Astros Draft Profile: Center Fielder Dylan Brewer

The Houston Astros should look for Dylan Brewer in the 2022 Major League Baseball Draft.

Drafted in the 32nd round by the San Francisco Giants out of Latta High School in Latta, South Carolina, Dylan Brewer elected to sign with Clemson and with good reason.

Brewer’s Perfect Game profile listed him at 6-foot-1 and a slight 160 pounds, while other reports say 170, in his senior season.

To say Brewer needed to fill out his frame is an understatement. Almost three years later, the third-year sophomore is listed by Clemson at an inch taller and 20 pounds heavier.

Brewer was ranked the number eleven incoming freshman by Perfect Game and number two incoming ACC freshman in the 2020 preseason.

The Tigers’ 2020 season was limited to 17 games by the pandemic that season, but the left handed hitting Brewer played in 16 and started 15, 11 in right field and four at first base, slashing .245/.413/.408 with a home run and six RBI before the season was canceled.

Brewer’s sophomore season was up and down, culminating in a .207 average with ten home runs and thirty-one RBI. There was a lot of swing and miss across the season as Brewer totaled 65 strikeouts in 174 at-bats (37%).

Brewer played for Lexington County in the Coastal Plain League in the summer of 2021 and hit .350 with 15 doubles, two triples, four homers, 17 RBI, 37 runs and 15 steals in 32 games and then D1 Baseball named him the 12th best draft prospect in the ACC for the ’22 season.

The strikeouts are down to 27% in the early part of 2022 and Brewer is slashing .244/.340/.356 through 11 games with a home run and six RBI from the leadoff position in the Tigers’ lineup and playing a new position (center field).

Brewer’s frame is ideal and projectable and he generates power and bat speed, pulling most of his home runs from the left side of the plate as seen below.

The strikeouts are a concern and his bat is not where it needs to be to move up this season’s draft list, which is reflected in Perfect Games slotting him as the 255th overall prospect and 135th best college prospect for the 2022 draft.

It’s also a concern that his batting average hasn’t made notable improvement over his time at Clemson, but as noted above he raked in a wooden bat summer league after the 2021 season, which is a definite positive.

Physically, I’m reminded of former Clemson right fielder and current MLB outfielder Steven Duggar, who is listed at 6’1″ and 187 lbs., though Brewer has more power and Duggar had a better average and struck out less than twenty percent of at-bats in college.

Duggar was selected in the sixth round of the 2015 MLB Draft by the Giants. Brewer likely fits the mold of outfielders that the Giants are looking for based on recent selections like Duggar’s.

Despite the flaws noted, Brewer has many attributes that make him draftable and the Perfect Game projection above could put Brewer somewhere in the middle of the eighth round.

Given his foot and bat speed, projectable frame and power, that seems to be about the right ballpark.