will take the field in 2024.

Bump that to 2022, all of two years ago, and there are only seven holdovers – Adames, Aaron Ashby, Hoby Milner and Garrett Mitchell in addition to the other three. Out of 52 players on the team all of 18 months ago, only 13.5% remain.

The youth movement is taking over the Brewers

The Milwaukee Brewers as you knew them are gone.

But in their place is a cast of new, young players in cream and gold.

There’s Chourio and DL Hall. Mitchell and Brice Turang. Sal Frelick and Joey Wiemer. Joey Ortiz and Abner Uribe.

And a whole lot more of them are coming, too.

We won’t know the average age of the 2024 Brewers until the opening day roster is finalized, but it’s a good bet that the Brewers will be among the most youthful.

This is why Yelich quipped in a recent interview, “I don’t feel old, but I’m old here.”

These 2024 Brewers, if things go according to design, will look a whole lot like the 2025 Brewers and the 2026 Brewers and so on.

Because of this, maybe it isn’t all about this year for Milwaukee.

At face value, it seems a bit counterintuitive, in this era when the aim year after year is still to take a crunch of the ever-repopulating apple, to take some of the onus on the season that is right in front of you. The Brewers, after all, have yet to eat the entire apple. The roster still is plenty talented, so the goal should be to win and do it right now.

But aiming to win in 2024 and understanding the window has been opened for the foreseeable future through deft player acquisition and development are not mutually exclusive as it pertains to this iteration of the Brewers.

Putting the final stamp on moves such as trading Burnes, arguably the best homegrown pitcher in franchise history, is difficult. For fans, it may even be a tougher pill to swallow.

Through the right lens, though, it can easily be gleaned how it makes sense for Milwaukee in its quest for perennial contention. That type of thought process, in theory, is working. The farm system is now loaded, with most of the top prospects knocking on the big-league door.

The future is bright for the Brewers. That’s a phrase that doesn’t guarantee anything, of course. But maybe, just maybe, it’s one that will lead to the first late-October breakthrough in franchise history.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What should expectations be for the Milwaukee Brewers in 2024?