7:11 AM ET

MILWAUKEE — The Milwaukee Brewers had just finished one of the most successful road trips in their history, a 7-3 romp through the western regions of the big leagues, when the team returned home to bad news.

Garrett Mitchell, a rookie who had had a blistering first three weeks as the team’s starting center fielder, suffered labrum damage on an aggressive slide into third base during extra innings in Seattle.

The severity of Mitchell’s injury was announced Friday, and Mitchell spoke to the gathered media after manager Craig Counsell broke the news. After explaining that he was still processing the blow and declaring his intention to get back by the end of the season if at all possible, the almost impossibly upbeat Mitchell turned into a P.R. rep for the player replacing him, a 6-foot-4, blond-haired, toolsy rookie named Joey Wiemer.

“Joey is going to be fine,” Mitchell said. “The organization, all of the fans, should be happy, excited for him. He’s going to do a good job.”

Wiemer, who has all of 24 big league games under his belt, started about 80% of his games in the minor leagues on the outfield corners, mostly in right, where he featured one of the strongest arms in professional baseball. Center field is another beast, of course, but during his 44 games in The Show, Mitchell has shown signs of becoming an elite defender at that crucial position, the one held down so well in recent seasons by now-retired Lorenzo Cain.

On April 22, the day after Mitchell’s pep talk, the Brewers were clinging to a one-run lead against the Red Sox in the fifth inning. Boston’s Alex Verdugo blistered a Wade Miley pitch 103.7 mph to dead center. Wiemer got a quick read on it, raced for the warning track and made a leaping, twisting, falling grab on a ball that might have left the park had he not caught it.

It happened again in the eighth: With Milwaukee still leading by a run, Verdugo launched a 103.2 mph drive, right at Wiemer, who took a few long strides toward the wall and leaped slightly to make the grab. This was another ball that would have clanged off the fence if Wiemer had not reacted so quickly, moved so well or, let’s face it, if he were not so huge. He made it look easy.

“I’m very comfortable in center,” Wiemer said, with the kind of nonchalance only a rookie can summon. “I just touch the grass and if the ball’s in the air, go catch it. I just treat it all the same.”

This is just an anecdote, but it illustrates some crucial things about this version of the Brewers. They are younger. They are more athletic. They are more fun. They are deeper. And because of all these factors, they are better.

This can change. After all, we haven’t even reached the end of April. But when it comes to the Brewers, don’t look at this start as a mirage. This team was already pretty good, but now it’s better. In fact, while it’s too soon to make this a declaration, we can at least speculate that when the dust settles, we might just look at these Brewers as the most improved team in baseball.

CONSIDERING ALL OF this change — plus an early injury to starting third baseman Luis Urias — the bottom line is this: Of the nine players who have currently played the most at their respective positions, only three are carryovers from last season: Tellez, Adames and Christian Yelich.

Yelich’s tenure with the club is an interesting prism through which to view the Brewers’ success. His first season with Milwaukee was 2018, when the Brewers won 96 games and finished one win shy of the World Series, losing to the Dodgers in the NLCS. Even as the roster keeps churning, the Brewers have remained competitive ever since, with four playoff appearances in the past six seasons — in the other two, they finished a single game out of the NL bracket. And yet Yelich is the only position player remaining from his first Brewers team.

There are many explanations for this ongoing competitiveness despite so much turnover. One is a willingness to spend, at least moderately: Milwaukee is baseball’s smallest market, but the Brewers’ payroll has ranked in the 19-20 range the past three seasons, per Cots Contracts.

Counsell’s nine-year tenure is another, one constant in the storm of iteration that marks baseball in a market like Milwaukee.

“He’s a winner,” Turang said. “He wants to win as much as we do. When you have that atmosphere and that’s all you have to focus on, leaving stuff off the field at the door, it’s been awesome.”

In practical terms, this has been evident in different ways over the years, all while Counsell has soared to the top of his profession. He (and his pitching coaches, currently Chris Hook) have been able to put relievers in the right roles to bridge the innings from Milwaukee’s strong starting staff to its lockdown closer, formerly Josh Hader and now Devin Williams. It’s also evident in the Brewers’ ability to field elite defenses, with Counsell usually deflecting the credit for that to coaches like Pat Murphy and Nestor Corredor.

But maybe it’s evident most of all in the way the players so often seem to just get better after they join the Brewers. For all the attention that has gone to teams like the Rays, Dodgers and San Francisco Giants for their ability in this area, Milwaukee ranks right with them. Two of the offseason acquisitions, Anderson and Contreras, are the latest examples of this.

Anderson has been a major boost to the roster in a number of ways. On offense, he’s simply hitting the ball harder more often than ever before. His barrel rate this season (18.9%) is in the top 10 percentile of big league hitters. And, in his first season with the Brewers, it’s more than double the career standard he established with the Marlins (7.8%).

Perhaps just as important, Anderson’s defensive ability in both the infield and the outfield has allowed Counsell to shape his lineup in a number of ways even as he moves players around and covers for the absences of Urias, Tyrone Taylor and, now, Mitchell.

“We’ve come to realize just how valuable that is, especially with our injuries,” Counsell said. “The infielder-outfielder, just the flexibility that it gives you, just increases the floor for your team.”

Contreras made the NL All-Star team last season largely because of his bat. He produced at 136 OPS+ for the Braves but was dealt largely because they believed Murphy’s defense made him a more viable everyday option.

It’s early days when it comes to looking at this game of catching musical chairs, but Contreras has been a big part of Milwaukee’s elite run prevention unit so far. According to Fangraphs’ consensus rating for defense, Contreras is first in the majors at 4.6.

“Contreras is a dynamic player and it’s happening on both sides of the ball, which has been a lot of fun,” Arnold said. “Same with Brian Anderson. There aren’t too many guys that can go at third and to the outfield at a very high level. So those kinds of profiles, when they come available, we just do what we can to hop in and get involved.”‘

THERE WILL BE challenges ahead for the Brewers. The Mitchell injury was a gut punch, especially given an injury to Sal Frelick, the highly rated outfield prospect who likely would have been his replacement — if not for the ill fate that he sprained his left thumb in the minors on the very same day that Mitchell injured his shoulder in Seattle. Like Mitchell, Frelick suffered the injury on a slide.

While Frelick’s injury required surgery, his recovery is expected to be much quicker than that of Mitchell — Frelick could be back in as soon as six weeks. Whenever he returns, adding another rookie of his caliber could help perpetuate this feeling of forward momentum for Milwaukee, even as everyone holds out hope that Mitchell can return to help out late in the campaign.

The team continues to wait to see how long it might have to go without ace starter Brandon Woodruff, who has an ailing shoulder. Meanwhile, co-ace Corbin Burnes has been up and down to start the season, though given his track record, that’s only another spot at which Milwaukee can look to get better as the season goes along. Eventually, Urias will add to that dynamic as well.

But on the field, the Brewers show every sign of being a sustainable contender. Only five teams have a better run differential during the early going, even though Milwaukee has played a tough early schedule.

The Brewers rank in the top 10 positionally by fWAR at most spots and are in the positive at most of the others, except for DH. And that ranking could change fast if Winker gets going. They rank second in Fangraphs’ team defensive metric and have an elite ERA+ of 120.

In other words, this is a complete team without any glaring weaknesses and with excellent depth (as long as the injury bug doesn’t get worse), a balanced set of skills and a number of players who should continue to trend in a positive direction.

So if the Brewers aren’t the most improved team in the majors yet, they might just get there by season’s end. Either way, this is a team that is just enjoying what it is doing right now. It plans to keep doing it.

“We’ve had a good time,” Turang said. “We just keep continuing to go out there every day, give it all we got and try to win ball games. But we know nothing’s promised. So we’re just going to keep the energy high and the focus going.”