Brandon Sproat Brings What He Learned Through Failure in 2025 to Brewers Rotation Battle

In the first inning of his first taste of Cactus League action, Brandon Sproat touched 99.8 miles per hour with his four-seamer and sat just over 98 MPH. He wasn't checking those velocity readings, though, and he declined to connect them to any kind of adrenaline rush afterward.

"It's always fun to go out there and pitch," said the former Mets farmhand, acquired as part of the Freddy Peralta trade. "I mean, whether it's 10,000 fans or nobody. I mean, it's fun to to get back to it again, but yeah no, I don't peek at the velo."

Whether he was feeling amped or not, the stuff he displayed in his 35-pitch appearance will have Brewers fans sufficiently excited. In addition to flirting with triple-digit heat—he'd never gotten up that high in spring training or the minors before, and did so only a handful of times in his short stint in the majors late last year—Sproat showed good feel for spin on his breaking balls, and introduced his newest weapon: a mid-90s cutter that gives him as many as seven pitches to work with.

"Yeah, kind of," Sproat replied, when asked to confirm whether this was a new addition to his arsenal. "I started throwing it last year towards the end of the year. It was basically my short slider, but we kind of turned it into a cutter. It was good, but I wasn't fully convicted behind it.

"Then over the offseason and coming into here this year, we've turned into a true cutter now. It's been fun to learn that pitch, and throw it. I thought I had good success with it today."

Here's the movement plot of all of Sproat's pitches Friday. Here, though, some of his cutters are mistagged as four-seamers, and others as sliders. In reality, he's now working with the four-seamer, a sinker, a cutter, a sweeper, a curveball, a slider and a changeup. 

The sweeper and cutter are likely to obviate the slider, so he might end up a six-pitch guy again as the year rolls on, but Sproat continues to evolve—and has enjoyed enmeshing himself in an organization that encourages and facilitates that.

Last season saw the first prolonged failure of Sproat's career, as he seemed to hit his head on a low ceiling in Triple A. His philosophical approach to that adversity helped him survive it.

"The failures we go through, they're not always fun, but they're not necessarily failures," he said. "It's more lessons that we learn. So I was able to learn from that and kind of move on from it. After the All-Star break, things kind of turned around for the better. The fastball ticked up. It was just more of just having confidence behind it."

There was another key change, too, though: the addition of a sinker. A year ago, Sproat was a four-seam specialist. By the end of last season, he'd brought in the two-seamer, to which he now adds the cutter. He noted that he moved to the first-base side of the rubber last season, to allow himself to target both sides of the plate with the sinker, and feels that that has benefited his whole arsenal because of the angles he can create and the way he can fill up the strike zone from there.

With a strong second half, Sproat entered the offseason with momentum, and with a clear plan for how to capitalize thereupon. Then, late in the offseason, he was traded, which can be a nervous-making experience for a player in such a position. Did the Brewers try to install any immediate changes?

"No, they're right on board with everything," Sproat said. "Everything that I had in mind to work on this offseason, it was the same thing that I've been working on here. They've been on board with it ever since I've walked in the door day one, so that has been a blessing."

Although the White Sox found holes with three singles, stole a base and drew a walk en route to scoring a run during Sproat's short appearance Friday, the process made the results feel unimportant. Sproat looked, for all the world, like a mid-rotation starter with the ability to dominate when his stuff is locked in. His velocity dipped in the second frame, but he kept missing bats. He finished with three strikeouts and a pickoff. 

He won't immediately replace Peralta, but Sproat has the stuff and the aptitude to do so over the long term. He's been virtually attached at the hip to unlikely veteran leader (and lockermate) Aaron Ashby this spring, and it's becoming clear that the fit between player and team is pitch-perfect.

"This team bets on themselves," Sproat said. "We—I don't wanna say we, I haven't really been part of the season yet—but just when watching them in the past, I see that they've bet on themselves. They find different ways to win, whether it's from pitching to hitting or even the little things like a PFP or stealing bases. It's the small things that turn into big things."

Learning from failure and exploding through to the other side is one of those small things. Sproat looks like one big potential weapon for a Brewers team hoping to make another strong showing this October.