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 tell you a DSL pitcher’s ultimate upside, two stats in particular can tell us something else interesting – which pitchers are most likely to be brought stateside, survive the pitching nightmare that is the Arizona Complex League, and emerge on the other side in full season ball.

The MOST Important Stat

It might surprise you to know that the stat that in recent years best predicts which Brewers’ DSL pitchers reach low-A isn’t a rate stat. It’s not ERA or WHIP, strikeout rate or walk rate. It is a counting stat.

And, for all but a few exceptions, it is a stat that you can count on your fingers.

Based upon the years since the pandemic, when Brewers DSL pitchers reaching full season ball stopped being a novelty and started being a regular occurrence, look first at the games started and set aside any relievers with fewer than four starts.

It makes sense, with pitchers this young and far from the majors, that the Brewers would look to get the guys they are highest on the largest number of starts and innings.

There have been two categories of exceptions from this rule. The first is composed of older, late spring or early summer signings, who usually don’t throw many DSL innings before being promoted (Jesus Broca, Cristofher Carrasco, Leoni De La Cruz).

Outside of maybe, if you squint, Jhosep Ospino, I don’t know that any of the remaining DSL crop from last season really fit this category other than the already promoted Broca.

The second category isn’t so much a category as much as it is a single person: Dikember Sanchez. Last season’s three-level success story started four games in his first season in the DSL but had moved to the bullpen long before earning his stateside shot.

Perhaps there will be another outlier, or perhaps the Brewers view a higher-inning guy like Lonell Downs as part of the starting group despite only having three starts (the starts were spread more evenly than in past years).

For the purposes of this article, however, we’re just going to focus on the pitchers with at least four starts.

The Second Cut-Off

So, DSL starters are more likely to end up in full-season ball than relievers, but not all do. There is a second stat that can be quite telling: strikeout-to-walk ratio.

I know what you’re probably thinking: “Wow, so you’re saying that pitchers who the organization believes in who strike out a lot more hitters than they walk are more likely to move up the organizational ladder? Not. Exactly. Shocking.”

And no, it isn’t shocking. But it is predictive.

Between 2021 and 2023, 17 Brewers DSL pitchers started at least four games and compiled a strikeout to walk rate of 2.5 or better. Of those, three got hurt and haven’t been heard from since. One, Aneuris Rodriguez, was on track to hit Carolina before being dealt for AAA depth. Of the remaining 13, only Domingo Mejia fell short of hitting A ball, which is pretty remarkable when you consider how little time has passed. Edwin Jimenez, Miguel Segura, Stiven Cruz, Alexander Vallecillo, Manuel Rodriguez, Daniel Corniel, Anthony Flores, Bryan Rivera, Enniel Cortez, Eric Prado, Melvin Hernandez and Jeral Vizcaino have all reached A ball (Vizcaino admittedly as a Cub)

Falling short doesn’t mean that the player won’t hit A-ball, but for the sake of keeping this article shorter than my DSL hitters one, I’m going to focus only on the six who hit this benchmark, so we are setting aside Ayendy Bravo, Dalvin Bodre, Dariel Jaquez, Christopher Peralta, Carlos Carra, Josue Toledo, Lukas Gonzalez, Aldrin Gonzalez, Gabriel Colmenarez, and Paul Hoff.

That leaves the following six:

The Prospect

Wande Torres

It wasn’t supposed to take this long.

Wande Torres was a mainstay in the 2022 Brewers DSL rotation. I even tossed him in my honorable mentions for one of the prospect polls that year, basically saying that he’s 6-3, left-handed and strikes a lot of guys out. Sure the walks were too high, but his ability to miss bats (and give up few hits overall) made him a coin-flip for being brought stateside in 2023.

Then he got hurt.

Torres missed the entirety of the 2023 season and the beginning of 2024, but unlike many lower-level pitchers who get hurt and then are never heard from again, Torres came back stronger. His K-rate was over 50%. His K/9? Almost 19. On the rare occasion a ball was put in play, he induced grounders at a nearly 70% clip and was the toughest pitcher on either Brewers DSL staff to pull the ball against. And, almost as importantly, he cut his walks down to a reasonable rate.

The first episode of the Spencer Michaelis-Joseph Zarr minor league podcast series did a great job touching on Torres, so I will leave it at that, but suffice it to say, I think the Brewers have something here.

The Ace

Wenderlyn King

Perhaps calling King the ace of the DSL staff is an exaggeration, but with Torres still working his way back from injury, you could make a good case. Among those with a starter’s workload (or what passes for one in the DSL), King had the best FIP. He didn’t just meet the K/BB criteria, he blew it away. Among Brewers DSL pitchers, only Enniel Cortez’s absurd nearly double-digit K/BB ratio in 2023 topped King’s 7.17 mark.

Simply put, King managed to combine a double-digit K/9 with one of the best walk rates a Brewers DSL pitcher has ever posted. While the stateside struggles of another recent smaller DSL star pitcher, Osbriel Mogollon, give a bit of pause, the control issues that would plague Mogollon later on were somewhat present in the DSL as well, something which was definitely not the case for King.

The Control Artist

Manuel Moreno

In each of the last few seasons, there has been one 16- or 17-year-old pitcher who hit this metric more by avoiding walks than racking up strikeouts. In 2022, it was Manuel Rodriguez. The next year, it was Melvin Hernandez. This past season, it was Manuel Moreno, who was the best of the three at avoiding walks.

Outside of the 4.0 BB%, there wasn’t necessarily anything about Moreno’s stat line that stood out. His K numbers (7.75/9) weren’t that interesting either way, and Moreno was one of only a handful of Brewers DSL pitchers who pretty much pitched exactly to their peripherals, his ERA nestled roughly midway between his FIP and xFIP. Still, there is little reason to think, based upon his stats, that he can’t follow the same path laid out by Rodriguez and Hernandez.

The Former Two-Way Player

Argenis Aparicio

If you were to take Moreno’s season, increase the walk rate slightly but give him superior batted ball luck, you’d probably get roughly the season enjoyed by Argenis Aparicio. A year after splitting his time between the mound and the outfield, Aparicio shelved his bat in 2024, and the move so far has paid off.

Aparicio led the Brewers’ DSL hurlers in innings pitched while posting a sub-3.00 ERA. Like Moreno, he has thus far been better at avoiding walks than missing bats, but his performance was good enough that we should be seeing him stateside next spring.

The Trade Acquisition

Joshua Quezada

Of all the players here, only one has hit the minimums to be on this list twice. That would be Joshua Quezada, who hit them first for the Yankees in 2023 and then for the Brewers in 2024 after being acquired for Clayton Andrews.

While that makes him interesting, and shows consistency, it also leaves me with one nagging question about Quezada.

Why wasn’t he in Arizona?

He’s an older prospect for the DSL, not making his debut until his age 19 season. This is the kind of guy the Brewers usually have been fast-tracking. I’m hoping that he just had an erratic spring or they had something specific they wanted him to work on, because the stats show a guy who should at least be able to hold his own in the lower full season levels.

The Outlier

Enderson Mercado

For most recent Brewers pitchers, hitting these marks has led to a very successful season. There are more than twice as many who have posted sub-2.00 ERAs than those with ones higher than 4.00. There have been two entire years in which all of the pitchers who hit the mark have been below 4.00.

So where does that leave Enderson Mercado and his 5.95 ERA? That is the question. Was his absurdly bad BABIP simply bad luck, or a product of mistakes getting hit hard? It is impossible to say from just his stats.

If you want some optimism, look to one of the other three pitchers on the list who posted a 4.00+ ERA. Much like Daniel Corniel, Mercado had stretches of dominance (note a three start stretch where over 12 innings he struck out 20 and walked 2) and periods of struggles. Corniel made his way through two rookie ball seasons like that, however, and ended up holding his own as a teenager in A ball last season.

There is a precedent here, and that is among the reasons why Mercado is one of my favorite deep sleepers on the pitching side.