Angels make surprise pick, take RHP Tyler Bremner 2nd overall

ANAHEIM -- Right-hander Tyler Bremner pitched with plenty of emotion this season during his junior year at UC Santa Barbara, as his mother Jennifer’s health worsened after a five-year battle with breast cancer before she ultimately passed away on June 11.

The family held a memorial for her just last week, then had to regroup and gather for the first day of the 2025 MLB Draft on Sunday. Bremner, MLB Pipeline’s No. 18 Draft prospect, was a surprise selection, getting picked by the Angels as the No. 2 overall pick in the Draft. And the San Diego native believes it was fate the way things worked out.

“She came out to all the games all the way up to the point where her body wouldn't let her anymore, but she's a fighter and I know she's out there watching, and in a weird way, I went to the Angels,” Bremner said. “It's weird how life works. So it's a special moment, for sure.”

With a hard-to-hit fastball and an elite changeup, Bremner was ranked as one of the best college right-handers in the 2025 Draft class. He flashed his strikeout stuff for UCSB in a solid 2025 season, posting a 3.49 ERA with 111 K’s in 77 1/3 innings. He was projected to go at some point in the first round but didn’t know he had the chance to go as high as No. 2 until roughly an hour before the Draft, which is why he could sign for underslot with the Angels using that unused pool money later in the Draft.

“Definitely just overwhelmed with shock and emotion,” Bremner said. “I don't think this was really something that we really thought was a possibility up until really recently. So it was definitely a shock, and that's kind of the emotion coming out. But it's also just a really emotional time for me and my family right now, and just overwhelmed with excitement and ready to get to the next step.”

But it wasn’t the step forward prospect evaluators had hoped for after Bremner’s standout 2024 (2.54 ERA, 104 K’s in 88 2/3 IP). He started nine games and appeared in 10 games as a reliever that season before becoming a full-time starter in 2025. Whether Bremner can stick in the rotation remains up for debate, but his talent is undeniable. He had a rough start to the year and his mom's battle no doubt weighed heavy on his mind, but he pitched better as the season went along.

“Funny enough, as she got worse, that's when I got stronger on the field,” Bremner said. “I feel like I did a very good job of almost using that kind of negative energy and channeling it into pitching, and pitching angry, or pitching for her, pitching for something bigger than myself.”

Bremner possesses an impressive fastball -- a strong heater with ride that touches 98 mph -- but the righty’s changeup is his best pitch. MLB Pipeline gave the offspeed offering a 65 grade on the 20-to-80 scale, with some scouts grading it as high as 70, thanks to its late movement out of the strike zone. The changeup misses bats at a high level, posting a 46 percent whiff rate in 2024.

“We’ve been following Tyler for years,” said scouting director Tim McIlvaine. “We really like Tyler's changeup. We think it's a pitch that, whenever he's in trouble, he can go to that changeup. He can get outs with that. We like his fastball a lot at 98 mph, and he's six-foot-[two] and he's going to put on more weight. There’s a lot you can dream on.”

But despite the success of Bremner’s changeup and fastball (a heater that could add velocity in the professional ranks, scouts believe), his slider needs work. The righty has struggled to throw the mid-to-upper-80s breaking pitch for strikes, making him more of a two-pitch pitcher -- something that could make a career as a starter more difficult.

Still, his swing-and-miss arsenal makes Bremner a first-round prospect and potentially the latest in a long line of UCSB players to reach the Major Leagues, a group that includes Michael Young, Barry Zito and Shane Bieber.

And McIlvaine pointed to the challenges that Bremner has faced as a reason why they like his makeup as a person and a competitor.

“We watched him deal with all the adversity that he's gone through with his mom and when you look at his second half of the year, I’d put it up against anybody in the country,” McIlvaine said. “Some guys don't know how to deal with it. But when they've dealt with something like that before and learned how to come back on top of it, it helps.”