Dad catches son's 1st pro HR after predicting it was about to happen

It’s just like playing catch in the backyard … except a couple hundred feet apart.

Brewers No. 17 prospect Sawyer Strosnider connected on his first career homer with High-A Wisconsin on Wednesday and had a special person on the other end of the milestone dinger: his father, Scott.

The 2026 second-rounder got a 1-0 changeup from Lake County right-hander Logan McGuire in the seventh inning and crushed the 85 mph pitch out at 103.6 mph. As the ball sailed over the wall in right-center, you can see a man in a white shirt size it up for a comfortable snag, and the Timber Rattlers later confirmed it was indeed Strosnider’s dad who received the souvenir on the fly.

“My dad, he can't sit still, so he loves to run around the stadium,” said the younger Strosnider. “I'll just be looking up after a foul ball or something and see him on every different side of the stadium. I think it was just the right place at the right time.”

“The people on the party deck were like, ‘You know, this is a private party,’” Scott said. “I was like, ‘Well, my son's about to hit a home run that I'm going to catch.’”

Strosnider added an RBI double in the eighth and finished 2-for-4 with a walk in the seventh game of his young career. He is 10-for-30 (.333) with four extra-base hits over that span with the home run the final XBH type remaining on his resume.

The TCU product was ranked as MLB Pipeline’s No. 22 Draft prospect in the 2026 class and earned plus power grades from evaluators. He went deep 24 times and slugged .623 over his two seasons with the Horned Frogs before being taken this summer as a Draft-eligible sophomore. He also earns above-average to plus grades for his run, arm and fielding tools, and the Brewers have cycled him between both center and right field in his early taste of the Minor Leagues. There have been some concerns about his swing-and-miss and chase levels, but as he proved with Wednesday’s blast, he’s capable of making loud contact when he gets a drivable pitch inside the zone.

“I'd been seeing a lot of changeups all day, so I decided to adjust my sights a little bit to left-center for a heater,” Sawyer said. “Ended up getting another changeup and just stayed through it pretty well, caught it out in front and headed it out to right-center.”

As he proved with his catch of his son’s dinger, Scott Strosnider is no stranger to the diamond himself. He played four years of college ball at Morehead State from 1990-93 and helped the team win the Ohio Valley Conference tournament in his senior year. He also played one season for the West Virginia Coal Sox in the independent Frontier League.

But sometimes parental intuition takes precedence over true ball knowledge.

“I've seen him take tens of thousands of swings, been at so many ball games, and I just had a feeling that he was due,” Scott said. “We’re going home tomorrow, so I thought maybe this last at-bat he'll catch one. I went out, and I thought let's see what happens. I videotaped it, and as it was coming to me, I thought that this ball had a chance to land right to me. So I dropped my phone, and I actually caught the ball.

“I didn't miss the ball!”

The Strosnider family has made a habit of collecting Sawyer artifacts over the years. They have his bat from when he hit .547 as a senior at Brock High School. They have a bat from when he was named Big 12 Freshman of the Year and Second-Team All-American by Baseball America in 2025.

The first pro homer though? That’s something new altogether.

“We've got those little keepsakes,” Scott said. “But you know, when you get to this level playing in a professional field, this home run ball is probably going to be a memory for a long, long time.”