https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/153-how-the-recent-past-can-be-instructive-of-the-brewers-future/It was, by most measures, an amazingly successful season. The best record in their league. A team record for wins. Significant contributions from rookies both at the plate and on the mound. That they were unceremoniously knocked out of the playoffs by a team with a much higher payroll was...153Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:55:55 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/141-do-the-brewers-actually-have-the-best-teenage-prospect-group-in-baseball-part-1/A while back, one of the posters made a simple statement in the forums: The Brewers must have the top group of teenage prospects in baseball. I thought, well, that sounds likely given the number and quality of teen prospects the Brewers have. It’s tough to know for sure, though, if you don’t look a...141Sat, 11 Jan 2025 03:50:56 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/140-a-dose-of-perspective-ahead-of-international-signing-day/Almost four years ago, Major League Baseball teams embarked on the opening of the annual international signing period. Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, it had been more than 18 months since the opening of the previous signing period, but finally the top Latin American prospects could sign on the do...140Sun, 15 Dec 2024 14:05:08 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/139-what-statistics-perhaps-can-tell-us-about-dsl-pitchers/It is almost impossible to tell how good of a prospect a Dominican Summer League pitcher is by stats alone. Stuff is king, and great DSL ERAs don’t always equal great stuff. So why am I, who focuses almost entirely on statistics, writing about DSL pitchers? Because while statistics can’t...139Tue, 03 Dec 2024 03:28:46 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/137-which-dsl-hitters-will-be-coming-stateside-potentially-a-lot/The headline for any story about the Brewers 2024 Dominican Summer League season has to include Jesus Made and Luis Pena. Their seasons were that absurd and they are consistently regarded among the top prospects coming out of the DSL this year. Dig a little deeper, though, and there is another...137Sat, 09 Nov 2024 00:50:20 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/127-my-long-and-rambling-draft-preview-blog/A caveat: I am not a scout nor a coach nor anyone with any original insights to offer on any of the prospects who will be selected. I do, however, enjoy looking at history, at trends, and trying to see how it could project some of what the Brewers are going to do with their picks. So with...127Wed, 10 Jul 2024 11:48:19 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/125-mission-accomplished-so-far/Several years ago, the Brewers made a change in organizational philosophy to place greater emphasis on a prospect's hit tool when it came to scouting for the draft or international signing class. Statistically at least, the results have paid off. Led by the now-injured Juan Baez, the Caro...125Thu, 04 Jul 2024 02:36:09 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/118-where-have-all-the-good-outfielders-gone-hint-not-the-national-league/With all of the hype that the current young crop of Brewers outfielders got as they moved through the Milwaukee system, it is easy to look at the production that the Brewers have gotten from their outfielders this season and be, well, a bit underwhelmed. Joey Wiemer hasn't hit. Garrett Mitchel...118Sat, 08 Jun 2024 21:04:12 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/110-minor-league-sleepers-who-is-poised-for-a-breakout/With Spring Training opening, I thought it was a good chance to take a look at some sleeper prospects who could rise up the prospect ranks this season. I decided to pick four position players and four pitchers and, as with last year, I am dividing this into three tiers. The first tier are your...110Sun, 18 Feb 2024 14:19:09 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/105-the-intriguing-brewers-minor-league-logjam-no-one-is-talking-about/When you hear the word logjam in regards to the Milwaukee Brewers these days you typically think of one thing: the outfield in the majors and at triple-A. And for good reason. You've got a punch of recently graduated top prospects, a former MVP, a couple of useful reserves, and, oh yah, one of the...105Thu, 21 Dec 2023 03:43:00 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/102-injuries-inconsistency-and-asterisks-the-road-from-the-dsl-for-brewers-pitching-prospects/There are plenty of stories from the Brewers' 2023 minor league season of players stepping up and loudly announcing themselves as prospects to watch. This is not one of those stories. This is a story of entire seasons lost to injury, of struggles at a new level. It is a story where even m...102Thu, 07 Dec 2023 04:19:47 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/96-rule-5-draft-plea/What if I were to tell you that the single most dominant pitcher in the 2022 Arizona Fall League was left exposed in this year's Rule 5 draft? The guy who blazed through AFL hitters to the tune of 25 strikeouts to one hit allowed (No, that's not a typo. Yes, that is ridiculous). The guy w...96Fri, 17 Nov 2023 18:00:00 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/92-2023-retrospective-stats-to-watch-and-sleepers/I thought I'd use a couple of items I wrote before the season to look at some of the things that did (or did not) go right in 2023. Statistics to Watch Ground Ball Rate - Jadher Areinamo When we left Jadher Areinamo at the end of the 2022 season, he was coming off a breakout campaign...92Tue, 31 Oct 2023 03:12:58 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/90-more-stats-i-find-bizarrely-interesting/It's been a while. I had two longer blogs lost halfway through to computer crashes. One was moot by the time I had time to sit down and write long-form again. I still plan to write the other at some point in the offseason, but that 1,000+ word meandering treatise on how the 2022 DSL starters fared...90Sun, 01 Oct 2023 16:06:52 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/65-minor-league-stats-to-watch/With pitchers and catchers reporting, I thought I would celebrate by delving into one of my favorite topics, a random assemblage of minor league statistics. There were a lot to choose from, ranging from Darrien Miller's caught stealing percentage to a bunch of guys' strikeout rates, but here are th...65Thu, 16 Feb 2023 05:04:12 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/46-this-is-not-normal-but-is-it-the-new-normal/Author's note: Because of ease of sorting for the various categories, I used Baseball Reference for team ages and Fangraphs for age season the individual players were in. Also, 2006 is used as a cutoff date for some of the items because that is how far back Fangraphs’ database goes. It is no s...46Sun, 04 Sep 2022 22:47:00 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/36-when-statistics-become-flat-out-interesting/Because of my job (despite working in sports) and where I live (the epicenter of MLB blackout bizarreness), I get to actually watch very little baseball. It is one of the reasons I post mainly in the minor league forum, because a far smaller number get to see those with regularity. Following the sp...36Tue, 09 Aug 2022 04:58:00 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/28-digging-into-draft-tendencies/With the MLB draft about a month away, I thought I would take a bit of time and examine some of the Brewers tendencies to predict what we can expect when the draft kicks off July 17. Catch a falling star          The Brewers have no problem stopping the fall of players many didn’t expect...28Thu, 16 Jun 2022 02:19:00 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/13-the-carolina-number-that-matters-most/There is one number that stands out above all others for this year’s Carolina Mudcats. It isn’t their 6-4 record or their 5.21 ERA. It isn’t Eduardo Garcia’s OPS checking in at .969 thus far or Hedbert Perez’ being at .510. It isn’t Jeferson Quero’s .344 batting average or Hendry Mendez’s 25%...13Wed, 20 Apr 2022 15:19:00 +0000https://brewerfanatic.com/blogs/entry/11-in-search-of-pitching-breakouts/From the time that this site got me mildly obsessed with following the Brewers’ farm system, I have been fascinated with trying to predict breakout seasons. Specifically, pitching breakouts. Sometimes, like Max Lazar, Zack Brown, Evan Reifert and to some extent Bowden Francis, the breakou...11Sun, 10 Apr 2022 15:08:00 +0000