Milwaukee Brewers 2022 MLB Draft Class Superlatives

Brewers 2022 Draft Toughest Signs: C Brady Neal, BHP Jurrangelo Cijntje, RHP Jaden Noot

Towards the end of Day 3, the Milwaukee Brewers selected three high upside high school players. Both Brady Neal and Jaden Noot were in the top 100 spots on MLB Pipeline’s list and have strong commitments to LSU. Cijntje has a commitment to Mississippi State.

The Brewers did not save enough slot money to sign all three. They may or may not have enough left to sign one. But if they are able to sign one player from this group, it’s a huge win for the Brewers.

Brewers 2022 Draft Favorite Pick: C Matt Wood

This is my personal favorite pick in the draft. Matt Wood was the Big Ten Batting Champion this season, has a good combination of both power and hit tools and is a quality defender behind the plate. He’s a left-handed hitting catcher with on-base skills and some pop. That’s extremely valuable and is a starting quality catcher at the big league level.

I think the floor is very high here and Wood should at least make the big leagues as a backup but provided that hit tool remains, he could be a starter and perhaps the catcher of the future in Milwaukee. Time will tell.

Three words to describe the Brewers 2022 Draft: Contact, Strengths, Safe

With every hitter the Brewers selected, a trend became clear. They were selecting players with contact skills, that put bat to ball really well and walk more than they strike out. Every hitter selected fits that mold. Given the big league club’s proclivity to strike out, this strategy seems like a sound one.

The Brewers played to their organization’s strengths. They know developing hit tools isn’t one of them, so they drafted guys with natural feels to hit already that they don’t need to make too many adjustments on. On the pitching side, they drafted a lot of projects and a lot of guys with raw stuff that need refinement. The Brewers have proven to be quite good with their development of raw pitching talent. They played to their strengths.

But overall, this draft was quite safe, if even a little underwhelming. It seemed like they may have reached for guys who fit this specific mold and were safer rather than take some risks on some higher upside talent.

Eric Brown leads this class as the first round pick, but his upside is somewhat limited. At his ceiling, he’s probably maybe a league average shortstop. There isn’t really All Star upside or Gold Glove upside to dream on like there was with some other players that were on the board at 27. Granted, at that late stage of the first round a league average everyday shortstop is not a bad result and they should be quite pleased with that.

It was a bunch of safer college hitters and the pitchers, outside of Misiorowski, all seem to have limited upside even with the pitching lab. This draft class won’t win any plaudits from pundits. Picking as late as they did they probably weren’t going to anyways. But still, it was a relatively safe draft where they selected contact skills and played to their organization’s strengths.

The players that do end up signing will be getting started in the minor leagues soon and we’ll get to watch their journeys to the big leagues from there.