Is 2026 the year Jake Bauers finds some consistency at the plate?

Jake Bauers is in a weird spot heading into the 2026 season, mostly because the Milwaukee Brewers' roster is in a weird spot.

The long-awaited offensive upgrade never came, leaving Pat Murphy to run it back with a crew that is more known for depth than star power. And while Bauers is versatile enough to play left field and first base, both positions are mostly spoken for at present -- assuming Andrew Vaughn can keep his breakout going into a new year and Garrett Mitchell stays healthy.

Still, as a left-handed hitter with serious power, Bauers shouldn't be going anywhere. Even if he's mostly serving as a bench bat and occasional spot starter, there's enough potential in his bat to justify keeping him around for another full season.

In order to earn more than just a little playing time, though, he'll need to start displaying some consistency for the first time in his career.

Jake Bauers must lift floor in 2026, even at the cost of his ceiling

From an underlying metrics standpoint, Bauers is a resoundingly good player. He walks a ton (14.7% walk rate in 2025), swings hard (76.5 mph average swing speed), tears the cover off the ball when he makes contact (91.7 mph average exit velocity), and is generally immune to swinging at pitchers' best offerings (20.4% chase rate).

The problem is that he strikes out and whiffs a lot. And when he isn't on one of his usual heaters at the plate, odds are he's mired in one of his similarly frequent slumps.

Between April and May last year, Bauers posted a 128 wRC+. In September, he was even better, lighting up pitchers to the tune of a 1.018 OPS. Those bookends were great, but the middle chapters of his story in 2025 were hard to look at.

His 14 wRC+ in July, when slashed all of .087/.250/.087 in 28 plate appearances, was abysmal. It got even worse in August, as Bauers failed to notch even a single hit at the plate. A similar thing occurred in 2024, when he was great in May (106 wRC+) and June (141 wRC+) and then was a below-average bat the rest of the way.

Limited playing time won't help matters, but Bauers needs to find a way to limit strikeouts and keep up his contact quality. Last season, during his best months, the 30-year-old frequently went to the opposite field; when he struggled, he became pull-dependent. Even if he can't sell out for home runs quite as much, more consistency on that front would also go a long way to ensuring he's playable for an entire season, rather than just a few weeks at a time.