Wednesday, July 16

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.

At the start of this week, Brewers top prospect Jeferson Quero (MLB No. 44) began taking simulated at-bats, resumed receiving drills behind the plate and continued his running program after an early-season shutdown for a hamstring injury he suffered during Spring Training. 

The timing of that setback was especially brutal for Quero, since he was about to resume game action after missing all of 2024 following surgery on his throwing shoulder. Quero, a favorite of Brewers manager Pat Murphy, was injured in Triple-A Nashville’s Opening Day game while diving back to first base. Before his hamstring injury, he’d been cleared to start the '25 season at Nashville with a mix of catching and designated hitter duties.

“He’s been putting everything together in as many controlled environments as possible and progressing really nicely in all of them,” Castro said. “Hopefully we’ll get him back out [in games] there soon.”

“Soon” is hard to define by design, since Quero will only progress as his body allows. After working so hard for so long to come back from the shoulder only to be derailed by a hamstring, the last thing anyone wants is a setback. 

If all goes well, Quero could be back in game action by the middle of May. 

“Quite frankly, the biggest challenge going from shoulder rehab to the hamstring strain, as he did, is not losing the steam he built up in throwing endurance,” Castro said. “Obviously, locking up that lower half is a big blocker for his throwing program and squatting and throwing to bases. A big focus for us was finding ways through the hamstring program to keep the throwing promotion going so he doesn’t take any steps back.”

The 13-4 Single-A Carolina Mudcats took a rare loss Thursday, but there was good news: Shortstop prospect Jesús Made (Brewers No. 2, MLB No. 52) was back in action for the first time in four days after being hit on the foot by a pitch over the weekend.

The setback wasn’t serious, Castro said. Made could have played on that foot, but given the timing at the front end of a long season, not to mention the 17-year-old’s importance to the organization, the club decided to wait until his inflammation subsided completely before clearing him to play. 

With Made back in action, the Mudcats’ impressive lineup was back intact. The group includes four of Milwaukee’s top 10 prospects in Made, first baseman Eric Bitonte (Brewers No. 7), infielder Luis Peña (No. 9) and center fielder Braylon Payne (No. 10), plus second baseman Josh Adamczewski, a 15th-round Draft pick from 2023 who is quickly rising to Top 30 consideration. As a group, the Mudcats went into Friday leading the Carolina League -- all three Single-A leagues, actually -- with an .816 OPS. 

“Carolina is a popular destination right now for a lot of our roving staff,” Castro said. “It’s crowded. ‘Rover takeover’ -- that’s how you know you have a good team.”

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