How the Brewers found (and believed in) Jacob Misiorowski

MILWAUKEE -- The 2025 MLB Draft begins on Sunday. If all of the pieces fall into place just right, maybe the Brewers will come away with the next Jacob Misiorowski.

Even after trading the 33rd overall pick to the Red Sox in the Quinn Priester deal, Milwaukee has a slew of early selections in the two-day event which begins on Sunday at 5 p.m. CT with the first three rounds and then continues on Monday with Rounds 4-20. The Brewers will make five picks on Day 1 at No. 20, No. 32, No. 59, No. 68 and No. 94 -- leaving plenty of opportunities in the range at which the club landed Misiorowski (Milwaukee’s No. 2 prospect, MLB Pipeline’s No. 21 overall) with the 63rd overall pick in 2022.

By then, Brewers scouts had already loved Misiorowski for years. In the winter of 2019, when he had even fewer pounds on his tall frame and much less velocity on his fastball, Milwaukee, Tampa Bay and Colorado were the only clubs with scouts on hand when Misiorowski threw a December bullpen session in suburban Kansas City.

Even at that early stage of his development, Brewers area scout Riley Bandelow thought he was onto something. When Bandelow invited regional scouting supervisor Drew Anderson, the former big league outfielder, to join him, Anderson shrugged and agreed.

“Sometimes in December, you’re looking for stuff to do,” Anderson said.

Misiorowski’s fastball sat at 88-90 mph during that mound session, but the curveball stood out to Anderson -- a power breaker that made a sound as he spun through the air. It brought Anderson back to facing Craig Kimbrel in his prime closing games for the Braves. So, Anderson and Bandelow filed glowing reports.

• Day 1 picks: 20, 32, 59, 68, 94
• Bonus pool allotment: $13,138,100; 10th in MLB
• Last year’s top pick: Braylon Payne, OF, pick 17 ... Still only 18 years old, Payne has been limited to 50 games by some muscle injuries, but he remains one of the fastest players in the organization and has held his own as one of the youngest players in the Single-A Carolina League.
• Breakout 2024 pick: Tyson Hardin, RHP, pick 365 ... A 12th-rounder out of Mississippi State who signed for $147,500, Hardin is already at Double-A Biloxi, with a 2.24 ERA through his first 15 starts at two levels this season.

Unfortunately for the scouts, circumstances got in the way when the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled Misiorowski’s senior season of high school ball in 2020. Still, the scouts made a case for the Brewers to select Misiorowski in the $800,000 range, even though that year’s Draft had been shortened to five rounds, making every pick especially precious. That was third-round money that year.

“I don’t know if I’ve ever written a report on a guy off one bullpen with that conviction,” Anderson said.

But without any games to see Misiorowski pitch, it was impossible for the Brewers to confirm that conviction. The industry was mixed at the time about whether he could make it as a starter or whether he’d be a reliever in the long term.

“I remember talking to Riley and hearing, ‘This guy’s going to throw 100 [mph] some day,’” said Milwaukee VP of amateur acquisition Tod Johnson. “They were a little light, since it’s 103. But it was too [risky]. We had a five-round Draft in 2020, and without having any way for anybody to see him throw, and the strikes were still a concern, it was just too tough to make that pick that year.”

So, the Brewers resolved to follow Misiorowski when he went to Crowder College, the same community college in southwest Missouri that produced Aaron Ashby as a fourth-round pick by Milwaukee in the 2017 Draft. But again, those plans were dashed when Misiorowski injured his right knee in his first season there, limiting him to fewer than 10 innings.

“He was really not somebody on the scene,” Johnson said.

That changed the following year, when Misiorowski pitched 76 innings, struck out 136 and saw a significant -- and sustainable -- jump in velocity.

“It was like a build,” Johnson said. “I think he was mid-90s his first outing and it kept creeping up. By the end, he was hitting 100 fairly consistently. Still fairly inconsistent with the strike-throwing, but it started to get better. Then he went to the [MLB Scouting Combine] and threw a really good bullpen at the Combine -- which put him on everybody’s radar.”

That wasn’t a great development for the Brewers, who’d lost whatever head start they built over the preceding years. Misiorowski also had some leverage with a scholarship waiting at LSU, where he could have been teammates with future No. 1 overall Draft pick Paul Skenes.

By Draft night, it was pretty clear that Misiorowski would go high, and Milwaukee’s efforts to sort it all out were complicated by the fact there was a Mötley Crüe/Def Leppard concert at American Family Field. As a result, Brewers scouts were scattered, with Johnson and top officials working from the downtown office of principal owner Mark Attanasio, and other staffers working from the Renaissance Hotel in nearby Wauwatosa, Wis.

“Then, it became a race of 'Who is going to take this kid first?'” Johnson said. “We were lucky he got to where he did.”

When the Brewers announced the pick, Bandelow and Anderson finally had their man.

“It’s easy to get Paul Skenes at 1.1, you know?” Anderson said. “But when you can get a guy who can match up with Skenes and even be discussed on the same level as that guy, where we got him? That’s what we have to do as the Brewers. We need those types of guys. Hopefully, he can continue this path, because the ceiling here is one of those organization-changing type things, and that’s what we’re looking for.”