Traditionally Major League Baseball’s “first half” of the season doesn’t end until next week’s All Star break. Mathematically, however, the halfway point of the 2025 campaign already came and went more than a week ago.
The Brewers played their 81st of 162 scheduled games on June 25 and will already have played 96 (almost 60%) of the dates on their schedule by the time next week’s break rolls around. With more than half of the season in the books, it’s no longer too early to start talking about “on pace” numbers.
Sunday’s win in the series finale against the Marlins left the Brewers on pace to go 90-72 on the season, extending their franchise record streak of seven consecutive 162-game seasons with a winning record (excluding 2020’s 29-31). There’s still a lot of baseball left to be played and the Brewers’ roster may change slightly or dramatically at the trade deadline, but they’ve already created a significant buffer between their preseason predicted win totals (FanGraphs had them at 81) and their likely result.
Individually there are also a few “on pace for” numbers to keep an eye on as the stretch run approaches:
Christian Yelich: 31 home runs
One of the most interesting storylines of the 2025 season is Yelich’s new evolution: He’s no longer the all-around MVP candidate he was in his mid-20s, but he’s also no longer the high walk rate, occasional power guy he was from about 2021-24. Instead, along with his new position change Yelich is striking out more and hitting more home runs. He’s on pace to do the former 171 times this season, but he’s also on pace to hit 31 home runs. It would be both the first time he’s led the Brewers in home runs and the first time he’s had more than 19 in a season since his MVP runner-up season in 2019.
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There is some reason to believe that Yelich’s first half power surge could be an outlier: He’s hitting home runs on over 30% of his fly balls this season, up from 22% for his career, and his Statcast batting numbers show that, if anything, he’s not hitting the ball as hard as he did during seasons where he had lesser power output. His outputs suggest he’s having something of a power resurgence, however, and if he can keep it up and stay healthy he’s in line to become just the fifth Brewer ever to hit 30 home runs three times.
Jackson Chourio: 176 hits
Chourio’s home run on Sunday was his 15th of the season, leaving him just shy of Yelich’s 30 homer pace, but it also pushed his hit total to a team-leading 98. That’s tied for the eleventh highest total in the majors this season, but Chourio is also significantly younger than most of his contemporaries on that list: At 21 years old Chourio entered play on Sunday as the youngest player in the majors to rank in the top 50 in hits this season and only three other players (James Wood of the Nationals, Pete Crow-Armstrong of the Cubs and Elly De La Cruz of the Reds) were within two years.
Chourio is not a high average hitter at this point in his career, but he has played a lot this season and he doesn’t draw many walks so he’s been well positioned to collect a lot of hits in his NL-leading 377 at bats this season. Chourio is on pace to become the first player to collect 176 hits or more in his age 21 season or younger since Manny Machado and Mike Trout did it in 2013 and 2012, respectively.
Freddy Peralta: 182 IP
With the Brewers’ pitching staff coming into 2025 with more question marks than usual, this team’s success might have hinged on Freddy Peralta’s ability to take the ball when scheduled and pitch deep into games when called upon. So far he’s answered the bell on both counts: He and recently-optioned Chad Patrick are the only Brewers to make 18 starts this season and Peralta has completed at least five innings in 17 of those appearances. We wrote about his arsenal change back in April, but to this point Peralta has also avoided the disaster outings he’s occasionally tripped over in years past. By Game Score Peralta’s weakest outing this season has been a 45 (where 50 is roughly average). He had nine outings that scored worse than that in 2024 (his worst was a 29) and five in 2023 (where his worst was a 16).
While 180 innings has not historically been a huge number, the Brewers have only had four pitchers reach that plateau in the last 11 seasons: Corbin Burnes in 2022 and 2023, Jhoulys Chacin in 2018 and Zach Davies in 2017. Last year Peralta led the Brewers with 173 2/3 but only three other pitchers broke 100.
Kyle Lobner covers the Milwaukee Brewers in the Shepherd Express’ weekly On Deck Circle column. He has written about the Brewers and Minor League Baseball since 2008.
Jul. 07, 2025
11:17 a.m.