Brandon Woodruff's Latest Rehab Setback Delays Difficult Pitching Decisions for Milwaukee Brewers

For the second time in less than four weeks, Brandon Woodruff's impending big-league return from shoulder surgery was delayed by an unrelated injury. This one was flukier (and scarier) than the last. Just 12 pitches into what could have been his final rehab outing, a 108-mph comebacker struck Woodruff in his right elbow, forcing his exit from the game.

Pat Murphy and Matt Arnold told reporters that X-rays on Woodruff's elbow were negative. He'll return to Milwaukee for further testing on Wednesday.

In any case, it's a tough break for Woodruff, who seemingly remains snake-bitten after more than 20 months of hard work to reach this point. If he avoided a serious injury, though, another minor setback may be a blessing in disguise for him and the Brewers. For most of his rehab stint, Woodruff's stuff continued to exhibit the encouraging and somewhat surprising progress he had shown in spring training. Through his first three Triple-A outings with Statcast tracking, his four-seamer and sinker averaged 92.7 mph and regularly touched 95 mph. Meanwhile, his existing pitch shapes were unaltered from his heyday, and his new sweeper and cutter looked like legitimate offerings.

That changed when a bout of right ankle tendinitis cropped up last month. Starting in his May 11 outing, Woodruff's velocity dropped an additional couple of ticks, and it had not rebounded since he started a new rehab assignment. Before his departure on Tuesday night, the average velocity of his four-seam fastball was down to 89.2 mph.

With a deeper arsenal and his veteran feel for mixing pitches to keep hitters off-balance, Woodruff had a clear-cut path toward succeeding with diminished velocity—when his fastballs sat in the low-to-mid-90s. His outlook is cloudier when they sit in the upper 80s and merely touch the low 90s occasionally.

Despite that step back in his stuff, the Brewers suggested that Woodruff's Tuesday start could be his last rehab appearance before his long-awaited activation. That would have required them to send down a starter. During the team's homestand last week, Pat Murphy heavily implied that the casualty could be Chad Patrick, who has pitched to a 2.97 ERA and 3.30 FIP in 13 outings (12 starts) but has options remaining.

"What do you do?" Murphy said. "Do you tell Woody, 'No, you're not coming back?'"

While a challenging message to deliver after Woodruff's contributions to the franchise and the work he put in throughout his rehab, it's a conversation the Brewers should have entertained, had he emerged from his last start healthy and felt ready to return. In his current form, Woodruff is not one of the five best starters on the 40-man roster, and time remains on his 30-day rehab clock to rediscover the still-recent version of his stuff that had him looking like a viable big-league arm again. Activating him next week at Patrick's expense would worsen the rotation and put Woodruff in a disadvantageous situation when facing big-league hitters in a regular-season game for the first time in nearly two years.

This latest setback may have kicked that can down the road. It's an unfortunate development in the moment, but in the long run, both Woodruff and the Brewers could end up in a better position for a successful MLB return.