On Monday, the Brewers announced that SS/3B Jesus Made and RHP Tyson Hardin have been selected as this year’s Robin Yount Performance Award winners. The Yount Performance Award, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is awarded annually to the top position player and pitcher in the Brewers’ farm system.
It’s easy to be hyperbolic when discussing prospects and their ceilings, but Made has made it really, really hard for me to overstate how good he’s been. Remember when Jackson Chourio was supposed to be the Brewers’
best prospect, like pretty much ever? Baseball America’s No. 1 prospect? Youngest player to start for the Brewers since Robin Yount? Youngest player with multiple 20-20 seasons? Made is quickly proving that he deserves to be part of the same conversations that Chourio was as a prospect.
Made, ranked as the No. 3 prospect in baseball by Baseball America and the No. 5 prospect by MLB Pipeline, started out the year by slashing .267/.373/.388 in just over 300 at-bats with Single-A Carolina. His OPS was between .745 and .949 every month except for July (.633 OPS). Despite the rough stretch, Made got the call-up to High-A Wisconsin on August 5 and responded by going nuclear; in 108 at-bats with Wisconsin, he hit .343/.415/.500 with 11 extra-base hits. His August earned him yet another promotion — this time to Double-A Biloxi, where he went 6-for-23 in the regular season and even hit a home run for the Shuckers in the playoffs.
While Made’s stats have certainly been impressive, his ceiling remains tantalizing and has a lot to do with why he’s considered a top prospect in baseball. This is a kid who was 17 years old at the start of the season, yet his first home run in High-A had an exit velocity of 111 mph. The Brewers also seems to love him as a person, which is a great sign. Brewers senior vice president of player ops and baseball administration Tom Flanagan gave a quote to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel about how impressed the organization has been with his mindset since coming over from the Dominican Republic.
“We brought him over in January and he’s 18 years old, and at that age you’d think there would be homesickness … But the way he’s adapted, soaked up the knowledge and the culture and avoided slumps, it’s been a solid-plus year for him across the board.”
Hardin, drafted in the 12th round out of Mississippi State in 2024, was an older prospect (24 at the start of next season) who was also primarily a reliever. Milwaukee turned him into a starter this season, and with resounding success. Hardin went 6-5 with a 2.72 ERA and 1.18 WHIP over 21 starts between High-A Wisconsin and Double-A Biloxi.
The right-hander doesn’t necessarily have a true plus pitch (although his slider is close), but he spots his pitches incredibly well. Hardin also fits the high spin rate, lower vertical approach angle profile that the Brewers have had success with (Logan Henderson, Coleman Crow, Freddy Peralta). His meteoric rise this season has seen him go from unranked by major prospect scouting publications to being ranked the Brewers’ seventh-best pitching prospect (No. 20 overall) by MLB Pipeline.
