Prospect Spotlight - Josh Knoth

The Brewers' 2023 draftee is off to a great start in 2024

Prospect Spotlight 🔦

Josh Knoth – Age: 18 – B/T: R/R, 6’1” 190 – Brewers (Single-A)

• Born: 8/10/2005 in Brookhaven, NY

• Draft: 2023, Milwaukee Brewers, Round: Comp-A, Overall Pick: 33

• High School: Patchogue-Medford, Medford, NY

With the 33^rd pick in the 2023 draft, the Milwaukee Brewers selected Josh Knoth, a right-handed pitching prospect who entered the year as a prospect to watch, but not necessarily one close to 1st-round contention. As spring rolled around, it became clear that Knoth put a lot of work in during his offseason. In some ways, Knoth is an “old-school” analytics type of player, one with a carrying fastball up in the zone and a 12-6 curveball with spin rates over 3,000. As we’ve learned as an industry over time, there are ways to be effective without a fastball that has a ton of carry, and spin rate isn’t always the most important variable in an offspeed pitch, but these are still positive traits to possess. By the time the draft came around, I felt that Josh Knoth was the second-best high school pitcher in the class. While Thomas White and Travis Sykora have done better than I expected, Knoth is still one of the strongest performers of the 2023 high school pitching class.

Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

The knock on Knoth is that he is slight in stature, standing just at 6’1’’, 190 pounds. It’s obvious when watching him pitch that he is on the smaller side for a professional pitcher, but it’s also equally obvious how athletic he is on the mound. Knoth has a deep, drop-and-drive delivery that is enabled by his premium athleticism. He also has top of the line arm speed, and while there is some effort and head whack in during his motion, he is in control throughout his delivery. There isn’t a ton of physical projection, so what you see is likely what we’ll get from him in the future, maybe adding another tick of velocity, but what he shows presently is likely enough.