Covering innings may be a challenge for the first couple weeks of the season
A few weeks ago, it looked like the rotation was going to be an area of considerable strength and depth for the Milwaukee Brewers this season. It’s possible that that could still be the case in a couple of months, but right now, the Brewers’ starting rotation is hurting.
A quick review. The Brewers entered the spring with a hypothetical starting pitching depth chart that looked something like this:
Freddy Peralta
Nestor Cortes
Tobias Myers
Aaron Civale
Aaron Ashby
DL Hall
Brandon Woodruff
Tyler Alexander
Elvin Rodriguez
Connor Thomas
We knew that Woodruff probably wasn’t going to quite be ready at the beginning of the season (and that Robert Gasser wouldn’t be an option until late in the season), but still, that left the club with four established starters, two intriguing young guys, and some low-risk fliers. DL Hall got hurt early in spring, but the Brewers then signed the reliable veteran Jose Quintana to solidify another rotation spot.
Well, then Ashby got hurt too, and a week later Myers got hurt too, and Quintana’s late signing meant that he didn’t appear in a spring training game until mid-March, and even though he was making good progress, Woodruff was—as expected—not going to be ready for Opening Day. Another player on a minors deal who could conceivably have had a shot at filling in, Thomas Pannone, got hurt, too. Now, the Brewers have just three starting pitchers—Peralta, Cortes, and Civale—who will ostensibly be ready for the start of the season, and one of them is the somewhat fragile Cortes.
The good news is that Milwaukee has thus far avoided any major injuries to their staff. The fact that Hall needed to be put on the 60-day injured list was a blow, but the team has at least avoided anything that sounds like elbow trouble. Hall won’t be eligible to come back until late May, but Ashby, Woodruff, and Myers could all be in the majors before April is over, and Quintana only needs about an extra week of ramping up and should be ready by the second week of the season.
Still, the Brewers are in a bit of a lurch at least until Quintana is ready. The most obvious answer here is that we’re going to see a lot more than we thought of three players on that list whose roster status was far from certain at the beginning of camp: Rodriguez, Alexander, and the Rule 5 pick, Thomas. (A quick reminder of that rule: if Thomas does not make the Brewers’ 26-man active roster, he must be returned to St. Louis, though the teams could hypothetically work out a trade if Milwaukee wanted to keep him but send him to the minors.)
All three of those players are capable of going multiple innings. Thomas, who has been good so far in spring training (just one run allowed in 9 1⁄3 innings, though he has walked five batters), mostly pitched out of the bullpen last season but he was primarily a starter in college and in his first three years of minor league ball. Rodriguez, likewise, pitched out of the bullpen in Japan in 2024 but was a starter in the minors he played in the years before that. Alexander is a kind of modern swingman: he has three separate seasons—including 2024—when he made at least nine starts and at least 10 relief appearances as a big leaguer.
Whether those players will be effective is, perhaps, a different story; none inspire great confidence. But can they cobble together some innings and keep the Brewers in the game while the rest of the staff gets healthy? Probably. They aren’t the only options, though. Jason looked at two minor league players who were completely off the radar at the beginning of spring but have moved into the picture now: Logan Henderson and Chad Patrick.
Henderson, certainly, is not an unknown, as MLB Pipeline has him as the highest-rated Brewer pitching prospect after Jacob Misiorowski (with the exception of Gasser, who has already debuted but retains prospect status). Henderson got into this conversation with a great start to the spring, though it should be noted that he had a rough outing on Monday when he walked four and allowed four runs in three innings. Patrick is a “non-prospect,” so to speak, but he pitched well at Triple-A Nashville last season, when he went 14-1 with a 2.90 ERA, 9.6 K/9, and 2.6 BB/9 in 24 starts for the Sounds.
The reason that Henderson and Patrick could be attractive options is because they’re both on the 40-man roster, placed there this offseason to protect them from the Rule 5 Draft. Carlos Rodriguez also fits this bill, though his cup of coffee didn’t go well last season, and he wasn’t exactly lighting up the International League. He’s also given up eight runs in less than five innings this spring, so the other options are far more likely.
One last roster decision that could be affected here is the status of Abner Uribe. Uribe, who has also not been particularly sharp so far this spring, is certainly a contender for a bullpen spot, particularly so with Nick Mears unlikely to be ready for Opening Day after an illness set him back. But Uribe still has to serve a four-game suspension from last season, and the Brewers’ potential need to cobble together a couple of bullpen days early in the season may mean that the team leaves Uribe in the minors to start the season rather than bring him with the big-league team, where his suspension would put the staff down a man for the first four games. That’s speculation, but it’s probably part of the math that the front office is doing to figure out how to get through these first couple of weeks.