Milwaukee Brewers minor-league slugger Blake Burke was high-school teammates with current Brewers pitcher Kyle Harrison at De La Salle High School in California. At this rate, that’s not the last time they’ll be sharing the field as teammates.
Burke, one of the Brewers’ first-round draft picks in 2024, has been on a torrid start to his minor-league season with Class AA Biloxi, with two more homers April 9 and now six in six games to start the 2026 season. The Shuckers won over the Pensacola Blue Wahoos, 15-3, and Burke finished with three hits and four RBIs. He scored three runs and also stole a base.
He joined Milwaukee’s top prospect Jesús Made with a great batting line; Made went 3-for-6 with four RBIs.
Burke also opened the season with two homers April 3, and he had the strange distinction of entering the night April 9 with five hits on the season, all of which drove in one run apiece (four solo homers and an RBI single). Then he finished with 10 total bases, adding a double to his two homers.
Burke, who played college baseball at Tennessee, hit just five homers with the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers in 350 at-bats last year, although he demonstrated strong batting skills with his .289 average and elite patience with his .380 on-base percentage. But once promoted to Biloxi last year, the power arrived as well, and he belted 11 homers in 140 at-bats, with a .377 OBP and stellar .956 OPS, despite playing in a league known to be pitcher-friendly.
So far this year, he’s up to a ridiculous 1.345 OPS while batting .296 and reaching at a .345 clip over the small sample (27 at-bats). He has twice as many homers as second-best on the Southern League home-run leaderboard. He has the most homers of any player in minor-league baseball outside the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League (which started earlier), where former big-leaguer Patrick Wisdom (now with the Seattle organization) has eight homers in 12 games, and top Los Angeles Dodgers prospect James Tibbs has seven in 12.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Brewers minor-leaguer Blake Burke has six homers in six games
Reporting by JR Radcliffe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
