The top two hitters in the minor leagues for the Milwaukee Brewers this year were Keston Hiura and Trent Grisham. Neither of those names should come as big surprises; Hiura entered the year as a consensus top prospect league-wide and Grisham is a former first-round draft pick. But the organization’s third-best hitter by wRC+ in 2019 is a name that you probably won’t immediately recognize, and that is just fine by Cooper Hummel.
“I would say I was always the underdog growing up,” Hummel told me in a recent interview. “I always said I would be a Major League Baseball player.