The Brewers Top 5 Prospects

Here are the Brewers top 5 prospects according to ESPN.com's Keith Law:

1. Matt LaPorta (37th overall)
2. Manny Parra (41st Overall)
3. SS Alcides Escobar
4. C Angel Salome
5. RHP Jeremy Jeffress

Matt Laporta
Laporta seems to be on the fast track to the majors I could see him on the Brewers big league club sometime in 2009. He already has 12 homeruns in his short minor league career. I expect him to play either Left or Right field depending on the Ryan Braun situation.

Manny Parra
Parra has a great chance to make the Brewers big league club as the 5th starter this year. If he is not a starter I would think he would either be a long reliever out of the pen or they would send him back down to the minors so he could get his work in every 5th game and be ready if a starter went down. Parra tossed a perfect game in his second career Triple-A start on 6/25 at Round Rock!

Alcides Escobar
It will be interesting to see what Melvin will do with Escobar he is currently blocked by J.J. Hardy and Rickie Weeks and I would expect him to be major league ready by 2009. He is a career .306 hitter in the minors and has great speed and is improving on his defense at Shortstop.

Angel Salome
Salome is still along way from being major league ready but he was the pioneer league MVP and .318 with 6 home runs. I expect to hear more about him in the future being that the Brewers never seem to find a catcher that fits well with the team.

Jeremy Jeffress
Jeffress was off to a great start but he is now suspended for 50 games do to a violation of the league's substance abuse policy. If all goes well he will be able to start pitching again in may I will get some new info up on Jeffress then.

Overall I think that the Brewers have done a fantastic job with there farm system and you can start to see that with there major league club (Fielder, Weeks, Hardy, Braun, Hall, Hart, and Garaldo all came from the farm system). I think the Brewers will be in good shape for years to come do to the fact that they are stacked in the minor leagues.

Escobar, Iribarren come to terms

Reported by: Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"The Brewers have agreed to terms with two players on their 40-man roster, shortstop Alcides Escobar and second baseman/outfielder Hernan Iribarren, on contracts for 2008.

Many of the Brewers' top prospects are lower in the system but Escobar and Iribarren both should play at Class AAA Nashville this season.

Escobar, 21, is ranked as the No. 3 prospect in the Brewers' system by Baseball America (in the interest of full disclosure, I work with BA on that list). He split last season between Class A Brevard County and Class AA Huntsville, batting a career-high .306 overall. He is a very slick fielder at short -- major-league ready in that area.

Iribarren, ranked No. 26, was exclusive a second baseman until last year. Because Iribarren is blocked at the big-league level by young Rickie Weeks, the Brewers have started giving him playing time in center field. He has the speed to play that position and is a carer .324 hitter in the minors.

Both players will be in the Brewers' big-league camp, as will all players on the 40-man roster."

Brewers are going bigtime

It looks like the Milwaukee Brewers are starting to draw some national attention 4 of there games have been moved to Fox. Here are the games:
May 10 vs. St. Louis, moved to 2:45 p.m
May 17 at Boston, moved to 2:55 p.m
Aug. 2 at Atlanta, moved to 2:55 p.m
Sept. 13, at Philadelphia, moved to 2:55 p.m

I think this is great for the Brewers to finally start getting some national attention. The people at Fox must expect the Brewers to be contenders late in the year. I think we will be right in the hunt at the end and this year we will prevail over the scrubs!

The Brewers Projected Starters

Here is a list of the projected Starters

Position Players
Catcher: Jason Kendall
First Base: Prince Fielder
Second Base: Rickie Weeks
Short Stop: J.J. Hardy
Third Base: Bill Hall (He might play a little bit of center because Cameron is suspended for the first 25 games)
Right Field: Corey Hart
Center Field: Mike Cameron (Suspended for the first 25 games)
Left Field: Ryan Braun (National League Rookie of the Year)

Starting Pitchers
First: Ben Sheets
Second: Jeff Suppan
Third: Yovani Gallardo
Fourth: Chris Capuano
Fifth: Dave Bush (As of now but its a tight race between Claudio Vargas, Manny Parra, and Carlos Villanueva)
Closer: Eric Gagne

I like the makeup of are team right now we still have a lot of young players but i think they will be able to hold up down the strech this year. It will be interesting to see are batting order and if Ned Yost will try to utilize the roster as much as he did last year. I guess we will have to wait and see!

The new milwaukee brewers blog

HI! I am a huge brewer's fan from Wisconsin i live about 1 hour North of Milwaukee. I try to go to 15-20 games a year and i watch or listen to the rest of the games. With this brewers blog i plan to give spring training updates, series recaps, player news and some interactive polls. So if you stumble upon this blog and are a brewers fan please subscribe to get the latest brewer news!