Brewers prospects carry team to victory in 2025 Arizona Fall League championship

The Arizona Fall League (AFL) has officially wrapped play for the 2025 season, but not before several Milwaukee Brewers prospects played integral roles in their team's victory in the league's championship.

Founded in 1992, the AFL serves as an opportunity for top prospects from around the league to compete with and against one another during the offseason as a way to either make up for lost time caused by injury during the regular season or prove that they are deserving of a promotion to the next minor league level prior to the following season. With only six teams in the AFL, each squad consists of prospects from five different MLB teams, and which teams those are rotates each year, meaning Brewers prospects don't always play with players from the same organization.

This year, the Brewers prospects sent to the AFL joined minor leaguers from the Cleveland Guardians, Kansas City Royals, Philadelphia Phillies, and Texas Rangers organizations to form the Surprise Saguaros. The Saguaros, whose logo at least warrants a look at the AFL's online store, enjoyed a solid season in 2025, finishing second in the league with a record of 16-10. After a victory in the semifinals over the Mesa Solar Sox on Friday night, the Saguaros took on the Peoria Javelinas in the AFL title game on Friday night.

From driving in important runs to making stellar plays on the defensive side of the ball to covering multiple innings out of the bullpen, Milwaukee's top prospects displayed their talent during the title game and were a key factor in the Saguaro's 9-4 victory.

Brewers prospects cap impressive 2025 AFL season with victory in Friday night's title game

The game began very much in the Javelinas’ favor, who, ironically, was the team that the Brewers prospects represented in the AFL a season ago. Jumping out to a four-run lead through their first six trips to the plate, it appeared as if Peoria was going to coast to an AFL title, but the Saguaros were simply waiting for the right moment to strike.

In the bottom of the sixth inning, the Saguaros cut the Javelinas' lead in half with back-to-back sacrifice flies off the bats of Blake Mitchell of the Royals and Dylan Campbell of the Phillies. Mitchell's sacrifice fly brought Brewers' No. 8-ranked prospect Luke Adams home to score.

Now staring down a two-run deficit, the Saguaros once again rallied in the bottom of the eighth inning, this time in a much more emphatic fashion. The team plated seven runs in the penultimate frame, giving them a commanding five-run lead with just three outs to get. Adams singled, walked, scored a run, and drove one in during the inning, Josh Adamczewski, the Brewers 13th best prospect according to MLB Pipeline, drove in two runs with a ground rule double, and Dylan O'Rae, a former third-round pick who missed the 2025 season due to injury, collected an opposite field RBI single as well.

The five-run lead held, and the Saguaros earned their third title in the last four years. Adams, who has been an on-base machine throughout his minor league career, finished the game with three walks, one single, one run scored, and one RBI. Adamczewski collected a single in addition to his ground rule double, giving him two hits, two RBI, and a run scored on the day. O'Rae finished with just the lone single in four trips to the plate, but he also added an impressive defensive play at second base to escape a jam early on in the game (video provided below).

On the pitching side of things, three Brewers prospects appeared in the AFL championship game. Jesús Broca, whose performance in the AFL earned him a spot in the Fall Stars Game showcase, covered the second and third innings. Depsite allowing a double and triple to the first two batters he faced, Broca hunkered down and struck out three of the next six batters he faced while allowing just the one run to the Javelinas. Anthony Flores, whose curveball has turned heads throughout the fall, came on in relief for the fifth and sixth innings, and despite allowing two earned runs, he struck out three batters in his six outs of work. Edwin Jimenez, who the Brewers signed as an international free agent back in 2018, covered the final two innings of the game, allowing zero runs on one hit, while collecting two strikeouts. In addition, Jimenez, given the Saguaros eighth-inning rally, was named the winning pitcher of the 2025 AFL championship.

Overall, it was another highly successful AFL season for the Brewers. Several of the players they sent down to Arizona to join the Surprise Saguaros demonstrated their readiness for the next level of minor league baseball, and several others proved that their stellar performance in a small sample size of minor league games -- the result of several poorly timed injuries -- is an accurate representation of who they truly are as players.