The Brewers didn’t address one of the 2025 team’s toughest challenges during last week’s Winter Meetings but, according to at least one projection model, they might not need to.
Joey Ortiz was one of baseball’s most productive rookies for the 2024 team, but his sophomore season and move to shortstop in 2025 did not go well. To say Ortiz got off to a slow start would be a massive understatement: He carried an on-base plus slugging under .500 all the way into June, batting .181 with a .256 on-base and .241 slugging through his first 64 games. In part because Ortiz added significant value on defense and in part because the Brewers didn’t acquire any other options, Ortiz played in 149 of the Brewers’ 162 regular season games and all nine of their postseason games. His .593 OPS was the lowest of any hitter in baseball to play enough to qualify for the batting title.
Citing Ortiz’s batting line by itself doesn’t capture his full contribution as a player, of course. Both Baseball Reference and FanGraphs noted Ortiz’s positive contributions on defense and the positional value of his ability to play every day at shortstop and estimated Ortiz’s value at above replacement level for 2025. Baseball Reference had him slightly above that line at 0.3 Wins Above Replacement while FanGraphs was higher at 1.4. Even the latter, however, only made Ortiz the 23rd most valuable primary shortstop in the majors last season. Shortstop was easily the weakest position on a division-winning roster.
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Upgrade at Shortstop?
As such, “will the Brewers upgrade at shortstop?” could have been one of the biggest storylines around the organization this winter. It’s also possible, however, that the question could be “should they?”
The first projection models for the 2026 season are starting to come out, and Dan Szymborski of FanGraphs released his ZiPS projections last week. One of the more surprising numbers on the graphic was at shortstop, where one of the team’s weakest positions from the prior year was a strength: Joey Ortiz and Brewers shortstops are projected for 2.4 Wins Above Replacement, looking much more like “steady contribution” than “upgrade candidate.” In the writeup Szymborski highlights that he didn’t put his thumb on the scale for this year’s projections at least in part because the Brewers have proven him wrong before.
“Typically, when ZiPS spits out a bunch of interesting projections for fringy guys on Milwaukee, I tell myself, ‘Sure, but no way the Brewers actually gamble and play those guys.’ And then, well, they do,” Szymborski said. “So when ZiPS has projected Joey play and get 2.3 WAR per 600 plate appearances, tabbed Isaac Collins and Caleb Durbin to be roughly league-average starters given full-time play, and liked a whole bunch of random fifth-starter types as relievers, I’ve chickened out and knocked the team down a peg, only for the Brewers turn out to be braver than I thought. So, this time around, I’m going to go all in on the interesting guys! And hopefully, this won’t be the year the Brewers get boring.”
Szymborski’s projections have Joey Ortiz getting 500 plate appearances in 2026, which is roughly in line with the 506 he accumulated in 2025, and batting .247 with a .304 on-base and .379 slugging. None of those numbers are outstanding but they’re 17, 28 and 62 points better than the .230/.276/.317 marks he posted in 2025, respectively. The reasons why may be twofold:
Szymborski’s projections are somewhere between Ortiz’s dismal 2025 numbers and the significantly better offensive line he posted in 2024.
While it wasn’t enough to buoy his numbers into league average territory, Ortiz did hit better in the second half of the 2025 season. After the aforementioned first 64 games he batted .266 with a .292 on-base and .373 slugging the rest of the way, which is closer to his projected numbers for 2026.
Optimistic Projections
The comparable cases in Ortiz’s projections might be even more optimistic: Szymborski flagged former Twins and Mariners infielder Jorge Polanco as a similar case at a similar age, and Polanco went on to have star-caliber seasons in the majors in his late 20’s and early 30’s.
It doesn’t work out that way in every case, however. Szymborski’s projections also highlight 80th/20th percentile projections for all players, and in the latter Ortiz hits just .221/.278/.340 with a value under one win above replacement. To put that into simpler terms, in at least one fifth of all projected seasons Ortiz is less productive in 2026 than his disappointing 2025 season.
If Ortiz is unable to right the ship, then his days at shortstop for the Brewers might be nearing their conclusion: Two of the organization’s top prospects are both shortstops in Jesus Made and Cooper Pratt. Neither are likely to be ready to take over the position early in 2026, however, and even a late 2026 debut might be pushing it—they will still be 19 and 21 years old, respectively.
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In a good scenario it’s possible that shortstop, a position of weakness for the Brewers in 2025, becomes a solid spot on its own in 2026. If the Brewers want to be assured of contender status, however, then they’d probably be well served to have a short-term alternative.