Brewers Sign Tristen Lutz Near Deadline

The Brewers were not about to let Tristen Lutz slip away.

When the Brewers selected Lutz, a high school outfielder from Arlington, Texas, in the supplemental first round of the 2017 draft, they knew he would not be easy to sign. The 18-year-old had a scholarship to Texas, which he described as his “dream school.”

The assigned value of the 34th pick was $1,983,600, which the Brewers knew would not be enough to ink the 6-foot-3, 220-pound Lutz. Just two days before the July 7 signing deadline, the sides reached a deal for $2,352,000.

“He said he loved UT and it was his dream school, and we didn’t take that lightly at all,” scouting director Tod Johnson said. “But he also said his real dream is to be a big league baseball player, and I think the best way to do that is to get started as a professional.”

The Brewers were able to splurge for Lutz in large part because of savings with first-rounder Keston Hiura, selected at No. 9 out of UC Irvine. He signed for $570,000 under slot, in part because an elbow injury prevented him from playing in the field in 2017.

With negotiations going deep into the signing period, Lutz admitted he wasn’t sure how it would shake it.

“It was long, and I won’t say stressful, but kind of uneasy not knowing where I was going to go,” Lutz said. “I just trusted the process and knew that I had to wait a little bit.”

Lutz, who has a strong arm and profiles as a power-hitting corner outfielder, immediately slugged two home runs with five RBIs in his pro debut in the Rookie-level Arizona League.

The Brewers went over their allotted bonus pool of approximately $10.45 million, but only by 4.8 percent. An overage of 5 percent or greater forces a club to forfeit its first-round pick in the next draft, but anything less results in a tax of 75 percent.

MICROBREWS

• Righthander Josh Pennington, one of four players acquired from the Red Sox last December in a trade for reliever Tyler Thornburg, had a couple of setbacks in extended spring training while recovering from an offseason elbow procedure but finally joined low Class A Wisconsin at the end of June.