All Eyes on the Minors

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Photo: Bryan Green - Wikimedia Commons

Sal Frelick - Boston College 2020

Sal Frelick batting for Boston College in 2020

While it remains to be seen when Major League Baseball will open the 2022 season, all eyes turn to the minors for our first glimpse of baseball in several months. Minor league camps are open across the sport, building towards an April 9 Opening Day unimpacted by labor strife at the big-league level.

It’s also a busy time of year for those tasked with evaluating and ranking players. FanGraphs recently completed their annual “Prospect Week,” a detailed look at the state of the player development industry and the top prospects within. Similarly, ESPN’s Kiley McDaniel is in the process of unveiling his list of the game’s top 100 prospects and farm system rankings and Keith Law of The Athletic did so earlier in the month.

Generally speaking, most of the publicly available farm system rankings have the Brewers in their bottom third. McDaniel had them 25th, assigning them a future value ($128.5 million) less than half of the first place Orioles ($344 million). Law doesn’t assign dollar values to farm systems but had the Brewers in the same neighborhood at 26th. This is a slight improvement from last season, when McDaniel had them 29th and Law had them 28th.

There are several reasons why the Brewers’ rankings have been low recently, but one of the primary ones is “they win.” Some of the top young talent in the organization doesn’t show up on prospect lists because those players are already in the majors: Freddy Peralta and Luis Urias, for example, were 25 and 24 when they played big roles in the Brewers winning the NL Central in 2021. The Brewers also haven’t been shy about using their top prospects as bargaining chips in trades, and their recent status as a frequent winner means they’re usually selecting late in the first round of the draft.

As more prospect lists come out it becomes possible to build something like a “consensus” list, an effort to compile all the publicly available lists into one master ranking. The process isn’t perfect, of course: 2017’s consensus rankings had Lewis Brinson as the Brewers’ clear #1 prospect ahead of Josh Hader (#3), Brandon Woodruff (#12) and Corbin Burnes (#21). Nonetheless, the list provides an opportunity to weigh several expert opinions in one system.

The following is the Brewers’ top 10 prospects for 2022, using a weighted average of six publicly available prospect lists.

1. Sal Frelick, OF (633 of a possible 648 points)

More so than any other year of this project, there’s significant disagreement among the experts about who belongs as the Brewers’ top prospect, so Frelick edged out several notable top contenders by being the least polarizing: He wasn’t listed first on any of their lists, but Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, FanGraphs and The Athletic all have him as either the #2 or 3 prospect in their respective rankings, and each of the Brewers’ other top prospects have at least one detractor among that group.

The #15 overall pick in the 2021 draft, Frelick played 35 minor league games across three levels in his professional debut season and batted .329 with a .414 on-base and .466 slugging. He struggled a bit during a short run at High-A Wisconsin at the end of a long season (at that point he had been playing baseball since the college season started in February) and may start the 2022 campaign at that level. Baseball Prospectus was, to date, the only publication to include Frelick on a list of the top 100 prospects for 2022. They had him 98th. Both Tess Taruskin and Kevin Goldstein of FanGraphs included him on a list of players they expect to make their top 100 next year.

2. Garrett Mitchell, OF (631.5 points)

It is perhaps fitting that Mitchell and Frelick are neck-and-neck on this list, as the two are likely to challenge each other for playing time and accolades for years to come. Mitchell, the Brewers’ top pick (#20 overall) in the 2020 draft, burst onto a lot of fans’ radar with a big showing in spring training in 2021 and carried that momentum to a hot start with Wisconsin, where he batted .359 with a .508 on-base and .620 slugging in 29 games and stole 12 bases in 13 attempts.

Mitchell plays the game like his hair is on fire, which makes him fun to watch when he’s healthy but has also led to an array of times where he’s less than 100%: Across two levels he was limited to just 64 of a possible 120 games in 2021. Both he and Frelick primarily play center field, a position where the Brewers have several elite defenders in the organization. Baseball America listed Mitchell as a top 100 prospect before the 2021 season (#91) but left him off this year. Baseball Prospectus did not have him on their list last year but put him on this year at #94.

3. Aaron Ashby, LHP (627.5 points)

The only player in the Brewers’ top ten with MLB experience, Ashby is also the one that most divided the lists: FanGraphs has him as the #1 prospect in the Brewers organization and the #46 prospect in all of baseball, while The Athletic has him as the Brewers’ seventh best prospect. At least part of the disparity may stem from a question about his long-term role: The Brewers have developed Ashby as a starter but largely used him out of the bullpen in his 2021 MLB debut, where he struck out 39 batters in 31 2/3 innings. Dan Szymborski’s projected prospect rankings, which use his statistical model to project players’ future value, have Ashby as the 15th most valuable prospect in all of baseball and second-best pitcher.

Either way, Ashby’s encore performance in 2022 is on hold. As a member of the Brewers’ 40-man roster, he can’t report to spring training until the lockout is resolved.

4. Brice Turang, SS (621 points)

The Brewers’ first round pick in the 2018 draft, Turang was a high school infielder with significant international experience but some work to do to fill out a somewhat small frame. In the years since he’s done that work and steadily climbed the ladder, splitting the 2021 season between AA Biloxi and AAA Nashville.

Keith Law is the highest on Turang among the lists sampled here, ranking him atop the Brewers organization and #85 in all of baseball. He credited Turang with “a core skill set that gives him a high floor as at least a great super-utility player, with above-average regular upside as a shortstop who gets on base with moderate power.”

5. Joey Wiemer, OF (610 points)

A fourth-round pick in the 2020 draft, Wiemer had one of the more interesting breakouts in all of minor league baseball in 2021. On July 15 he was hitting .233 with a .368 on-base and .344 slugging and having a solid-if-unspectacular season with Low-A Carolina. Wiemer says a conversation with teammate Zavier Warren prompted him to make a mechanical adjustment that opened the door for him to go on a tear, batting .353/.436/.749 across his final 54 games between Carolina and Wisconsin. No Wisconsin Timber Rattler has ever hit more than 22 home runs in a season, but Wiemer had 14 for that team in just 34 games. The Brewers named him their Minor League Player of the Year.

Wiemer will likely continue to draw varied opinions from scouts because of a swing that is perhaps best described as “violent.” He doesn’t swing and miss as often as one might expect from a player with a big swing, however, and still drew 63 walks in his first full professional season. He’s also a very good defender with a strong throwing arm and has drawn comparisons to longtime Astros and Giants outfielder Hunter Pence.

Rounding out the top 10:

6. Tyler Black, 2B (600 points)

7. Ethan Small, LHP (588.5 points)

8. Jeferson Quero, C (588.5 points)

9. Hedbert Perez, OF (585.5 points)

10. Jackson Chourio, OF (543.75 points)