{"id":749915,"date":"2026-07-12T17:00:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T17:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/749915\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T17:00:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T17:00:22","slug":"pros-cons-of-milwaukee-brewers-picking-clemsons-aidan-knaak-in-2026-mlb-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/749915\/","title":{"rendered":"Pros, cons of Milwaukee Brewers picking Clemson’s Aidan Knaak in 2026 MLB Draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clemson baseball<\/a> ace pitcher Aidan Knaak<\/a> was selected No. 163 overall by the Milwaukee Brewers<\/a> in the fifth round of the 2026 MLB Draft<\/a> on July 11.<\/p>\n

The pick has a $425,400 slot value.<\/p>\n

He was rated as MLB.com’s No. 210 prospect entering the draft.<\/p>\n

Here’s what Knaak will bring to the Brewers’ organization.<\/p>\n

What Aidan Knaak brings to Milwaukee Brewers 2026 MLB Draft<\/p>\n

Knaak, 21, is a right-handed pitcher who served as Clemson’s ace in 2025 and 2026. He is the first Clemson pitcher to earn first-team All-ACC honors and the first to have 100 strikeouts in each of his first two seasons. Knaak became the seventh player in school history to reach 300 career strikeouts this season.<\/p>\n

His pitching arsenal consists of a 91-93 mph fastball, a changeup that varies between the 70s and mid 80s, a mid-80s slider and a low-80s curveball.<\/p>\n

Aidan Knaak highlights, strengths, weaknesses at Clemson<\/p>\n

Knaak rarely struggled in his first two seasons, compiling a 14-2 record in 2024 and 2025. His off-speed pitch caused plenty of swings and misses and that helped him enter 2026 as a top 100 draft prospect, according to MLB.com’s rankings.<\/p>\n

However, he regressed in 2026. Knaak had a career-worst 5.81 ERA, allowed a career-high 11 home runs and struck out a career-low 88 batters. Opponents took advantage of his strike-throwing with Knaak allowing a career-high .292 batting average.<\/p>\n

Still, if he can regain his freshman and sophomore form, Knaak will be an asset for teams with improved delivery and contorl.<\/p>\n

Aidan Knaak stats<\/p>\n

Here’s how Knaak performed in his Clemson career over three seasons:<\/p>\n

306 strikeouts in 231 innings<\/p>\n

Derrian Carter covers Clemson athletics for The Greenville News and the USA TODAY Network. Email him at DCarter@usatodayco.com<\/a> and follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @DerrianCarter00<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Milwaukee Brewers pick Clemson’s Aidan Knaak in 2026 MLB Draft<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Clemson baseball ace pitcher Aidan Knaak was selected No. 163 overall by the Milwaukee Brewers in the fifth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2401],"tags":[3283,5,136,4547,4972,92973,843,59,4280,4],"class_list":["post-749915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-milwaukee-brewers","tag-aidan-knaak","tag-baseball","tag-brewers","tag-clemson","tag-clemson-baseball","tag-knaak","tag-milwaukee","tag-milwaukee-brewers","tag-milwaukeebrewers","tag-mlb"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116908079416746540","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749915","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=749915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}