The Astros have taken big swings before. Some pay off, some don’t. In 2019, the Astros took another big swing taking an uber athletic outfield prospect in Jordan Brewer. Well before the Astros even considered drafting Brewer, he was playing football in high school, and at a high level too. Brewer was recruited to the University of Michigan as a receiver until he dislocated his shoulder in high school. I asked Jordan about football and he said “football was my first love growing up but wasn’t sure what I wanted to do at the college level. I played baseball, basketball and football.”
Jordan ended up attending Lincoln Trail Community College in Illinois playing baseball for two years before he transferred to the University of Michingan. The experience Brewer got at a JuCo school was unlike anything else. “The experience of going to JuCo isn’t comparable to anything, it really taught me how to be an absolute grinder,” he said. “When all you have is a bat and a ball you kinda just fall in love with baseball a completely different way. When I finally got to Michigan it was absolutely amazing making that run in the college World Series and just making life long friends.”
Brewer had an unreal season in 2019 slashing .329/.389/.557 with 20 2B, 12 HR, 19 SB in 63 games. This helped him earn the Big 10 player of the year award. It also boosted his draft stock way up and the Astros selected Brewer with their 3rd round pick in 2019. After the draft, he was immediately one of the best athletes in the system.
Jordan had a tough go of things early in the system though. In college he battled turf toe and that carried over to the 2019 season after the draft. “So during the World Series I was battling turf toe which doesn’t sound that bad but honestly probably one of the worst pains I felt, you don’t realize how much you use your toes,” Brewer said. This caused him to only play 16 games for Tri-City following the draft.
In 2020, he dealt with another injury, this time a knee injury that required surgery. I asked Jordan about that and he said “The knee surgery slowed me down quite a bit, but Covid gave me some time to recover from that.” Due to the time off, he was able to get 100% for the 2021 season. Brewer had a solid 2021 season where he slashed .275/.375/410 with 12 2B, 6 HR, 21 SB in 65 games for the Fayetteville Woodpeckers. He ended the season on fire hitting .460 with 3 HR, 11 RBI and 4 SB in the final 9 games.
I asked Jordan what kind of changes, if any, did he make from 2021 to this season and he said “the only thing adjustment I had was honestly having a healthy off season. Which help me really focus on my swing this past offseason.” So far that has helped him get off to a strong start posting a .839 OPS in 20 games and connecting on 4 HR.
But that wasn’t the only thing that helped him. Jordan also added this about his off-season work to help him get off to a good start, “having a full healthy offseason, actually getting to work on things I needed to work on instead of being behind from just trying to be healthy. Getting live Abs against some of the leagues greatest like Walker Buehler, Logan Webb, Sean Manaea, and Garrett Crochet“.
Lastly, I asked Jordan was his goals were for the 2022 season. Jordan said “my goals this year is well first off is to stay healthy and secondly to prove I am a solid player to the front office. But I’m more excited just to see where this path will take me!” After a solid start this year, Jordan could see himself in Double-A in the near future, and just a few stops from making his MLB debut at some point in his future!
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