The Brewers have developed pitchers. Can they start to do the same with position players?

Publish date: 2024-05-16

PHOENIX — There’s a sign with big block lettering inside the Brewers’ batting cages at their spring training facility that reads, “Be you.”

It’s new. First-year hitting coaches Brett Dawson and Ozzie Timmons wanted to share that message with players. The idea is that each hitter has a special skill set that has enabled him to play in the majors, and the coaches want to embrace that and let players compete with freedom.

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that in the Brewers’ farm system, Brenton Del Chiaro, newly promoted to hitting coordinator after serving in an assistant role to the position, has a similar message. The most important part of Milwaukee’s hitting initiative in the minor leagues, he said, is for players to be themselves, which, in theory, promotes comfort and confidence at the plate.

With advances in pitching development widening the gap, all organizations are looking for answers on the hitting side, even though they are finding out, as Brewers vice president for player development Jake McKinley said, “There’s no secret sauce.” He’s right. Damn if Milwaukee isn’t trying, though.

After struggling to consistently produce runs over the course of a full season at the major-league level, the Brewers not only changed voices but also beefed up their staff to include Dawson and Timmons as co-lead hitting coaches with Matt Erickson as an assistant hitting coach. That’s three hitting coaches after the last couple of years had just one lead hitting coach and one assistant. Over the offseason in the minors, the Brewers invested more resources there, too; for the first time, they have two hitting coaches per affiliate.

The effort and changes are necessary. Does any organization in baseball better represent the disparity between hitting and pitching development these days than the Brewers?

The Brewers have blossomed in recent years as one of baseball’s best teams because of their ability to identify, train and improve pitchers while their hitting development has lagged. Pitchers such as Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff and Devin Williams were all Milwaukee draft picks. Others like Freddy Peralta and Josh Hader were acquired as prospects and thrived in Milwaukee’s farm system. The Brewers have excelled at finding arms with upside and unlocking pitching talent.

Hitting development? Not so much.

Ahead of Opening Day on Thursday, the Brewers have just three position players likely to make the active roster who would be considered homegrown. That includes Lorenzo Cain, a Milwaukee draft pick in 2004, a long time before president of baseball operations David Stearns took over in 2015. The two others are much more recent: Keston Hiura and Tyrone Taylor. Hiura, a first-round pick in 2017, soared as a rookie in 2019, but has since struck out 36.5 percent of the time with 17 home runs in 443 plate appearances. Taylor, an outfielder, is 28 and just last year established himself as a viable option after the Brewers picked him in the second round of the 2012 draft.

That’s not enough.

To be fair to Milwaukee, trades have occurred, including outfielders Trent Grisham (first-round pick in 2015) to the Padres and Monte Harrison (second-round pick in 2014). Both players had varying degrees of success in the Brewers’ farm system. But a few other high draft picks just haven’t panned out. That tends to happen more often in the MLB Draft than in other sports. But on the position player side for the Brewers, it was especially evident for a while.

In 2016, the Brewers’ first-round pick was outfielder Corey Ray, who is a fringe 40-man player for Milwaukee and hasn’t shown he could consistently reach base in the minors. In 2017, Milwaukee picked outfielder Tristen Lutz, who hasn’t yet reached Triple A.

In the second round of the 2016 draft, Milwaukee chose third baseman Lucas Erceg, who is still in the organization, but as a relief pitcher. In rounds 1-10 of the amateur draft from 2015-18, the Brewers picked 21 position players. The other highlights in that span are shortstop Brice Turang (who could debut this year and is a fringe top-100 prospect), catchers Mario Feliciano (on the 40-man roster), David Fry (traded to Guardians), Payton Henry (traded to Marlins) and outfielder Joe Gray (2018, second round). Gray has yet to appear in a game beyond Class A mostly because of health issues but broke out with 20 home runs and 23 stolen bases last year.

Development takes time. The Rays, for instance, just made room on their roster for outfield prospect Josh Lowe, who was drafted in 2016. Yet Lowe, 24, is widely considered a top-100 prospect, top-50, even. Besides Turang, the Brewers have a few other fringe top-100 prospects, but they were all drafted in the last two years: outfielders Garrett Mitchell, Sal Frelick and Joey Wiemer.

When talking to the media a couple of weeks ago about general direction and expectations in what many consider to be the golden age of Brewers baseball — for the first time, they’ve made four straight trips to the postseason — owner Mark Attanasio said, “We are just going to try to compete every year. Some years it’ll be with free agent signings. Some years it’ll be with trades. Hopefully, a lot of it is in player development.”

The fact that Milwaukee has had so much success lately despite a lack of homegrown position players on their roster is a credit to Stearns and his group. Their ability to land talent like Christian Yelich and Willy Adames through trades has been downright impressive. With baseball’s economics the way they are, however, it behooves a franchise like the Brewers, which considers itself a small-market team, to improve in their player development, particularly when it comes to bats. Trading from strengths to acquire help has worked, but getting a better handle on hitting development would likely mean more sustained success.

Mention the shortcomings in the hitting development area over the last couple of years to the Brewers’ brass, and they don’t bristle. It’s a true and fair assessment. In the industry, hitting development lags behind pitching development, and that’s especially true for the Brewers. So many factors explain why. Perhaps the most influential of which is that improved information is generally going to be an advantage to the competitor who is dictating the action. Hitting is reactionary and there are some things that likely cannot be taught.

“It’s really difficult just because from the pitching side, the pitcher controls so much,” Brewers vice president for minor-league operations Tom Flanagan said. “Some of the new training that our guys are doing are basically focusing on the core things like hitting the ball in the air, hitting the ball hard, swinging at strikes. It sounds so cliche or so simple. But it’s really that, those are the ones that we know have merit to them. So I think it all starts with those things. Now, putting them in the right training environments or the right drills, those are all still things we are always working through.”

That’s not to mean the Brewers accept their struggles.

There are signs of progress.

Consider the OPS over the years for the Brewers’ two Class A affiliates, Carolina and Wisconsin. Unlike the higher levels of the minor leagues, the players at Class A are mostly young prospects and recent draft picks, and, therefore, the numbers aren’t often skewed by the presence of veterans or major-league-ready talent that comes and goes. From 2016-21, Wisconsin’s OPS has been: .686, .644 (last in league), .680, .648, .740 (fourth in a league of 12). In that same span, Carolina’s OPS has been: .680, .697, .679, .660, .798 (second in a league of 10).

Perhaps things are changing?

Unlike in years past, the Brewers’ best prospects are all position players, and most will appear at Double-A Biloxi at some point this season for the first time or are international prospects readying to make an impact at the affiliate level. The exception is lefty Ethan Small, who is set to start the opener Tuesday night for Triple-A Nashville (Aaron Ashby was the latest young pitcher to impact the major-league team).

“A lot of it starts on the acquisition side,” Flanagan said. “Our scouts, they did a heck of a job on the pitching side. Obviously, we are seeing the fruits of that. But on the hitting side, the advancements with helping hitters versus pitchers aren’t as far along. So I think the hitting side of developing players is more of an unknown while with our pitchers, we are pretty confident that we know what we know and that there are maybe some areas of low-hanging fruit where we can help guys.

“Three or four or five years ago, you looked at our system and it was pitcher heavy, maybe light on position players, and now you look at it and maybe the pitching is not what it was, but the hitting side, there’s guys who you get excited about and think they have some ceiling to them.”

Assembling young talent is one thing. The Brewers now must develop.

Part of that means assembling the right staff. Under McKinley, the Brewers have expanded their player development group with people from varying backgrounds. Milwaukee’s hitting apparatus for their domestic minor-league teams breaks down as follows: Al LeBoeuf and Ned Yost IV at Triple-A Nashville; Chuckie Caulfield and J.J. Reimer at Double-A Biloxi; Nick Stanley and Liu Rodriguez at High-A Wisconsin; Ken Joyce and Daniel Demondesert at Low-A Carolina; Mike Habas, Brock Hammit, C.J. Retherford and Jose Garcia at the Arizona Complex League. In the Dominican Summer League, the Brewers have Austin Turner and Luis De Los Santos.

Milwaukee believes it has one of the more robust player development staffs, especially in regards to hitting. But not everyone on the Brewers’ staff comes from strictly an analytics background; some are more traditional in their approach. Some, like LeBoeuf, have decades of experience, but not everyone. Reimer, for instance, was recently an assistant softball coach at the University of Northern Iowa, while Turner was a junior college coach.

“When you have this many players, they’re just gonna connect differently to different types of coaches,” McKinley said. “And if you give them one profile of a coach — like, a young, analytically minded coach — I don’t think you’re going to connect with everyone. That was important for us, creating a diverse staff.”

Joyce, 57, has been a hitting coach since the 1990s and is viewed as a progressive pioneer in getting the ball off the ground. He was the hitting coach for the Somerset Patriots in 2021. The way Joyce sees it, having more information is good, but the key is knowing how to share that intel with players and teach them why it’s useful. The shared philosophy within the Brewers, Joyce said, is combining the understanding of the mechanics of the swing while also valuing the mental side and preparation. In other words, putting hitters in the best situation to take a swing while making them think they are the best hitter possible. Regarding why he’s hung around for so long and was attractive to the Brewers, Joyce said he hasn’t survived — he’s adapted.

“This is a perfect spot because it’s a blend of the old school and new school, if that’s what you want to call it,” Joyce said. “For me, it’s basically coming into a situation where they value analytics, but they also value the fact that every player has a heartbeat as well. You got to remember that. Analytics have been around a long time. The metrics have changed or the way they measure things now change, but it’s things that guys, like myself, Al, we’ve been around for a while, we’ve been doing it.

“Now, it’s just different numbers that we’re looking at. The biggest thing is to get guys ready to hit at the big-league level. And I think they did a good job of bringing people in here that could do that.”

A few young players who have been through the Brewers’ farm system and are no longer in the organization said that at times in the past, they heard instructions that sometimes led to a more passive approach. But they also added that things started to change for the better under former hitting coordinators Kenny Graham (who left before the 2021 season and is now the Tigers’ director of player development), Sara Goodrum (who left before the 2022 season and is now the Astros’ director of player development) and now Del Chiaro, who has been with the Brewers for five years, mostly working in Arizona.

“You get the best of both worlds,” one Brewers minor-leaguer said. “I like the direction it’s going. Analytically, if you’re not where you should be, you can use the hitting guru guy to get there. There was one guy that was a little too mechanical, but I’ve never heard anyone in this organization preach something like launch angle. It’s basically, ‘OK, what are you working on? … We think these are your strengths as a hitter, and what do you think?’ They have good feel.”

One area in which things have improved in the Brewers’ minor-league system is batting practice. It’s tougher than it used to be, players say. Instead of having coaches throw, drills rely more on pitching machines for an array of velocity and pitch types. Prospects during practice are put in a position to attack their areas of weakness. For instance, in one drill while at Low-A Carolina, then-Mudcats hitting coach Eric Theisen worked with infielder prospect Zavier Warren on only inside pitches to make Warren more proficient in that zone.

Theisen, formerly the head coach of Hillsdale College, a Division II school in Michigan, joined the Brewers in May 2021. He’s now Del Chiaro’s assistant coordinator. Brewers shortstop prospect Freddy Zamora recently credited Theisen for helping him tap into more power. In the first 36 games of the season for Low-A Carolina, when Zamora had 161 plate appearances from May 4 to July 11, he hit two home runs with a .658 OPS. From July 12 to the end of the season, when Zamora had 248 plate appearances, he hit four home runs with a .942 OPS.

“I started doing some drills when I was down in Low-A Carolina, and (Theisen) started emphasizing to me to start swinging a heavy bat and then a lighter bat for bat speed,” Zamora said. “When he came in, he definitely knew what he was talking about. And I just listened to him and he told me things and it all helped out.”

Theisen is an unfamiliar name to many, but his offenses in college baseball were major successes. Under Theisen, the Chargers twice set single-season conference home-run records (68 in 2016 and 78 in 2019). He said he essentially started with a blank canvas and learned more about hitting by reading Bobby Tewksbary’s book, “Elite Swing Mechanics.” But then, Theisen said, he realized he became too mechanical-minded in his approach and it wasn’t working. So he adjusted. Although he knew he needed to first learn the foundation of mechanics, he started to shift his interest toward human movement and how people learn and receive information.

“That has helped me develop my own perspective on things,” Theisen said.

In addition to wanting hitters to be themselves, the initiative under Del Chiaro and Theisen includes players being active participants in their development. Coaches ask them what they feel they need or want to work on this season, and then they aim to blend their goals with the organization’s goals for them. Then there are three other points: be athletic, be adaptable, be adjustable.

“The last three points are all-encompassing to the daily life of our hitters,” Del Chiaro said. “No two pitches are the same and no two swings are the same. Being those three things will give them the ability to problem solve in-game, from at-bat to at-bat, and throughout the season.”

So much of Del Chiaro’s role involves communicating with the front office and making sure the messaging to players is being delivered in a digestible way. Collaboration is another buzzword, but it’s true; there are so many areas — including the strength staff, research and development, sports science and so on — and they all play a role in hitting development.

For the Brewers, 2022 projects to be an exciting season. That’s not just at the major-league level, where Milwaukee enters the year as the prohibitive favorite to win the NL Central, but also in the minors, where hitters like Wiemer, Mitchell and Zamora are starting the season at Double-A with others like Frelick not far behind at High-A Wisconsin. Milwaukee has gotten this far over the last few years largely thanks to pitching development. But sustainable success over the next few years may mean evolving into more of an overall player development factory.

“We’re certainly trying to put more resources into hitting,” Brewers manager Craig Counsell said. “From a technology standpoint, pitching is just ahead. The pitcher starts with the ball. So the technology has provided guidance for us as coaches more so than in the hitting area. We are trying to attack it with more manpower, really, to try to get to some better answers for the players, try to help the players more.”

Counsell’s words were in a response to a question about improving the major-league club’s offense in 2022. But the answer, he said, can certainly be applied to the organization as a whole. After all, the Brewers always love to count on their depth. It’d be something for them to see more readily available help over the next year or two from position players within.

(Photo of Tyrone Taylor: Michael Owens / Getty Images)

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The Brewers have developed pitchers. Can they start to do the same with position players?