The Brewers had some tough decisions to make among their arbitration-eligible players this offseason, but second baseman Brice Turang was not one of them. The 2024 Platinum Glove winner was eligible for the first time and got easily the largest payday of his MLB career: He’ll make $4.15 million in 2026 after earning slightly more than the league minimum in each of the three years before that.
It’s a well-deserved step up in pay for Turang, but it didn’t always seem certain to come. Turang was an experienced high schooler when the Brewers selected him with the 21st overall pick in the 2018 MLB Draft, having played for Team USA in both the U15 and U18 World Championships. Even so, it’s a long way from playing high school baseball in California to the majors, and Turang didn’t always follow the typical path for a future MLB star.
Turang immediately became one of the top prospects in the Brewers organization when he was drafted high and advanced across four levels in his first season and a half of professional baseball. The pandemic cost him the 2020 season, but when minor league baseball returned in 2021 Baseball America ranked him as the #88 prospect in the sport.
Offensive Production?
As a 21-year-old at the AA and AAA levels in 2021, however, Turang’s offensive production dipped to roughly league average. He returned to the AAA level in 2022, and not all of the hype followed him: The major publications all left him off their top 100 lists.
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Prospect rankings are a fickle business, and new crops of top draft picks and high dollar international signings enter the ranks every year. Publications, scouts and fans alike are quick to dismiss prior years’ “rising star” when they get new names to follow and dream on, and an influx of talent in the Brewers organization made it easy for them to sleep on Turang. Keith Law of The Athletic still had him as the Brewers’ #1 prospect entering the 2022 season but MLB Pipeline and FanGraphs dropped him to fifth and Baseball Prospectus had him eighth.
That “what have you done for me lately?” mindset makes it easy for high school draftees to prematurely fall off the radar: If he had gone to college 2021 would have been Turang’s junior season. Instead, he was roughly a league average hitter at the highest minor league levels. He slipped off the top of the radar, however, at least in part because that year’s high draft picks were already drawing significant hype before ever taking the field as a professional.
Breakout Star
Four years later, though, Turang is a 26-year-old breakout star. Baseball Reference estimates he’s already been worth 11.8 Wins Above Replacement, meaning after just three MLB seasons he already grades out as the tenth best Brewers infielder of all time. By the same measure, he’s the 14th most valuable position player and 17th most valuable player overall to debut in the majors in the last five seasons. FanGraphs’ 2026 projections have second base as the Brewers’ second strongest position for 2026, trailing only catcher.
In future years it’s going to be increasingly difficult for teams to give players like Turang enough time to develop. With fewer minor league levels, stricter limits on the number of players under contract and increasingly skillful player development happening in college, it’s going to be a costly commitment for teams to spend high draft picks on players that might need four or five years in the minors before they’re ready to contribute at the MLB level. Perhaps there won’t be as many “post-hype” prospects like Turang anymore simply because there won’t be as many drafted high schoolers in years to come. There will always be some, however, and Brice Turang is here to serve as a strong reminder that they still deserve top billing even if they do take a little longer to reach their potential.
Kyle Lobner covers the Milwaukee Brewers in the Shepherd Express’ weekly On Deck Circle column. He has written about the Brewers and Minor League Baseball since 2008.
Jan. 12, 2026
12:29 p.m.