Brewers sign Tuffy Gosewisch to minor league deal

While most of the talk about the Brewers’ catching situation has focused on the possibility of upgrades at the Major League level, they also could use some help at the upper levels of the minor league organization.

Outside of Jacob Nottingham, the Brewers didn’t necessarily have anyone who was ready to handle Triple-A after Christian Bethancourt became a minor league free agent. Add in the possibility of Nottingham maybe getting a chance to steal a Major League roster spot this spring, and the organization needed someone who could at least fill a season before some of the young catchers in the lower levels of the minors start to work their way up.

That’s why David Stearns went out and signed what might be the best name for a catcher you could dream up — Tuffy Gosewisch — to a minor league deal with an invitation to spring training.

If there was ever someone destined to be a baseball player in San Antonio, it’s someone named Tuffy. He’s a real person, there’s a picture and everything.

Gosewisch is a veteran minor leaguer, having spent 12 seasons riding the bus — including last season at Triple-A Syracuse in the Washington Nationals system, where he hit .219/.310/.335. He didn’t make his Major League debut until he was 29, finally getting the call from the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2013. He spent 7.5 years in the Philadelphia system before having his contract bought by Toronto in 2012, only to sign with Arizona that offseason as a minor league free agent.

He hasn’t had much success during his brief stints in the big leagues, hitting .190/.228/.271 in 137 games over the course of 5 seasons. He was most recently in the Majors with Seattle in 2017, when he played in 11 games in May of that year.

He’ll likely be a camp body until heading back to minor league camp, where he’ll probably end up being almost a player-coach, similar to the way Tim Dillard has been kept around in the Triple-A bullpen.

Statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference