Cary-Grove’s Quinn Priester putting together breakout season for first-place Brewers

At least he had a future with Regan, he correctly assumed.

Quinn Priester’s future with the Pittsburgh Pirates, the team that drafted him in 2019 when he was 18 years old and had just graduated from Cary-Grove, wasn’t so certain.

Tuesday, Priester makes his first start against the team he rooted for from his seat at Wrigley Field during Game 5 of the 2016 World Series when he takes the mound for the Milwaukee Brewers against the Cubs at American Family Field. His two other career appearances against the Cubs were in relief (one with Pittsburgh and one with Milwaukee).

Exactly one year ago Tuesday, the Pirates traded him to the Boston Red Sox after two disappointing seasons with the big-league team.

Priester left Pittsburgh with a 6.46 ERA and 1.59 WHIP in 20 appearances (14 starts). That wasn’t exactly what the Pirates expected from the 6-foot-3 right-hander when they selected him 18th overall only five years earlier.

“A year ago today I was sitting in Arizona with the Pirates and definitely doing what I could to just stick around,” Priester said Monday in the Brewers locker room before the start of a three-game series between the co-leaders in the National League Central Division.

Life got busy quickly for Priester after the trade deadline deal. He started the Red Sox’s season finale Sept. 29 and, armed with a newly added cutter to his arsenal, pitched five innings of one-run ball, allowing only four hits against Tampa Bay.

His next pitch came a couple of days after Christmas at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, where he proposed to longtime girlfriend and former Marian Central star athlete Regan Dineen, who, yes, said yes. The couple plans to wed in the offseason.

Then, on April 7, with several pitchers unable to pitch for various reasons, the Brewers acquired Priester from the Red Sox for a hefty package that included minor league outfielder Yophery Rodriguez (a top-10 prospect in the organization) and the 33rd pick in the 2025 draft.

“A lot can change [in a year],” Priester said with a smile. “A lot can change.”

For Priester, his most recent change of uniforms has been the best.

His start against the Cubs will be his 15th for the Brewers, who’ve helped him unleash his potential with consistency. Priester has enjoyed a breakout season, going 6-2 as a starter and 9-2 overall with a 3.28 ERA and 1.20 WHIP.

Since June 4, he’s 7-0 with a 2.47 ERA.

“The way I look at it is, like anything else in life, sometimes you just find the right fit, and the Brewers, at least right now, for Quinn, are the right fit,” said Andy Priester, Quinn’s dad. “It wasn’t that Pittsburgh was awful. It wasn’t that Boston was awful.”

The two-time defending NL Central champion Brewers have brought out the best in the 2019 Gatorade Illinois Baseball Player of the Year, and making adjustments to his pitches has been only a small part of it.

“I think a lot of it is these guys really believing in me,” Priester said. “Once I got here, it was, ‘We love what you do. We just want to help you to focus it and hone it a little bit,’ and that’s exactly what we did. We got with [pitching coach] Chris Hook and [assistant pitching coach] Jim Henderson and really got to work on some small things, keeping things tighter, keeping things moving fast in terms of having some good rhythm and pace.”

Priester started throwing a cutter last season with Boston and was effective with the pitch in his only start for the Red Sox. He then continued to tweak the cutter. He changed his grip, which led to better command.

“Just to be more centered behind the ball,” Priester said. “I went from like 87-88 [mph] to the low-90s with better carry essentially, with the same amount of cut.”

The addition to his arsenal combined with a change of mentality have helped him emerge as a key player during the Brewers’ surge. He’s matured to the point where he knows he doesn’t have to be perfect every time he toes a big-league rubber.

He’s also been fueled by the winning brand of baseball the Brewers play. Despite losing two of three to the Marlins before the start of the Cubs series, Milwaukee is 31-15 since the start of June, including 15-6 in July.

“When you’re winning,” Priester said, “you don’t want to be the guy that messes that up.”

In Pittsburgh, it had become all messed up for Priester.

“When he didn’t achieve his own expectations and of course the team’s and the fans’ expectations,” Andy Priester said, “I promise you he was harder on himself than any coach, any teammate or any fan could be.”

Quinn Priester’s low point might have come last summer, when the Pirates removed him from the starting rotation.

“I feel like when they asked me to move to the bullpen before the [trade] deadline at 23 years old, I was like, ‘Man, I can still do this. I feel I can still contribute as a starter,’” said Priester, who turns 25 on Sept. 15. “That was a hard thing to [accept] because you still want to be there for your team and pitch.”

Once he got traded, he said the Red Sox told him they believed in him as a starter.

“That was huge for me,” Priester said. “It was like, ‘Now we have someone who’s bought into me the way I’m bought into me.’ ”

Beginning in mid-May, Priester strung together an eight-game stretch where he had a 2.23 ERA, 5.6% walk rate and 60% ground ball rate. Hook and Henderson have gotten him to throw more strikes and execute his pitches better. Priester said they liked his sinker when the Brewers acquired him, liked how he was commanding the cutter better in spring training and had no plans of changing his breaking ball.

Milwaukee has shown it can help pitchers perform better (see ex-Cubs Jose Quintana and Trevor McGill), and Priester is the latest example. Priester gives credit to Hook for his success since he’s put on the blue and yellow. Hook relies more on his eyes than information on his I-pad.

“Hookie’s not pushing his I-pad,” Priester said. “He’s sitting there off to the side, watching me, watching my body and saying, ‘This is what I’m seeing.’ He’s really good at what he does. A lot of times he doesn’t even need to see the plate to know what’s happening at the plate.”

Priester struck out 10 Dodgers in six innings July 18 in Los Angeles. He had 11 strikeouts against the Rockies in Milwaukee on June 28, allowing only one hit in seven innings.

He’s not all about strikeouts, however. He has 86 in 101⅔ innings this season.

“Colorado, that was like, ‘Dang, I didn’t know I can do that,’” Priester said. “I’m a ground ball guy, and I love that identity. That’s something that’s been a huge strength of mine. Just because I do have couple of big strikeout games, I need to be this guy who gets ground balls. If they strike out, they strike out.”

He has embraced the change.