Examining the Brewers internal and external relief options
All season long, the Milwaukee Brewers’ bullpen has been an unexpected strength. After Devin Williams was injured in spring training, the relief group entered the season with question marks, and season-long struggles for two of last year’s best relievers, Hoby Milner and Joel Payamps, could have spelled doom. But the emergence of Trevor Megill and Bryan Hudson as elite relief options and of Jared Koenig and Enoli Paredes as unexpected sources of quality innings has given the Brewers one of the more reliable bullpens in the majors. Through Sunday, the Brewers had the third-best ERA by non-starters in the league.
In the last week, the wheels have started to come off a bit. Koenig and Paredes were both placed on the IL within a week of each other. Hudson, who’d been essentially untouchable all season, has given up runs in three consecutive outings after allowing runs in only three of his first 29 appearances. Megill remains excellent, but the Brewers have been struggling to bridge the gap between their starting pitching and the late-game situations that Megill is used for.
Fatigue is certainly a factor, particularly in the case of Hudson, who is only about 18 innings away from the most innings he has had in a season since he was a minor-league starter in 2018. The endless stream of injuries that the Brewers have dealt with all season, particularly in their starting rotation, means that the bullpen has been tasked with more duty than they would otherwise. Through Sunday, the Brewers are tied with the Oakland Athletics for the second-fewest quality starts in the league with 23, and they’re second in the league with 372 innings pitched by relief pitchers. That number is inflated some by their occasional use of openers, but it’s behind only a team that uses the opener even more than they do, the San Francisco Giants.
That the Brewers have managed so well to this point is a great accomplishment, but given the recent struggles, it’s worth taking stock of the bullpen and looking at what options the team has for improvement.
Doing Well
Trevor Megill has been excellent all year and could easily (should) have been named an All-Star on Sunday. Megill has a 1.53 ERA/2.04 FIP, he is 18-for-19 in save opportunities, he has 35 strikeouts in 29 1/3 innings, and he’s allowed just one home run all season. He is in the 91st percentile in K percentage, 94th in chase percentage, 95th in whiff percentage, and 99th in fastball velocity. He is elite.
Despite his recent struggles, Bryan Hudson has been one of the best relievers in baseball this season, and he’s done so with a big workload: he’s tied for sixth in the league with 46 2/3 innings out of the bullpen. Hudson leads the Brewers in Baseball Reference’s version of WAR (though he’s in a tie for fourth by Fangraphs’ version of that stat). But he does appear to be tired, and it’s probably good for the Brewers that he did not get named an All-Star.
Jakob Junis missed most of the season but has looked solid lately, and sports a 2.87 ERA despite giving up two runs in relief on Sunday. He is likely to be the team’s top option as a long reliever, though Bryse Wilson looked good in that role on Saturday and was successful in it last season. (Wilson has been basically exactly league average this year, mostly as a starter or as a “starter” piggybacking on an opener, but his peripherals suggest he’s been fortunate; he does not have the trust of a large portion of the fanbase, probably with good reason.) There’s a scenario where Junis returns to a starting role, but unless injuries continue to mount, I don’t expect it to happen.
Struggling
I wouldn’t exactly say that Elvis Peguero is struggling, as he has a 3.50 ERA (119 ERA+), but he’s one of those pitchers who puts me on edge whenever he’s put into a close game. Peguero is a high-variance pitcher with questionable control, and while he throws hard, he doesn’t strike out as many batters as you’d expect and has been hit hard on occasion this year.
Joel Payamps, one of the heroes of last season, has had a rough year. He’s looked good for stretches (including his last two outings) but his overall results haven’t been there, as he sports a 3.98 ERA and 4.24 FIP in 31 2/3 innings. His strikeouts are down, his walks are up, and he’s been susceptible to the home run ball, with four allowed.
In the same camp is Hoby Milner, who had a great season in 2023, but has been hammered this year. There is some reason to believe that Milner is a victim of bad luck: his 4.73 ERA is more than a run-and-a-half higher than his 3.20 FIP, and his underlying numbers are good—he’s not walking batters, he’s getting a lot of ground balls, and his barrel rate is in the top two percent of the league. But he’ll need to start getting some actual results if the team is going to rely on him in big spots later in the season.
Injured
The big name in this category is, of course, Devin Williams. Arguably the best reliever in baseball, Williams hasn’t pitched competitively since spring training, though he is nearing a return and some reports say he could be back before the end of July. Whether Williams needs time to settle back in remains to be seen, but you would expect his return would do wonders for the rest of the bullpen; you’d have Megill as one of the best set-up men in the league, Hudson may not have to throw two innings as often, and you’d have an outstanding trio for the 7-8-9 innings.
The aforementioned Jared Koenig and Enoli Paredes have been surprisingly excellent for the Brewers in their duties this year. The lefty Koenig has already thrown 38 innings (and has been used five times as an opener) and sports a 1.66 ERA (251 ERA+) with pretty good peripherals (though his 3.41 FIP suggests regression may be coming). Paredes is a guy who has always had good stuff but has struggled with major control problems. Still, he’s allowed just two runs in 16 2/3 innings for the Brewers this season, though the walks crept back up in his last few outings and he hasn’t been striking many batters out. They were both placed on the IL with “forearm tendinitis,” and neither seems to be seriously injured. Expect them back before the end of July.
DL Hall seems headed for the rotation when he returns, which should be soon, though I would consider using Hall in the bullpen depending on how things shake out. Joe Ross has been exclusively a starter this season, but with Aaron Civale in the mix, the Brewers have Civale, Freddy Peralta, Colin Rea, and Tobias Myers seemingly locked into four of the rotation spots. If no one else gets hurt, somebody is going to be in a swingman role, probably occasionally starting as a sixth member of the rotation but pitching more often out of the bullpen. Given Ross’s injury history, that might not be a bad role for him.
Finally, Abner Uribe has had a complete mess of a season for a variety of reasons. He had meniscus surgery in mid-June, a procedure that typically requires a 6-8 week recovery time, and he still has to serve his major league suspension before he can pitch again. Milwaukee might be able to get creative with how that suspension gets served, but my expectation is that Uribe will not pitch again for the Brewers this season.
So how might the Brewers go about upgrading this group?
Internal Options
I will quickly mention Rob Zastrzyny, who has thrown 3 1/3 scoreless innings with the Brewers over the past week and has been good at Triple-A Nashville in 28 1/3 innings. He is likely to be a victim of numbers, as I’d expect he is designated for assignment as one of the several pitchers the Brewers have coming back from the 60-day IL in the near future gets activated. Particularly once Koenig is back, you’d expect Zastrzyny to go, as they serve similar roles.
Kevin Herget is on the 40-man roster, pitched reasonably well in five games earlier in the season, and has been good in the minors: with Nashville this season he has a 2.86 ERA in 28 1/3 innings with 10.2 K/9 and 1.9 BB/9 and he’s allowed only one home run. Janson Junk and Joel Kuhnel are also pitching reasonably well with Nashville, though I wouldn’t expect either to be a shutdown reliever, and Kuhnel was removed from the 40-man after the team acquired Dallas Keuchel.
Some more adventurous options—the “high ceiling, low floor” choices—reside with Double-A Biloxi. The first is reliever Craig Yoho, the 24-year-old who recently jumped into the Brewers’ top-30 prospect list despite being exclusively a relief pitcher. Yoho has been incredible in the minors this season: in 34 2/3 innings for High-A Wisconsin and Double-A Biloxi, he has a 1.04 ERA, 16.9 K/9, and 2.6 BB/9. But it must be said: just one year ago, Yoho had a 3.41 ERA in the Big Ten, so we might be getting a little ahead of ourselves. Still: the strikeout numbers are eye-popping (65 strikeouts in less than 35 innings), he hasn’t been walking too many batters, and hey, you never know. (One opinion I received on Yoho, who has a lengthy injury history: “might as well use him when he’s good, because he’ll probably get hurt again.”)
The other option in Biloxi is mega-prospect Jacob Misiorowski. Miz has been excellent in three of his last four starts for the Shuckers (by game score, those are his three best starts of the season), he’s getting a whole bunch of strikeouts (88 in 66 2/3 innings so far this season), and he is often noted as perhaps having the best “raw stuff” in the minor leagues, including a fastball that easily reaches 100 mph. The big issue here is control: Misiorowski currently plays like early-career Randy Johnson a bit, a big guy with imposing stuff, lots of strikeouts, but lots of walks—each of the last two seasons, he’s walked 5.3 batters per nine innings.
Giving Misiorowski his first taste of the big leagues as a reliever would not be unprecedented for this organization, even if their long-term view of him is as a starter; Brandon Woodruff, Corbin Burnes, and Freddy Peralta all pitched as relievers early in their major league careers, and all three pitched out of the bullpen in the postseason in 2018.
External Options
The Brewers could certainly make a trade to shore up their bullpen. They’ve made trades for relievers in July in each of the last six non-COVID seasons:
2023: Andrew Chafin
2022: Taylor Rogers (in exchange for Josh Hader)
2021: John Curtiss and Daniel Norris
2019: Drew Pomeranz, Jake Faria, and Ray Black
2018: Joakim Soria
2017: Tyler Webb, Anthony Swarzak, and Jeremy Jeffress
Now, the Brewers might be a little more careful with who they send out: Daniel Norris was famously acquired in exchange for Reese Olson, who has been good with Detroit this year, and a trade that isn’t on this list but was also for a middle reliever, J.C. Mejía, ended up with the Guardians receiving David Fry, who was named to the All-Star team on Sunday. Those were fluky: they call them lottery tickets for a reason, and when Olson and Fry were in the Brewers organization, no one expected them to become the players they currently are. But it can happen, and it might have the Brewers a little jumpy about trading for relievers that may not move the needle.
But it would be very much in keeping with this franchise’s recent history to make a trade for a reliever that, on the surface, doesn’t look like much. There are some relievers that will be sought after this trade deadline, guys like Mason Miller (not going to happen), Tanner Scott, Aroldis Chapman, Carlos Estévez, and Michael Kopech. Others might end up available if their teams struggle over the next few weeks, players like Kirby Yates and Kyle Finnegan. Do not expect the Brewers to be after any of these players, as I expect they’ll find the asking price unpalatable.
Instead, expect the Brewers to trade for someone like Trevor Richards, Shelby Miller, or Jalen Beeks. These players won’t cost much in terms of prospect value and would be very in keeping with their past moves.
What should they do?
I’m not especially in favor of trading for relief pitching unless it’s a clear upgrade: if you look at the list of Brewer acquisitions above, how many of them worked out? Jeffress was a great pickup and he had an unbelievable season the following year. Pomeranz and Swarzak worked out. Soria was okay but not great. But a lot of those guys pitched 14 bad innings and then left the team. These moves are unlikely to come back to hurt you, but they can: the Brewers have been reminded of that this season with the emergence of Olson and Fry.
I would probably be in favor of just waiting it out, assuming that no one else gets hurt (a terrible assumption). With the impending returns of Devin Williams, DL Hall, Joe Ross, Jared Koenig, and Enoli Paredes, the Brewers are already going to be looking at a roster crunch. While there’s room for some improvement on the margins, I just don’t expect that the Brewers are going to trade for anyone who would pitch in the postseason for them, given that Junis, Hudson, Megill, and Williams will conceivably be the go-to guys in those positions.
That said, I do expect the Brewers to do something, perhaps another trade for a starting pitcher, which could bump somebody—like Hall—to a high-leverage bullpen role. I also would not rule out the possibility that Misiorowski gets a call-up in August or September as a reliever, and honestly, that might be the best opportunity for a meaningful upgrade. Yoho remains a possibility there, too, though Miz’s stuff is probably more likely to play at the major league level. It could go sideways with either of them, but you wouldn’t have a whole lot to lose by giving it a shot.