MILWAUKEE -- The Brewers have long insisted that their Draft strategy is to take the “best player available.” In 2019, it looked more like “best college left-hander available.”

That was a total coincidence, scouting director Tod Johnson insisted.

“Honestly, we did not necessarily target left-handed pitching,” Johnson said after wrapping up the three-day event. “We’re not going to draft for need. It wasn’t a specific target. It just fell that way.”

• Brewers nab Small in first round

After taking two college lefties with each of their picks on Day 1, the Brewers began Day 2 with another before adding seven more during Day 3 on Wednesday, including each of their first three picks. All told, six of Milwaukee’s first 12 selections and eight of 39 selections overall were college lefties. For good measure, there was a high school southpaw in the mix, too.

So, was this the result of a long history of success developing southpaws? Not exactly. In 19 seasons since Miller Park opened, only seven home-grown left-handers have pitched in the Major Leagues for Milwaukee. Two were international signees: Valerio De Los Santos and Luis Martinez. Five were draft picks: Dana Eveland, Mitch Stetter, Zach Braddock, Manny Parra and Brent Suter.

• Draft Tracker

Suter, a 31st-round pick out of Harvard in 2012, pitched for the Brewers from 2016-18 and is expected to resume throwing from the mound this month as he continues his comeback from Tommy John surgery.

Before Suter, the last home-grown lefty to pitch for Milwaukee was Parra from 2007-12.

• Small's college rival among Brewers' Day 2 haul

There are left-handed pitchers in the farm system bidding to be the next, but only one of them ranks among MLB Pipeline’s top 30 Brewers prospects. He’s Aaron Ashby, the team’s fourth-round pick last year, who ranks No. 9.

Here’s the new crop of left-handers who will try to pitch their way to Miller Park:

Round 1: Ethan Small, Mississippi State University
Round 2: Antoine Kelly, Wabash Valley College<
Round 6: Nick Bennett, University of Louisville
Round 10: Brock Begue, Cuyahoga Community College
Round 11: Arman Sabouri, University of California
Round 12: Jackson Gillis, Vanderbilt University
Round 17: Kelvin Bender, Junipero Serra High School (Calif.)
Round 25: Dan Wirchansky, Pace University
Round 34: Josh Shapiro, Marshall University

All have their own story to tell, but Begue’s is particularly fascinating. He has no feeling on the right side of his body, the result of seizures and a stroke soon after birth.

But that did not impede Begue on the baseball field or basketball court at high school in Alliance, Ohio, where he starred in both sports. The Brewers worked him out at a pre-Draft camp at Miller Park during the team’s last road trip, and Begue fielded his position with no problems.

“He’s overcome that,” said Johnson. “Talking to the coaching and watching him, he seems to manage it fine. It’s an interesting story. He’s obviously overcome a lot to make that work.”

Begue began another run of southpaws to start Wednesday’s rapid-fire Day 3. The Brewers followed by selecting Sabouri, who pitched in a number of different roles for Cal, and Gillis, who was a workhorse for Vanderbilt in 2018 but pitched more sparingly this season.

“The pitchers, when we landed on them, wound up being primarily left-handed, and I’m fine with that,” Johnson said. “They’re obviously more rare, and they’re rare in our system. But it wasn’t necessarily a target of like, ‘Let’s go get a bunch of left-handed pitching this time.' That’s how it worked out with this group.

“We took the chance on the ones we thought stood out for some reason. Performance, stuff. We worked through it, and that’s what we got.”