Andrew Fischer continues to swing his way into the Minor League record books.
The Brewers' No. 5 prospect walloped his MiLB-leading 45th and 46th homers of the year in Double-A Biloxi's 8-5 victory over Birmingham in Game 2 of their double dip at Keesler Federal Park on Saturday. The clouts extended his home run advantage to eight over Lazaro Montes (SEA No. 5/MLB No. 56) -- now in the bigs -- and nine over the next-closest Minor Leaguer, Easton Shelton (Dodgers).
In addition to pulling away from his contemporaries, Fischer also scaled another rung on the historical home run ladder. His 45th roundtripper -- which was a pulverized three-run moonshot off right-hander Juan Carela (White Sox) -- vaulted the 2025 first-rounder past Phil Hiatt (2001) and Greg Brock (1982) on the Minor League single-season home run list.
Fischer's 46th -- which was pulled down the line to nearly the same spot and came off righty Garrett Wright -- tied him with former National League MVP Ryan Howard (2004), Chris Hatcher (1998), Ken Phelps (1982) and Dave Duncan (1966) for fourth place over the past 60 years. With the pair of big flies, Fischer has homered eight times in his past nine games.
COMPLETE BREWERS PROSPECT COVERAGE
Following his 2004 domination, Howard took home the NL Rookie of the Year Award in 2005 and subsequently won MVP in '06. That trajectory is a lofty goal for Fischer to meet, but his 2026 season is very much on par.
Howard finished the year -- his fourth professional campaign -- with a .291/.380/.637 slash line. Fischer's line? A similar .273/.409/.662. Their OPS are within 100 points of each other -- 1.017 (Howard) vs. 1.071 (Fischer).
Despite the gaudy stats, the 22-year-old currently sits outside MLB Pipeline's Top 100 prospects, and the main reason is his swing-and-miss rate. While he tops the Brewers' system in RBIs (110), slugging (.662), extra-base hits (66), total bases (274), runs (100) and obviously home runs, he also leads by a large margin in strikeouts with 178.
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Just five Minor Leaguers have fanned more than Fischer this year.
"It’s all about the K's,” MLB Pipeline's Jonathan Mayo said when discussing Fischer earlier this week. "I know a certain amount of strikeouts is perfectly acceptable, especially in today's game. His power is impressive, but with a strikeout rate over 33 percent in the Minors this year, I'm a little concerned about him getting to it once he's facing big league pitching."
As Mayo alluded to, impressive power is only valuable if the player can tap into it. Fischer has shown a knack for launching baseballs in the Minors, but the holes in his swing could be exploited at the next level.
Conversely, plenty of big leaguers have had massive success with a three-true-outcomes approach. Kyle Schwarber has fanned 199 times this season while launching 40 roundtrippers. Howard punched out 166 times during his historic Minor League year and ended up as a MLB superstar soon after.
If Fischer can mitigate the strikeouts, he could follow a similar path and land among MLB's top sluggers. But in the meantime, he's already become one of the Minor League single-season greats.