Brewers: 3 Crucial Team Needs To Address In 2023 MLB Draft

The 2023 MLB Draft begins on Sunday night and the Milwaukee Brewers have lots of needs to address across their organization.

An important, annual reminder that the MLB Draft does not unfold according to current MLB team need. Just because the Brewers need a first baseman or a third baseman currently doesn't mean that they need to pick one in the first round. The players the Brewers select in the Draft this year won't make an impact at the big league level for another couple years.

Even though the impact from this Draft won't be felt in Milwaukee for awhile, that doesn't mean the selections aren't important. Garrett Mitchell and Joey Wiemer were selected in 2020 and they're already having a big impact on this team. The Brewers knew that Lorenzo Cain was going to be on the way out and they picked outfielders knowing that they'd need to fill that hole in a few years.

While the Brewers farm system has lots of exciting talent, there's still more areas for them to fill and this Draft is the perfect opportunity. The 2023 Draft class is slated to be one of the best and deepest in a decade.

In the 2023 MLB Draft, these are the 3 key areas of organizational need the Brewers have to address.

Brewers Draft Need #1: High-upside pitching

The Brewers have eschewed drafting pitching in the first round in recent years. They've drafted exactly one pitcher in the first round in the last eight drafts and that pitcher was Ethan Small. Small was seen as more of a safe, high floor option than high upside, and he's still trending toward being a bust.

Milwaukee hasn't had much success with pitchers in the first round, so they've targeted hitters early on. The system is now flush with hitters and quite light on pitching. A few years ago, the system was stacked with pitching, when they had Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, Freddy Peralta, and Josh Hader all coming up. They've graduated into All Stars now, but the Brewers need that next wave. Burnes and Woodruff are free agents following the 2024 season. If the rotation is going to continue to be strong, they need pitchers with that kind of upside to come up.

Currently, the Brewers have just a couple notable pitching prospects. Jacob Misiorowski was selected in the 2nd round of last year's draft and certainly fits the bill of a high upside talent. There's a lot of risk that Misiorowski might end up as a reliever, but he could end up as an ace. He's really the only one with ace-level upside that could replace a Burnes or a Woodruff.

Robert Gasser, acquired in the Josh Hader trade, looks like he could be a solid rotation piece for a long time. He doesn't quite have the upside of someone that can lead a rotation as a No. 1 arm, but he's still an important piece for the future. Carlos Rodriguez has surprised and climbed the prospect ranks, but is still likely a back end of the rotation arm.

The Brewers need to add more high upside talent in their pitching ranks. Pitching is a volatile demographic, it's true. There's nothing that can change that. Injuries are impossible to predict. It's been said that of every three pitchers drafted early, one will perform to expectations, one will get hurt, and one will regress.

Just 9 of the Brewers top 30 prospects on MLB Pipeline are pitchers. If pitching is to remain a strength of this organization, they'll need to increase that number.