{"id":566568,"date":"2026-02-11T17:35:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T17:35:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/566568\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T17:35:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T17:35:25","slug":"could-brandon-sproat-be-the-next-pitching-lab-success-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/566568\/","title":{"rendered":"Could Brandon Sproat be the next \u201cpitching lab\u201d success story?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Milwaukee\u2019s pitching development staff has a reputation around the league as a \u201cpitching lab.\u201d As an organization, the Brewers have done a great job of developing pitchers with talent who were either unheralded or underperformed previously. In 2024, Tobias Myers turned into arguably the Brewers\u2019 best starting pitcher. In 2025, Quinn Priester didn\u2019t lose a game for literal months on end.<\/p>\n

In 2026, I think recent acquisition Brandon Sproat is the best bet to follow this pattern.<\/p>\n

Coming out of the University of Florida, Sproat was regarded \u2014 per Baseball America \u2014 \u201cas an athletic righthander with arm speed who emphasized his fastball and changeup,\u201d although his \u201cshaky control induced reliever risk.\u201d Despite the \u201crisk,\u201d he was drafted in the second round of the 2024 draft by the Mets and initially looked to be an amazing find. Sproat breezed through the lower minors and arrived in Triple-A before the end of his first professional season.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, he hit a wall there. The right-hander started seven games in 2024 for the Syracuse Mets, posting a 7.53 ERA. His peripherals weren\u2019t great, either. Sproat allowed 2.2 home runs and 11.3 hits per nine innings, both more than double his average in Double-A. He allowed an opponent slugging percentage of .574. Sproat struck out 11 batters per nine innings in both High-A and Double-A, but that number dipped all the way down to 6.59 in Triple-A. Through his first 22 starts with Syracuse (seven in 2024 and 15 in 2025), Sproat sported a pretty brutal 6.45 ERA.<\/p>\n

And then, just like that, he figured things out. Starting in July 2025, Sproat started shoving like he had been in the lower minors. Through his last 11 starts in 2025, he recorded a 2.44 ERA while striking out batters a whopping 30% of the time.<\/p>\n

Sproat was rewarded for his efforts with a September call-up, making his major-league debut just before his 25th birthday. He didn\u2019t pitch incredibly well during his four appearances with the Mets but didn\u2019t embarrass himself either. I\u2019m inclined to agree with Baseball America, which said in their scouting report on Sproat that he \u201chas all the ingredients to be a No. 4 starter or better, and he\u2019s ready to assume that role in 2026.\u201d He has talent to spare, with four pitches (a mid-80s sweeper, a high-70s curveball, a slider, and a 94-96 mph sinker) that all have the potential to be plus pitches at the major league level.<\/p>\n

So, how can the Brewers\u2019 pitching lab get the most out of Sproat?<\/p>\n

Sproat has always been talented, but his success down the stretch came as a result of developing a more effective pitch mix. Milwaukee has had a ton of success with modifying and developing pitch selection, and Sproat has as much to work with as any pitcher the Brewers have had in recent years.<\/p>\n

Sproat has used a combination of six different pitches \u2014 a sweeper, curveball, changeup, slider, fastball, and sinker \u2014 since becoming a member of the Mets organization. Below is his pitch chart over his first four career starts. As shown below, Sproat threw his sinker nearly twice as often as any other pitch. He deployed his sweeper, curveball, fastball, and changeup at roughly equal rates while barely using his slider. It\u2019s an extremely limited sample size, but it does show us what the Mets thought an ideal pitch mix would be for Sproat.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

His sinker was hit harder than any other pitch during his four starts in New York, even after accounting for higher volume. Sproat gave up a hit on nine of the 99, or 9.1%, of the sinkers that he threw, with three of those hits going for extra bases. His changeup (43 pitches, two hits) and sweeper (55 pitches, one hit) were each used less frequently than his sinker but proved very effective when utilized. Brewer Fanatic\u2019s Jake McKibbin<\/a> showed that the sinker and sweeper were ineffective against lefties, describing them as pretty much \u201cneutralized.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sproat was only throwing his fastball 32% of the time, even in July. He gets solid velocity on his fastball, which can occasionally touch triple digits, but due to below-average shape (a lack of induced vertical break) his fastball hasn\u2019t exactly been a put-out pitch thus far. Baseball America called it \u201cpedestrian.\u201d<\/p>\n

The weird thing is that Sproat\u2019s pitch chart with the Mets is almost the exact opposite of what it had been a year prior. Per a 2024 scouting report<\/a>, Sproat\u2019s best pitches were his fastball and his slider, the two pitches he threw the least as a Met. The fact that he only threw his four seamer 14% of the time in the big leagues probably doesn\u2019t even mean it\u2019s not a good pitch \u2014 it just means that without a good shape, it can\u2019t be heavily featured without giving up hard contact. His fastball numbers were good as a Met, which may have because Sproat was reportedly able to slightly alter its shape<\/a> sometime around\u2026 July.<\/p>\n

Maybe the fastball is best as an ancillary offering, but I think Milwaukee sees a legitimate plus fastball waiting to be unlocked. Here\u2019s former Brewer Josh Hader on the team\u2019s pitching lab<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cWith (pitching coaches) digging more into the lab, they\u2019re starting to learn how pitches should spin to get optimal drop or movement. That\u2019s one of the things we\u2019ve been looking into with TrackMan, seeing how your ball rotates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pretty much every scouting report on Sproat mentions that his fastball has a lot of potential but could use some work to induce further vertical break. That is exactly what the Brewers do. I\u2019d bet that the Brewers will play with Sproat\u2019s fastball until they find the right shape. Trevor Megill and Nick Mears both got hit around before arriving in Milwaukee, but both thrived once they leaned on their fastballs.<\/p>\n

In a world where the Brewers are able to unlock his fastball, his ceiling seems to suddenly raise. Even if he doesn\u2019t throw his fastball more than 30-35% of the time, he also has a few other pitches that are worth utilizing.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons Sproat improved in July, per Baseball America, was that he began to throw changeups a lot more. His changeup recorded a 26% swinging-strike rate and a 71% groundball rate, with Baseball America noting that the pitch was \u201cparamount\u201d to his recent success. After his fastball, his changeup was his second-most used pitch<\/a> against left-handed hitters in Triple-A. His curveball \u2014 which had a 41% whiff rate and a 32% chase rate in July \u2014 was the third-most frequently used.<\/p>\n

For the sake of argument, let\u2019s say the Brewers can\u2019t get the sweeper and sinker \u2014 a pitch the Mets clearly believed in \u2014 to play better against left-handed hitters. If the Brewers can unlock his fastball, he\u2019d have four pitches (fastball, curveball, slider, and changeup) that should all play well against lefties.<\/p>\n

Can Sproat be the next Brewers pitching success story? Answer that for yourself. Sproat is an extremely talented prospect, but he\u2019s still figuring out how to pitch to his strengths and fully harness his stuff. He couldn\u2019t have come to a better organization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Milwaukee\u2019s pitching development staff has a reputation around the league as a \u201cpitching lab.\u201d As an organization, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2401],"tags":[5,136,843,59,38822,39030,4280,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-566568","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-milwaukee-brewers-prospects-minor-leagues","14":"tag-milwaukeebrewers","15":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116053208788138803","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566568","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=566568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}