{"id":545616,"date":"2026-01-30T09:27:47","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T09:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/545616\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T09:27:47","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T09:27:47","slug":"reassessing-the-brewers-backup-catcher-situation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/545616\/","title":{"rendered":"Reassessing the Brewers\u2019 backup catcher situation"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re here to talk about the one thing on everybody\u2019s minds: who is going to be the Milwaukee Brewers\u2019 backup catcher when the 2026 season starts?<\/p>\n

There was a bit of news on this front on Tuesday, when the Brewers \u2014 after rumors swirled for some time \u2014 signed the Chicago Cubs\u2019 2025 backup<\/a>, Reese McGuire. The wrinkle here is that McGuire was not signed to a major league deal; he instead received a minor league deal with an invite to spring training.<\/p>\n

McGuire, who turns 31 early in spring training, is still probably the best bet to open the season as the backup catcher, but since he is not yet on the 40-man roster and doesn\u2019t have a guaranteed deal means that we cannot take that for granted.<\/p>\n

Whoever the team\u2019s backup catcher is may not have much of a role. William Contreras plays as often as any catcher in the league, and he\u2019s one of the best at the position, so Milwaukee\u2019s backups in recent years haven\u2019t had a whole lot to do.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a quick look across Milwaukee\u2019s catching landscape to see who could be in the running here.<\/p>\n

As mentioned, McGuire makes the most sense. Of all the catchers that we currently know will be in major league camp with the Brewers, McGuire is the only one other than Contreras who has ever played in a major league game. That seems notable.<\/p>\n

Harrison did a good job running down McGuire\u2019s bona fides yesterday, but a quick review: McGuire was the No. 14 overall pick out of high school in 2013 and worked his way onto top 100 prospect lists within the next couple of years. But McGuire\u2019s bat didn\u2019t develop like some hoped, and it wasn\u2019t exactly an \u201cevent\u201d when he made his major league debut with the Blue Jays late in the 2018 season.<\/p>\n

McGuire spent most of 2019 in the minors, but he had an encouraging, brief 30-game run in the big leagues in which he hit .299\/.346\/.526 and clobbered five homers. That good offense turned out to be a mirage, though; after he struggled through the shortened 2020 season, McGuire settled in as a low-offense, solid-defense backstop in 2021, a season in which he played more games than any other Blue Jay catcher but eventually got a bit crowded out by the dependable Danny Jansen and the emerging Alejandro Kirk.<\/p>\n

With both Kirk and Jansen playing well, Toronto broke up their catching trio by trading McGuire to the White Sox at the end of spring training in 2022. Chicago didn\u2019t have as much invested in McGuire, so after a rough season, they cut bait and shipped him to Boston at the trade deadline. McGuire actually had a magical partial season with the Red Sox: in 36 games after the deadline, he hit .337\/.377\/.500. That magic didn\u2019t last, though, and he spent the next two seasons playing rather poorly backing up Connor Wong.<\/p>\n

McGuire became a free agent after the 2024 season. He signed with the Cubs in January but didn\u2019t make the major league team out of spring training. But when Miguel Amaya strained an oblique in late May, the Cubs re-signed McGuire, and he was with them through the end of the season. In total, he played 44 games in 2025. He hit for a low average and walked only four times in 140 plate appearances(!) but did hit for power: nine homers put his slugging all the way at .444 despite a .245 OBP. That power bump was probably an outlier; through his first seven seasons, McGuire had an isolated power number of just .113, which shot up to .218 in his small sample with the Cubs.<\/p>\n

McGuire\u2019s profile is of a guy who features good-enough defense who can obviously run into one at the right moment, but his offensive production will likely be bad; in eight major league seasons covering just under 1,200 plate appearances, he holds an 84 OPS+ and an on-base percentage of just .293.<\/p>\n

If McGuire doesn\u2019t make the Brewers out of spring training, he has no minor league options, so he would need to be designated for assignment or traded.<\/p>\n

The only non-Contreras catcher on the 40-man right now is former mega-prospect Jeferson Quero, who finished last season at Triple-A Nashville. You\u2019re all familiar with the Quero story, so I won\u2019t spend much time on it: Quero ranked in the top 40 of all three major prospect rankings heading into the 2024 season, but he suffered a torn labrum in the very first game of the 2024 season, which cost him the whole year.<\/p>\n

Crucially, it may also have cost him the weapon that set him apart as a catching prospect: his throwing arm. Quero was one of the best players in all of professional baseball at catching base stealers in 2023, but the early returns after Quero returned from his long injury journey last June were, at best, discouraging. At worst, it showed that the tool that was always the first thing mentioned in Quero scouting reports is no longer something that is going to help him.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s certainly a chance that with more time elapsed since the injury, Quero recovers some of his arm strength in 2026. And it\u2019s not like that was the only thing that people liked about him; scouting reports laud his receiving and his work with pitchers, and he projects as a capable, if not good, hitter.<\/p>\n

Still, Quero is unlikely to start the season as the team\u2019s backup catcher even if the Brewers think he is ready, because that\u2019s not how the Brewers act with their top prospects. Keeping him in the minor leagues for a month or two delays his service clock, which is something that Milwaukee has done with its other big prospects in recent years.<\/p>\n

If I were guessing who finishes the season as the Brewers\u2019 backup catcher, I might choose Quero, but I doubt we\u2019ll see him on Opening Day.<\/p>\n

Ram\u00f3n Rodr\u00edguez or Matt Wood<\/p>\n

Rodr\u00edguez and Wood are notable because they were on a list of Brewer minor leaguers invited to major league camp<\/a> recently. Wood, who turns 25 on the same day that McGuire turns 31, was a fourth-round pick in 2022 and has worked his way up to Double-A Biloxi, where he performed well at the plate in 2025.<\/p>\n

Rodr\u00edguez was drafted by the Dodgers way back in 2016 and caught on with the Brewers as a minor league free agent in 2024. He played just 21 games in 2025, but he raked for the Shuckers in those 21 games, in which he hit .359\/.457\/.484. Rodr\u00edguez is a career .262\/.335\/.380 hitter in nine minor league seasons and reached Triple-A when he was in Baltimore\u2019s system but has never made the majors.<\/p>\n

Neither Rodr\u00edguez or Wood likely factors into Milwaukee\u2019s plans at the major league level, at least for now. But they\u2019ll be working with the pitching staff during spring training, and one of them will likely start the season at Triple-A Nashville.<\/p>\n

Last season, Jorge Alfaro played 82 games with Triple-A Nashville, and Eric Haase played 19 after accepting an assignment there after the Brewers acquired Jansen at the trade deadline. Nick Kahle was another player who got some time behind the plate at the highest level of the Brewers\u2019 minor league system.<\/p>\n

Alfaro is gone: he signed a minor league deal with the Royals earlier this month. Haase, likewise, reportedly agreed to a minor league contract with San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. Kahle, as far as I can tell, is not under contract. Another player hypothetically in the mix is another guy with an early-May birthday, Darrien Miller, who is still in the Brewers\u2019 system; he was a ninth-round draft pick in 2019 and has played the entirety of his last two seasons at Double-A Biloxi. But his progress has stalled; at the plate, Miller can take a walk, but he can\u2019t do much else \u2014 he hit .192\/.381\/.329 last season and hasn\u2019t hit above .228 in a full-season league since graduating from Low-A in 2021.<\/p>\n

The names have changed, but I have long held the belief that Quero is going to be in Milwaukee as soon as the team is sure they\u2019ve delayed his clock. I thought at first that the logical \u201cfirst backup\u201d was Eric Haase, who has served in that role before and knows Milwaukee\u2019s pitchers, but McGuire makes a lot of sense here, too. My official prediction is that, assuming health all around, McGuire makes the Brewers out of spring training, and is designated for assignment (or traded, or both) sometime in May or June when Quero makes his major league debut.<\/p>\n

A few things could change that prediction, though: someone could get hurt; McGuire could continue hitting bombs like he did last year and prove himself a worthy, solid offensive option; or Quero could struggle in the minors.<\/p>\n

If Contreras gets hurt, the Brewers likely call up Quero and make him the everyday catcher, though he\u2019d likely split time with McGuire. If Quero or McGuire gets hurt, then the other is the backup. If Quero struggles, he likely just stays in the minors and McGuire continues as the backup. Hopefully everyone stays healthy and productive, and things work out for everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019re here to talk about the one thing on everybody\u2019s minds: who is going to be the Milwaukee…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2401],"tags":[5,136,843,59,38822,4280,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-545616","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-brewers","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-brewers","10":"tag-milwaukee","11":"tag-milwaukee-brewers","12":"tag-milwaukee-brewers-commentary-and-analysis","13":"tag-milwaukeebrewers","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115983345595094960","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}