How Brewers RHP Jack Hostetler Went From D-III Free Agent Signing To Potential Big Leaguer
Image credit: Jack Hostetler (Freek Bouw/Four Seam Images)
As an amateur, Brewers righthander Jack Hostetler spanned the country. He pitched three seasons for Whitman College, a D-III school in Walla Walla, Wash. He also spent his summers on mounds in Spearfish, S.D., Bethesda, Md. and Palmer, Ak.
None of those stops provides quite the same exposure as taking the hill on Friday nights in the SEC or stepping into the batter’s box in Big Ten country, but, as the saying goes: If you perform, scouts will find you.
The Brewers found Hostetler, and he’s made a big impact in a short amount of time.
“I don’t think they actually had much data on me,” Hostetler said. “I didn’t have any TrackMan reports or anything. All they had was a report from Shawn Whalen, our area scout up in the Northwest, saying, ‘This kid looks pretty good.’
“So, yeah, I think they took a little bit of a leap of faith there.”
Hostetler, 21, inked a free agent deal with Milwaukee in 2024 after a summer spent with the Mat-Su Miners in the Alaska League. He got his first unofficial pro test in the bridge league, an informal series of games similar to extended spring training but played after the close of the Arizona Complex League season.
He was impressive enough to join a host of players earning spots in their teams’ Spring Breakout games before ever having an official pro appearance under their belts. Others with that distinction included first-rounders like Trey Yesavage (Blue Jays), Konnor Griffin (Pirates) and Ryan Sloan (Mariners).
And then there was Hostetler, who got the ball in the ninth inning against Cincinnati and struck out two of the four hitters he faced.
A few weeks prior on Feb. 25, Hostetler made his first and only appearance in the Cactus League. He spun a perfect seventh inning against Cleveland, retiring a trio of hitters that included 2019 first-rounder Will Wilson.
Hostetler’s lone swing and miss that day came when he got Wilson to wave through the latest addition to his arsenal—a cutter that came in at 91 mph.
“That was a new pitch for me,” Hostetler said. “So, now I have a five-pitch mix, and that’s been a good pitch for me to get back in a count, or just a good strike pitch for me.”
The cutter complements a repertoire headed by a mid-90s four-seam fastball, sinker, changeup and slider. It also means he joins a growing group of pitchers who throw three fastball variations—four-seamer, sinker and cutter—in order to give them high-velocity weapons that are effective against both lefties and righties while figuring into horizontal and vertical attack patterns.
The cutter was added as the answer to Hostetler’s search for something like a harder slider. It provides a bridge between his sweepy, low-80s offering and his four-seamer, which has touched as high as 98 mph.
“The cutter ended up being that pitch that I wanted, kind of that mid-speed pitch,” Hostetler said. “Doesn’t move a whole lot, but it’s a good separator off all my other pitches.”
For his official pro debut, Hostetler was assigned to Low-A Carolina and given the ball on the final Opening Day for a franchise in its final season in affiliated ball. Facing Fredericksburg, he allowed two runs (one earned) over five innings and walked nobody. He got 13 whiffs, including the finishers on all four of his strikeouts.
Scouts who saw Hostetler this spring and in his pro debut agree that he has a chance to one day fill a role in the big leagues. Whether that’s as a swingman or a back-end starter will be determined in the coming years.
For now, it’s just another potential milestone in a career that—like his pitch mix—has touched north, south, east, west and everywhere in between.
