Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Milwaukee Brewers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as our own observations. This is the fifth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here.
Other Prospects of Note
Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.
High School Draftees on the Complex
Ethan Dorchies, RHP
Jayden Dubanewicz, RHP
Tyler Renz, RHP
Griffin Tobias, RHP
Hayden Robinson, RHP
The Brewers’ approach to the draft has netted them a ton of mid-six figure high schoolers the last several years, and this contingent of guys, mostly from the 2024 class, is currently pitching on the complex. Dorchies, a lanky, 6-foot-5 UIC commit from Cary, NC, signed for just $162,500. He’s generating seven feet of extension and was sitting 92 in his outing prior to list publication. Dubanewicz ($665,000 in the 16th round, Florida commit) is a lanky, 6-foot-3 righty who was sitting 91-92 this spring and is an advanced slider executor. Renz ($852,500 St. John’s commit) is a lanky righty with an upper-80s fastball that, at times, has 20 inches of vertical break. He’ll flash an average slider. Tobias ($247,500, Indiana commit) is a more physically mature 6-foot righty sitting 92 with a cutter and slider. Robinson ($347,500, Nicholls State commit) was a 2023 draftee who had TJ last year and is slated to be back in game action soon. He was sitting 91 and working with a good slider last year.
Skills-y Guys with Vanilla Stuff/Tools
Melvin Hernandez, RHP
Raynel Delgado, INF
Eric Brown Jr., INF
Manuel Rodriguez, RHP
Juan Baez, 3B
Juan Ortuno, SS
Hernandez is an 18-year-old Nicaraguan righty with gorgeous touch-and-feel command of a tailing fastball and sweeper. He’s a smaller guy with a lower arm slot who is currently pitching well in A-ball. Delgado was drafted by the Guardians in 2018 out of Calvary Christian Academy in Florida and reached Triple-A with them before hitting minor league free agency over the winter and signing with the Brewers. He’s got 40-grade contact and power, and is a 45 shortstop defender, a fine upper-level depth guy who can play all over the infield. Brown is tough because he’s not bad, but he really can’t play shortstop (he takes far too long to set himself to throw — this happens a lot) and he doesn’t do enough on offense to be an everyday second baseman. Without positional versatility facilitating a part-time role, he’s a Quad A type. Rodriguez is a strike-throwing Mexican righty who, at just 19, was having success at High-A until he was shut down in late April. He sits 87-88 and commands roughly average secondary stuff. It’s the look of a depth starter despite his excellent results. Baez has a gift for contact but not quite as great of one as his aggressive approach is currently demanding. He’s caught between lacking both the projection for the power to stick at third and the mobility to cover an up-the-middle defensive position. Ortuno is a small Venezuelan infielder who’s starting to put the ball in play in excess of 100 mph. He played all over the diamond in 2024 but has been focusing on the middle infield so far in 2025.
More Potential Relievers
Blake Holub, RHP
Sam McWilliams, RHP
Will Childers, RHP
Miqueas Mercedes, RHP
Ismael Yanez, RHP
Travis Smith, RHP
Wande Torres, LHP
Holub came over from Detroit in a swap for Mark Canha and is pitching in relief at Nashville. He’s a human trebuchet with a vertical arm slot, a naturally cutting 94 mph fastball, and a below-average slider. He lives off deception rather than pure stuff and is on the 40-man fringe. McWilliams’ presence on prospect lists has now spanned an entire decade, as the former projectable high schooler has become a Triple-A journeyman. He’s sitting 95 and generating plus miss with his slider at Nashville so far in 2025, and he should wear a big league uniform at some point. Childers has pretty standard relief stuff — he sits 95 and has a plus mid-80s curveball — but 30 control relegates him to the Honorable Mentions section of the list. Mercedes is a physical 6-foot-3 Dominican righty up to 96. He’s bending in some plus sliders at 2,800 rpm on the complex, but his body is pretty close to maxed out. Yanez, 19, is a low-slot Venezuelan righty who’ll show you 97-98 at peak. He’s a wild pure relief prospect. Smith is a 6-foot-4, 220-pound righty from Kentucky who has been up to 98 as a starter. He’s a crude strike-thrower with fringe secondary stuff, and is just an enormous arm strength dev project at this stage. Torres is a physical, 6-foot-3, 20-year-old Dominican lefty who missed 2023 with injury, spent 2024 in the DSL, and has now been skipped over the domestic complex and sent straight to Low-A to start 2025. He’ll touch 96 with round-down shape and has an average slider. Mechanical inconsistency gives him a lefty relief look.
Power Bats
Hedbert Perez, OF
Engel Paulino, OF
Hedbert has a little bit of life, as he’s swinging super duper hard right now and producing louder contact than he did all of last year. To this point in 2025, as Perez repeats High-A, his strikeouts have come down a bit compared to 2024. Will this persist as he climbs? Given how much effort it’s taking him to produce above-average power, probably not. But if he does this all year (something like 72% contact, 108 mph EV90, 50% hard-hit rate, which he’s hovering around right now), including for a while at Biloxi, he’ll have earned a re-evaluation. Paulino is a muscular 5-foot-9 outfielder in Arizona. He’s built like an SEC safety. He takes a healthy rip but is going to strike out a ton.
The Injured Guys
Quinton Low, RHP
Tyler Woessner, RHP
Will Rudy, RHP
Enniel Cortez, RHP
Low was initially developed as a two-way player, but it became clear his future was on the mound when he started working in the upper 90s. He hasn’t pitched since 2023 and is again on the full season injured list. Woessner has touched the upper 90s in relief, but his stuff was way, way down at the start of 2025 and he was shelved. He’s throwing bullpens again and is on track to be back in games as soon as next week. He had a 40 FV reliever look when healthy. Rudy was a JUCO draftee in 2022, an athletic and relatively projectable righty with a good breaking ball. He’s progressed as a strike-thrower and worked 113.1 innings at High-A in 2024, but his stuff is still only fair. He was sitting 90 last season and had TJ this spring. Cortez, 19, is a Nicaraguan righty with advanced command of three pitches. His fastball only sits about 91, but it plays because of traits and location. He had TJ late last year (early September) and is on the full season IL.
System Overview
The Brewers system is among the best in baseball thanks to their scouting in Latin America, and their ability to synergize the domestic draft with their player development processes. In the span of a few years, the Brewers have signed two superstar-level international talents in Jackson Chourio and Jesús Made. Even if things somehow go awry for Made, his bat speed is his bat speed, and his power is his power. The ability to identify and/or develop indomitable characteristics in just a couple of players can change the course of an entire franchise, and the mere chance that Milwaukee has done this twice in short succession is remarkable, and very bad news for the rest of the NL Central.
The Brewers, for the most part, do not put all of their eggs into one basket on the international front. There isn’t a $3.5 million player occupying the majority of their pool space. Instead, they tend to have multiple $1 million to $2 million players, and those players tend to have the heuristic qualities (switch-hitting infielders, shorter-levered players) that analytically inclined teams like the Rays and Guardians target, with slightly more physicality or projection than is typical for that player demographic. Casting a wider net in that market allows the Brewers to diversify their risk and field two rosters worth of players in the DSL. Homegrown players are so important to smaller market teams, and this gives Milwaukee more chances to find some.
The rate and speed at which the Brewers improve the pitchers they draft is among the best in the industry. There are so many generic college relievers on this list who have not only improved, but who have a shot to be big league starters. For a while, the Brewers hammered junior colleges, but the transfer portal has made those less dense with talent. Now they’re unearthing guys who had 8.00 ERAs at big schools and making them good during their first offseason. It’s not like other teams don’t scout Mississippi State; the Brewers aren’t turning over rocks in the Dakotas to find players, though they do scout the Midwest very well. Guys like Tyson Hardin and K.C. Hunt had all the resources of an SEC program, but their time in Starkville still didn’t make them especially good.
And the Brewers give themselves lots of chances to apply their player dev concepts to many players. They work out their bonus pool math in such a way that they maximize how many high school players they’re drafting, signing 15 of them (!) combined the last two drafts. High school players have more athletic projection, with more time and opportunity to develop than college players, and when you’re adding six or eight of them to your system every year, you’re adding the opportunity for homegrown ceiling to an org that needs it to tilt with the likes of the Dodgers and Phillies. It’s conceptually basic but difficult to execute. It takes your scouting staff properly gauging signability in a weird slice of the amateur market, namely high schoolers whose talent puts them in the $250,000 to $600,000 bonus range, and who are willing to sign for that. It’s such a specific tier of talent to care about, and the org has to have non-data intel on each of these individuals in order to execute the strategy.
Content Source: blogs.fangraphs.com