Who boasts the Crew's single best pitch? Ask the backstops

This story was excerpted from Adam McCalvy's Brewers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

PHOENIX – It’s the sort of question Brewers manager Pat Murphy loves to chew on during Spring Training.

What one pitch, from one pitcher, has really opened your eyes?

Of course, Murphy can’t pick just one. He named three.

1. Shane Drohan’s slider
2. Tate Kuehner’s changeup
3. Coleman Crow’s curveball

Kuehner and Crow have already been sent back to the Minors, and Drohan might also begin the season on the outside of the big league roster. But they all possess the sort of pitch that fires up onlookers amid the unlimited optimism of Spring Training.

“The reality is that with the pitchers that we have here,” veteran catcher Gary Sánchez said, “it’s not just with one guy that you have that reaction.”

So while William Contreras is away at the World Baseball Classic, we polled many of the Brewers’ other catchers about the pitches that have made them go, “Ooh.”

Here are their answers.

Brandon Sproat’s sweeper

It takes some prodding, but Sánchez eventually plays ball and picks a single favorite pitch.

“There’s [Abner] Uribe, and I haven’t had [Jacob] Misiorowski in game action, though I had him in a live BP and that’s very impressive,” Sánchez said. “But getting to have Sproat’s sweeper, you have a pretty good reaction the first time you see him throw it.”

Sometimes it takes seeing a hitter’s reaction to a pitch for a catcher to really know how it plays. But Sánchez needed only to catch Sproat’s slider in a pregame bullpen session to have the reaction, “Oh, wow.”

“He’s probably at only 60% there, and you’re reading out the pitches,” Sánchez said. “Then you get the game intensity behind it, and when there’s that intensity piece, that’s where you really see what the pitch is like and how it plays in real time. It’s different.”

Kyle Harrison’s changeup

The only multiple winner in our little clubhouse poll, Harrison’s kick change is a new pitch (GIF above provided by Curt Hogg of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).

Both Jeferson Quero – Milwaukee’s No. 8 prospect per MLB Pipeline – and Matt Wood called it his favorite pitch in camp.

“It’s special because it’s nasty,” Quero said. “You can see it in the bullpen, the way it moves. But you have to set up that pitch. You have to throw another pitch to make that one work special.”

“It’s the depth,” Wood said. “It’s an interesting shape because most changeups have the fade, but this one is a fastball for a long time, and then, whoosh, it falls off the table.”

The best news is that Harrison says it’s still a work in progress.

“I would have thought it’s always been his bread and butter,” Wood said. “That’s a really cool thing.”

Chad Patrick’s cutter

Patrick was an unsung hero for the Brewers in 2025, delivering 119 2/3 innings in the regular season with a 3.53 ERA before becoming a relief force in the postseason. He’s looking to expand his arsenal this spring, but it was Patrick’s old faithful that most impressed organizational newcomer Reese McGuire.

“He threw a cutter up and in on a lefty who swung and missed, and it was like 15 [inches of induced vertical break] and 11 [inches of vertical break],” McGuire said, referring to a March 6 pitch to D-backs outfielder Gavin Conticello. “It was crazy. It came out and took a left-hand turn.”

It’s the sort of moment that reminds McGuire why he loves working with pitchers.

“They’re always tweaking something,” McGuire said. “Funny enough, they’ll sometimes throw something that I think looks pretty nasty, and then they look at [data on] the iPad and they’re kind of shaking their head, not really liking it. They’ve got their numbers they’re trying to get their pitch shape to look like.

“But the game is the real deal. The cutter he threw in the game, the hitter’s reaction to it, was like, ‘What the [bleep] was that?’ When you get those kinds of reactions, that’s the shape you want.”

Sammy Peralta’s sweeper

This sleeper pick comes courtesy of Minor League catcher Darrien Miller, an organizational workhorse who has been with the Brewers since they drafted him in 2019.

“It’s so good because it comes from the side,” said Miller, mimicking Peralta’s three-quarters delivery. “It’s really big. I really like it. I think it’s going to be a good pitch.”

It all starts with arm angle.

“It’s moving like 20 inches from way over here,” Miller said, again holding his left arm out to the side, “so it looks like it’s moving even more because of where it’s thrown. Arm angle plays a big part in how a pitch moves.”

Soon, the pitchers will see how those offerings play in games that count.

They’ll have their catchers with them at each step.

“The cool part of pitching is that everyone is different,” said Wood. “Everybody has different ways to get guys out, and everybody comes into camp with something they want to work on. Helping them get there is one of the more fulfilling things about catching.”