{"id":366947,"date":"2025-12-24T05:40:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T05:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/366947\/"},"modified":"2025-12-24T05:40:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T05:40:08","slug":"brewers-notes-backup-catcher-quero-henderson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/366947\/","title":{"rendered":"Brewers Notes: Backup Catcher, Quero, Henderson"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Brewers got through the 2025 season relying on only three catchers.\u00a0William Contreras<\/a> was second in MLB with 128 starts behind the dish.\u00a0Eric Haase<\/a> backed him up for the first half of the season. Milwaukee acquired\u00a0Danny Jansen<\/a> at the deadline and outrighted Haase off the 40-man roster in the corresponding move.<\/p>\n

Haase elected minor league free agency at the end of the season. Jansen returned to the open market when the Brewers declined their end of a $12MM mutual option. He officially signed a two-year, $14.5MM deal with Texas last week. That leaves Milwaukee with only two catchers on the 40-man roster: Contreras and 23-year-old prospect Jeferson Quero<\/a>, whose contract was selected over the 2023-24 offseason to keep him out of the Rule 5 draft.<\/p>\n

The Venezuelan-born Quero suffered a labrum tear in his throwing shoulder one game into the \u201924 Triple-A season. He underwent surgery and missed the rest of the year. Quero missed the first couple months of the \u201925 campaign because of a hamstring strain. He didn\u2019t return to Triple-A action until the beginning of June. The right-handed hitter turned in a league average .255\/.336\/.412 batting line in 250 plate appearances the rest of the way.<\/p>\n

At the moment, Quero stands as the favorite for the #2 catcher job by default. Contreras is the only catcher in the organization who has played in an MLB game. Curt Hogg of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel<\/a> writes that the Brewers have evaluated the market for a veteran backup but aren\u2019t closing the door to Quero potentially breaking camp in that role. Assistant director of baseball administration Brenton Del Chiaro told Hogg that the young catcher is \u201cpretty close\u201d to big league readiness.<\/p>\n

Quero showed promising contact skills against Triple-A pitching, albeit with a tendency to expand the strike zone. His combination of bat control and average pop gives him a reasonably high offensive ceiling for a #2 catcher. Quero\u2019s calling card as a prospect had been his defense, particularly an arm that had been a weapon before the labrum injury. Baseball America\u2019s scouting report<\/a> notes that Quero\u2019s pop times suffered in his first year back from the surgery. That\u2019s reflected in an 18.9% caught stealing percentage that is well below the fantastic 34.6% mark he posted in Double-A in 2023.<\/p>\n

The Brewers can option Quero to Triple-A for at least one more season. He\u2019d be a candidate for a fourth option year as well because of the missed time in 2024. If they feel he\u2019d benefit from more minor league time to hone his approach (or they want to see how his arm strength looks another year removed from the injury), they\u2019d need to add someone from outside the organization. It\u2019s not a position to which they\u2019ll devote many resources given Contreras\u2019 durability, but a player like Reese McGuire<\/a>,\u00a0Christian V\u00e1zquez<\/a>\u00a0or old friend\u00a0Luke Maile<\/a> could sign for slightly more than the league minimum. They\u2019ll at least bring in an experienced catcher on a minor league deal with a Spring Training invite.<\/p>\n

Quero isn\u2019t the only prospect who\u2019ll be looking to establish himself in camp. Right-hander\u00a0Logan Henderson<\/a> impressed over his first five MLB starts but suffered a season-ending elbow injury in August. Henderson was able to resume throwing bullpen sessions by the postseason and did not require surgery. Adam McCalvy of MLB.com<\/a> writes that he\u2019s following a normal offseason plan and will return to working off a mound within the next couple weeks.<\/p>\n

Henderson will enter camp battling for a spot at the back of the rotation.\u00a0Freddy Peralta<\/a> and\u00a0Brandon Woodruff<\/a> are lined up for the top two spots, barring a trade of the former.\u00a0Quinn Priester<\/a> is locked into the #3 role.\u00a0Jacob Misiorowski<\/a>, Chad Patrick<\/a>, Robert Gasser<\/a>,\u00a0Tobias Myers<\/a> and potentially\u00a0Angel Zerpa<\/a> could be in the mix for back-end jobs. Zerpa would be in the bullpen if he doesn\u2019t win a rotation role. Everyone from that group aside from Woodruff and Peralta have minor league options remaining, so the Brewers have a lot of flexibility in moving pitchers up and down from Triple-A Nashville.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brewers got through the 2025 season relying on only three catchers.\u00a0William Contreras was second in MLB with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[143289,42113,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-366947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-jeferson-quero","9":"tag-logan-henderson","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}