The Road to The Show™: Brewers’ Quero

Each week, MiLB.com profiles an elite prospect by chronicling the steps he's taken toward achieving his Major League dream. Here's a look at Brewers third-ranked prospect Jeferson Quero. For more stories about players on The Road to The Show, click here.

Though he missed a significant amount of games over his first three Minor League seasons, Jeferson Quero is moving quickly for his age.

The 20-year-old was the fifth youngest player in the Southern League to open the season, despite hamstring and shoulder injuries limiting him to 118 total games coming into the year. Quero is not only holding his own with Double-A Biloxi in 2023, but showing that his bat can certainly catch up to his advanced defensive skill set behind the plate.

Over 72 games this season, Quero is hitting .276/.356/.466 with 14 homers, nine doubles, 43 RBIs and 38 runs scored.

MLB Pipeline’s No. 34 overall prospect was remarkably consistent at the plate over the early part of the season, but then really caught fire in the eight-week span leading into a stint on the injured list in July. Throughout that 31-game stretch, which included a Futures Game appearance, Quero batted .321 with a .910 OPS, four homers and 10 RBIs.

While his performance at the plate has trended in the right direction, Quero remains one of the best, if not the best, defensive catchers in the Minors. In addition to being named among MLB Pipeline’s All-Defense Team last winter, he’s also the only catcher among the Top 100 prospects list to receive 60 grades for both his arm and fielding ability.

“A 20-year-old in Double-A, crushing it on both sides of the ball, that kind of says it,” Walker McKinven, the Brewers’ associate pitching, catching and strategy coach, told MLB.com in May. “One, the confidence to put him at that level, and two, for him to do it. We had him in big league camp for the first time and he more than held his own there.

“It was incredibly valuable to integrate him with our staff and our big league catchers. And from a physical standpoint, there’s incredible life in the body. The throwing stands out first and foremost for everyone. But he has really good hands. He checks all the boxes. He’s capable of a lot, so we can ask him to do a lot.”

Before he joined the professional ranks, Quero performed in front of an international audience for the first time in 2015. The Barquisimeto, Venezuela, native played on the Cardenales Little League club that represented Latin America in the Little League World Series, homering during a late-round game against the tournament’s eventual winners from Japan.

On July 2, 2019, Quero inked a $200,000 deal with the Brewers as part of a class that was headlined by outfielders Luis Medina and Hedbert Perez. Quero first drew attention for his consistent, line-drive approach to all fields and an ability to hammer the opposite-field gap. But his advanced defensive skills and acumen behind the plate quickly became his headlining characteristic.

Due to the pandemic, it would be a while before Quero made his affiliated debut, but he managed to put on an impressive display during the 2020 fall instructional league following the shutdown.

The 5-foot-11, 215-pound backstop finally got the opportunity to play in Minor League games in the Rookie-level Arizona Complex League in 2021. But a concussion, hamstring issue and surgery to his left shoulder limited him to 23 games. During that time, he still managed to raise his stock, going 21-for-68 (.309) with two homers while throwing out six of 19 attempted base stealers.

He came back the following season and managed to stay healthy for most of the year, getting in 95 games between Single-A Carolina and High-A Wisconsin. Quero was quiet over the first two months of the season with the Mudcats before hitting his stride in June. In the 39 games between June 1 and his final Carolina League contest on Aug. 7, he batted .326 with an .886 OPS, five homers, nine doubles and 26 RBIs.

He had a bit of a slow start in Wisconsin before missing a little more than a week with a shoulder issue. Quero went hitless in 12 at-bats upon his return but caught fire over the final 10 games of the regular season, going 19-for-43 (.442) with eight extra-base hits, including four homers, 12 RBIs and seven runs scored.

Another strong day offensively and defensively from Jeferson Quero in the Fall League

⭐ 105 mph Triple off CF wall
⭐ Another CS & athletic play on a dribbler
⭐ 0-2 1B off 94 mph up-and-in#ThisIsMyCrew pic.twitter.com/3viCSUk9Cj

— Brewers Player Development (@BrewersPD) October 27, 2022

True to McKiven’s word, the Brewers challenged Quero once again with an assignment to the Arizona Fall League, where he was the seventh-youngest player on the circuit. In addition to getting a hit and a run in the Fall Stars game, the highlight of his time with Glendale was a 4-for-5 performance during which he threw out two runners trying to steal. Otherwise, he didn’t have great offensive results with the Desert Dogs, finishing with a .222 average and .679 OPS in 55 at-bats.

Quero got right back to work in January at the Brewers’ offseason camp for catchers in Phoenix. Truly wise beyond his years, he earned his first invite to big-league camp and got into six Cactus League games.

His performance between this past October and March may have done as much to boost his stock as his first two Minor League seasons. Quero has been up to the task since his aggressive promotion to Biloxi to open this season.

The Brewers had the No. 3 farm system in MLB Pipeline’s midseason rankings last week, and Quero figures to be an important part of a future core that’s led by baseball’s No. 2 overall prospect, Jackson Chourio.

But Quero actually managed to outshine the 19-year-old phenom during a May contest against Chattanooga, during which he homered three times to Chourio’s one. It certainly seems as if the wily backstop has leading-man potential.