Competitive fire has Brown on cusp of Majors

PHOENIX -- The Brewers’ top pitching prospect doesn’t mince words when talking about his springboard season into professional baseball.

“Awful,” Zack Brown said.

And if that wasn’t clear enough, Brown has more to say, as if he’s mentally rehashing that junior season at the University of Kentucky.

“So awful,” he said. “If you were to go back and look at my 14 starts, I would say I had 10 different deliveries. Every week, I was changing something.”

That was 2016. Brown was 2-11 with a 6.08 ERA for the Wildcats. He would throw 97 mph but get shelled. Coaches would collectively find something and suggest a fix. Then he would get shelled again. The process would repeat.

Now, it’s 2019. And a Major League manager is talking about Brown breaking into the big leagues.

“He’s in the picture for us at some point during the season, for sure,” Milwaukee skipper Craig Counsell said.

How did Brown get from there to here? With the benefit of hindsight and some lessons learned over parts of three years of pro ball, he has an idea of what happened.

“It was a never-ending cycle. But ultimately, I’m throwing the pitch. It’s my career,” Brown said. “I just never really grasped that idea. ‘This is me, and I don’t care who’s telling me what to do. At the end of the day, I want to compete.’”

And there’s the magic word, the one you hear again and again from teammates and coaches and club officials about the 24-year-old right-hander.

He competes.

***

Brown stands at his locker in his first big league Spring Training and tells a baseball origin story similar to so many of the other men in the room. It starts with an older brother, Tyler, who was three years Zack’s senior and playing for a youth baseball team that found itself short a fielder one day.

Zack jumped in. He was 3.

Despite that early start, Brown describes himself as a late bloomer who didn’t draw the attention of colleges and scouts until his senior year of high school in Seymour, Ind., when he converted from shortstop to pitcher and added height and bulk.

“I think my first driver’s permit said 5-foot-7, 135 pounds,” Brown said. “I was a tiny guy.”

He discovered the weight room and a long-toss program. Brown had always thrown hard for his size, but suddenly, as his high school career came to a close, he actually had some size. He had a good coach, too; Jeremy Richey was a graduate of Seymour High School himself, who went on to pitch in college.

And Brown had that competitive nature baked into his psyche.

“He was that way in everything,” Richey said. “It didn’t matter if it was in school. It didn’t matter if it was on the baseball field. It didn’t matter if it’s when he’s home in the offseason and playing darts with my son.

“He is a competitor, and that is what has allowed him to overcome those obstacles.”

For the record, Richey’s son, Braden, is 12 years old.

“No mercy at all,” Richey said with a laugh.

They still talk and text often, about everything from Brown’s decision to pass on pro ball after the Cubs made him a 38th-round Draft pick in 2013 to the success he’s had since going pro with the Brewers. Every day Brown is scheduled to take the mound, Richey sends a text with some words of encouragement, a quote or a motivational quip.

Those texts always end the same: “Good luck. Kick their a--.”

***

Milwaukee saw beyond the college stats and made Brown a fifth-round pick in 2016, the same Draft that netted Corey Ray (first round), Lucas Erceg (second round), Corbin Burnes (fourth round) and Payton Henry (sixth round). Less than three years later, all of those players are in big league camp with Brown.

Sometimes, Brown and his old coach talk about the turnaround from those tough days on the mound in college.

“I was just super down on myself,” Brown said. “I wanted to be confident, but I couldn’t get that last week out of my head. It was 14 starts and I think I had 11 losses, two wins and one no-decision. It was throwing more than pitching.”

Brown knew his stock was sliding and plucked a theoretical signing bonus -- $400,000 -- out of thin air in the run-up to the Draft. If he fell below that slot value, he’d go back to Kentucky for his senior season.

The Brewers selected him 141st overall and signed Brown for slot value: $401,700. One pick later, the slot value would have fallen to $398,000, and Brown might have gone back to school. He believes it was meant to be.

Milwaukee sent him to Rookie-level Helena and Brown gave up three earned runs on three hits and a walk in a one-out debut that included -- because why not? -- a lightning delay. He expected the cycle of tips and fixes to begin again.

Only it didn’t. The Brewers let him just pitch. After his third outing, which saw him allow five runs over three innings, Brown was called into manager Nestor Corredor’s office for what he thought would be a demotion to the Arizona League. Instead, it was a promotion to Class A Wisconsin.

“It was all a surprise,” Brown said. “They let me go.”

It was a huge change.

Brown has long believed that the Brewers did a quick analysis of his personality and came to the conclusion that he required a hands-off approach. Perhaps his scout, Jeff Simpson, who also covered the Brewers’ first-round pick that year, Ray, and ninth-rounder Trey York, sent word.

But no, farm director Tom Flanagan said. That’s just the organization’s philosophy.

“Most pitchers coming in, unless we think there’s something we need to correct as a medical or injury, we just let them play,” Flanagan said. “Position players, too. That first year out, it’s pretty much hands off. They obviously had the skills to get drafted, and going into pro ball is a big enough adjustment in itself. Hey, let them pitch or hit. In instructional league, if there’s anything we want to do, that’s when we’ll do it.

“Regarding his numbers, credit to our scouts. Sometimes that will scare a guy off, like, ‘What am I missing here? These numbers aren’t very good.’ Obviously, they looked past that and looked at the stuff and got to know him.”

That thinking paid off.

Through two and a half professional seasons, Brown owns a 2.97 ERA. Last season at Double-A Biloxi, he went 9-1 with a Southern League-best 2.44 ERA over 22 appearances and was named Milwaukee’s Minor League Pitcher of the Year. The award's predecessors, Burnes in 2017 and Brandon Woodruff in 2016, cracked the Majors the following year.

Brown hopes to do the same, and he has an asset in new Brewers pitching coach Chris Hook. It was Hook, as the organization’s roving pitching coordinator, who brought data to Brown early last season about his curveball and instituted some changes that sparked his breakthrough season.

“He attacks hitters and he knows what he’s working with,” said Adrian Houser, one of Brown’s former Minor League teammates. “And he loves getting out there and doing it. I think that showed last year.”

Brown is scheduled to pitch again for the Brewers in Saturday’s split-squad game against the A’s in Mesa, Ariz. Minor League camp opens in earnest next week, so his first big league camp could be coming to an end soon.

“It’s been an awesome three years since I got drafted,” he said. “All of it is going to help me down the road. I know how to handle failure.”