The Brewers are pleased with the performance of their 2021 draft class. Trend of drafting middle position players could continue in 2022

In a perfect world, Tod Johnson would be rocking out to Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard, Poison and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts at American Family Field on Sunday night. 

“I’m kind of bummed that I can’t actually attend that concert,” the Milwaukee Brewers’ vice president of domestic scouting said. 

He does, after all, have the team's Major League Baseball draft war room to oversee. The Brewers will make three picks that first night – No. 27 in the first round, No. 62 in the second round and No. 72 in Competitive Balance Round B. 

And because of that twice-postponed concert that was originally scheduled for 2020, Johnson & Co. will be booted from their usual accommodations in the Brewers’ offices at the ballpark and instead conduct their business off-site. 

“We’re going to be at an alternate location downtown, and then we’ll have another location because we can’t fit everybody where we are,” Johnson said. “We’ll make it work, though. If we survived the 2020 all-Zoom draft, we’ll survive Mötley Crüe. 

“I mean, it’s certainly not ideal. We would prefer to have our normal setup in our comfort zone and be able to all be together and have instant access to everyone. But with Zoom, that’ll make it pretty easy.  

“While it certainly would be better to have it with our normal kind of setup, it will not be catastrophic to us.” 

The Brewers will make their selections in rounds 3-10 on Monday and wrap up with rounds 11-20 on Tuesday. 

July draft creates business time crunch

This marks the second year the draft is being held during the all-star break after being a fixture for years in early June. 

While MLB has made the move with the intent of driving up TV ratings and making it more of an event like the NFL and NBA drafts have been, the draft now butts up against the trading deadline, which is Aug. 2 this season. 

The last day teams can sign draft picks is Aug. 1, leaving a very small window for front offices to wrap up two of the year’s biggest pieces of business. 

“There’s good and bad things,” Johnson said. “I think the biggest good thing is it has driven more attention to the draft. I like the fact that by the time we’re drafting guys, everybody’s done playing. Because that used to be a big challenge with guys who were in the College World Series. 

“I know one year we were talking to a player – we didn’t end up drafting him – but we were talking to his advisor while he was on deck in a regional game. I never felt like that was a good situation. The lateness of it, there’s not a ton more scouting that gets done. 

“The timing of it relative to other things we have going on this month isn’t great; the signing deadline is one day before the trading deadline and the draft is the latest it can be at just about 2½ weeks before the trade deadline. 

“David (Stearns), Matt (Arnold), (senior vice president of player personnel) Karl Mueller and (vice president of baseball operations) Matt Kleine are heavily involved in both, so their attention to the draft is kind of diverted to the trade deadline.” 

Up-the-middle athletes preferred

The last two drafts Johnson has overseen have been unique in that the Brewers selected all college players in the five-round pandemic draft of 2020 and then college or junior-college players with their first 11 picks in 2021. 

Milwaukee also has selected pitchers with just two of its last 10 first-round picks – left-handers Ethan Small in 2019 (who made his major-league debut with the Brewers this season) and Kodi Medeiros in 2014 (who was traded in 2018 and currently at Class AAA Salt Lake City in the Angels' organization). 

“We’re not specifically hunting for one type of player,” Johnson said. “It’s not like we’re only going to take bats or we’re only going to take arms (as the Angels did last year). Or we’re only going to take college or we’re only going to take high school. We try to get the guys in the order we value them, and then take the ones we like the best. 

“Signability and some of those things factor into it as well, because we feel like we have a great opportunity if we do save money or do something else at the top that we can spread that money across other picks and get kind of a portfolio of players that all potentially have pretty good value.” 

What the Brewers do like doing in the first round is drafting athletes who can play up the middle – shortstop and center field, specifically. 

In the last two years they’ve drafted centerfielders in Sal Frelick and Garrett Mitchell, and in 2018 they took shortstop Brice Turang. All three rank among the organization’s top prospects. 

“That’s certainly our take on it,” Johnson said of drafting athleticism. “Nobody says, ‘We have too many shortstops.’ Or, even too many centerfielders, because those guys are the best athletes, and you can always put them at other spots and they have even more defensive ability relative to that position. 

“Or, they become trade candidate possibilities. Nobody’s ever going to complain about having a guy at a premium position that you think is really good, so we price that into our evaluation of the players and try to account for that as far as what position we think they’ll play and use that as a piece of the information we have on them. 

“It’s certainly a pretty big factor and it’s worked out pretty well, I think.” 

Frelick a fast-riser from '21 draft

Milwaukee’s 2021 draft was highlighted by Frelick, a player out of Boston College who has risen four rungs on the minor-league ladder after signing last July 20 for a $4 million bonus. 

One unexpected twist came when the Brewers traded third baseman-first baseman Alex Binelas, their third-round pick from Oak Creek, as part of a package that netted them rightfielder Hunter Renfroe minutes before the MLB lockout last Dec. 1. 

“We’re pretty excited about that group,” Johnson said of the 2021 class. “Obviously we turned Binelas into a guy that has been a big part of our big-league team. We liked him a lot when we took him and thought he had good potential. 

“Then we have Sal, who’s in Double-A already and one of the fastest guys in that class to get there and he’s performed well there. (Competitive Balance A pick) Tyler Black was doing really well and unfortunately he’s dinged up now, but he was hitting like we thought he would at Wisconsin and he was showing some defensive versatility, going out to play in center field pretty well. 

“(Second-rounder) Russell Smith’s pitched much better recently, and (sixth-rounder) Carlos Rodriguez down at Carolina has been pitching really well this year. So, we’re excited about that class in general and we feel like we’ve added a decent group of prospects to the organization.” 

Top of draft could be hitter heavy

The top of this year’s draft class is expected to be carried by position players with the sons of two former all-star outfielders – Druw Jones (Andruw Jones) and Jackson Holliday (Matt Holliday) projected by some as the potential top two picks. 

Jones is an outfielder and Holliday a shortstop. Pitching, meanwhile, isn’t expected to fly off the board this year in the first half of the first round. 

“I think that’s probably a good characterization,” Johnson said. “Usually, the very top of the draft is more bat-heavy anyway. This year, what’s happened is a lot of the arms that probably would have worked their way toward (the top of the draft) either came into the year and were already hurt or got hurt during the year. 

“So, it’s really thinned out the group that would potentially have gone and filled in some of those spots. What we’ll probably see is some of those arms that were injured still get taken in pretty high spots, and then some other arms (will fall). 

“But that will shift it to being more bats – especially at the very top of the draft.” 

The Brewers haven’t drafted this late in the first round since 2019, when they took Small 28th out of Mississippi State. 

It wouldn’t come as a surprise to see them again select a college outfielder, with the likes of Florida’s Sterlin Thompson, Vanderbilt’s Spencer Jones, California’s Dylan Beavers, James Madison’s Chase DeLauter, Tennessee’s Drew Gilbert or Oregon State’s Jacob Melton all projected to be going in the bottom third of the draft. 

Shortstop Peyton Graham of Oklahoma also could be someone worth watching. 

“This draft – and every time you’re picking in the back you want to say this, and you hope you’re right – I do think there’s a top group that is five or eight deep of guys that have sort of separated themselves,” Johnson said. “And then I do think there’s a pretty good set of depth players beyond that where we think, with all three of our Day 1 picks and then all the way through the draft, that we’ll get good opportunities with guys. 

“So, we feel that the depth is there and picking that late won’t mean that we won’t be pretty excited with who we end up with there.” 

The slot values for Milwaukee’s first-day picks are $2,700,500 (first round), $1,130,900 (second round) and $914,900 (CBA Round B).