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There are a number of different projection systems available to those interested in that sort of thing. Baseball Prospectus has theirs named PECOTA. Dan Syzmborski developed one known as ZIPS. There is also one named Steamer which was developed by two high school students and their teacher in 2008. These three are generally considered the "Big Three." Today Steamer released it's projections for the 2016 season.
Each system uses it's own formulas to derive it's projections. As these are proprietary works those are not made public. Therefore it's hard to know which system is better--if one really is better than the others. It's also hard to know which one values the same metrics that you might. It's for these reasons I always take projections with a grain of salt as you should also.
Any projection system is going to have a weakness. All share similar ones. By the random nature of the universe we cannot predict everything that will happen. That would be boring anyway. Projection systems also can't tell when an athlete is playing through an injury that may impact his ability to perform. It'll just see the statistics and use them at face value in the future.
This doesn't mean projection systems are worthless. In a general sense they're often quite accurate. I think they're more useful in constructing a fantasy roster but that doesn't mean they don't have real world applications. And you're fooling yourself if you don't think each MLB team uses it's own projection system to determine what they need to do in order to make their team competitive.
If you want to check out last year's Steamer projections you can do so here. It's a bit awkward to navigate because the document is so big but they're all there. With that out of the way I thought it would be interesting to take a look at a couple of the likely key contributors to the 2016 Brewers.
As a sort of disclaimer I want to let you know I was looking at Steamer600. That just means it's what Steamer thinks a player will do if given a full season of play. So for position players that means 600 plate appearances. For starting pitchers it's 200 innings and for relievers 65. This is to avoid Steamer thinking a guy like Khris Davis won't play full season because he missed time this year with an injury. Or a guy like Domingo Santana won't play full time because he was in the minors for most of the year. You can view the full projections on FanGraphs here.
Ryan Braun - 276/341/477, 24 HR, 16 SB, 118 wRC+
Adam Lind - 274/350/450, 21 HR, 1 SB, 114 wRC+
Khris Davis - 247/316/466, 29 HR, 7 SB, 109 wRC+
Domingo Santana - 249/328/430, 22 HR, 7 SB, 105 wRC+
Jonathan Lucroy - 273/339/417, 10 HR, 3 SB, 104 wRC+
Jimmy Nelson - 7.87 K/9, 3.16 BB/9, 1.34 WHIP, 4.04 FIP, 4.26 ERA
Zach Davies - 7.07 K/9, 3.35 BB/9, 1.40 WHIP, 4.22 FIP, 4.28 ERA
Wily Peralta - 6.38 K/9, 2.94 BB/9, 1.41 WHIP, 4.35 FIP, 4.47 ERA
Matt Garza - 6.94 K/9, 2.91 BB/9, 1.38 WHIP, 4.44 FIP, 4.45 ERA
Taylor Jungmann - 7.69 K/9, 3.90 BB/9, 1.44 WHIP, 4.50 FIP, 4.66 ERA
