Brewers: Are 2021 Starting Pitcher Stat Projections “Fair” or “Foul?”

Josh Lindblom

Projection: 6-8 / 4.77 ERA / 115.0 IP / 1.339 WHIP / 9.5 K/9

Ruling: Fair

Spring Training hasn’t necessarily been kind to Josh Lindblom so far, but he’s been given plenty of chances. So far, nobody has more innings pitched than Lindblom (9.2) and he did have a nice outing against the Dodgers in his last appearance but struggled a bit before.

He’s been erratic a bit too often and it seems fairly similar to last year, running into high pitch counts and just giving up too many runs. The good thing is though it’s still mid-March and he has time to correct things before the regular season begins.

Last year he ended his season on a strong note, only allowing four runs in his last five appearances when before that he was struggling, with a 6.46 ERA. It’s hard to debate this projection just because there hasn’t been MLB consistency for Lindblom since the early 2010’s.

I think you could consider an ERA below 5.00 a success as the Brewers offense, not to mention an improved defense, may be able to help him out every so often. If he can stay healthy, 115.0 innings pitched would be great.

This WHIP is also almost identical to his career one so I have no problem with it and he does get a good amount of strikeouts (69th percentile in K% per Baseball Savant) so 9.5 K/9 works for me.

Adrian Houser

Projection: 6-9 / 4.40 ERA / 133.0 IP / 1.346 WHIP / 8.7 K/9

Ruling: Fair

Adrian Houser has the same amount of Cactus League games played as Lindblom but was looking quite a bit better until his most recent outing. Houser has a 4.15 ERA through four spring training starts for the Brewers with a pair of homers given up. Even that would be an improvement over last season at this point.

I wanted to label this one as foul, but once again he had some struggles last year that make it hard to disagree with. I do believe that Houser’s ceiling is higher and floor is lower than Anderson and Lindblom and he could very well make the jump to the third starter this year.

I think a more likely projection might have Houser looking like 7-7, 110.0 IP,  4.25 ERA, 1.312 WHIP,  8.4 K/9, but I’ve been wrong before.

These are the five we may see to start the year but I’m almost certain these won’t be the only starters all year even if they all stay injury-free. Craig Counsell wants to try out Freddy Peralta and maybe even a Brent Suter return is in the cards. Drew Rasmussen has also been getting stretched out as well, so the Brewers have options.

Stay tuned as we shift our focus to some of the Brewers bullpen arms. It should be one of the more feared units in all of baseball, but will the projections agree?