What makes Brewers' pitching lab unique? 'It’s the dosage of the medicine'

PHOENIX -- It’s not uncommon to hear a pitcher who’s just been traded talking with excitement about the changes proposed by his new team. A new pitch. A new grip. A new mix.

That sort of thing drives Brewers pitching coach Chris Hook, “[bleepin’] crazy.”

“It’s like, ‘I’ve never even seen you throw a baseball!’” Hook said. “I would rather get to know you a little bit, get to know how you handle information before I just throw it all out there. Let them get in the building.”

Take Brandon Sproat, the 25-year-old right-hander acquired from the Mets with infielder Jett Williams in last month's Freddy Peralta trade. Sproat (ranked by MLB Pipeline as the Brewers' No. 5 prospect and No. 100 overall) spent the winter working on a cutter he introduced late last year.

That’s the sort of thing the Brewers like to hear. This is the organization that saw Corbin Burnes and Quinn Priester take off after making the cutter a reliable weapon. But instead of getting in the way of Sproat's offseason ramp-up, they waited until he got in the building before getting to work on it.

The same goes for Shane Drohan, the 27-year-old who was among three players (with lefty Kyle Harrison and infielder David Hamilton) acquired from the Red Sox earlier this month for a package headlined by third baseman Caleb Durbin. While adding a gyro slider and leaning heavily on a cutter last year as he set a career high with a 34.5 percent strikeout rate, Drohan (No. 30 Brewers prospect coming into Spring Training) neglected the changeup that had once been a primary pitch.

He spent the winter focused on rediscovering the shape and feel of that pitch.

“It’s human nature. You want to impress, being the new guy,” Drohan said. “But when you play for so long, you have to settle in and do what you know you’re good at and what got you here. It’s knowing who you are as a pitcher and sticking to it.”

Drohan unofficially began his Brewers career with two scoreless innings in Milwaukee's 5-2 win over the White Sox at American Family Fields of Phoenix on Friday, starting with a three-up, three-down, three-strikeout fourth inning. That outing followed Sproat’s own spring debut, a 1 1/3-inning start in which he threw 23 of his 35 pitches for strikes -- including a heavy dose of the new cutter.

Both have appreciated the way the Brewers’ highly respected pitching apparatus has let them continue to work on the projects they already had underway.

“They’re not like, ‘Let’s change everything,’” Sproat said. “They’re taking what I had and making it better.”

“When I got here,” Drohan said, “they were like, ‘Just be yourself. Do what you do. We’ll get into the details later.’”

Both pitchers said they expected the detail work to begin on Saturday when they dig into video of their respective outings and work with the club’s coaches and analysts to develop a plan for the days leading to their next appearances. It’s a delicate process, one which the Brewers have become known for since a 2019 renovation of their Arizona complex turned the old Major League clubhouse into a state-of-the-art pitching lab. It’s no coincidence that 2019 is also the year Hook was promoted from roving Minor League pitching coordinator to Major League pitching coach.

In the years since, Milwaukee has refined its system of translating data from the lab and the explosion of on-field measurements into customized plans for each pitcher. Then it’s a matter of communicating that plan in a way that makes sense to the player and engenders buy-in.

“As we’re going through the process, there’s a slow leak of what we’re doing, and then at some point it’s like, ‘OK, let’s sit down and talk about this,’” Hook said. “Then I know the kid better. I know, ‘He doesn’t need all that.’ Or I know that he needs 1, 2 and 3 but not 4, 5 and 6 in our plan.

“That’s the way we do it here. It’s the dosage of the medicine.”

It’s pretty clear that Sproat and Drohan are the sort of pitchers who like to take their medicine. But first, they’ve been given the opportunity to settle in.

“It’s super reassuring from the standpoint that my thought process is not wrong,” Sproat said. “That’s super comforting, knowing that these guys have seen veteran big leaguers who have been here for years, and then they see me and are like, ‘We love what you have and your thought process behind it.’

“Now I can fully buy into what they have for me, and run with it.”

Friday’s Cactus League debuts marked a successful start for both young newcomers.

“It’s always fun to go out there and pitch, whether it’s 10,000 fans or nobody,” Drohan said. “It’s fun to get back at it again.”