Colton Gordon Has Raw Ingredients the Brewers Like. Now, They Need to Get Cooking.

It's not hard to see what the Brewers like about Colton Gordon. He's not a standout guy, but he has upside. The 6-foot-4 lefty gets down the mound well and has plus extension, which the Brewers always love. He's shown the ability to work east and west with a sweeper and a slow but slurvy curveball, and he's shown the feel to create depth with his changeup. There are just two problems: he doesn't throw hard, and so far, he sucks.

In 95 1/3 innings over 24 appearances in the majors going back to 2025, Gordon has a 5.95 career ERA. This season, he's spent most of his time in the minors—not because the Astros haven't needed him, but because he's surrendered six home runs in 50 batters faced and his ERA is on the wrong side of 11.00. He's had steady and impressive success at Triple-A Sugar Land over the last two and a half seasons, with an ERA under 4.00 each year as a starter, but that hasn't carried over to the majors. He throws 91 miles per hour, and the shapes of his fastballs just don't work. He has below-average carry on his four-seamer, even for a low three-quarters arm slot, and he doesn't get the heavy action you'd like on his sinker, either. Nothing sets up his softer stuff well, so despite what looks like a plus sweeper in a vacuum, he runs into barrels way too often and can't consistently miss bats the way he needs to.

On the other hand, he fills up the strike zone exceptionally well. Between Triple-A and the majors, Gordon has faced 958 batters since the start of last season. He's only walked 52 of them. He's allowed more homers (27) than free passes (22) in his brief big-league career. Though that sinker lacks the movement you'd prefer to see from it, he locates so well with it that hitters rarely do damage. He has good feel for the sweeper to the glove side and the curveball as a backdoor offering against righties. He's just in the middle of the plate with that hittable four-seamer far too often.

As the Brewers take control of Gordon, they probably do so without grand plans. He's good depth to have, with a demonstrated ability to start and throw strikes and one more year of optionability beyond this season. However, they might also have multiple ways to unlock him and get more from him, in the short and the long term.

First, expect them to ask him to lean into his sinker and cutter a bit more, at least for the balance of this season. The former should work well against lefties, and even against righties, using that pitch more at the expense of the four-seamer should allow the defense to work behind him. Gordon's cutter has been more slider-like this season than in the past, and is slowly replacing a true slider as his sixth pitch, but Chris Hook and Jim Henderson might ask him to tinker with the harder, more fastball-flavored version of that offering for a bit.

Just as importantly, though, the team will almost surely make some mechanical changes. You can see a Brewers-like pitcher in the body of Gordon, but not in the way he moves it. He starts on the third-base side of the rubber and uses a fairly extreme crossfire stride pattern. The Brewers are likely to move him to the first-base side and try to get him on a slightly straighter line to the plate, without losing the facility with the zone that is his trademark skill. With a bit better posture near release, he can also naturally lower his arm slot and add deception to his fastball.

As strange as it sounds for a 27-year-old with subpar velocity and so much polish in terms of strike-throwing, the Brewers will see Gordon as a ball of clay with real potential. His delivery doesn't fit their preferences, but it shows the mobility they need to make the changes they'll want. His pitch mix is unimpressive, but the differences between the pitching philosophies of the Astros and Milwaukee leave ample room for tweaks even before they make any big physical changes. Gordon is insurance, for now, for a team that needed reinforcement because of injuries and medium-term durability concerns among their stable of existing hurlers. He can be a lot more, though.

As Bob Howsam built some great teams as the general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1960s and the Cincinnati Reds from the late 1960s through the late 1970s, he gained a reputation for frequently extracting a throw-in player in trades who turned out to be much more than that. Matt Arnold is getting exceptionally good at the same thing. Not all multi-player deals have that dynamic, but just as the one that brought in Kyle Harrison, David Hamilton and Shane Drohan felt that way, this one does. Lance McCullers Jr. has the big name, and he's at least a bit more likely to help the Brewers for the balance of 2026. They would not have made this deal without also acquiring Gordon, though, and a year from now, Gordon's stock is likely to be higher than it is right now. He's a quintessential Brewers pickup, and an excellent candidate to get a boost from a spin through the H & H Car Wash.