We’re here to talk about the one thing on everybody’s minds: who is going to be the Milwaukee Brewers’ backup catcher when the 2026 season starts?
There was a bit of news on this front on Tuesday, when the Brewers—after rumors swirled for some time—signed the Chicago Cubs’ 2025 backup, Reese McGuire. The wrinkle here is that McGuire was not signed to a major league deal; he instead received a minor league deal with an invite to spring training.
McGuire, who turns 31 early in spring training, is still
probably the best bet to open the season as the backup catcher, but since he is not yet on the 40-man roster and doesn’t have a guaranteed deal means that we cannot take that for granted.
Whoever the team’s backup catcher is may not have much of a role. William Contreras plays as often as any catcher in the league, and he’s one of the best at the position, so Milwaukee’s backups in recent years haven’t had a whole lot to do.
Let’s take a quick look across Milwaukee’s catching landscape to see who could be in the running here.
Reese McGuire
As mentioned, McGuire makes the most sense. Of all the catchers that we currently know will be in major league camp with the Brewers, McGuire is the only one other than Contreras who has ever played in a major league game. That seems notable.
Harrison did a good job running down McGuire’s bona fides yesterday, but a quick review: McGuire was the 14th overall pick out of high school in 2013, and worked his way onto top-100 prospect lists within the next couple of years. But McGuire’s bat didn’t develop like some hoped, and it wasn’t exactly an “event” when he made his major-league debut with the Blue Jays late in the 2018 season.
McGuire spent most of 2019 in the minors, but he had an encouraging, brief 30-game run in the big leagues in which he hit .299/.346/.526 and clobbered five homers. That good offense turned out to be a mirage, though; after he struggled through the shortened 2020 season, McGuire settled in as a low-offense, solid-defense backstop in 2021, a season in which he played more games than any other Blue Jay catcher but eventually got a bit crowded out by the dependable Danny Jansen and the emerging Alejandro Kirk.
With both Kirk and Jansen playing well, Toronto broke up their catching trio by trading McGuire to the White Sox at the end of spring training in 2022. Chicago didn’t have as much invested in McGuire as the team that drafted him did, so after a rough season they cut bait and shipped him to Boston at the trade deadline. McGuire actually had a magical partial season with the Red Sox: in 36 games after the deadline, he hit .337/.377/.500. That magic didn’t last, though, and he spent the next two seasons playing rather poorly backing up Connor Wong.
McGuire became a free agent after the 2024 season. He signed with the Cubs in January but didn’t make the major league team out of spring training. But when Miguel Amaya strained an oblique in late May, the Cubs re-signed McGuire, and he was with them through the end of the season. In total, he played 44 games in 2025. He hit for a low average and walked only four times in 140 plate appearances (!) but did hit for power: nine homers put his slugging all the way at .444 despite a .245 OBP. That power bump was probably an outlier; through his first seven seasons, McGuire had an isolated power number of just .113, which shot up to .218 in his small sample with the Cubs.
McGuire’s profile is of a guy who features good-enough defense who can obviously run into one at the right moment, but his offensive production will likely be bad; in eight major league seasons covering just under 1,200 plate appearances, he holds an 84 OPS+ and an on-base percentage of just .293.
If McGuire doesn’t make the Brewers out of spring training, he has no minor league options yet, so he would need to be designated for assignment or traded.
Jeferson Quero
The only non-Contreras catcher on the 40-man right now is former mega-prospect Jeferson Quero, who finished last season at Triple-A Nashville. You’re all familiar with the Quero story, so I won’t spend much time on it: Quero ranked in the top 40 of all three major prospect rankings heading into the 2024 season, but he suffered a torn labrum in the very first game of the 2024 season, which cost him the whole year.
Crucially, it may also have cost him the weapon that set him apart as a catching prospect: his throwing arm. Quero was one of the best players in all of professional baseball at catching base stealers in 2023, but the early returns after Quero returned from his long injury journey last June were, at best, discouraging. At worst, it showed that the tool that was always the first thing mentioned in Quero scouting reports is no longer something that is going to help him.
There’s certainly a chance that with more time elapsed since the injury, Quero recovers some of his arm strength in 2026. And it’s not like that was the only thing that people liked about him; scouting reports laud his receiving and his work with pitchers, and he projects as a capable, if not good, hitter.
Still, Quero is unlikely to start the season as the team’s backup catcher even if the Brewers think he is ready, because that’s not how the Brewers act with their top prospects. Keeping him in the minor leagues for a month or two delays his service clock, which is something that Milwaukee has done with its other big prospects in recent years.
If I were guessing who finishes the season as the Brewers’ backup catcher, I might choose Quero, but I doubt we’ll see him on Opening Day.
Ramón Rodríguez or Matt Wood
Rodríguez and Wood are notable because they were on a list of Brewer minor leaguers invited to major-league camp recently. Wood, who turns 25 on the same day that McGuire turns 31, was a fourth-round pick in 2022 and has worked his way up to Double-A Biloxi, where he performed well at the plate in 2025.
Rodríguez was drafted by the Dodgers way back in 2016, and caught on with the Brewers as a minor league free agent in 2024. He played just 21 games in 2025, but he raked for the Shuckers in those 21 games, in which he hit .359/.457/.484. Rodríguez is a career .262/.335/.380 hitter in nine minor league seasons and reached Triple A when he was in Baltimore’s system but has never made the majors.
Neither Rodríguez or Wood likely factors into Milwaukee’s plans at the major league level, at least for now. But they’ll be working with the pitching staff during spring training, and one of them will likely start the season at Triple-A Nashville.
Any others?
Last season, Jorge Alfaro played 82 games with Triple-A Nashville, and Eric Haase played 19 after accepting an assignment there after the Brewers acquired Jansen at the trade deadline. Nick Kahle was another player who got some time behind the plate at the highest level of the Brewers’ minor league system.
Alfaro is gone: he signed a minor league deal with the Royals earlier this month. Haase, likewise, reportedly agreed to a minor league contract with San Francisco a couple of weeks ago. Kahle, as far as I can tell, is not under contract. Another player hypothetically in the mix is another guy with an early-May birthday, Darrien Miller, who is still in the Brewers’ system; he was a ninth-round draft pick in 2019 and has played the entirety of his last two seasons at Double-A Biloxi. But his progress has stalled; at the plate, Miller can take a walk but he can’t do much else—he hit .192/.381/.329 last season and hasn’t hit above .228 in a full-season league since graduating from Low-A in 2021.
The likely outcome
The names have changed, but I have long held the belief that Quero is going to be in Milwaukee as soon as the team is sure they’ve delayed his clock. I thought at first that the logical “first backup” was Eric Haase, who has served in that role before and knows Milwaukee’s pitchers, but McGuire makes a lot of sense here too. My official prediction is that, assuming health all around, McGuire makes the Brewers out of spring training, and is designated for assignment (or traded, or both) sometime in May or June when Quero makes his major league debut.
A few things could change that prediction, though: someone could get hurt; McGuire could continue hitting bombs like he did last year and prove himself a worthy, solid offensive option; or Quero could struggle in the minors.
If Contreras gets hurt, the Brewers likely call up Quero and make him the everyday catcher, though he’d likely split time with McGuire. If Quero or McGuire gets hurt, then the other is the backup. If Quero struggles, he likely just stays in the minors and McGuire continues as the backup. Hopefully everyone stays healthy and productive, and things work out for everyone.
