2025 Brewers Prospect Preview: Blake Burke

Draft Context, Scouting and Signing
Blake Burke was 49th on the Brewer Fanatic consensus draft board entering the 2024 draft, occupying spots ranking from the low 30s to the mid-60s on most industry boards. The Brewers liked what they saw from Burke, selecting him with the 34th overall pick (in the competitive-balance segment after the first round) and signing him to an under-slot bonus of $2.1 million.

Given his 2024 season, and how advanced Burke’s bat is, I found the pre-draft ranking discrepancy between his profile and other first base, power-oriented bats a little wide for my taste. Burke has legitimate bat speed that underpins an uppercut swing. It's all designed to lift the baseball. He has 70-grade raw power, and Burke put up gaudy exit velocities in 2024. His 110.5-mph 90th-percentile exit velocity was one of the very best in NCAA baseball, and he maxed out at 117 mph. He’s not pull-reliant, either. His 19% pulled fly ball rate was only in the 38th percentile in Div. I in 2024. Burke’s bat-to-ball skills are more advanced than you might suspect for a power-oriented bat. In 2024, there was some swing-and-miss in the strike zone (12.6%, right around average), but his overall contact rate of 83% was good for the 66th percentile, and he posted strong numbers outside the strike zone, too.

The bugaboo in Burke’s offensive profile is an extreme chase rate. He’s an aggressive hitter (51% swing rate), but he’ll need to tamp down a chase rate which in 2024 was north of 33%, as pitchers in the upper levels of the minors will take advantage of his eagerness. 

2024 Pro Debut: Strengths, Opportunities and Expectations for 2025
2024 Stats (NCAA): 72 games (323 PA), .379/.449/.702, 20 HR, 10.8 BB%, 14.9 K%, 147 wRC+
2024 Stats (A+): 5 games (18 PA), .250/.333/.250, 11.1 BB%, 22.2 K%, 78 wRC+

There’s not much to say on Burke’s 2024 pro debut, as it was so brief that our sample size is unreasonably small. Burke had an incredibly long college baseball season in 2024, playing 72 games for the eventual national champion Tennessee Volunteers. With a full offseason under his belt, I’d expect him to start at High-A Wisconsin in 2025. The Brewers will be hoping he makes short work of Appleton and rises to the upper levels of the minors by the end of the season. He’s a bat-reliant corner profile who will need to mash to provide value, but the building blocks are firmly in place for this outcome.

2025 Brewers Prospect Preview: Braylon Payne

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