Brandon Woodruff Showed A Flurry Of Positive Signs In His First Rehab Outing

It's a miracle that Brandon Woodruff is where he is at the moment. For most, an injury that can be career-ending, or at least trajectory-altering, has been handled with aplomb by both Woodruff and the medical staff with the Brewers. A revamped shoulder usually affects future mobility and strength within the joint, creating big concerns about whether he would regain the outlier life and carry on his fastballs or the same sharp movement of his breaking pitches again. Medical science has come a long way, but given Woodruff's age and historical shoulder duress, it was possible he would never surpass 94 mph again.

He may have still learned how to pitch around that, but we would see a markedly different arm than the one that leads MLB in the 2020s (min 400 IP) for ERA at 2.68. Woodruff, at his best, was an MLB-leading ace. He's beginning to show signs that not only has he rediscovered the pitch shapes and pronation that eluded him in spring (see Jack Stern's excellent article here), but he's even beginning to command an entirely new pitch, one that he's desired since 2023. Let's have a look at the data to see where we should be impressed with Woodruff and where he still has room to grow before returning to the Major Leagues.

The Pitch Shapes
Before I go too deep, special thanks to Thomas Nestico at TJStats for giving me access to some amazing tools. These tools allowed me to customize Woodruff's pitches manually, which provides you with the insight below.

During spring, Brandon Woodruff talked about feeling like his legs weren't always working as intended underneath him, creating an intriguing cut-ride fastball shape. It's not what he would have preferred, but it was something he could have worked with. It seems that the true Woody four-seamer has returned, though, with just a few iterations that cut amongst his 66 pitches. The other fascinating item was the sweeper, showing a strong horizontal movement profile to differentiate it from his slider and curveball, which have historically been very north/south. The sweeper returned a TJStuff+ grade 105, grading at almost 60 on the 20-80 scouting scale per TJStats models.

Overall, Woodruff flashed a four-seam fastball that graded out as above average despite averaging just 92.4 mph, alongside a nice movement profile for his changeup, slider, and sweeper, as mentioned above. I cannot stress enough how remarkable that is at this stage of his recovery.

The below doesn't include my manually adjusted pitch plots for Woodruff, but it does highlight how his fastball shape roughly coincides with that of his 2023 version. The only thing missing at this point is a couple of ticks of velocity on all of his offerings, and that's entirely to be expected at this stage of his recovery. Woodruff has spoken of how the final part of the rehabilitation process is the "snap," and it's something that just comes one day several months into a return to pitching. With this, we'll hopefully see those final few ticks of velocity across his arsenal while maintaining the same degree of movement across his arsenal; we just don't know when exactly that will be.

One final reason for positivity is how Woodruff improved his fastball as the outing went on; his fastball was in the 90-92 mph range for the first half of his outing before finishing more regularly in the 93-94 mph range quite consistently on the four-seamer, and even touching 95 mph with his sinker on his fifth and final strikeout of the evening. Here's how his stuff played out on a rolling 5-pitch TJstuff+ basis in his outing (the four-seamer is in pink):

With some further snap to come, this is very impressive from Woodruff and bodes very well for his continued rehab. The one element that will still require some adjustment is his command of his arsenal.

Remember, Brandon Woodruff didn't pitch off a mound for almost 18 months. Finding that rhythm and timing in his delivery to enable him to be accurate in locating pitches will take time, and we can see that (from the cutter still appearing at times) his delivery isn't entirely in sync with where it could be. He did get hit relatively hard on Saturday evening to the tune of an Expected Weighted on Base Average on Contact (xWOBACON) of .712, and command was a large reason for that.

It's nothing to be concerned about at this point, and with time on the mound continuing to replicate his delivery, that command will return, but for now, that and the "snap" are the only two things of concern for Woodruff. As a result, we can begin to be perhaps more optimistic that maybe, just maybe, Brandon Woodruff can lead this staff as a true rotation ace once more.

What did you think of Woodruff's outing? Did you see signs of positivity? Or am I being too optimistic? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!