Advanced metric proves why Brewers fans should believe in the Brandon Lockridge breakout

Brandon Lockridge is an excellent defender who is very fast. In other words, he's the quintessential modern Milwaukee Brewers player.

His bat is another story, with a career 61 wRC+ more or less defining his offensive profile. The team didn't acquire him at last year's trade deadline with the expectation that he'd become the next Andrew Vaughn-style success story, but the early 2026 returns on Lockridge are exciting.

He absolutely eviscerated Spring Training pitchers, slashing .318/.423/.636 with four home runs and two doubles, good for a 168 wRC+. The showing in the power department was especially impressive, seeing as the 29-year-old outfielder has just nine career extra-base hits to his name in 80 major-league games.

And while it's important to keep a level head when discussing any Spring Training stats, Lockridge has backed up the hype through his first two games of the 2026 season. While the numbers on the stat sheet might not jump off the page, there's one advanced metric that indicates Lockridge's breakout potential is real.

Brandon Lockridge is swinging faster, which opens up tantalizing possibilities for Brewers

It should be noted that this is an incredibly small sample size of just two regular-season games for Lockridge -- though Statcast data from Spring Training this year backs up the trend to some extent.

In his first five plate appearances of the 2026 season, Lockridge is swinging fast, producing some head-turning bat speed numbers in the process. On Opening Day, Lockridge had one swing that clocked in at 80 mph, and his top bat speed in Saturday night's game was 78 mph.

For reference, the fastest swinger in the world is Oneil Cruz, who averages 78.8 mph. Though Lockridge's top bat speed surpassed Cruz's average, the Brewers' outfielder is currently averaging 76 mph on his bat speed for the season.

Again, there is a lot of small-sample noise doing witchcraft on these numbers, but if his average swing speed stays roughly where it is right now, it'll be a huge jump for Lockridge. Across his first two seasons in the big leagues, his swings clocked in around 71.0 mph, below league average. Push that up by a few ticks on the radar gun, and his entire offensive outlook changes.

Most importantly, this new data backs up the power gains we saw from Lockridge in camp. It's hard to hit the ball hard if you aren't swinging the bat hard, so this development offers some hope that what we saw in Spring Training wasn't a mere mirage.

With Jackson Chourio set to miss time with a fractured hand, Lockridge will get serious playing time in the early going, at least against lefties. If he can pair even league-average offense with his speed-and-defense profile, the Brewers will have yet another major success story on their hands.