SURPRISE, Ariz. -- Josh Adamczewski has been a man on an island.
No one would confuse Arizona as land flush with water. The place where the Brewers’ No. 13 prospect can get lost in his thoughts had been unchartered territory prior to late August, but he's been there on a full-time basis during his run with the Surprise Saguaros:
Left field.
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“It's different,” laughed Adamczewski, who spent all of his pro career at second base up until Aug. 29 when the Brewers decided they needed to increase his defensive flexibility. “It's a learning moment for sure. I feel I've gotten a lot more comfortable out there since the end of the season, so it's going well. I mean, every day I’m just trying little things out and seeing what works.
“The first few games, if you go back and watch video on a few of them, you can see the routes are still getting there. But everything's been caught out there so far that should be caught, so that's all that matters.”
Adamczewski feels a lot more comfortable in the batter’s box. The 20-year-old hammered his third Fall League homer Wednesday, a 106.4 mph, 417-foot roundtripper that went out to straightaway center field. Of his six hits through the first two-plus weeks of action, five have gone for extra bases.
The fact that Adamczewski is even in Arizona is tied to the defensive crash course, but it’s also connected to the fact that he missed two months during the regular season due to left sacroiliac joint irritation. He said he felt back to normal right out of the chute for Single-A Carolina and the results backed it up -- a .991 OPS in July and nine multihit games in August.
A 15th-round pick out of an Indiana high school in 2023, Adamczewski was committed to play at Ball State -- until the Brewers came calling. Since then, all he’s done is hit. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been in the lab, fine-tuning his swing.
His ground-ball rate dropped by more than 10 percent from 2024 to ‘25, a conscientious effort to take his swing geared for line drives and make sure it was putting the ball in the gaps and over the fence instead of into the gloves of infielders.
“I tweaked a lot of things in the offseason,” said Adamczewski. “I lowered my hands, just trying to help me get the ball in the air more often and I think it worked out a little bit better this year than last year. … Focus on ball flight and not getting frustrated when it's not happening overnight. Just trusting in that process.”
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Even prior to those improvements, Adamczewski was on Milwaukee’s radar. He didn’t enter the club’s Top 30 Prospects list until June 1 when Caleb Durbin officially graduated, but the Brewers believed enough in the hit tool to include him on their 2025 Spring Breakout roster in March and he got three at-bats during the game. (Jacob Misiorowski started for the Crew this year; in 2024, Jackson Chourio headlined the squad.
The native of Munster, Indiana, doesn’t fit the mold of a prototypical slugger at 6 feet and 190 pounds. An added positive of spending extended time in the Fall League is unfettered access to Statcast technology, and through the first two-plus weeks, Adamczewski has been responsible for three of the league’s 19 longest home runs. He’s not only the lone batter with three among that group, he’s the only hitter with more than one.
Getting the most out of prospects’ size and enabling them to tap into their power has become something of a standing operating procedure for the Brewers. Jesús Made (MIL No. 1/MLB No. 4) and Luis Peña (MIL No. 2/MLB No. 18) went from exciting young talents to two of the best prospects in all of baseball this past season for that very reason. While that duo shared time between shortstop and third base, primarily with Carolina, then with High-A Wisconsin, Adamczewski had a front-row seat -- and helping hand -- in what could be the future of Milwaukee baseball.
“Their work ethic, the way that they go about their business is about as professional as it gets,” he said. “It was something special for sure.”