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Craig Yoho was a $10,000 signing in the 2023 Draft who was completely unheralded before this season. Jacob Misiorowski has been about as high on helium as they come. Misiorowski dominates behind a remarkable fastball, while Yoho uses good command and boomerang-like movement to get a similar level of swing-and-miss. They are almost polar opposites in terms of their profiles, but they’re both genuine difference-makers. Adding either to the bullpen would be a bonus in September, but with limited 40-man roster spots available and only one expanded roster spot for a pitcher, there’s a very real possibility only one of them gets the call.
How Have They Each Performed Early On At Triple-A Nashville?
Let’s start with Misiorowski. He had an average perceived velocity of 100 mph on the fastball in his most recent appearance, an incredible number. His gigantic extension from that 6-foot-6 frame (combined with wicked arm speed) means the fastball is deadly, or at least it should be. It has shown a slightly inconsistent shape in terms of the ride he’s generating, and has just a 5.6% swinging strike rate. He has limited hard contact, with an average exit velocity of just 67 mph, but where Triple-A hitters make poor contact, a big-league hitter will often do damage, so that’s a prospective concern.
The ABS system has challenged his control a bit and narrowed the strike zone. The word is out there about how to approach him. Hitters are swinging just 37% of the time on his heater, in part due to the uncomfortable nature of the at-bat and its velocity, but also in an attempt to wait him out.
The good news is that he adapted in his last appearance, pouring it into the zone for called strikes and using the curveball, which has been electric, to put them away. His breaking pitch has a 33.3% swinging strike rate, and has been devastating when he’s commanded it. There have been a number of uncompetitive offerings which have inflated his pitch counts, but it should improve as he adjusts to the level.
Meanwhile, Craig Yoho has continued to make hitters look completely and utterly overmatched with basically every pitch in his arsenal. He’s thrown ten sliders, seven for strikes, with three swings and no one even making contact yet. The sinker has been used to right-handed batters a lot, and he pummels the strike zone with it. Vicious arm-side movement has him backdooring the pitch for called strikes and presents an alternative, velocity-wise, to the changeup.
Speaking of, that changeup has been about as filthy as they come. I could give you the statistical numbers, or just show you some of the swings he’s been generating:
The sheer two plane movement could make it instantly one of the nastiest pitches in baseball, and you can see why he has a 0.67 FIP on the year across the upper levels of the minors. In terms of how he generates the swing-and-miss without that high-end velocity and combined with a 66% ground ball rate this season, he’s essentially an ideal reliever--a “swing-and-miss merchant” who avoids the long ball. He has three pitches that move in dizzying ways, in a variety of directions and speeds that confounds hitters. No one in the minors has yet found an answer.
For both pitchers, their Triple-A sample is small, but there are definitely things we can glean from them. Misiorowski has lost some of the fastball IVB he had with the ball in Double-A, but he’s avoiding hard contact on it and getting some elite swing-and-miss on his breaker. Yoho is, well, the same Craig Yoho we’ve seen at every other level of the minor leagues. We shouldn't make too many early judgments based on this small dataset. However, it should play a part in the decision made at the end of it all.
What Type Of Reliever Do The Brewers Need?
This is a large part of the decision. Coming out of the bullpen, Misiorowski has been working as a multi-inning reliever, whereas Yoho has been kept as a single-inning arm. When you look at how the Brewers roster is currently constructed, and when you take into account Pat Murphy’s quotes about DL Hall after Sunday’s game:
They have a six-man rotation right now, to deal with a 14-day stretch without an off day, but Hall is likely to move into a multi-inning role himself (alongside Bryse Wilson and Joe Ross) at some point. That’s three multi-inning men, and whether the Brewers want to add a fourth to that mix would be questionable, barring injury or poor form from any of the three. That’s without taking into account how Bryan Hudson has been deployed this year as a multi-inning arm.
With a five-man rotation, you would have nine arms available out of the bullpen in September. With the injured list expected to be considerably shorter by that point with the returns of Hudson and Trevor Megill, that would leave four multi-inning relief options and five single-inning arms, including Megill, Devin Williams, and Joel Payamps. It seems much, much easier for the Brewers to find space for a single-inning relief role than yet another multi-inning, stretched-out arm.
That would appear to give Yoho the leg up in some respects. Misiorowski could be dialed down to that role, as well, and definitely has the stuff to thrive in it, but it’s not how the Brewers seem to be deploying them as it currently stands.
What About Long-Term Plans?
As referenced earlier, the Brewers have said about the pitch count for Jacob Misiorowski. He was shut down last year after a promotion to Double-A, with arm fatigue (never a great sign). They’ve been careful again with his ramp-up this season. They are comfortable with him getting those innings at either Triple-A or in the Show, but if they’re serious about being cautious on the workload, then having Yoho around may allow them to retain that caution while still adding an elite bullpen arm for the playoff push.
The other thing is that, eventually, the Brewers still seem keen on Misiorowski as a starter. He’s not quite gotten a hold of his command of his fastball or his third pitch to the point that you’d feel comfortable with him starting in the majors next year. He still has development and growth to go before he’s ready for that stage, and (unfortunate as it is that it’s a consideration) starting his service-time clock when you know he likely won’t be ready to start games until at least halfway through next season would be wasting a year of control.
That’s something that can be justified if he was the sole big, internal upgrade possibility for September, but Yoho’s presence does negate that somewhat. While Misiorowski has some development ahead of him, Yoho is ready to get big-league outs in high-leverage spots right now and over the next few years. He has far less to learn from the minor leagues, and as such, he should be the preferred option for the promotion.
One more point of observation is the adjustment factor at each stage of promotion. Yoho has been promoted from High-A Wisconsin to Triple-A, and his numbers in terms of swing-and-miss, strike rate, and so on haven't changed at all at each step:
Contrast that to Misiorowski, who at every step has required an adjustment period due to a mandate for better command. Yoho seems like a safer candidate. The Brewers, if they bring them up in September, will have one month before the playoffs where they have to perform down the stretch and into October. It's a not a time where they can afford to let someone adjust to the level over a longer period, and so far in their minor-league careers, Yoho has demonstrated himself to be significantly better in this regard.
So What Direction Should They Go?
The Brewers still may attempt to include both on their September roster, but with an already packed bullpen that should be getting natural reinforcements from injury returnees, there is no obligation for them to do so. The smart path long-term may be to keep Misiorowski in Nashville, adjusting to that caliber of hitter and working out how he can fill up that zone, but it’s a difficult decision; he may be an elite arm coming from the bullpen in the playoffs.
It’s hard to argue that Misiorowski wouldn’t be an upgrade on a Hoby Milner or Elvis Peguero, but with an in-form Payamps alongside a rejuvenated Hudson, Megill, Williams, Enoli Paredes and Jared Koenig, who have all been excellent this year, that choice becomes a little bit more difficult.
At this point, Yoho makes the most sense for the Brewers, both in the short term and in the long term, given how ready he looks for the major-league level and how little development he has left combined with the need for a shorter-stint reliever and Misiorowski's path to the big leagues as a starter.
What do you think of the Brewers' potential dilemma for the expanded rosters? Can you see them preferring one of Yoho or Misiorowski? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
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