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While spring training baseball often starts to lose its luster as the calendar reaches mid-March, a new MLB special event should add a layer of intrigue to what would otherwise be one of the season’s more mundane periods.
While their big league counterparts are busy ramping up towards Opening Day many of baseball’s top minor leaguers are gearing up for a new showcase event, the Spring Breakout. This week teams made of each organization’s top prospects will play in a series of 16 games across the Grapefruit and Cactus League sites, including the Brewers’ minor leaguers visiting the Royals in the event’s final day on Sunday.
The event is a dream come true for scouts, who often spend spring training scurrying from complex to complex and back field to back field in an effort to get a look at the top minor league players who will now all be playing in the same games. On any given day the Brewers’ representatives alone might play in five different games in Arizona, with the minor league clubs split across two fields at home and away complexes while the MLB club plays a Cactus League game. It’s safe to assume the seats behind home plate will be full of scouts at these games, a rare opportunity to see everyone face quality opponents in one location.
For Brewers fans, however, this event should also be particularly exciting for a pair of reasons. First, the Brewers’ roster is a virtual “Who’s Who” of the top prospects in the organization. Nine of the Brewers’ top ten prospects (as ranked by MLB Pipeline) will participate in the game, with only infielder Joey Ortiz remaining in MLB camp for the day. All told, 24 of the Brewers’ top 30 prospects are on the roster. That’s tied for the most of any Spring Breakout team.
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Second, though, both the Brewers’ top prospect list and Spring Breakout roster are heavily weighted toward players in the upper levels of the organization. The Brewers’ top eight prospects all played at or above the AA level last season and any or all of them could feasibly play at the MLB level in 2024. For comparison purposes, only five of the Royals’ top ten prospects are projected to play in AA or above this year.
The headlining performer for Sunday’s game will, of course, be Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio. The #2 rated prospect in all of Minor League Baseball would already be a significant attraction even if he hadn’t also recently signed the largest contract ever given to a player before their MLB debut. Several of his teammates, however, have also seen significant playing time in Cactus League games already this spring:
- 21-year-old catcher Jeferson Quero has played in about half of the Brewers’ MLB games this spring, hit a home run and drawn rave reviews for his defense, throwing out five of the first seven runners who tried to steal on him.
- 21-year-old infielder Brock Wilken, the Brewers’ top draft pick in 2023, reached base in nine of his first eleven plate appearances while facing off against opposing pitchers that Baseball Reference estimates averaged between AAA and MLB quality.
- Infielder Tyler Black is getting an extended look at multiple positions this spring as the Brewers work to figure out if they can find a place in the lineup for his advanced bat.
- First baseman Wes Clarke was the first Cactus League player to reach four home runs this spring and got there in just 17 plate appearances.
The Spring Breakout series should be a fun opportunity for fans across the sport to see the future of their franchises as top prospects all gather on the same field for a showcase game. For some teams, including the Brewers, that promised future might come sooner rather than later.
