This rookie is already a clubhouse favorite

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MILWAUKEE -- Rookie outfielder Joey Wiemer has a new nickname in the clubhouse. Actually, he has two. There’s an internal debate about whether “The Labrador” or “The Golden Retriever” is the better fit.

Watch Wiemer endlessly bounce around the clubhouse and the field, with blonde hair spilling out the back of his cap, and it’s evident that either moniker is apt.

“You let either one of them go,” quipped one teammate, referring not to a lab or a retriever, but to Wiemer or a puppy, “and you know they’re coming back with a ball of some kind.”

Wiemer led the Brewers with six home runs in June, ranked second to Christian Yelich with a 127 wRC+ and also second to Yelich at 1.0 fWAR for the month, a figure bolstered by his high-energy defense in center field.

That defense allowed Wiemer to stick in the everyday lineup even through stretches when he wasn’t hitting. As manager Craig Counsell put it, “You play a three-game series, and he’s going to do something on some side of the ball that’s going to make the other team take notice. In the long run, that will stand out.”

When the Brewers picked Wiemer from the University of Cincinnati in the fourth round of the shortened 2020 Draft, his comp was former big league outfielder Hunter Pence. Both players are lean (though Wiemer has since filled out), long-limbed and somewhat unconventional.

“You want him to turn into that kind of a career,” Counsell said. “That was an incredible career. I think there are some differences. Hunter Pence ended up being such a good hitter and he wasn’t known as [having] the ceiling of a defender that Joey is. There’s little difference from that perspective. But they both stand out for the way they physically carry themselves on the field. They have unique characteristics that you don’t see in many players.”