Andrew Fischer’s 2026 season was built on one loud, steady sound: the crack of a home-run swing. Milwaukee’s No. 5 prospect split the year between High-A Wisconsin and Double-A Biloxi, hit 48 regular-season homers, and finished as Minor League Baseball’s home-run leader.
The result
Fischer, a 22-year-old left-handed corner infielder, added two more blasts during the Southern League playoffs, giving him 50 for the full Minor League calendar. The regular-season total of 48 is the official benchmark, and it put him well clear of the field. Jesús Báez was next with 39, while Lazaro Montes and Billy Amick each hit 38.
No Brewers farmhand had paced the Minors in homers since Bill Foley hit 34 for Single-A Burlington in 1978. Fischer also joined a much smaller historical group. Since the modern Minor League system took shape under the 1963 Player Development Contract, only nine individual seasons have produced at least 46 home runs.
| Rank | Player | Club level | Season | Home runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bill McNulty | Triple-A Sacramento | 1974 | 55 |
| 2 | Gorman Thomas | Triple-A Sacramento | 1974 | 51 |
| 3 | Ron Kittle | Triple-A Edmonton | 1982 | 50 |
| 4 | Tony Solaita | Single-A High Point-Thomasville | 1968 | 49 |
| 5 | Andrew Fischer | High-A Wisconsin/Double-A Biloxi | 2026 | 48 |
| T-6 | Ryan Howard | Double-A Reading/Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre | 2004 | 46 |
| T-6 | Chris Hatcher | Triple-A Omaha | 1998 | 46 |
| T-6 | Ken Phelps | Triple-A Wichita | 1982 | 46 |
| T-6 | Dave Duncan | Single-A Modesto | 1966 | 46 |
Only Fischer and Howard have reached 46 in the 2000s. The old Sacramento totals deserve their own footnote: McNulty and Thomas played in a ballpark at Hughes Stadium with a left-field fence just 233 feet from the plate, though a 40-foot screen stood beyond it. The field received a waiver because it fell short of the usual 250-foot minimum. Both hitters batted right-handed, and McNulty, a Sacramento native, hit 44 of his 55 homers at home.
Fischer’s production traveled. He hit 25 home runs in home games between Wisconsin and Biloxi and 23 away from home.
The power did not arrive out of nowhere. Fischer set Duke’s freshman home-run record with 11 in 2023, then posted consecutive 20-homer seasons in the SEC: 20 at Mississippi in 2024 and 25 at Tennessee in 2025. His 25 for the Volunteers led the conference in his junior season and helped make him the Brewers’ 20th overall selection last year.
He gave an early preview of that pop on March 8, when he homered to right-center in his first World Baseball Classic plate appearance for Team Italy. Great Britain starter Owen Wild gave up the shot.
Fischer had already left High-A by June 13, yet his 20 homers there still ranked seventh in the Midwest League when the season closed. After moving to Biloxi, he launched 28 Southern League homers, fourth-most in the circuit. The three players above him had more opportunity; Fischer was the lone hitter among the league’s top eight homer men with fewer than 400 plate appearances, finishing with 314.
The recipe is clear in the numbers. Fischer recorded a 56.8 percent fly-ball rate, the highest among full-season Minor League qualifiers, and pulled the ball 55.0 percent of the time, 14th among 724 qualified hitters. His 33.0 percent strikeout rate is the tradeoff for that uphill, pull-side attack, but the bat speed, impact and loft have invited internal comparisons to the kind of ceiling Kyle Schwarber has shown as a big-league slugger.
For Fischer, 2026 was more than a strong first full season. It was a season that put his name beside the loudest power years the modern Minor Leagues have seen.
