Milwaukee Brewers 2026 preview by position: first base

The Brewers ended last season with a prominent figure in their first base rotation that no one saw coming, who wasn’t 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’s biggest questions for this season: Can he come anywhere close to repeating his production from last season?

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 — and probably final — opportunity with the major league club. Let’s check out the names in play for games at first base this season, and take a brief glance toward the future.

Andrew Vaughn

We’re all familiar with Vaughn’s 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 — 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 — where he should absolutely not have been playing — and was then moved to first base, where he didn’t 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.

At the time of the trade, Vaughn didn’t figure to play into the Brewers’ 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.

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 “King Vaughn” 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.

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’s 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’s 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.

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’s significant bat-to-ball skills. One way this is apparent is in Vaughn’s 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’t, apparently, a beneficiary of good luck last season: he really was scalding the ball. There’s a ton of red on his 2025 Statcast page, and maybe he was just on a heater, but he wasn’t getting bloop singles or benefitting from bad defense.

That’s the biggest reason for optimism here, and he’s off to a good start this spring: he is hitting .429/.529/.643 through five games.

Jake Bauers

Another player who needs to prove that late-season improvements were for real is Vaughn’s backup/platoon mate, Jake Bauers.

Bauers was another highly regarded prospect — he was in the top 50 in Baseball America’s 2018 rankings — 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.

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’t 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.

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.

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’s 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.

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.

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).

Tyler Black

Tyler Black is doing everything he can to get a job this spring, but it’s very possible that it won’t 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’s 25, and it feels like if the Brewers don’t see something from him in a sustained way at the major league level, he might be on his way out of the organization.

Black’s superpower is a fantastic batter’s eye. He’s got a 15.7% walk percentage in five minor league seasons, and that’s translated to the majors (in an admittedly tiny sample size), where he’s walked 12 times in 70 plate appearances (17.1% rate). But Black doesn’t boast the kind of power you’d like from a major league first baseman: while he’s 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.

But back to this spring: it’s only been four games, but he’s 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’t exactly locked in, but it seems like Black is making a statement: “Please don’t forget about me.”

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to see where Black figures into the Brewers’ 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.

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 — myself included — 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.

Who might be coming next?

Beyond Black, the Brewers have several intriguing minor league hitters who are either already playing first base or may end up there. Very quickly:

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’s 15.7% minor league walk percentage is impressive, what does that make Adams’ Soto-like 17.6% walk rate? Adams’ power needs to develop — he’s 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 — but if he can develop into his considerable 6-foot-4 frame, he could be a major league player.

The only other two players I’m going to mention here are both considered third basemen at this point, but may or may not stick there. The first is last year’s first-round pick, Andrew Fischer. Fischer (who hit a bomb in Saturday’s 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’ 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’ minor league system at this point, a move to first might be down the line.

Defensively, Brock Wilken is in the same boat. He’s been playing exclusively third base in the Brewers’ system, but while he’s viewed as capable there, it doesn’t 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’s played exclusively third in the minors, they’re 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.