With fewest top-100 Draft picks in 8 years, Brewers must do more with less

ST. LOUIS -- After earning high marks for their recent work in the MLB Draft, the Brewers will have to do more with less this year.

Milwaukee will have four picks on Day 1 of the MLB Draft, which runs from July 11-12. After trading a competitive balance pick -- No. 67 overall -- to the Red Sox as part of the trade that landed pitchers Kyle Harrison and Shane Drohan and infielder David Hamilton, the Brewers own just two of the first 101 selections.

It marks their fewest selections in the top 100 in the last eight years.

2025: Five
2024: Five
2023: Four
2022: Three
2021: Four
2020: Three
2019: Two

“It is a different dynamic for what we can do,” said Brewers VP of amateur acquisition Tod Johnson. “And obviously, it’s a smaller pool amount to move money around and get guys like Cooper Pratt and others we have had in the past.”

In other words, each pick in the first 10 rounds of the Draft comes with an assigned value, which add up to the total pool of money a club can spend in those rounds without incurring a penalty. If a player taken in the top 10 rounds doesn't sign, his selection's value gets subtracted from his team's pool.

There’s strategy involved, and the Brewers have fared as well as any club in drafting and signing talented players at the top of the Draft for less than “slot value,” then using the savings to offer more money to later choices. It’s how they were able to land Pratt in the sixth round in 2023 and pay him more than $1 million above slot value. Now, he’s Milwaukee’s starting shortstop.

But to execute that strategy, a club needs a hefty pool. And by trading away the 67th overall pick to Boston, the Brewers not only gave up a chance to select a player there, but also the $1.3173 million assigned to that slot.

As a result, the Brewers’ total pool of just north of $8 million is sixth lowest of the 30 teams.

“You have your bucket of money and you can spread it around in different ways, but ultimately it runs out faster when it’s smaller,” Johnson said. “We’re still excited about what we’re going to be able to do with the picks we have.”

It makes Milwaukee’s pair of Top 100 selections incredibly important, because while baseball is littered with examples of lower-round Draft picks going on to greatness, the best big leaguers more often come from the top of the Draft.

“It’s a good class,” Johnson said. “I think it’s separated itself into a top six that are pretty much a consensus top six in the Draft, and then a pretty big group, well back into the Draft, that are all of interest.”

The Brewers also expect to find good value in the second round at pick 66, but that can be challenging. The outlier is Jacob Misiorowski, who was drafted 63rd overall in the second round in 2022 and has already blossomed into a two-time All-Star. He’s the only Brewers second-round pick since Devin Williams in 2013 to compile more than 3 bWAR in the big leagues, and the only Brewers second rounder since Lucas Erceg in 2016 to even make it to the Majors so far -- though a handful of players currently in Milwaukee’s system will have a say in that.

• Day 1 picks: 25, 66, 102, 130
• Bonus pool allotment: $8,042,900
• Last year’s top pick: Andrew Fischer, 3B, pick 20 ... Ranked third in NCAA Division I with 25 homers in his junior season at Tennessee before the Brewers drafted him, and has brought even more power to the pro ranks. Fischer belted 20 home runs in just 54 games with High-A Wisconsin before a bump to Double-A Biloxi, where he’d homered eight times in his first 16 games with the Shuckers going into this week.
• Breakout 2025 pick: Josiah Ragsdale, OF, pick 215 ... As a left-handed-hitting speedy center fielder from Boston College, it was easy to make the Sal Frelick comp when the Brewers spent a seventh-round pick on Ragsdale, who went into this week with the third-best wRC+ (158) in the Brewers' system among players with 50-plus plate appearances. Only Fischer (179) and rookie league breakout Alexander Frias (161) were higher. Ragsdale has climbed into MLB Pipeline’s Brewers Top 30 at No. 30.