Who Will be the Brewer Everyone Will Talk About Next Spring?

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Photo via Joey Wiemer/Carolina Mudcats/Twitter

Joey Wiemer Player of the Year

While most of the Brewers have headed home or off to offseason training academies for the winter, a small handful of players are still playing in games and one of them might be working his way towards being the player everyone is talking about next spring.

After a one-year hiatus in 2020, the Arizona Fall League is back as one of the game’s premier showcases for top prospects. This year the Brewers are one of five teams who sent players to play for the Salt River Rafters, managed for the first time in 2021 by longtime Wisconsin Timber Rattlers manager Matt Erickson. The Brewers’ contingent includes several players who would have been the headliner of the group in many other seasons:

• Outfielder Joe Gray Jr., a 2018 second round pick who reached High-A Wisconsin in his first full professional season in 2021.
• Relief pitcher Abner Uribe, who has limited professional experience but a fastball that tops out above 100 mph.
• Chinese pitcher Jolon Zhao, the youngest pitcher on Salt River’s roster, who is recovering from elbow surgery but has previously displayed elite-level spin on his breaking pitches.

Fourth Round Pick to High-A Level

This year, however, a player who established himself as a phenom late in the regular season has carried that momentum down to the desert this fall. Outfielder Joey Wiemer, the Brewers’ fourth round pick in the 2020 draft, burst into conversations about the game’s top prospects with an incredible stint to finish the season at the High-A level. Wiemer hit 14 home runs in just 34 games down the stretch with Wisconsin, batting .336 with a .428 on-base and .719 slugging across 152 plate appearances. In August Wiemer credited a mid-season swing adjustment with his sudden surge of power.

To put Wiemer’s numbers in context: No Timber Rattler has ever hit more than 22 home runs in that franchise’s 25-plus year history of 140-game seasons. Wiemer got more than halfway to that mark in just 34 games. Power, however, was not his only positive contribution: He also stole eight bases in ten attempts and was an exceptionally good outfield defender, drawing particularly positive reviews for his arm strength. In one of the final games of the season an opposing manager intentionally walked Wiemer twice in the same contest despite the fact that Sal Frelick, the Brewers’ first round pick in this year’s draft, was on deck behind him.

Even among some of the game’s top prospects, the early reports on Wiemer suggest he stands out on Salt River: One of Baseball America’s early prospect reports from the Fall League described him as “Herculean.” On the Effectively Wild postcast FanGraphs lead prospect evaluator Eric Longenhagen described Wiemer as someone who “will stand apart from the other kids on this roster because his frame is gigantic.” That’s high praise for someone whose teammates include Tigers prospect Spencer Torkelson, the #1 overall pick in the 2020 draft and a consensus top-five prospect in all of baseball.

Through the first few games, Wiemer has lived up to the hype: He had a four-hit game on Friday to move into the AFL lead with eleven hits in his first eight appearances. He’s already hit a home run, drawn four walks and stolen a pair of bases. The Fall League is a notoriously hitter-friendly environment (teams are often reluctant to overwork their top pitching prospects by extending their seasons into the fall), but Wiemer’s 1.199 on base plus slugging through his first eight games was slightly better than Torkelson’s, for example and right in line with Cardinals top prospect Nolan Gorman.

Another Big Step Forward?

Given his performance across multiple levels, Wiemer would appear poised for another big step forward next spring: Even if he’s not officially invited to major league spring training in 2022, Wiemer would appear to be a likely candidate to be called over from minor league camp early and often to cover the late innings of Cactus League games.

Given his strength and his propensity for big swings, Wiemer could make a big impression next spring if he gets to face two staples of the second halves of spring training games: veterans who aren’t using their whole arsenals and young pitchers who are simply trying to throw strikes. The Brewers have had plenty of top prospects emerge onto fans’ radar with big performances in a similar environment.

Wiemer has about another month in the desert to make a closing statement on his breakout 2021 campaign. Even if he does nothing else, however, he’s earned the right to be someone fans know and are excited to see in the years ahead.