Image via Brewers.com
One of the biggest changes across baseball in recent years has been in the evaluation and development of young pitching, and being ahead of the curve in that regard has allowed the Brewers to find and develop some significant MLB contributors in unlikely locations.
Before the 2016 season, for example, the Brewers made what appeared to be an extremely minor transaction when they added 22-year-old Dominican pitcher Miguel Sanchez to the organization. In a country where nearly all of the top amateur players sign as teenagers, Sanchez signed up for the Dominican Republic Air Force and played in a military amateur league before signing with the Brewers. Later that same year he made the jump to pitching for a stateside minor league affiliate and he’s been on an advanced path ever since, pitching in the Arizona Fall League and Dominican Winter League in addition to 140 games over parts of five seasons in the minors.
Across his first eight big league outings Sanchez has a 2.16 ERA and has walked just two of the 32 batters he’s faced. His best outing to date came on June 30 against the Cubs, when he entered and stabilized a game that was 5-0 in the top of the first inning and allowed the Brewers to come back to win 15-7.
Three years after signing Sanchez the Brewers gave an opportunity to another long shot reliever. Jake Cousins was an Ivy League alum and had recently been released by the Nationals when the Brewers signed him out of independent ball during the 2019 season. He was 24 years old when he reached the low-A level for the first time with the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers that August, more than two full years older than the average player in that league. He logged just seven appearances for Wisconsin that season.
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Bullpen Revelation
Less than two years later, however, Cousins has been a revelation in the Brewers bullpen. He’s made just eight MLB appearances but has already pitched his way into high leverage duty by allowing just one hit across his first 9 1/3 innings, striking out 14 while walking just three. Cousins and Sanchez’s emergence were a big part of the reason the Brewers were able to include another reliever, Trevor Richards, in the trade that brought first baseman Rowdy Tellez to Milwaukee.
In between signing Sanchez and Cousins the Brewers gave an opportunity to another reliever on his way back: Anthony Bender was 24 years old, had recently been released by the Royals and was pitching for Sioux City in the independent American Association when the Brewers gave him a second opportunity in affiliated baseball. Bender quickly climbed the ladder in the organization during the 2019 season, posting a 1.49 ERA in 29 appearances across three levels.
The Brewers opted not to add Bender to their major league roster following the 2020 season, but his comeback story didn’t end there: He made his MLB debut with the Marlins in May, where he has a 1.84 ERA in 28 games and recently recorded his first MLB save.
Rapid Career Turnarounds
It’s not unusual for teams to scour indy ball or add minor league free agents to provide organizational depth during a long season, but it is unusual for one organization to identify this many success stories in such a short span of time. Given their recent track record, it’s hard not to wonder who their next fast climber might be. The Wisconsin Timber Rattlers have one possible candidate.
The Brewers released Carlos Luna during the 2020 season after a brief and somewhat quiet stateside career in the low minors, where he had pitched just one game above rookie ball. They brought him back into the organization in 2021, however, and his success was immediate: Luna started his tenure with High-A Wisconsin with nine hitless innings, including the final four innings of a combined no-hitter on June 10. In slightly more than a month with Wisconsin Luna has logged 29 1/3 innings with a 0.92 ERA and 10.1 strikeouts per nine innings.
Given this volume of rapid career turnarounds, it seems likely the Brewers are ahead of the curve when it comes to identifying freely available talent they can develop into solid organizational depth. In an era where teams rapidly rotate through talent at the MLB level, being ahead of the curve locating bounce-back candidates has put the Brewers at a significant advantage.
