It's Early, But the Brewers' 'A' Bullpen Already Looks Depleted

[Jack Stern]

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images

Working long plate appearances, taking extra bases, and playing tight defense have all been attributes of Pat Murphy's successful Brewers teams, but so has relying on the back end of their bullpen. In both 2024 and 2025, Milwaukee relievers logged the fourth-most innings of any bullpen in baseball. In that span, their 18.1 RA9-WAR ranks second to only the Cleveland Guardians' bullpen, at 18.2. Because WAR is not precise enough for a tenth of a win to be a reliable difference, it's reasonable to say Murphy's bullpens have been the most valuable in the sport.

It's been a different story to start this season. Through 15 games, Brewers relievers have had results near the middle of the pack, ranking 17th with a 96 ERA- (an ERA 4% lower than the league average, after accounting for the ballparks where they've pitched). The group is coming off an especially tough week, too. Since last Saturday's doubleheader in Kansas City, Milwaukee relievers have allowed the third-most runs in baseball.

That's far too small a sample to push the panic button. Trevor Megill, Abner Uribe, and Ángel Zerpa having a combined 7.27 ERA on April 14 is nothing to worry about, on its own.

There have been warning signs in their stuff, though. All three have lost velocity on their upper-90s fastballs, lowering the quality of those pitches. Megill and Uribe, in particular, have both lost at least 1.5 mph from last season. The Stuff+ model at FanGraphs, which graded Megill's heater among the best in baseball and Uribe's as above-average, now sees both as underwhelming pitches.

Pitcher	Season	Primary FB Velo	Primary FB Stuff+	Breaking Stuff+	Overall Stuff+
Trevor Megill	2025	99.2	116	141	125
Trevor Megill	2026	97.4	97	114	103
Abner Uribe	2025	98.7	102	120	115
Abner Uribe	2026	97.3	96	130	106
Angel Zerpa	2025	96.6	128	110	112
Angel Zerpa	2026	95.7	107	116	106

Stuff-wise, Zerpa is the least concerning. His sinker still has excellent depth and is getting ground balls, and he now has a tighter slider that tunnels better off that pitch. Better days could be ahead for him.

Sitting around 97 mph isn't unprecedented for Megill, either. He averaged 97.8 mph last April before averaging nearly 100 until a flexor strain sidelined him down the stretch. Upon returning from that injury, though, Megill sat 97.5 in his regular-season return and 98.5 in the postseason. Since those elbow problems cropped up, his triple-digit velocity hasn't been there.

Even at 97, Megill's heater is still much firmer than the league average for right-handed pitchers. However, he needs plus velocity to keep that fastball from finding barrels. Megill backspins his fastball from a high slot, so it averages 19.0 inches of induced vertical break and just 4.4 inches of arm-side movement. That's a very straight fastball, so Megill's goal is for hitters to swing late or underneath it.

Without touching triple digits, it becomes easier for hitters to time up that fastball and get on top of it, instead of getting underneath well-struck fly balls that fall near the warning track for flyouts. That already became apparent in Megill's second outing of the season against the Tampa Bay Rays, when Nick Fortes drove a high fastball into the right-center gap for what was ultimately a game-winning double.

At 99-plus, a swing against that fastball is almost certainly a whiff or a flyout popped high into the air. At 96.4 mph, Fortes didn't perfectly barrel it, but he got on top of it enough to hit a high line drive with a 20-degree launch angle that split the gap.

If his best fastball doesn't return, Megill faces a tougher path to being an effective late-inning reliever. He may have to lean more on his breaking ball, which he's continued to spin progressively more like a slider each year. So far this year, it's down to just -3.2 inches of induced vertical break, but has the same velocity as last year.

Uribe may be the reliever to watch most closely, given his diminished stuff and the circumstances leading up to it. Unlike Megill and Zerpa, his breaking ball has also lost velocity. Whereas Megill has a history of taking time to warm up, Uribe is throwing slower than he ever has in his big-league career—something that started in the postseason last year.

"If you remember last year at the end, it wasn't coming out great right at the end in the last two series [in the playoffs]," Murphy said after Uribe surrendered a lead on Sunday against the Washington Nationals. "In the last series, we pitched him at least twice [in the NLCS], maybe three, but it wasn't coming out the same. It got better, and he shows flashes, but it isn't as good."

Uribe has still limited hard contact so far, but his whiff rate has cratered from 32.0% last year to 12.5% this season. That's not quite uncharted territory for him in a six-game sample, but when paired with the velocity decrease, it looks more suspicious.

"Yeah, I'm sure it is," Murphy said when asked if that lower velocity is leading to fewer whiffs. "Again, you just look at that one number. You've also got to look at the movement and the patterns of it all."

Uribe's stuff is moving less, too. His sinker has lost an inch of sink, going from 6.2 inches of induced vertical break last season to 7.3 this year (a lower single-digit number means more depth on pitches like sinkers, sliders, and changeups). It last had that shape in 2024 from a slightly higher arm slot. Opponents slugged .436 against it that year, and that was with Uribe averaging nearly 99 mph.

The loss of velocity and movement follows a career-high workload last season. Uribe appeared in 75 regular-season games, tied for the sixth-most among relievers. Of the relievers with at least that many appearances, only Uribe averaged at least one inning per outing. He then pitched six more innings across five postseason appearances. He already looked fatigued by that point, and his stuff has not bounced back since.

Uribe hasn't been Murphy's only sudden bullpen workhorse. Jared Koenig (career-high 72 appearances last year before losing velocity this spring and spraining his UCL), Bryan Hudson (60 2/3 innings through August in 2024 before losing velocity), Nick Mears (pitched in 46 of 95 team games between April and July 2025), and Aaron Ashby (50 innings in regular-season team games from July onward last year, a pace of 100 innings per season) all went prolonged stretches with extraordinary workloads during his first two seasons as manager.

It's all part of the aggressive "win tonight" approach inspired by Murphy's days as a college head coach. Baseball at that level is chaotic. The season is shorter, and runs score in bunches due to the lower quality of pitching and defense. Having experienced that environment for more than 20 years, whenever Murphy sniffs a win, he puts the pedal down to secure it.

That includes leaning on his best relievers. Murphy hasn't just used them to protect tight leads, but also with four- or five-run leads, and sometimes to keep the Brewers in close games when they're trailing.

Using those pitchers in those situations isn't always necessary, though. Multi-run comebacks are not actually that common, meaning lower-leverage relievers can usually eat innings that are not save situations without meaningfully altering the outcome of the game. Pitching Jake Woodford in a five-run game, for example, is unlikely to change which team wins, and it keeps the high-leverage guys fresh to be at their best for protecting close leads.

To his credit, Murphy never puts relievers at risk of injury with any single appearance. The Brewers' pitching coaches and high-performance team help him determine who is and isn't available every night based on pitch counts, number of appearances that week, and biomechanical data. Still, he's been reluctant to trust pitchers who are less proven or with whom he's less familiar. He'll use his best arms on days they're cleared to pitch, but in situations where they don't have to pitch.

"We've been pretty good about limiting pitch counts and limiting days in a row, days per week, altering the early work, altering different things," Murphy said. "We have to be mindful of it. But, I mean, what are the options? Just say, 'Okay, here, kid in Triple-A. Come on up, close tonight.' It's probably not going to lead to a lot of success."

As such, while he wants to mitigate health concerns, he often remains as aggressive as those guidelines allow.

"How do you protect yourself from it without hurting your team?" he said earlier last weekend about preventing injuries to relievers. "Because you can't afford to just throw other guys in there. So how do you do that?"

It's unfair to definitively blame Murphy's aggressive management for the Brewers' current bullpen troubles. At times, it has even facilitated comeback wins. However, from an outside perspective, diminished stuff from overuse—and, as a result, losses like the one they endured on Sunday—always looked like a potential future consequence. At the very least, the club should look back to determine how pitchers like Uribe, Koenig, and Megill ended up in their current states.

It's an especially relevant question amid Ashby's current workload. Murphy said before Opening Day that he intended to pitch him at a similar rate to that 100-inning pace from the second half of last year. He's made good on those plans so far, throwing the left-hander a league-leading nine times in 14 games for 12 2/3 innings. That has put Ashby on pace to throw 92 2/3 innings over a full season.

Some of those innings have been avoidable. On April 4 in Kansas City, Murphy used Ashby in the sixth and seventh innings with a five-run lead in the first game of that doubleheader. Woodford, acquired by the Brewers as a low-leverage long reliever, had not pitched in five days and ultimately went eight days between appearances.

While game situations may force a manager to use some relievers more often than others in a given week, that lack of workload balance is striking. By all accounts, Ashby's body has handled his innings well so far. One of the reasons Murphy feels comfortable using him so often is that he wants to pitch as frequently as possible. The Brewers should monitor him closely, though, with an eye on how that usage might impact his effectiveness in the future.

Milwaukee has enough talented arms to have a strong bullpen again this season. Regardless of how they got here, though, the reality is that Murphy's preferred relievers do not look like themselves. As the dust settles in the coming weeks, roles could look much different than they did on Opening Day.

Along the way, the Brewers must also ensure that what has happened to Uribe and others is less likely to happen to Ashby and whoever else climbs Murphy's trust tree. Maybe that means setting stricter guidelines for when a reliever is available. If that's not the problem, it could mean a different change. Either way, if these velocity drops are not just a blip on the radar, they must lead to action.

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[Brian]

I guess we will have to start dipping into the top 3 Nashville pitchers soon.