The Brewers ended last season with a prominent figure in their first base rotation that no one saw coming, who wasn\u2019t even in the organization at the beginning of last season. But Andrew Vaughn, who seized the job after Rhys Hoskins (who has now departed the club) was injured and the Brewers traded Aaron Civale for him, figures to play a big part in 2026 as well. Vaughn presents one of the team\u2019s biggest questions for this season: Can he come anywhere close to repeating his production from last season?<\/p>\n
There are a couple of other players who figure to man first base for the Brewers at some point this season, one of whom may be hoping to get a significant \u2014 and probably final \u2014 opportunity with the major league club. Let\u2019s check out the names in play for games at first base this season, and take a brief glance toward the future.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re all familiar with Vaughn\u2019s story by now. No. 3 pick in the 2019 draft. A top 20 overall prospect. Debuted two years later at 23. Topped 15 homers in each of his first four seasons. But his progress stagnated fairly quickly, and as an offensive player, Vaughn appeared to have peaked early \u2014 his best OPS+ to date was in 2022, his second year, when he hit .271\/.321\/.429 with 17 homers in 134 games. Add to it that Vaughn was first used in the outfield by the White Sox \u2014 where he should absolutely not have been playing \u2014 and was then moved to first base, where he didn\u2019t grade out particularly well defensively. His start in 2025 was so bad that Chicago demoted him to the minors, and then took the opportunity to send him to Milwaukee for Civale.<\/p>\n
At the time of the trade, Vaughn didn\u2019t figure to play into the Brewers\u2019 plans. Hoskins was healthy, and Vaughn had given no reason to play him. He was only 27, but it looked like his career was in jeopardy. But getting out of Chicago turned out to be a very good thing for Vaughn: he showed some life at Triple-A Nashville, and when Hoskins got hurt just after the Fourth of July, Vaughn got his opportunity and did not disappoint.<\/p>\n
In his first 33 games with Milwaukee, Vaughn hit .325\/.394\/.600, hit six doubles and nine homers, and knocked in a remarkable 35 runs. He showed a knack for getting the big hit, and \u201cKing Vaughn\u201d quickly became a cult hero of sorts. While he cooled off a little in the last month-and-a-half of the season, Vaughn still posted a 142 wRC+ and 1.9 fWAR in just 64 games as a Brewer.<\/p>\n
The question now is whether those 64 games were a blip or whether Vaughn is a good offensive player who needed to get out of a bad situation in Chicago. He has shown an ability to hit over his career, but in four-plus years with the White Sox, he had an OPS+ under 100 (97). That\u2019s a long track record, and the major reason to be skeptical of his one-third-of-a-season in Milwaukee. That skepticism is apparent in Vaughn\u2019s projections; for example, ZiPS projects Vaughn for a 100 wRC+ (20 homers, but just a .244\/.305\/.413 batting line) and 0.5 WAR. Others are similar.<\/p>\n
But the optimistic take is that the wake-up call of getting sent to the minors, plus a better coaching staff in Milwaukee, has unlocked Vaughn\u2019s significant bat-to-ball skills. One way this is apparent is in Vaughn\u2019s walk rate, which jumped from 3.6% to 9.4% between his time in Chicago and Milwaukee last season; the 9.4% walk rate he posted in Milwaukee would have been a career high over a full season. Vaughn also wasn\u2019t, apparently, a beneficiary of good luck last season: he really was scalding the ball. There\u2019s a ton of red on his 2025 Statcast page, and maybe he was just on a heater, but he wasn\u2019t getting bloop singles or benefitting from bad defense.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the biggest reason for optimism here, and he\u2019s off to a good start this spring: he is hitting .429\/.529\/.643 through five games.<\/p>\n
Another player who needs to prove that late-season improvements were for real is Vaughn\u2019s backup\/platoon mate, Jake Bauers.<\/p>\n
Bauers was another highly regarded prospect \u2014 he was in the top 50 in Baseball America\u2019s 2018 rankings \u2014 but he was never able to come through on his promise after debuting in 2018 and has bounced around the league ever since. The Brewers, with whom he landed in 2024, are his fifth major league team.<\/p>\n
Pat Murphy seemed to take a liking to Bauers in 2024; he had a good, reliable glove at first base and had enough pop that he could run into a ball, making him a good option off the bench. But the overall numbers still weren\u2019t great: despite 12 homers in only 346 plate appearances, Bauers hit just .199, had an 84 OPS+, and had -0.4 WAR according to Baseball Reference.<\/p>\n
But he stuck around in 2025, and his overall numbers improved in 2025, and much of those improvements came after a stint on the IL that caused him to miss about a month between late July and late August. After returning, though, Bauers smoked the ball: he hit .321\/.433\/.500 with four doubles, two homers, and 10 RBIs in 67 plate appearances between his return on August 23 and the end of the season. That carried into the postseason; he was 4-for-13 (.308) with a double and a homer in five postseason games.<\/p>\n
Were his late-season adjustments real? Bauers looked like a real threat in the postseason when hardly anyone else on the team was hitting. He has the tools to be a solid offensive player if he\u2019s figured something out: he has a solid .179 isolated power number over the last three seasons, and should be a source of homers for the club, even in limited duty.<\/p>\n
Bauers also offers the Brewers flexibility in one other respect: while he is by no means a good outfielder, he is capable of playing there, and indeed appears to be a preferred defensive option in left field to the aging Christian Yelich at this point.<\/p>\n
For now, Bauers and Vaughn are likely platoon at first. Bauers posted a .769 OPS against right-handed pitching in 2025 (and was given only 17 plate appearances against lefties) while Vaughn crushed lefties, with an .859 OPS (and just .661 against right-handers).<\/p>\n
Tyler Black is doing everything he can to get a job this spring, but it\u2019s very possible that it won\u2019t be entirely up to him. Strong minor league seasons in 2022 and 2023 got Black into top 100 prospect lists heading into 2024, but a lack of opportunities and an offensive step back at Triple-A Nashville have hurt his stock. And while he did get a brief major league debut in 2024, Black has appeared in just 23 games over the past two seasons. Now he\u2019s 25, and it feels like if the Brewers don\u2019t see something from him in a sustained way at the major league level, he might be on his way out of the organization.<\/p>\n
Black\u2019s superpower is a fantastic batter\u2019s eye. He\u2019s got a 15.7% walk percentage in five minor league seasons, and that\u2019s translated to the majors (in an admittedly tiny sample size), where he\u2019s walked 12 times in 70 plate appearances (17.1% rate). But Black doesn\u2019t boast the kind of power you\u2019d like from a major league first baseman: while he\u2019s a good contact hitter, he has just average power, with 42 homers in 386 minor league games (and a career high of 18). He hit just five home runs in 2025, one of which came while he was rehabbing at the Arizona Complex League.<\/p>\n
But back to this spring: it\u2019s only been four games, but he\u2019s 8-for-12 with four extra-base hits (two doubles, a triple, a homer) in 13 plate appearances. Of course, all of those at-bats came in February, when pitchers aren\u2019t exactly locked in, but it seems like Black is making a statement: \u201cPlease don\u2019t forget about me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, it\u2019s difficult to see where Black figures into the Brewers\u2019 plans, barring an injury to Bauers. He has played third base in the minors, but if he were a viable defensive option there, the Brewers would likely not have signed Luis Rengifo. All accounts are that his defense at third is not a viable major league option; his future is likely at first base or in one of the outfield corners.<\/p>\n
If a Brewer regular does get injured, Black is likely to be one of the primary alternatives: he might get the first call with an injury to an outfielder, a first baseman, or to designated hitter Christian Yelich. Obviously, we hope no one gets injured, but Black is still intriguing enough that many fans \u2014 myself included \u2014 would like to see him get an extended run in the majors to see what he can do. Whether it happens this season or not is a major question, but as Black approaches his 26th birthday in late July, he may be running out of time with the Brewer organization.<\/p>\n
Who might be coming next?<\/p>\n
Beyond Black, the Brewers have several intriguing minor league hitters who are either already playing first base or may end up there. Very quickly:<\/p>\n
Luke Adams was drafted in the 12th round in 2022 out of high school, and in his first three full seasons as a Brewer minor leaguer, he has shown off an incredible amount of patience: if Black\u2019s 15.7% minor league walk percentage is impressive, what does that make Adams\u2019 Soto-like 17.6% walk rate? Adams\u2019 power needs to develop \u2014 he\u2019s hit 11 home runs in each of the last three seasons, though he did that in significantly fewer games in 2025 than in the two seasons prior \u2014 but if he can develop into his considerable 6-foot-4 frame, he could be a major league player.<\/p>\n
The only other two players I\u2019m going to mention here are both considered third basemen at this point, but may or may not stick there. The first is last year\u2019s first-round pick, Andrew Fischer. Fischer (who hit a bomb in Saturday\u2019s spring training game) was one of the best college hitters in the country in 2025 and then hit .311\/.402\/.446 in his professional debut in 19 games at High-A Wisconsin. His offensive game is tantalizing, and he could progress quickly through the Brewers\u2019 system. He figures to start at Double-A Biloxi this season. He might be able to stick at third base, but given how much middle-infield talent exists in the Brewers\u2019 minor league system at this point, a move to first might be down the line.<\/p>\n
Defensively, Brock Wilken is in the same boat. He\u2019s been playing exclusively third base in the Brewers\u2019 system, but while he\u2019s viewed as capable there, it doesn\u2019t figure to be one of his strengths. Wilken had an impressive season in 2025, after his 2024 season was derailed by a pitch to the face in April of that season. In 2025 at Double-A Biloxi, Wilken played only 79 games but hit 18 homers and 17 doubles in just 344 plate appearances; he also walked a whole bunch, and put together a .226\/.387\/.489 batting line. The Brewers started Wilken at first base in their spring training contest on Monday, so even though he\u2019s played exclusively third in the minors, they\u2019re obviously starting to think about him as a first baseman. He figures to start at Triple-A Nashville and could conceivably make a major league debut this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brewers ended last season with a prominent figure in their first base rotation that no one saw…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":601659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2401],"tags":[5,136,843,59,38822,4280,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-601658","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-brewers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-brewers","10":"tag-milwaukee","11":"tag-milwaukee-brewers","12":"tag-milwaukee-brewers-commentary-and-analysis","13":"tag-milwaukeebrewers","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116160048969889380","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=601658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/601658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=601658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=601658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=601658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}