'Confident' Small ready to contribute 

PHOENIX – There were no fans at the Brewers’ alternate training site last summer. Heck, on some days there were only a handful of position players.

And yet, everyone found ways to keep things competitive. Jake McKinley, the Brewers' coach running the camp, made everything a contest. Some days, instead of Team A vs. Team B it was pitchers vs. hitters, with points awarded for strikeouts or batted balls over 100 mph. Other days, when there were enough hitters on hand, teams played a scrimmage beginning with the ninth inning of a tight game. Sometimes there was a $10 Chipotle gift card -- a veritable pot of gold for a baseball player (just ask Christian Yelich) -- for the winner of a skills contest. McKinley and the other coaches conceived score ideas to get competitive juices flowing, some of which worked, and others which bombed.

For hyper-competitive Brewers pitching prospect Ethan Small, it was just what he needed.

“It’s tough, because one of the best things about this game is always going up against somebody else and competing,” Small, ranked Milwaukee’s top pitching prospect by MLB Pipeline and No. 3 overall, said. “One thing is for sure, it kind of gets a little repetitive when you’re just doing the same thing day in and day out, so you’ve got to really make sure you’re locked in and focused on your development.

“One thing I’m really happy about is, hopefully, this year we’ll have a full season and we get to play against other people.”

Small will not make the Brewers’ Opening Day roster, but he has a chance to pitch in the big leagues later in the year as Milwaukee and other clubs navigate the jump to a 162-game schedule. That’s not our projection, it comes from manager Craig Counsell, who mentioned Small and fellow left-hander Aaron Ashby as prospects who have yet to pitch above Class A, yet could potentially help in the Majors in 2021.

So, it was vital for the club to push those prospects’ development in 2020, even when there was no Minor League season. Small focused on some modest goals.

One, sharpen his slider.

Small was a three-pitch pitcher at Mississippi State, where he overcame Tommy John surgery to become one of college baseball’s most accomplished pitchers in one of its most competitive conferences. His fastball didn’t light up radar guns -- 88-92 mph was the pre-Draft scouting report -- but it played up thanks to a spin efficiency nearing 100 percent that created the rising effect pitchers covet, and Small’s long extension. His changeup was a plus pitch. He also threw a curveball.

In Appleton, Small focused on his slider.

“I would say the biggest thing from last year is I came in really wanting to develop a fourth pitch, and that was the slider,” he said. “From where it was last year at this time to this year is a pretty drastic difference, and I’m pretty happy with where that’s going. I would say that’s probably the biggest thing.”

Two, get Tyrone Taylor out.

Every pitcher has that pesky hitter who always seems to give him trouble. For Small in '20 it was right-handed-hitting outfielder Taylor, the unofficial MVP of Camp Appleton, who performed so well he earned a callup to the big leagues. Given the strange circumstances of playing professional baseball amid a global pandemic, Small’s trouble with Taylor was a significant problem. Small had to face him day after day after day.

“It felt like he was hitting .600 when he was there and it felt like even when you got him out, he was hitting the ball hard somewhere,” Small said. “I think a lot of us joked about, ‘How do we get this guy out?’”

In a way, it was a positive.

“I think that’s probably one of the best things about the alternate site, because up until that point minus maybe two innings in Spring Training I hadn’t really faced that level of hitter yet,” Small said. “Sometimes you have to face them -- especially in Appleton -- twice in the same inning and you’re like, ‘Well, how do I do this?’”

Small’s mature approach to the matter impressed McKinley. But it didn’t surprise him.

McKinley was the Brewers’ roving pitching coordinator in 2019, and he happened to be in Milwaukee when Small came through town to sign his contract.

“I was one of the first people who met him,” McKinley said. “We were in the dugout chatting and you could just see this confidence spewing off of this kid. He’s in a Major League dugout and he’s unfazed. The moment has never seemed too big to him.”

McKinley got the sense that Small enjoyed a lot of autonomy at Mississippi State to be himself as a pitcher -- the internet is teeming with videos of Small’s strikeout strut -- and the Brewers found him mature and intelligent, so they adopted a similar strategy.

“For somebody to have the confidence to enter this arena and not change who they are, just be totally, organically, himself, I think it speaks to his confident nature,” McKinley said. “It’s a really tough needle to thread, where you’re trying to be hands-off and let this guy be what makes him good. [In 2020] we saw his slider get better, we saw his changeup get a little bit better. When you get a guy with that kind of talent, you want him to drive the bus.”

Small is eager to get the competitive juices flowing again, but he must be patient.

The Minor League seasons do not begin until May. That’s why the Brewers have yet to begin stretching him out as a starter.

“I really don’t want to try to get too caught up in [thinking about the Majors] because the whole thing about me is I’ve got to stick with the process, continue to get better and, really, it’s just the day-to-day grind of all the stuff that goes on behind the scenes for me,” Small said. “So, I’m just going to keep trying to focus on that. Obviously, the big leagues are the goal.”