Offseason Deep Dives: Quinn Priester

Quinn Priester began the 2025 season at Triple-A Worcester in the Red Sox organization and ended it pitching four scoreless innings for the Brewers in the NLCS. In between, he unexpectedly emerged as a steady fantasy contributor for a team that finished with baseball's best record. Will he be able to retain mixed-league value in 2026?

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Priester was a first-round pick of the Pirates in the 2019 First-Year Player Draft. He was regarded as a top-100 prospect in baseball at times, including by RotoWire's James Anderson for a stretch in 2021. Priester's star had dimmed in recent years though, in no small part due to a 6.23 ERA, 1.56 WHIP and lowly 15.2 percent strikeout rate during his first 99.2 innings at the big-league level from 2023 to 2024.

Following a rash of injuries to its rotation, Milwaukee swung a rare early-April trade when it acquired Priester from the Red Sox in exchange for young outfield prospect Yophery Rodriguez and a competitive balance pick. The Brewers immediately threw Priester into their rotation and he wound up making 24 starts and five bulk relief appearances for the National League Central champs, finishing with a 13-3 record along with a 3.32 ERA, 1.24 WHIP and 132:50 K:BB over 157.1 innings.

Priester went through a four-month stretch from mid-May to mid-September when he didn't take a single loss, going 12-0 over 21 appearances. He also boasted a 2.87 ERA during that span. All told, Priester finished as the No. 36 starting pitcher, per RotoWire's Earned Auction Values. That came after he was not drafted in basically any fantasy leagues during the spring.

Admittedly, Priester was well off my fantasy radar heading into the 2025 campaign. However, that the Brewers saw something in him piqued my interest. Not only would the right-hander benefit from an excellent Brewers defense behind him, but Milwaukee has garnered a reputation in recent years of getting the most out of its pitchers. I was curious what the coaching staff might change with him and, sure enough, Priester went about things differently with the Brew Crew.

As you can see in the image above taken from Baseball Savant, Priester completely ditched his ineffective four-seamer, a pitch that was tattooed in 2023 (.386 average, .818 slugging percentage) and 2024 (.409 average, .409 slugging percentage). Milwaukee instead had the right-hander lean into his sinker even more as his primary fastball, and it yielded terrific results.

Priester's sinker netted a plus-6 Run Value from Baseball Savant, which ranked 12th among sinkers for full-time starting pitchers in 2025. The pitch induced whiffs at just a 13.6 percent clip – which isn't surprising for a sinker – but he produced grounders at a 64.8 percent rate with the offering, helping him to an overall groundball rate of 55.7 percent that ranked in the 93rd percentile. Priester's sinker also produced a .107 ISO and .324 xwOBA. You can see below in terms of xwOBA how much better the offering performed compared to past seasons.

Priester also received positive returns with his slider (plus-2 in Baseball Savant's Run Value) and curveball (plus-1). He posted an xBA below .200 with both the slider (.198) and curveball (.174), and the two breaking pitches were his primary means of generating whiffs, as he collected a 35 percent whiff rate with the slider and 41.2 percent whiff rate with the curveball.

Speaking of whiffs, it's in that area where Priester was lacking in 2025. His 20.2 percent strikeout rate was well below the league average of 22.2 percent. Among the 70 pitchers to accrue at least 150 innings in 2025, Priester ranked 45th in strikeout percentage. Hidden in that underwhelming number, though, is the in-season improvement the right-hander made in that regard.

Among his first 14 outings of the season, Priester struck out seven batters on two occasions. Those were the only two times he fanned more than four batters in an appearance. During his final 15 outings of the season, he reached 10-plus strikeouts three times.

There were 26 pitchers to notch at least three double-digit strikeout games during the 2025 season, and among them, Priester's 20.2 percent strikeout rate was the worst. Eduardo Rodriguez was the only other hurler to make the list who had a below-average strikeout rate, at 20.6 percent. That doesn't mean Priester is going to suddenly turn into a big bat-misser like most of the other 25 pitchers on that list. What it does mean is he has shown the capability to deliver big strikeout performances, and he was able to sustain an above-average strikeout rate over the final three-plus months of the regular season. Logan Webb and Framber Valdez are two guys who also made that list of 26 and who also use sinkers as their primary pitches. Their career strikeout rates are 22.9 percent and 23.5 percent, respectively, and that range seems attainable for Priester.

Priester did have some good luck in terms of his BABIP (.284) and LOB rate (79.1 percent). Neither of those numbers are terribly far off from the league averages though, and they're partly a function of the Brewers' terrific defense, at least when it comes to BABIP. Freddy Peralta (.243), Jose Quintana (.259) and Brandon Woodruff (.243) all had BABIPs well below Priester's, and as things stand right now, Milwaukee appears likely to have virtually the same defensive alignment again in 2026.

The early NFBC data has Priester's ADP at 280.1, and he's the No. 79 starting pitcher off the board. Priester surely isn't going to win 13 of his 16 decisions again in 2026, and clearly there's skepticism the right-hander will ever have an acceptable strikeout rate. Still, it's a nice discount for a guy who was a top-40 starting pitcher in 2025.