Brewers Draft: 3 Team Needs To Address In 2021 MLB Draft

Brewers Draft Need #2: Power Bats

In what has been atypical of the Brewers historically, they find themselves short on power bats. The big league offense has Avisail Garcia and Luis Urias currently leading the team in home runs. If you had those two as your team HR leaders at the All Star Break when the season began, people would’ve rightfully called you crazy.

There also isn’t much for power bats down in the minor leagues either. The Brewers focused on adding advanced college bats in last year’s draft, but most of them were hit-over-power type players. Garrett Mitchell has a ridiculous amount of raw power, but he’s not a “power hitter”. Freddy Zamora, Zavier Warren, Joey Wiemer, and Hayden Cantrelle all have some pop, but they’re also not really considered “power hitters”.

Mario Feliciano has power, but has been hurt for most of the minor league season.  Other than that, there’s Tristen Lutz who has big power, but is hitting just .208 with a 36% K rate in Double-A this year, although he has hit seven homers. Outfielder Luis Medina has big juice but is 18 years old and is in Rookie level Arizona. C/1B Thomas Dillard has eight homers in High-A and is hitting .249 but has a 42% strikeout rate.

That’s about it for “power-hitting” prospects in this system.

They could use a couple more hitters with power upside. They have one of the more power-friendly ballparks in baseball. Milwaukee needs to use that to its advantage.

Unfortunately there isn’t a large amount of power-hitting college bats in this year’s draft class, but the few that are there will be at a premium.

Brewers Draft Need #3: Corner Infield Depth

I know this is a position group the Brewers have neglected a lot in recent years, and their strategy to focus on up the middle players (C, SS, 2B, CF, P) has been successful with the picks they’ve made. But they haven’t been able to develop a first baseman since Prince Fielder left a decade ago.

The last time the Brewers drafted and developed a third baseman who posted even a single 2.0 WAR season or better at the hot corner was Ryan Braun, who played one season at third and then moved to the outfield. Prior to that, you have to go back to the 1990s and Jeff Cirillo as the last homegrown third baseman the Brewers developed that had some decent success.

They’ve had varying levels of success in short stints with players like Casey McGehee, Aramis Ramirez, Travis Shaw, and Mike Moustakas. But it’d be nice to draft and develop something at the corner infield spots.

Because of the neglect in the early rounds of the draft at these positions in recent years, the farm system is quite bare at both spots. The Brewers had to claim Daniel Vogelbach last year and trade for Rowdy Tellez recently to help stock up on the position.

They’ve paid some prices to get both corner positions covered in recent years, but the most cost-effective way to fill those spots is to draft and develop your own players.

There should be some decent options to help fill out the corners in the middle rounds on Day 2 of the Draft. These spots likely won’t be addressed on Day 1 with the 15th and 33rd overall picks, but any pick in the first five rounds at either spot should be considered a win and a potential answer at a corner infield spot in the near future.

The Milwaukee Brewers have several needs to address in their system. Pitching will likely be the first one they tackle, but they also need some more bats, especially power bats. The Brewers can kill two birds with one stone as well since most corner infielders fit the power bat description.

Primarily, the need should be to take the best player available, but sometimes when you have a few players graded similarly, organizational needs like this can be tiebreakers.