FanGraphs Baseball

Brooks Brannon raised his prospect profile this season, and atypically he did so despite sliding down the defensive spectrum. Breaking out with the bat was the reason why. Now a first baseman after primarily wearing the tools of ignorance for his first four professional seasons, Brannon bashed 22 home runs while putting up a .280/.355/.560 slash line and a 133 wRC+ over 398 plate appearances with Double-A Portland. His slugging percentage led all qualified Eastern League hitters.

The positional change didn’t come as a surprise. As Brendan Gawlowski and Eric Longenhagen wrote when ranking him 29th when our 2026 Red Sox Top Prospects list came out in mid-May, Brannon “had been developed as a catcher throughout his career, though most scouts expected him to wind up at first base, which has finally come to pass.” With a caveat that strikeouts remain a concern — Brannon went on to finish the season with a 28.9% strikeout rate — our prospect analyst duo opined that he “could have a productive, bat-only prime.”

Again, Brannon broke out with the bat. Now ranked 22nd in the system with a 40 FV — not to mention a 70 grade for raw power — Boston’s ninth-round pick in the 2022 draft out of a Randleman, North Carolina high school has emerged as a prospect with more promise than he’d previously possessed as a bat-first backstop.

Brannon discussed his evolution, both positionally and as a hitter, in the final month of the regular season.

———

David Laurila: This is your fifth year in the system, yet you’re still just 22 years old. I have to admit I thought you were older than that.

Brooks Brannon: “I was a younger draft pick out of high school — I’d just turned 18 a month or two prior — so I’m blessed to have been in the org for quite awhile and still be on the younger side. But yes, I’m just 22.”

Laurila: Had you been drafted out of college, the numbers you’re putting up this year would draw a lot more attention than they are. With that in mind, what might your development path been like had you gone the college route?

Brannon: “It’s hard to say, because one thing the Red Sox are — and it took me awhile to appreciate this — is very analytical. The way they approach hitting is like blackjack almost. It’s, ‘This is what is expected to happen, so we’re going to live and die on this hill. Mathematically, this should happen.’ Air-pull being the optimal launch angle, focusing on hitting the ball hard in the air, making the right swing decisions and drawing walks to get on base… that’s what you want. I always prided myself on being a hitter, so it took time for me to understand what the most optimal way is to help the team win games.

“This past offseason was the first offseason where I really bought in to everything they were preaching. It has helped me tremendously. So, had I gone to college… you know, a lot of colleges are still kind of on the old-guard way of hitting. I don’t think I’d have had the growth I’ve had, even though it admittedly took awhile for me to realize what was optimal.”

Laurila: This year was a turning point for your career…

Brannon: “Yes. My first couple of years I had a lot of injuries, and then for a few seasons I wasn’t doing what I knew I could do. I knew that what I was doing wasn’t working, so something needed to change. Having conversations with our hitting coordinators and coaches, learning who moves like me — how people who have my skills and strengths play the game — and molding that into my game to the best of my ability… I mean, I couldn’t have been able to do that without their help.”

Laurila: Approach aside, there would have been mechanical changes, as well. Read the rest of this entry »

LOS ANGELES — On Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium, Blake Snell took the mound with his team down 2-0 in the NLCS and made one of the best postseason starts I’ve ever seen. For six scoreless innings, he was nearly unhittable. At one point, he set down 14 Brewers in a row, striking out nine of them. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about ALCS Game 2, nominate (13:52) the five Rays-iest players on the current Rays roster, discuss the Dodgers’ decision to start Shohei Ohtani in NLCS Game 3 (and the matchup between the Brewers and Blake Snell), react (57:00) to news about the Phillies’, Astros’, and (maybe?) Mariners’ managers, and pick (1:10:51) the likeliest 2026 non-playoff teams to be 2027 playoff teams and the likeliest 2026 playoff teams to be 2027 non-playoff teams.

Audio intro: Luke Lillard, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Jimmy Kramer, “Effectively Wild Theme”

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If you’re searching for a metaphor for how differently the 2026 NLCS has gone than last year’s version, look no further than Blake Snell. In 2025, the two-time Cy Young winner humbled Milwaukee in the series opener, allowing one hit over eight strong innings, a prelude to the drubbing the Dodgers put on the Brewers in a sweep. This year, Snell got the start in Game 3, attempting to keep his team in the series after two Milwaukee victories, but the Brewers proved far more formidable this time around. Last year’s series was all about dominant Los Angeles pitching. The current edition has been about back-and-forth games and a resilient Milwaukee offense, and Wednesday’s contest — which the Brewers ultimately won 6-2 to pull within one win of their first World Series appearance since 1982 — delivered on both counts.

In last year’s NLCS start, Snell faced the minimum, erasing the only Brewers baserunner with a double play. This time, his brush with perfection lasted all of one pitch. Snell eased a fastball down the middle to Jackson Chourio to start things off, and Chourio tattooed it, a line drive missile that screamed out to right field, landing in the Dodger Stadium seats before many of the fans did. (This being Los Angeles just after 5 PM local time, only about a quarter of the spectators had arrived.) Snell recovered to retire the next three batters in order, but the tone was set: This iteration of the Brewers wasn’t going to go meekly into the L.A. night.

Snell has been spectacular when available since joining the Dodgers, and he had it all working in the early innings of Game 3. His curveball fizzed with menace, he located his changeup near perfectly, and playoff adrenaline had him up a few ticks on his fastball, which turned an already-good pitch into a monster. He used the curveball to clip the bottom of the zone and the fastball to bully the top of it, a combination that Milwaukee hitters had few answers for over his first six innings of work.

Snell’s counterpart, Robert Gasser, didn’t have the same dominant stuff, but he too gave the opposing lineup fits. He managed as many strikeouts in his five innings of work as Snell recorded in the first inning. He let the leadoff runner reach in three of those five innings. The Dodgers racked up a pile of loud contact; when Gasser departed, seven of the eight hardest-hit balls of the game had come against him. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to our Open Game Thread for the NLCS games today. Chat with fellow readers as we watch the Brewers play the Dodgers! Only Members can participate, and unlike our usual staff Q&A chats, your messages will be posted immediately.

Our Member community is made up of thousands of incredibly knowledgable baseball fans, and we think this is a great way to follow a game with like-minded baseball enthusiasts. We might even have some FanGraphs Staff drop in and join the fun. Please be courteous to your fellow Members, or you may find your chat privileges revoked.

Direct link to application (please see job details below):

Senior Software Engineer (Baseball Systems)

Senior Software Engineer (Baseball Systems)

Milwaukee Brewers – Senior
Milwaukee, WI
Baseball Operations · Technology · Software Sales

Overview
The Senior Software Engineer will collaborate with the Baseball Systems team to assist in the development and maintenance of the club’s player information system. This position requires strong software development skills and experience, as well as a demonstrated ability for independent thought and the willingness to work within a team framework.

Core duties for this role include, but are not limited to:

• Coach and support engineers through solution design and implementation, serving as a technical advisor while providing constructive feedback and sharing performance observations with engineering leadership.
• Maintain hands-on technical ownership of critical systems, driving the design, development, and long-term sustainability of key departmental applications and platforms.
• Design, develop, and maintain high-quality, readable, and maintainable code that promotes consistency, scalability, and shared understanding across the Systems department.
• Evaluate, test, and integrate emerging tools, technologies, and frameworks to improve system performance, development efficiency, and support for baseball operations and internal platforms.

The ideal candidate will have experience across the full web stack. They will have a bachelor’s degree (B. A.) in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field from four-year college or university; and five years related experience and/or training; or equivalent combination of education and experience. Hands-on experience in baseball (team, league, or related organization) strongly preferred. Experience utilizing Large Language Models.

Our Team
Baseball Systems is the software backbone of Baseball Operations. We provide data and decision-making tools for analysts, coaches, and front office personnel to help win a World Series. Our department consists of a team of data engineers and a team of software engineers who work across all different aspects of Baseball Operations providing support and tools relevant to each group. We work directly with stakeholders in every department of Baseball Operations to ensure every project we work on drives value to the organization and helps us win more games on the field. We help drive technical innovation to find new ways to solve baseball problems.

Our Pitch
You come here to make a difference. We are a purpose-led organization, focused on building an inclusive and engaging culture that fosters excellence, collaboration, and ingenuity. We strive to be a model employer and cultivator of talent, empowering our teams to drive innovation through the inclusion of diverse thoughts, ideas, and perspectives. We operate at the highest standard of excellence, investing in the development of our staff across all levels and embracing differences through a culture of respect and understanding.

We are proud to offer a highly competitive perks and benefits package including:

• Exceptional health and dental rates, and fully covered vision package
• 401(K) match and an additional annual contribution from the Club
• Unlimited vacation time
• Paid parental leave
• Collaborative recognition program and incentives
• Leadership development programming
• Online educational platform for personal and professional development
• Business Resource Groups
• Paid time off for volunteering
• Inclusive training and leadership development opportunities aligned with Club values
• Brewers Home Game tickets, promotional giveaways and other discounts!

For more information about our Crew, other benefits and insight into our Club culture please visit our Careers Page.

To Apply
To apply, please follow this link.

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Milwaukee Brewers.

When you manage a big league ballclub, life is unfair. You’re always one bad season, maybe just one really bad month, from getting fired. Even when you’re doing a good job, a vocal contingent of your fellow citizens is likely still agitating for your ouster, mostly because they just kind of like the way they sound when they’re agitating for someone to lose their livelihood. Writers you’ve known for years will one day fire up their laptops and pen a thousand words about why you no longer have what it takes. And on top of all that unrelenting judgment, whenever you’re out there doing your job during the game, a camera is trained directly on your face. Any time you react to what you see, you’re likely to wind up on television, often in slow motion, slamming your hand in frustration or launching an F-bomb.

For that reason, managers tend to at least try to maintain a stoic front. Some are better than others, but I’ve always enjoyed watching Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy in particular. He seems to feel the game more than most managers. He’s constantly checking his notes, or scribbling more notes, or retreating a few steps into the tunnel that feeds into the dugout to think things through. Also, he tends to snack a lot. But on Monday night, as the Brewers took care of business against the Dodgers in Game 2 of the NLCS, I noticed that one emotion seemed to show as clear as day on Murphy’s face every time the camera found him. All night, it seemed to me, no matter how well things were going on the field, Murphy looked pissed off. Read the rest of this entry »

During the regular season, Tampa Bay’s defense ranked fifth in runs scored, while Cleveland’s offense ranked 24th in runs allowed. After giving up seven runs to the Guardians in Game 1, the Rays entered Game 2 at risk of dropping both games at their home ballpark in Florida.

So I did my best to lay to rest
All of the bodies that have ever been on my body
And in my mind, they sink into the swamp

Techniques for moving on from a humbling loss vary from person to person, but whether the Rays took their nightmarish Game 1 and visualized it as gator food or chose to hit the reset button in some other way, they bounced back with a 3-1 win in Game 2.

Rookie Parker Messick got the start for the Guardians on Tuesday. After posting a 67 ERA- over 186 1/3 innings during the regular season, Messick made two starts during the divisional round. The lefty allowed two earned runs in both outings, but his command was shakier his second time out and he was pulled after 2 1/3 innings in which he walked four batters and threw 65 pitches. In his first ALCS appearance, though, Messick bested both of his prior postseason starts by pitching five innings and striking out three while allowing zero runs. Well, zero earned runs. Read the rest of this entry »

Boston Smith emerged as a prospect to watch this year. Notably, he did so while spending the latter portion of the campaign with his third organization in just his second professional season. Selected in the sixth round of the 2025 draft out of Wright State University by the Washington Nationals, Smith was subsequently swapped to the White Sox the following March in exchange for Curtis Mead, then dealt from Chicago to Seattle at this summer’s trade deadline. The Mariners acquired the 23-year-old left-handed-hitting catcher, along with Seranthony Domínguez and Nolan Jones, in exchange for Luis Castillo.

Smith’s 2026 performance was quite promising. Playing at three levels, primarily High-A and Double-A — he also appeared in eight games in Low-A — Smith slammed 31 home runs while slashing .274/.424/.566 with a 158 wRC+ over 493 plate appearances. Unranked when our White Sox Top Prospects list came out prior to the season, he is now ranked 13th in the Mariners system with a 40 FV.

In our Arizona Fall League preview — Smith is currently suiting up for the Peoria Javelinas — Eric Longenhagen described the Dayton, Ohio native as “a pull-oriented catcher” who “isn’t a good defender yet.” Our lead prospect analyst also offered an interesting comp, pointing to how “that had been true for Liam Hicks, who as a prospect was likewise “a small school, undersized guy who had outlier pull data.”

Smith discussed his player profile, as well as what it was like to catch one of baseball’s top pitching prospects upon joining a new organization, during the first week of the AFL season.

———

David Laurila: You caught Kade Anderson almost immediately after coming over in the trade. What was that experience like?

Boston Smith: “I don’t get too nervous anymore, but I was very nervous to catch him. I obviously knew who he was through college, he was the third-overall pick [in 2025], and then there was the year he was having. So yeah, I was nervous. I wanted to be trustworthy and help him succeed, not be catching him for the first time and having no idea what to do if all of a sudden he started struggling.”

Laurila: That didn’t happen. Looking at the game log, he pitched very well.

Smith: “Yes, and he was by far one of the most mature human beings I’ve ever been around. He was very generous, very helpful, helping me be calm before the game. He even brought me waters. Then, after the outing, the next day, talking about it.

“When he got the call to The Show — I had only known him for two weeks — he hugged me and said, ‘Hey man, thanks for everything you did for me,’ You just don’t see human beings like that too often, especially ones who are so talented. He’s a big league human being as well as a big league pitcher. It was really, really special to me to be able to catch him and know that I was a part of his minor league career for that little bit.”

Laurila: Those qualities aside, what was it like to he behind the plate for him? Have you ever caught anyone who approximates his combination of moxie and stuff? Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the end of the all-AL-Central ALDS, what the future holds for the White Sox, the ALCS opener, the Brewers’ 2-0 NLCS lead, the contrast between postseason Shohei Ohtani and José Ramírez, the difference between the Rays and Guardians, and more, plus postscript follow-ups.

Audio intro: Ian Phillips, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Harold Walker, “Effectively Wild Theme”

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