Milwaukee Brewers: PECOTA Projects Big Season for Brandon Woodruff

Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA player projections have been released and Brandon Woodruff is expected to have another solid season in 2020.

After bouncing back and forth between the Milwaukee Brewers and Triple-A during 2017 and most of the 2018 seasons, we saw the emergence of Brandon Woodruff in September and October during the Milwaukee Brewers’ run to the NLCS.

Then just last season, with the starting rotation built around Milwaukee’s young core made up of Woodruff, Corbin Burnes, and Freddy Peralta, as well as the Brewers’ ace from 2018, Jhoulys Chacin, it was Woody who would emerge as their top pitcher.

In 121.2 innings pitched last year, Woody posted a 3.62 ERA, a FIP of just 3.01, a walk rate of only 6.1 percent, and he allowed only 12 home runs. On top of that his hard hit rate was at only 32.7 percent and he struck out nearly 30 percent of the batters he faced.

While the aforementioned Burnes, Peralta and Chacin all struggled, Woodruff thrived as he became Milwaukee’s go-to pitching option.

Now as we look ahead to the 2020 season, with more uncertainty around the starting rotation, the Brewers are really going to need Woodruff to produce once again. And the good news is that Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA projections is predicting another stellar season for Woody.

PECOTA predicts that Woodruff will throw 166 innings, strikeout 184 batters, walk just 59, record a 3.61 ERA, a 4.03 DRA, and finish with a WARP of 3.3. Certainly not bad at all.

In the article by Matthew Trueblood (subscription required), he would go on to say that Woodruff is a “deeply strange pitcher” because his results don’t necessarily match what his underlying numbers show:

"“He gets strikeouts without getting whiffs.” Trueblood would later add, “he has the ability to fill up the strike zone, but lacks real command.” Followed by, “his spin rates aren’t great, given his velocity.” And lastly, “Woodruff doesn’t hit his targets with much consistency. He doesn’t miss bats—not with either fastball.”"

However, despite those underlying stats, Woody is expected to be very effective once again and a large part of that is due to how he is able to keep hitters off-balance:

"“Yet, this doesn’t feel crazy, because when one watches a Woodruff start, the thing that jumps out most of all is this: he’s a deeply uncomfortable at-bat. Something about his delivery, power, and movement produces a lot of weak swings from opposing hitters. PECOTA forecasts a continuation of that in 2020.”"

For a Milwaukee Brewers team that has a number of question marks heading into the 2020 season, having Brandon Woodruff provide some stability at the front-end of the rotation will go a long ways towards helping them reach their third straight postseason. And based on the PECOTA projections, we should expect another big season from the Big Woo.