Brewers Minor League Affiliate Wins 2023 ACL Championship

Winning in the playoffs is something the Brewers want to do as an organization. When their minor league teams succeed in doing so, it gives them experience in playoff atmospheres that will help them when they get to the major leagues.

The Milwaukee Brewers have a team in their midst that has made a championship run this year and have brought home the trophy.

The ACL Brewers are 2023 Arizona Complex League champions!

Led by top 30 prospects Dylan O'Rae (recently promoted to Low-A Carolina) and Juan Baez, the ACL Brewers won the ACL Central division this year with a 31-25 record. That got them into the playoffs, which have been going on this week.

First, there was the semi-finals, a one game winner moves on matchup against the ACL Rockies. The Brewers won 3-2 on three solo homers. Two homers were from Yeison Perez, and one was from Reece Walling. 2023 Draft picks Mark Manfredi (9th round), Brett Wichrowski (13th round) and Tate Kuehner (7th round) led the way on the mound.

That led to the best-of-3 championship series against the ACL Diamondbacks Red team. The Brewers took the first game by a score of 2-1. In the 3rd inning, Yeison Perez walked, then 6th round pick Cooper Pratt singled, and both were brought home by a Juan Baez double and that was the only scoring the Brewers would need. 16th round pick Josh Timmerman and Osbriel Mogollon combined for seven shutout on the mound. Justin Yeager, acquired in the William Contreras deal gave up a run in the 8th, but it was unearned. Bayden Root struck out three in the 9th to close out the win.

Game 2 of the series, the Diamondbacks-Red battled back, blowing out the ACL Brewers 14-2. That led to the winner-take-all Game 3 on Sunday night.

In Game 3, the ACL Brewers mirrored the big league club with a big inning of their own. They jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the second inning, behind a bases loaded fielders choice by Luis Medina, followed by another fielders choice from Yeison Perez. Then Cooper Pratt brought a run home on a double play and Juan Baez reached on an error, allowing Medina to come around and score. It's not the most traditional big inning, but four runs is four runs. They added another run in the 4th on a sac fly from Juan Baez. The ACL D-Backs Red answered with three runs in the 4th and another run in the 7th to make it a one run game, but 8th round pick Craig Yoho and UDFA pickup Blake Whiting closed down the final two innings to win the ACL Championship.

This is the first year in a long time that the Brewers have just one Arizona Complex League team. They've previously operated with two but consolidated them this year with the pending cut down in total number of minor league players teams are allowed to have. The ACL Brewers had some great performances this year from guys like Dylan O'Rae and Juan Baez. Also Satchell Norman and Yeison Perez have had excellent years. The new draft picks have been a huge boost as well, especially 6th rounder Cooper Pratt. Day one picks Brock Wilken and Mike Boeve dominated for a short time before being promoted, but helped vault this team to that ACL Central division title.

Now that the ACL season is over, perhaps we'll see a decent number of these players get promoted to Low-A Carolina before their season ends to help their playoff push in Zebulon. They're looking to make the postseason for the first time since 2008 and are currently in first place in the Carolina League standings in the second half. That could lead to a ripple effect of some top prospects in Carolina being moved up to High-A Wisconsin and so on and so forth.

Congratulations to the ACL Brewers on a tremendous season, and hopefully they aren't the only Brewers team to win a postseason championship this year.