Caleb Durbin wasted little time in showing why the Brewers traded for him

To the annoyance of their entire fanbase, the Milwaukee Brewers are coming off of what was an unusually quiet offseason for them. A club being smack in the middle of their latest contention window should not have their biggest moves be involving players who left the organization rather than joined it.

Willy Adames is a San Francisco Giant while Devin Williams became a New York Yankee about a week after that. One of the players that came back to the Crew in exchange for Williams is fun-sized utilityman Caleb Durbin, who's already off to a great start in his new uniform.

Caleb Durbin isn't wasting time in showing why the Brewers traded for him

To this point, Durbin is just 2-for-15 (.133) in his first five spring training games on the Brewers, but one of those hits was a huge home run off of Logan Webb, who was an All-Star last year and finished sixth in the NL Cy Young voting.

Acquired from the Yankees along with starting pitcher Nestor Cortes, Durbin is an Altuve-like player who has a slew of intriguing tools at his disposal. He's got impressive raw power for a player who stands at just 5-foot-7, but he also hits the ball in the gap a ton, steals bases, draws walks, and looks to be an on-base machine in the making.

This past season, Durbin recorded 25 doubles with 10 home runs, 60 RBI, 31 steals in 35 attempts, 53 walks vs. 40 strikeouts, and an .839 OPS. Oh, and he did all of this in just 90 games split between three levels in the Yankees' minor league system.

Defensively, Durbin calls second base his position by trade, but he's got experience at third base and shortstop as well, along with time in left and center field. He's looking to be the latest utility option to find success in Milwaukee.

Durbin was initially drafted in the 14th round by the Atlanta Braves back in 2021, and isn't necessarily viewed as one of the Brewers' top prospects this year, but don't let that fool you. His low-ish ranking in top prospect lists is more due to the fact that the Brewers' system is stacked and that full re-ranks of organization lists haven't been widespread yet than a lack of talent.

While MLB Pipeline has yet to release their top Brewers prospects list for 2025, he's 23rd in Baseball America's ranking, 12th in Just Baseball's, and 16th in Prospects Live's, while functioning as nothing more than an honorable mention in Keith Law of The Athletic's latest rankings list.

Seeing as how Durbin's already got experience in Triple-A, there's little to no doubt that he makes his big league debut this year for the Brewers. Based off of what we've seen from him throughout his ascent up the minor-league ladder, he's going to be a solid player for a long, long while. Homering off of a stud like Webb is also a great start to endear himself to Brewers fans.

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