Lucky as we got in seeing Junior Caminero in Durham last night after he wasn’t in the starting lineup, the same could not be said for seeing the bigger prospect bats on the visiting Nashville Sounds.
Jeferson Quero, who is currently No. 3 in FSS Plus analyst Joe Doyle’s Top 30 Milwaukee Brewers prospects list, is out with a shoulder injury, and Tyler Black (No. 4) didn’t even get through his first AB on Friday before fouling a ball off his leg and leaving the game after just one half inning.
That does not, however, mean there wasn’t anything left to see, particularly with some strong arms saving the day on the visiting side.
Carlos Rodriguez, RHP, Milwaukee Brewers FSS Plus Top Prospect No. 11
Facing rehabbing big leaguer Shane Baz, it was Rodriguez who was inarguably the more impressive of the two on Friday. The Nicaraguan-born righty who was taken in the sixth round of the 2021 MLB Draft out of Florida SW State College was far better than his numbers entering the night would have indicated; he picked up the win in holding a strong Durham lineup to just one run over six innings, allowing just one walk and four hits while striking out six.
Four-seamers, cutters, sinkers, changeups, sliders…you name it, Rodriguez not only had it in his arsenal on Friday night, but was commanding it well. He was sitting between 92-94 miles per hour on the radar gun with the 4SFB and touching 95 and truly made just one mistake on the evening in allowing a long home run off the bat of Ruben Cardenas. Just out of Doyle’s Top 10 in the org. at No. 11, if the six-foot, 206-pounder can build off of this start to get his season turned around, he may be on track to reach the big leagues for the first time by the end of the year.
Abner Uribe, RHP — Milwaukee Brewers N/A
Uribe is a known commodity who made very recent headlines for his role in a benches-clearing incident in the big leagues that earned him a six-game suspension he’ll need to serve on his next recall. The 23-year-old righty made his big league debut last year, and dazzled for the majority of the time, pitching to just a 1.76 ERA over his first 30 2/3 MLB innings, whiffing 39 along the way. How does he do it?
Abner Uribe throws hard. Very, very hard. He hit 99.6 MPH twice on Friday and was solely a sinker-slider guy over the course of this outing, keeping hitters off-balance with a breaker that routinely crossed at 85-86. While he struggle to find the same success of last season in the bigs this year, there’s little doubt that as a true power arm, he’ll be back in “The Show” sooner rather than later. He’s famously touched 103 MPH in the past in the big leagues, recording the fastest pitch in Brewers franchise history.
| Abner Uribe 99+MPH pitches on 5/10
(Data: MiLB GameDay) |
Batter | Result |
| 99.6 MPH sinker | Rob Brantly | Ball |
| 99.6 MPH sinker | Jake Mangum | Swinging Strike |
| 99.2 MPH sinker | Jake Mangum | Groundout |
| 99.0 MPH sinker | Ronny Simon | Groundout |
Owen Miller, INF — Milwaukee Brewers N/A
At 27 years old and with exactly 1,000 big-league plate appearances, Owen Miller’s prospect days are long behind him. A third-rounder out of Illinois State back in 2018, Miller is on his third org. and has extensive MLB service time with the latter two; he played in a career-high 130 major-league games for the Cleveland Guardians in 2022 and got into 90 more with Milwaukee last year, not to mention seven more this season as well.
Miller is putting up numbers he hasn’t since his debut season in pro ball thus far for the Sounds, hitting .342 in 21 Triple-A games while drawing ten walks in just 91 PA’s. Hoping to shed a 4A label, he’s currently an interesting veteran asset for the Brewers, but could also be a target for a club looking for a big-league ready bench option via small trade.
