Milwaukee Brewers: 3 Free Agent Targets at First Base

C.J. Cron

C.J. Cron is a nice happy medium between Cabrera and Nunez, both in age and playstyle. He’s 30 years old, and his strikeout numbers are either pretty good or really bad, depending on which year you’re looking at.

For most of Cron’s career, he’s been a solid hitter as a first baseman and designated hitter who hits for a nice average and hits enough doubles and home runs to make his slugging numbers above average. The lowest he’s ever slugged in a season is .437, and that was the only year he ever had an OPS+ under 100 at 98. In every one of his six other seasons, he’s been above average but doesn’t get much recognition league-wide because he doesn’t do anything flashy.

At the plate, Cron has a tendency to go fishing for bad pitches quite a bit. His walk rate has never been above the 24th percentile, and that’s lead to a mediocre .312 career on-base percentage. It also leads to plenty of strikeouts, but only in some years. His strikeout percentage percentiles from 2016 to 2019 are as follows: 69, 18, 17, 48. It’s hard to figure out exactly what kind of hitter Cron is with these numbers because 2017 and 2018 were some of the worst in the league, but the other years he put the ball in play a lot more.

In 2020, he only played in 13 games and had just 52 plate appearances, but it was his most hit-or-miss season he’s had. He had just eight hits, batting .190, but seven of those eight hits went for extra bases, and four were home runs. That helped him post career-highs in both slugging percentage and OPS. However, it was also his career-high in strikeout percentage at 30.8 percent.

2020 was a very small sample size for Cron, but it could signal that something in his swing has changed. The game is going towards launch angle and trying to hit the ball out of the yard, so he might definitely be following that trend as well. After hitting 16 home runs every year from 2015 to 2017, he hit 30 in 2018 and 25 in 2019, so he has shown that he is trending towards being more of a power hitter. Both versions of Cron make for a solid player, and he’d bring some great stability to the middle of the lineup.

So who do you think would be the best fit at first base for the Milwaukee Brewers in 2021? Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter @DairylandXpress.