In any sport, injuries come with the territory, but what Milwaukee Brewers third base prospect Brock Wilken has been through over the past two seasons has been the definition of bad luck.
Originally born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Wilken moved to Florida, where he attended Bloomingdale High School, and likely would have been an MLB Draft pick out of high school if not for the 2020 Draft being shortened to five rounds due to the COVID pandemic.
He instead enrolled at Wake Forest, where he proceeded to mash 71 home runs over three seasons with the Demon Deacons. As a junior in 2023, Wilken hit .345/.506/.807 with 31 homers and 81 runs batted in, leading to Milwaukee selecting him with the 18th overall pick in the first round of the 2023 Draft.
Wilken signed with the Brewers for $3.15 million and got his pro career started with a brief stint in the Arizona Complex League, before moving up to Class-A Wisconsin in early August. He hit .289 with six doubles, three triples and two home runs in 34 games with the Timber Rattlers, and was promoted to Biloxi to finish out the Double-A season just two months after being drafted.
He returned to Biloxi to begin the 2024 season, but just five games in, Wilken suffered a devastating injury, when he took a Domingo Gonzalez fastball to the face. Wilken was able to walk off the field under his own power, but suffered multiple facial fractures which required reconstructive surgery.
Despite the gruesome injury, Wilken missed just three weeks before returning to action in early May.
“That was probably the hardest thing that I’ve had to do on a baseball field”, Wilken said during an interview with D1 Baseball. “You take 95 to the face, you don’t want to stand in another batter’s box for a while.”
“At first, I was like ‘man, this isn’t that bad’, and then I’m rehabbing and I get hit three more times before I even get back to Biloxi, and I only played one game! I was like ‘dude, what’s going on here? I don’t know how this is gonna go.’ So for me, mentally, that was probably the biggest struggle.”
Wilken wound up playing in 108 games for the Shuckers in 2024 and clubbed 17 home runs, but he finished the Double-A season with a .199 average.
Milwaukee assigned him to play in the Arizona Fall League following the season, but he struggled there as well, hitting .155 over 23 games with the Peoria Javelinas, and still didn’t feel like he was seeing the ball well.
So that offseason, Wilken spent two months doing eye therapy, which he credits for saving his baseball career.
“When he did the original diagnosis, I was at the 50th percentile of depth perception of the average American at my age”, Wilken said. “But professional baseball players are not average Americans. For me to be in the biggest deficiency of hitting a baseball, was huge. So we got that figured out.
The next one was, my eyes were converged more than they should have because of the impact. So it was like looking like I was basically staring at my phone the whole time, when I’m trying to look at the pitcher sixty feet away.”
The other one was, since the left side of my face took such a huge impact, the left eye and the left side of my brain tried to work overtime and make my left eye the dominant eye, when my right eye is my dominant eye.
So you have all of that mixing together, it’s just a whirlwind of a disaster.”
The eye therapy certainly seemed to have helped, as Wilken returned to Biloxi to begin the 2025 season, and he started to swing a hot bat. After slugging nine home runs in the month of May, Wilken was named Milwaukee’s Minor League Player of the Month.
He followed that up by hitting .304 in June as the Shuckers clinched a first half Division Championship in the Southern League, but then injury would strike again.
While celebrating following the team’s clinching win over Knoxville, Wilken slipped and dislocated his left kneecap. There were reports that Wilken was ticketed to move up to Triple-A Nashville for the second half of the season at that time, but the injury derailed those plans, and he instead would spend the next several months rehabbing, before returning in late August to finish out the year at Biloxi.
Despite the freak injuries, Wilken is not a player that you might label as injury-prone. At six-foot-four and a sturdy 237 pounds, he’s an imposing figure at the hot corner, who generates some easy power with his right-handed swing.
He made the jump to Triple-A Nashville to begin the 2026 season and despite not hitting for a high average, he’s shown he still has plenty of pop, hitting 11 doubles and six home runs, including one just last night, which was his third in his last five games, and fourth in the month of June so far.
Considering Milwaukee’s struggles to find production from the third base position this season, some good luck for Wilken in the second half of the year would be a welcome sight as he looks to continue to turn his season around and throw his name in the mix for the future.
• Speaking of third base in Milwaukee, Luis Rengifo’s tenure ended this past week as he cleared waivers after being DFA’s and was released by the Brewers.
Signed in February, Rengifo played in 57 games for the Brewers this season, but hit just .205 with very little power, collecting nine doubles, but zero triples and zero home runs.
When the Brewers promoted Cooper Pratt last week, the team DFA’d Rengifo, choosing to have David Hamilton and Joey Ortiz share time at third base for the time being.
• Nashville outfielder Akil Baddoo, who was mashing for the Sounds in June, suffered an ankle injury on Sunday that could see him miss some extended time.
With an OPS of 1.154 in the month of June, Baddoo had homered three times over his last three games prior to the injury, including a pair of grand slams, and was looking to force his way onto the big league roster.
The injury looked bad at the time, so to learn it was an ankle rather than something much worse was a bit of a relief, but it is still something that could sideline the 27-year-old outfielder for a lengthy period of time.
• The Brewers once again welcomed back right-handed pitcher Peter Strzelecki, when they re-signed him to a minor league deal on Wednesday.
The former big league reliever signed with Milwaukee this past February, and he was briefly called up to the big leagues on May 16th, before being DFA’d a day later. He elected free agency and signed a minor league deal with the Yankees, but was released last Thursday after just six appearances with their Triple-A affiliate.
• The Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, whose offense took a hit when they saw top prospects Andrew Fischer and Josh Adamczewski move up to Double-A recently, got some good news on Thursday night, with the return of shortstop prospect Luis Pena to their lineup. Pena, who has dealt with some concerning medical issues this season, was sidelined most recently by a bit more minor hamstring injury, that saw him miss a little more than two weeks.
In his first game back with the Timber Rattlers on Thursday night, Pena played shortstop and went 1-for-3 with a double and two runs batted in before exiting after seven innings.
• Hot-hitting outfielder Alexander Frias was promoted from Milwaukee’s affiliate in the Complex League to Class-A Wilson on Tuesday, and picked up right where he left off in the ACL, homering in just his second game with the Warbirds.
Signed by the Brewers out of the Dominican Republic in 2025 for a reported $350k, Frias tore apart the ACL, hitting .441/.518/.678 in 32 games prior to his promotion to the Carolina League.
Nashville Sounds (AAA) – Overall record: 45-33. Current second half record: 2-1, 2nd place in the International League West Division, 1.0 game back of first place Toledo (Tigers).
Biloxi Shuckers (AA) – Overall record: 37-30. Current second half record: 2-0, 1st place in the Southern League South Division, 1.5 games in front of second place Columbus (Braves) and Pensacola (Marlins). Biloxi won the first half and has already qualified for the playoffs.
Wisconsin Timber Rattlers (A+) – Overall record: 39-28. Current second half record: 5-0, 1st place in the Midwest League West Division, 2.0 games in front of second place Peoria (Cardinals) and Beloit (Marlins).
Wilson Warbirds (A) – Overall record: 38-34. Current second half record: 2-4, 3rd place in the Carolina League North Division, 2 games back of first place Fayetteville (Astros) and Fredericksburg (Nationals).
ACL Brewers (R) – Current record: 21-19, 4th place in the Arizona Complex League Central Division, 3.0 games back of first place ACL Guardians.
DSL Brewers Blue (R) – Current record: 13-5, 2nd place in the Dominican Summer League Northwest Division, 1.0 game back of first place DSL Padres Gold.
DSL Brewers Gold (R) – Current record: 6-12, last place in the Dominican Summer League Central Division, 5 games back of first place DSL Orioles Orange and DSL Guardians Goryl.