Brown making a name for himself in minors
One thing you can’t accuse Zack Brown of is being a poor sport.
Sharing the same name (although spelled slightly differently) as the lead singer and founder of the Grammy Award-winning Zac Brown Band, the Milwaukee Brewers’ minorleague pitching prospect has laughed off pretty much every reference and wisecrack directed his way the years.
And he’s plenty.
“Just as much as you’d imagine,” Brown said recently. “Every new teacher or professor I had, that was always an easy one for them the first day of school, a nice icebreaker for them. I know in A ball and I’d go on the road and start warming up in the first inning, they’d play ‘Chicken Fried’ or some-
heard thing.
“At this point it doesn’t bother me too much. It’s like, ‘Come on, there’s better jokes out there.’ I get grief for it all the time, but I’ve become accustomed to it, for sure.”
While the jokes are sure to continue, the good news for Brown is that he’s starting to generate some serious interest of his own thanks to his impressive right arm.
Through 13 starts at Class AA Biover
loxi this season, the right-hander has far and away been the Shuckers’ best starting pitcher.
He’s compiled a 5-0 record, 2.83 earned run average, WHIP of 1.10 and 76 strikeouts in 761⁄3 innings — numbers that rank Brown in the top four in each category in the Southern League and earned him his first all-star nod.
Biloxi is also 12-1 in games Brown has started.
It’s the type of performance the Brewers were hoping for, and believed he was capable of, keeping in mind how aggressively they’ve pushed the 23-year-old through the system since drafting him in the fifth round out of the University of Kentucky in 2016.
Brown pitched just three games for rookie-league Helena after signing for $401,700 before finishing 2016 with nine appearances at Class A Wisconsin. He returned to the Timber Rattlers in 2017 and made 18 appearances before being promoted to advanced Class A Carolina to close out the season.
In four starts for the Mudcats, Brown showed he was game for the bump up in competition, going 3-0 with a 2.16 ERA and WHIP of 1.04.
It would have been reasonable to expect Brown to return to Carolina to start this season and then make the jump to Biloxi a month or two in, just as fellow prospect Trey Supak did.
In fact, that’s pretty much what Brown was expecting this spring.
“I had my mind set on Carolina,” Brown said. “I didn’t want to get too happy about where I could go, and not really think about it and just do my job. When I heard Biloxi, it was quite a surprise. I’m glad it happened, and I feel like it was a good opportunity I’ve been given.
“And so far, I’ve taken off with it.” Brewers farm director Tom Flanagan noted Brown’s makeup as a big reason for his rapid ascent.
“I think Zack’s a guy that’s got the penchant and the tools to succeed, but his mindset — he’s as good a competitor as we have,” said Flanagan. “When he had his delivery and everything in place, he was a guy that we could move fairly quickly.
“Last year he only had 25 innings or so at high A, but everybody felt very comfortable with him taking that next jump to Double-A and he’s obviously off to an excellent start and we’re almost halfway through the year.”
There were some who questioned the Brewers’ decision to draft Brown so high in 2016 after a rough junior year at Kentucky in which he went 2-11 with a 6.08 ERA in 14 games. But the raw material was such that they believed Brown had only offered a glimpse of what he’d eventually be able to offer.
Brown, a Seymour, Ind., native, initially was chosen by the Chicago Cubs in the 38th round of the 2013 draft. After choosing to go to Kentucky, and now two years into his Brewers career, he offered some self-reflection.
“I’m a completely different pitcher,” Brown said. “I feel like my stuff is pretty similar, but the way I use it and the way I’m able to attack the zone is completely different. I feel like I’ve just grown up and learned how to be a pitcher a little more. When I got to college I was quite a bit behind as far as pitching goes because I didn’t pitch too much in high school.
“Now it’s kind of all coming together and I’m seeing it develop right in front of me.”
Standing 6-foot-1 and tipping the scales at 180 pounds, Brown doesn’t cut an especially imposing figure physically. But he has a live arm, normally sitting between 90-94 mph with his fastball while occasionally touching 95 or 96.
Aside from his four-seamer, Brown also throws a sinker, a curveball and a circle changeup. The difference-maker for him has been the curveball.
Brown classifies it as a “power curve,” a pitch that many hitters think is a slider because of the nasty break.
Biloxi’s rotation this season boasts a couple former first-round draft picks in Kodi Medeiros and Luis Ortiz, two second-rounders in Adrian Houser and Cody Ponce and now a Competitive Balance B pick in Supak.
Yet it’s been Brown and 2016 13throunder Thomas Jankins who will represent Biloxi in the Southern League All-Star Game on June 19 in Birmingham, Ala.
“I feel like we compete well with each other,” Brown said of his rotation mates. “I can remember the very first time, Luis and I gave up one or two runs through five innings and the other starters I don’t think gave up a run the rest of the series, and I went to Ortiz and I said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to pick it up. These guys are going to blow us away.’ ”
Brown, who happens to be a country music fan, knows full well the Zac Brown Band joke isn’t going to go away anytime soon.
But maybe in the meantime, he’ll reach the major leagues and make a name for himself.
“That’s the goal,” he chuckled. “I’d have to become pretty big, but that is the goal.”