Our Milwaukee Brewers sent eight representatives to the Fall League to suit up for Peoria (and later, a ninth player headed down to pitch for Mesa) so let’s take a moment to recap how well those players performed in the so-called “prospect finishing school.”

LHP Daniel Brown

Brown, a fastball-slider lefty who works in the low-to-mid-90s, enjoyed an excellent AFL. In nine appearances he covered 12.0 innings, allowing only eight hits, four walks, and a 3.00 Earned Run Average (ERA). Deserved Run Average thought his performance was nearly perfect; his DRA came in at 0.12 for a DRA- of 2.5! (DRA- measures DRA in league context, with 100 as average and the lower the number, the better).

RHP Bowdien Derby

The Javelinas used Derby as a starter in the AFL, and he toed the slab to begin seven games while logging 26.3 innings pitched. He did so with a modest 4.78 ERA, though DRA- (86) still assessed Derby as 14 percent better than the average pitcher on the circuit. Derby’s 18:9 strikeout:walk ratio wasn’t exactly inspiring, and we’ll see if the AFL performance that followed up a decent season as a swingman for Colorado Springs is enough to convince some team to pick him in this year’s Rule 5 Draft. Derby was left unprotected by the Brewers.

RHP Jon Olczak

Olczak turned in one of the most stellar campaigns of any reliever on the AFL circuit this year. He logged a 1.50 ERA across 12.0 innings, striking out 13 while allowing only eight hits and five walks. DRA- (45) valued his work as 55 percent better than his league-average cohorts. This comes after a terrific 73 DRA- in 56.3 innings for Double-A Biloxi during the regular season, and it wouldn’t come as a surprise to find out that the fastball/slider slinging Olczak (who sits 92-94 MPH) winds up generating plenty of Rule 5 interest in advance of next month’s draft.

RHP Miguel Sanchez

The 24 year old Sanchez put together a surprising pop-up season in 2018, advancing from Class A-Advanced all the way up to Triple-A before earning a shot at the Fall League. He continued to be effective in Arizona, posting a 3.60 ERA in 10.0 innings. He struck out eight while walking three, generating ground balls at a 65 percent rate. DRA- (74) saw his performance as well above average for the league.

RHP Aaron Wilkerson

After a truncated regular season split between Triple-A and the big leagues, the Brewers sent Wilkerson as a late addition to the AFL so that he could stretch back out in advance of pitching in winter ball in the Dominican Republic. Wilkerson joined the Mesa Solar Sox and appeared in three games, tossing four scoreless innings with three strikeouts and three walks.

C Mario Feliciano

Injuries limited Feliciano to just 46 games between the Arizona Rookie League and Class-A Advanced in 2018, so the Brewers assigned him to the Fall League to try and catch him up with some addition reps. It didn’t work out, though, as injuries unfortunately halted Feliciano’s progress once again. After only two games and six plate appearances (that included a hit and two walks), he was sidelined with discomfort in his throwing shoulder that led to arthroscopic surgery at the beginning of November. He should be ready to go again come next spring.

UTIL Weston Wilson

A jack-of-all-trades utility man, Wilson was highly impressive during the AFL campaign, batting .364 average /.462 on-base /.636 slugging percentage in 39 plate appearances for a True Average of .387. He clubbed a double, a triple, and two home runs, and even stole a pair of bases, too. A former 17th-round draft pick, more and more are coming around to the idea that the 24 year old Wilson has the ability to be a big leaguer after his terrific season between Class A-Advanced, Double-A, and the Arizona Fall League in 2018.

OF Trent Grisham

This former first-round pick, on the other hand, has plenty of people doubting that he’ll ever make it to The Show based on what he’s been showing lately (and really since being picked in 2015). Grisham’s passive approach has led to walks aplenty as a professional, but not much in the way of batting average of hard contact. Grisham hit .133/.304/.133 with 17 strikeouts in 57 AFL plate appearances, leading Mark Anderson of the BP Prospect Team to comment recently that “his comfort in the box and overall feel for hitting are seemingly non-existent at this point.”

2B Keston Hiura

Hiura is Milwaukee’s top prospect for good reason. Often described as a “hitting savant,” Hiura led the AFL in hits (31), RBI (33), and total bases (54). His five home runs were one off the league lead and his .934 OPS ranked sixth overall. Hiura’s overall slash was good enough for a .352 True Average, and he was so good so often that the BP Prospect Team seemed almost annoyed that they needed to keep writing about him. Hiura’s tremendous performance helped net not only the AFL Championship trophy, but earned him some well-deserved personal hardware, too.

#Brewers‘ hitting machine Keston Hiura is the 2018 @MLBazFallLeague MVP after hitting .323 with 5 homers and a league-leading 33 RBIs in 23 games. More from @wboor: https://t.co/Qbc6keDe54 pic.twitter.com/f47t6zO7fR

— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) November 17, 2018

Stearns just loudly answered that question this trade deadline.

What is fascinating about each of these trades is that they are fantastic in the sense of bolstering an MLB roster, in order to ensure that this stretch run features as few weaknesses as possible, while also potentially being over-pays in each case. Yet it should be stressed that these overpays are palatable for several reasons: the Brewers maintain a largely controllable roster that is also relatively inexpensive; the Brewers have a relatively large set of players that have been minor leaguers long enough to need potential 40-man roster protection entering 2019; and, perhaps most importantly, there is an incredible amount of role risk involved with each player. These trades should provide grounds for further analysis into when and how potential overpays are helpful to a team, and they should certainly provide further evidence that WARP/$ is not the sole determination of a trade’s potential value or impact.

Grading the System: 2016 || 2017

• Make no mistake about it, in terms of developing multiple quality pitches, command, and velocity, Luis Ortiz could potentially have the best pitching role for the Brewers system; there was a time, two years ago even, where it would not have been absurd for Ortiz to fight for a top tier pitching role in the prospect ranking cycle (and, really, it was not absurd). But Ortiz has been around forever in the advanced minors, it seems, without working full seasons. For example, the injury-fighting righty has 225 innings at Double-A without working 100 innings in a season, and with 68 innings at the 2018 deadline he could potentially miss 100 innings once again. If Ortiz can take his next step forward in the Orioles’ system, he is absolutely a more valuable asset, in terms of roster surplus, than Jonathan Schoop (and it is not close!!!), but that strong 60 Overall Future Potential (OFP) / 50 likely grade entering 2017 looks much more improbable. Ortiz is eligible for the Rule 5 draft for the 2019 season and almost certainly must be protected by the Orioles.

• Jean Carmona just made the jump stateside for the Brewers in 2018, and thus remains a full four levels away from the MLB. Additionally, Carmona might even be another year away from a clearly defined MLB potential role. In this regard, I do not envy the job of MLB scouts and analytics personnel, as it’s not entirely clear for me how I would price Carmona’s potential future value in terms of long-term systemic development.

• At BP Milwaukee, Kyle Lesniewski describe the roles and risks associated with both Kodi Medeiros and Wilber Perez. Medeiros could become an impact reliever at the MLB level, and it’s not unlikely that some observers still believe that he could start in some capacity, as there will always be hold outs for that sort of role. Given Medeiros’s delivery and command profile, however, as well as his fastball, Lesniewski outlines the difficulties that Medeiros may have for reaching even an impact reliever profile. Medeiros is eligible for the Rule 5 draft entering the 2019 season, and almost certainly must be protected by the White Sox, while Perez had yet to play stateside in the Brewers system.

• Finally, I already detailed the roles and surplus value for Brett Phillips and Jorge Lopez, so I will not go into too much detail here. However, I will add that of each of the prospects included in this midseason deals, Phillips is arguably the most likely to have MLB floor and ceiling roles that both surpass the value of the trade return (which is not a knock against Mike Moustakas, he simply might only be in Milwaukee for a couple of months). With a prospect such as Corey Ray coming on strong in Double-A Biloxi, not to mention the considerable development of Troy Stokes Jr. at the advanced level as well, Milwaukee cannot necessarily lose sleep over trading away a depth outfielder from their stacked group when they are fighting a close divisional deficit and leading the National League Wild Card race.

So, readers will witness a couple of recurring facts in these trades: the Brewers largely traded away players that must be protected for 2019 to avoid their loss via the Rule 5 draft, or players with little-to-no stateside development experience (and thus years to reach MLB), and/or players with roles that may be replicated within a year. One need not believe that a player like Stokes will surpass Phillips, in terms of overall ceiling, to see the value of the young prospect’s potential to fill an MLB depth position in 2019. Phillips himself may not have had an opportunity in 2019 to take such a role. The same logic might apply to Quintin Torres-Costa and Bubba Derby. This should not be construed to mean that these current system prospects are categorically better than Phillips / Medeiros / Lopez; in fact, I would have ranked each of that trio ahead of their potential 2019 depth replacements. But once again, since systemic development, contending windows, and player development cycles are now orbiting a club that is contending for consecutive seasons (and the foreseeable future, hopefully), if it costs system depth roles to improve MLB weaknesses, the Brewers have to eat the risk of losing those ceilings.

I like when MLB trades can simply be called good baseball moves. For all the rebuilding narratives in Baltimore, Kansas City, and Chicago, the White Sox, Royals, and Orioles front offices arguably made sensible trades with quality returns that both have long and short time horizons and development cycles. Milwaukee is working as a true contender without trading from their most elite potential prospect stash. This is good all around.

Stearns priced out these converging development cycles and adroitly moved the future role risk to address an offense that absolutely needed help for a serious contending run. Just the other day I wrote, “At worst, Travis Shaw has simply begun a potential shift over to the right side of the infield, where he might serve as a viable first base option for 2019 should the Brewers and Moustakas exercise his mutual option for 2019,” without thinking that a realistic move to first base for Shaw could occur as early as this week. Now, with Jonathan Schoop in the mix for second base and Jesus Aguilar slumping, Shaw becomes a strong side platoon option at 1B to form a serious infield unit:

This infield could open 2019 should Stearns consider keeping both Moustakas and Schoop, and now the talk can turn to development cycles once more. While the Brewers continue to season second baseman Keston Hiura at the most advanced levels of the minor leagues, Schoop basically serves as an upgrade over the Jonathan Villar gamble (gambling that he’ll return to his 2016 form), thus giving the Brewers a quality starting option while Hiura completes his minor league development. While Hiura’s bat is arguably ready for the MLB, and has been mentioned as a potential MLB option by Baseball Prospectus in their latest Top 50 list, the infielder may need more work in the field after missing significant fielding development time due to an extended elbow injury. Once Hiura is ready in 2019, a Schoop / Hiura mix simply extends the #TeamDepth mantra, and the same can arguably said for the remainder of the infield.

Entering 2018, the Brewers system took a step back in terms of organizational rankings, due to a series of developmental setbacks for key prospects, MLB graduations, and trades. I began to highlight this during last year’s “Grading the System” feature, but as one can never predict baseball, the development cycles and potential OFP assessments calibrated for Corey Ray, Keston Hiura answered a crucial risk question (can he play 2B?), and a veritable gang of pop-up pitchers continued to march upward in the system, potentially boosting and extending the no-name, depth-oriented pitching staff into 2019. Make no mistake about it, the system might continue to rank in the middle of the league in terms of overall quality, and the set of clear potential impact roles (true 60 OFP+ roles) may end with Keston Hiura and Corey Ray should Corbin Burnes exhaust his rookie standing through the end of 2018.

Yet, given the instant development of 2018 First Round draft pick Brice Turang, the Brewers could demonstrate that they indeed nabbed an Elite Prep prospect that fell due to prospect fatigue. Turang could quickly help to boost the top of the system as an MLB potential role falls into place. Moreover, given the Brewers’ expanded efforts in International signings, as well as the quality use of signing bonus allocations in each of the last two MLB drafts, the lower minors could continue to host a variety of players that suddenly surge onto the prospect scene. While this does not make the Brewers system different than many other MLB systems, it provides a road map to how the club can continue to develop talent while contending. One could argue that it’s absurd to suggest that the Brewers “rely” on someone like Turang falling in the MLB draft, but this is exactly the type of prospect perception and role foresight that the Brewers must have if they are going to succeed while drafting in the bottom half of each round.

Of course, the notable graduations from the system should not be undersold as well. Now there are so many starters, depth roles, and trades from the Brewers prospect stock that I added a new category this year:

Now, with these graduates in mind, what does a somewhat thinner, but still rather interesting Brewers system look like?

Prospect Key
Top 10 Consideration
Top 30 Consideration
[Just Interesting]

Of course, it is also worth emphasizing how the system has been….decimated in key areas. Given the quick development by advanced prospects acquired from the major 2015-2016 trades, as well as the huge trades entering 2018 and during the recent deadlines, the pool of potential impact prospects acquiring via trade has waned:

This is an important category to consider simply because Milwaukee demonstrated how adroit trades could quickly rebuild a system and reform an MLB roster. It will be worth watching to see if the Stearns continues to attempt to find Jonathan Villar and Keon Broxton types via trade now that the club is solidly contending. Of course, one could argue that Stearns is always trying to find this player (be it Oliver Drake, or Jesus Aguilar, or even Alec Asher), but that it simply the fact that these players will not always come via trade.

Thanks to the mechanical corrections, good health, and overall development of Corey Ray, as well as the surging role of Troy Stokes Jr., the development of draft prospects arguably has a better outlook entering 2019 than it did prior to 2018. Given the advancement of Corbin Burnes into a relief role, Brandon Woodruff and Taylor Williams into respective swingman and depth relief roles, and Brett Phillips into a fourth outfielder, it is clear that the Brewers front office is considering all possible role developments with each player (rather than following a cookie cutter model, or a model in which each prospect must immediately receive playing time in their clearest future role). It is arguable that this type of development strategy could maximize roles ranging from Stokes to Zack Brown, Jake Gatewood, and maybe even Lucas Erceg.

Meanwhile, Milwaukee signed a couple of additional potential impact International Amateur free agents this July, continuing an attempt to build up the low minors. Carlos Rodriguez and Larry Ernesto are already making some noise in the Dominican Summer League, while prospects like Jose Sibrian and Jesus Lujano have made the leap stateside.

Frankly, this Brewers system will not look as strong, in terms of potentially elite impacts roles, as the one that received ranking for 2018 at Baseball Prospectus. Yet, as new cycles of player development depth emerge in the low minors, and the Brewers continue their unique form of MLB roster construction (clearly using all 40 roster spots for MLB-adjacent roles and frequently shuffling those roles), Milwaukee could be an organizational well-suited to do more with less. For if 2017 fired the opening shot that the Brewers can contend simply based on giving high floor players a chance to work in the MLB, 2018 is advancing that ideal and carrying it to deeper logical, promotional, and transactional extensions.

Photo Credit: Gary A. Vasquez, USA Today Sports Images

AAA Colorado Springs Sky Sox
Who to Watch: The pitchers. Good news for those who distrust the Brewers’ current starting rotation: Help is on the way! The bad news is that said help is pitching at elevation, in conditions which have caused more than one pitcher to lose their feel for a breaking ball. Still, the fact that the organization has top prospects Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta awaiting a call in Colorado is in itself exciting. After coaxing Brandon Woodruff and Josh Hader through limited reps at Colorado Springs last season, there’s a template in place that could have Burnes and Peralta each recording big league outs as soon as the middle of the year. Both have potential to flourish as mid-rotation starters, with Burnes possessing both a higher ceiling and floor. But Peralta is no slouch; he should at least have impact potential as a reliever, and could wind up as a bullpen ace if the starting rotation isn’t his long-term home.

Perhaps the most exciting thing about the Sky Sox pitching staff is its depth. Burnes and Peralta are the top two names, but Junior Guerra and Wade Miley will make big league starts this year, and Brandon Woodruff is due back in Milwaukee any minute. Meanwhile, Jorge López is back in Colorado Springs to exorcise some personal demons two years after a disastrous turn for the Sky Sox tanked his prospect stock. Even if his path to the big leagues now lies through the bullpen, there’s plenty of reason to believe in his arm. If the big league staff stumbles, the call-ups could come in thick and fast.

Honorable Mention: Jacob Nottingham has quietly improved behind the plate to the point that he should be able to handle a big league staff. Take a peek behind his uninspiring slash line for Biloxi last year (.209/.326/.369), and you’ll see that he was actually a hair above league average with the stick last year by advanced metrics like TAv and wRC+. If he can continue to produce at that offensive rate (he’s off to a good start through his first few games), there’s plenty of reason to think that he’ll at least be able to hold down a job as a big league backup as early as next year.

AA Biloxi Shuckers
Who to Watch: The outfield. Corey Ray and Trent Grisham are the most familiar names here, but Troy Stokes, Jr. turned the most heads last year, reaching AA for the first time and posting a strong .279 TAv through 153 plate appearances. Stokes is a 5’8” right-handed hitter with good speed and some surprising pop. He’ll need to work on his barrel control and cut back on popups to take the next step.

The extraordinarily patient Grisham will watch his share of pitches sale by (his 98 walks were second in the minors last year), but when he does swing he uses his whole body to whip the bat through the plate at incredible speed. The hit tool needs to progress, but he’s got an elite eye and heaps of potential.

Meanwhile, Corey Ray struck out ten times in his first twenty at-bats, but still flashes the tools that made him a fifth-overall draft pick in 2016.

Honorable Mention: Kodi Medeiros is probably headed for a relief role in the majors, but the Brewers will keep developing him as a starter as long as they can. His funky delivery and low arm slot are hell on same-sided batters, albeit less so for those with the platoon advantage. Medeiros still has that wipeout slider that turned heads in high school, and he’s finally learning how to locate it. With a little more consistency, he could shoot up the fast track and into the big league ‘pen.

A+ Carolina Mudcats
Who to Watch: Keston Hiura, obviously. He’s off to a slow start (1-15, 5 Ks in 16 plate appearances) but there’s little doubt that he’s going to hit…and hit and hit. Unless his elbow implodes and necessitates surgery, Hiura stands a strong chance to taste Biloxi by mid-summer. Most don’t expect him in the majors until late 2019 at the earliest, but blue-chip prospects have a knack for setting their own timelines as they climb the organizational rungs.

Honorable Mention: Left-handed hurler Nathan Kirby, whose elbow actually did implode a few years back, is healthy for the first time since 2015. Back in college, he wowed scouts with a nifty fastball and two strong secondary pitches. Now 24 years old, he’s rebuilding his arm strength in Carolina and making up for lost time. If it all clicks and Kirby stays healthy, he could vault himself back to top-prospect status in a hurry.

A- Wisconsin Timber Rattlers
Who to Watch: Tristen Lutz is going to hit a lot of home runs. The Brewers grabbed Lutz with the 34th overall pick last summer, and word is that they were considering him at number nine, too. He’s a Texan, just out of high school, and he tore through the rookie leagues last summer. The folks at FanGraphs tabbed Lutz as the #68 overall prospect entering the season thanks to his light-tower raw power and elite exit velocities. He could be a Corey Hart-type force in the heart of the lineup, with plenty of arm for right field.

Honorable Mention: Catchers KJ Harrison (third rounder in 2017) and Payton Henry (sixth rounder in 2016) are variations on the same theme. Both are good-hitting catchers with pop. They’re also both very raw receivers, and it’s conceivable that both could get pushed out from behind the dish to first base or possibly left field, where they’d need the bats to play in order to retain much value. But if even one of them makes some defensive strides without slipping on offense, the crop of young catchers on the farm will start to look very appealing.