Spring Training begins in less than a month and the Brewers will have no shortage of fresh faces at their Arizona compound. To help fans get acclimated with this year’s crop of newcomers to the organization, the Daily Brew will be publishing a series of player profiles over the next several weeks. This is the seventh installment in the Newcomer Breakdown series, which will cover major leaguers as well as selected minor leaguers; the first six profiles covered Jerome Gamble, Derrick Turnbow, Justin Lehr, Julio Santana, Jose Capellan, and Sam Narron.

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When the Brewers dealt for flamethrowing right-hander Jose Capellan early in this year’s Winter Meetings, they acquired one of the hottest pitching prospects in baseball. Among the ranks of minor league hurlers, few if any made the kind of splash in 2004 that Capellan did with the Braves.

Not long after acquiring Capellan, Brewers’ General Manager Doug Melvin completed another trade that netted Milwaukee one of the hottest hitting prospects in the minor leagues. This time, Melvin sent Keith Ginter to the Athletics for reliever Justin Lehr and outfielder Nelson Cruz, whose rise from the California League to the Pacific Coast League nearly matched Capellan’s rise from the Carolina League to the Majors. Like Capellan, Cruz emerged from relative obscurity and now finds himself in the upper echelon of the Brewers’ prized farm system.

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