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Sixteen months after adding him to the organization, the Brewers are getting their first Minor League looks at a pitcher with a chance to climb back onto the club's Top 30 prospects list, per MLB Pipeline.
Right-hander Coleman Crow joined the Brewers’ Top 30 list at No. 25 after the team acquired him from the Mets in the December 2023 trade that sent outfielder Tyrone Taylor and pitcher Adrian Houser to New York. Crow was in the midst of recovering from Tommy John surgery at the time, so he didn’t get to pitch in games in 2024 until a late-season stint in the Arizona Fall League and fell off the Top 30 list, but now he’s back on a regular schedule at Double-A Biloxi, making his second start of the season on Thursday.
“We want to be conscientious of the workload, but it’s great to see him pitching again,” said Brewers senior VP of player development and performance Cam Castro. “This is a guy that we’ve been excited about for a long time. When you get dealt for Major League value as many times as he has, there’s a reason.”
The Angels drafted Crow out of high school in Georgia in the 28th round in 2019 but signed him for fifth-round money. The pandemic delayed Crow’s pro debut until '21, and he’d climbed to the Double-A level by '23, when he was dealt with another prospect to the Mets for Eduardo Escobar. Crow never pitched in New York’s system, undergoing Tommy John surgery that July.
When he’s right, Crow’s curveball is the best offering of his four-pitch mix (with a fastball, slider and changeup). After a terrific 2025 debut on April 18 in Birmingham in which he allowed one hit and one walk in three scoreless innings while striking out four, Crow allowed five hits, one walk and one run in 2 1/3 innings at home against Montgomery on Thursday, when Cooper Pratt (Brewers No. 3 prospect, MLB No. 53) and Luke Adams (Brewers No. 8) homered in a Shuckers win -- the day Pratt received his 2024 Rawlings Gold Glove Award and Adams celebrated turning 21 years old.
“The ingredients are super interesting,” said Castro of Crow. “It’s really high spin. He’s got the ability to mix a four-pitch arsenal to the spots in the zone that he wants to. But we want to be cognizant of what the gap has been for this guy and how long it’s been since he has handled volume. He missed last year, threw 24 innings in 2023. It’s just been a while. But we’ve been really excited for this for a long time.”
There’s the potential for a slingshot effect as Crow resumes a regular workload. One, Crow has already had some success at the Double-A level. Two, just because he didn’t pitch much in the past two years doesn’t mean he was not learning along the way.
“Biloxi right now is an easy place for us to control his volume, but once he gets settled in and he strings a couple of starts together, who knows what could happen?” Castro said.