Milwaukee Brewers: Brett Phillips Clicking This Season
By Jason Burke
The Milwaukee Brewers have been wheeling and dealing over the past couple seasons in order to restock their farm system with the hope of building a winner for the near future. One of those trade acquisitions, Brett Phillips, is having an extremely productive season in Triple-A.
Back when I was writing exclusively about the Houston Astros, Brett Phillips was easily one of the top prospects that everyone rooted for and wished success upon. He has a cannon of an arm, good speed, actually goes by the name Maverick and by now you’ve likely heard his laugh. He’s an all-around good dude.
Phillips came over to the Milwaukee Brewers in the Carlos Gomez deal back in 2015 along with current big league outfielder Domingo Santana, the currently injured Adrian Houser, and number two prospect (per Baseball America) Josh Hader. The Astros also received Mike “home run” Fiers in the deal, though his status in the rotation this season is now questionable with the emergence of strikeout machine Brad Peacock.
The amount of talent that the Brewers got in that deal could turn out to make it extremely lopsided in their favor, even though the scales are already starting to tip in their direction given the lack of production that Gomez provided, ultimately leading to his release in August of last season.
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When he was traded to Milwaukee, Maverick had already been bumped up from Hi-A where he started the 2015 season, to Double-A Corpus Christi. After the trade, he finished out the season with the Brewers’ Double-A affiliate, though he went from batting .321 with the Astros to just .250 with the Brewers. The bigger concern was that he tallied all of one home run in a combined 54 games at the level after launching 15 in 66 games in the California League.
Last season Phillips started in Double-A Biloxi and was likely due for a promotion at some point, but the struggles continued as he hit .229 with a .332 OBP, 16 homers and 12 stolen bases. The home run total was a career-high, but his batting average and 113 wRC+ were both career lows. He also led the Southern League in strikeouts with 154 last season, which was uncharacteristic of him.
None of this seemed like the player that Baseball America (57), MLB Pipeline (32) and Baseball Prospectus (61) deemed a top 100 prospect (to wildly varying degrees) before the start of the 2016 season. Only BP kept him as a top-100 prospect heading into this season, ranking him at number 75.
After being promoted to Triple-A to start the year, Phillips is back on track. He has drilled 11 bombs with the Sky Sox, his wRC+ is up to 143 and he’s batting .297 with a .366 OBP, all of which rank among the leaders in the Pacific Coast League. The one caveat is that his strikeout rate hasn’t gotten better this season, as he ranks third in total strikeouts behind Franklin Barreto, the A’s top prospect, and A.J. Reed, the once upon a time savior at first for the Astros. His BABIP is also a bit high at .388, but speedier players tend to have higher BABIP totals, so that could be all that’s happening here.
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With Keon Broxton showing flashes in center, Domingo Santana putting up solid offensive numbers while manning right and Ryan Braun the team’s biggest trade chip, Phillips could have a spot on the roster later this summer–if top prospect Lewis Brinson doesn’t beat him to the punch.