Prior to the 2021 season, few of the highest prospects in the Milwaukee Brewers farm system found themselves close to breaking through to the major league level. As the season has gone on, some of those players have made moves toward rectifying that situation.
No. 7 prospect (per MLB Pipeline), RHP Aaron Ashby, started the season in Triple-A and got a brief taste of The Show back in June. No. 4 prospect, LHP Ethan Small, moved from Double-A to Triple-A that same month. Even No. 1 prospect, OF Garrett Mitchell, only drafted last year, already saw a promotion to Double-A.
One of the Brewers’ higher ranked prospects who hadn’t switched teams yet this season was No. 2 prospect SS, Brice Turang. Up until Tuesday, the 2018 first-round pick had played the entire 2021 season with the Double-A Biloxi Shuckers.
It was only a matter of time, though, before Turang joined the rest of the team’s prospects who earned promotions in 2021. On Tuesday, it was a move that was made official.
With the promotion, the Brewers now have four of their top ten prospects sitting at the Triple-A level. Turang joins not only the aforementioned Small and Ashby, but also No. 5 prospect Mario Feliciano, who has spent the entire season at Triple-A Nashville but has been injured for much of the campaign.
After a slow start to 2021, Brewers prospect Brice Turang started to prove that a promotion to Triple-A was in his future.
Like many of the team’s top young farmhands, plenty of eyes were on Turang to see how we would perform at the Double-A level in 2021, especially considering how his 2019 season, the last season in which games were played, had ended.
Turang was great to start that year, slashing .287/.384/.376 with 57 runs scored in 82 games for then Low-A Wisconsin, as well as 21 stolen bases in 25 attempts. But a promotion to then High-A Carolina saw his slash line drop to .200/.338/.276 over 47 games. His strikeout rate also jumped from 15.1% to 22.7%.
A solid performance at the Brewers’ alternate training site in 2020 helped solidify a jump to Double-A for 2021. Turang would start slightly slow, batting just .139 through his first 10 games. After that, his season took off.
It started with four straight multi-hit games. Shortly after, he’d end up with a 15-game hitting streak. At the beginning of July, Turang would have his batting average over .300. Once all was said and done, at the time of his promotion to Triple-A, he would be slashing .264/.329/.385 with 40 runs and 39 RBIs in 73 games and his strikeout rate dropping back down to 15%.
Now, at just 21 years old, Turang becomes the youngest player on the Nashville Sounds roster. You might not know that, though, by the look of his bat and play on the field.
Turang’s promotion to the Triple-A was one that was well-earned. It’s also another part of why the Brewers’ future looks plenty bright for the coming years.