MILWAUKEE -- Time will tell where baseball takes Brewers fourth-round Draft pick Marco Dinges, but it doesn’t take a scout to know one thing.

Toughness won’t be a problem.

The Brewers drafted Dinges as a catcher out of Florida State University on Day 2 of the MLB Draft on Monday after an extensive dive into his medical background. He was hospitalized for just shy of six weeks last year with hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), which, according to the National Institutes of Health, is a rare and devastating immune deficiency disorder that can result in multiple organ failure and death.

For 43 days in two hospitals -- Dinges wore No. 43 at Florida State this season for that reason, his family told the Tallahassee Democrat -- he battled a terrifyingly high fever. But a little more than a year later, after a big season with the bat at Florida State, Dinges has a chance to play professional baseball.

"[My illness] gave me a lot of motivation, a lot of appreciation for the game for sure,” Dinges said last month to The Osceola, which covers FSU athletics. “You show up thankful to be at practice every day, you show up thankful to be in front of a great group of guys and very thankful to just play the sport, obviously. Because you never knew -- or at least I didn't know -- if tomorrow I would wake up.”

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Asked what a scout can learn about a player from hearing a story like that, vice president of domestic scouting Tod Johnson said, “He’s tough.”

Dinges caught the eye of Brewers area scout Ketchum Marsh more than a year ago at Tallahassee Community College. The Brewers didn’t get to see much because of Dinges’ illness, but after he recovered and transferred to Florida State, Brewers national scout Doug Reynolds met him at the Seminoles’ scout day.

Reynolds knew next to nothing about the player, other than the fact another Brewers scout liked him.

“Your first thought is, ‘Well, he’s so far behind,’” Reynolds said. “But the meeting itself, the kid has something about him that you see pretty quick. It’s like, ‘I don’t know if he can play, but I like him.’”

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So, the Brewers did their work to get to know Dinges as a player, checking in with current and former coaches and watching the player play. He didn’t catch at FSU, but he did hit, helping Florida State reach the College World Series in 2024 with a .323/.415/.583 slash line and 15 home runs in 288 plate appearances.

Some scouting services suggest Dinges’ future could be in the outfield or first base, but the Brewers announced him as a catcher. They have a history of giving a shot to players with an interest in sticking behind the plate.

“He hasn’t caught a ton, but we really like his tools to catch and he wants to do it,” Johnson said.

“He just needs time in the saddle. I know he has the tools to catch, he just hasn’t had the opportunity,” Reynolds said. “I’m excited about this player.”

The Brewers spent the rest of Draft Day 2 acquiring pitchers for Dinges to catch in the coming years. After taking a pair of high school pitchers with the final two of four selections on Day 1, seven of the eight picks on Monday were arms.

The first five came from four-year colleges, which could perhaps lead to some pool savings to sign some or all of the high school picks away from college commitments. The two high school arms drafted at the end of Day 2 were Griffin Tobias, a 6-foot righty from Lake Central High School in St. John, Ind., and Ethan Dorchies, a 6-foot-5, 17-year-old from Cary-Grove High School in Cary, Ill.

Dorchies comes from the same school that produced Pirates pitcher Quinn Priester, who just worked against the Brewers at American Family Field last week. And Tobias was a high school teammate of one of Milwaukee’s Draft picks last year, 15th-rounder Josh Adamczewski.

“[Tobias] has not been pitching that long. This guy played shortstop last year and Adamczewski played third,” Johnson said. “So that tells you something about the athlete here, and the baseball player. He has come on a lot in the last 6-9 months of pitching more frequently, so we see his stuff has ticked up pretty significantly from last summer.”