It Just Takes One (Sort of): How Brewers Can Pivot if Kyle Harrison, Chad Patrick Prove Unreliable

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Sunday night was the third straight appearance that felt like a trial for Kyle Harrison. The Brewers were hoping to see the lively movement back on his fastball, and to see hitters struggling to identify the slurve early. They wanted to see him challenge batters and win. Instead, he needed a bailout. He's been all but eliminated as a potential starter in the postseason rotation. His previous outing damaged his candidacy for a long-relief bridge role. This one set back his hopes of claiming even a short-relief, matchup-style gig on the playoff roster.

That's a sad denouement for a 2026 season that looked (for a bit) like the next great Brewers breakout. Like most people and machines who seem to defy gravity, he eventually paid a price for it, and though he didn't stay long on the injured list or receive an especially worrisome verbal diagnosis on his elbow, it's clear that something is wrong. He might very well avoid the surgeon's table, but he looks increasingly likely to be shelved for October, to rest up and prepare for next year with a bit of extra rest. The only consolation to be taken from this outing is that it was hardly a surprising letdown; it's been underway for quite a while.

Not so for Chad Patrick, whose erraticism is beginning to make you tilt your head to the side until you find a crick in your neck, the better to disguise a hand to the throat to wipe away a nervous sweat. He's always been effectively wild, but lately, the emphasis is sliding from the first word toward the latter—slowly, insidiously, but surely. On Sunday night, he got two outs, but he also issued two walks and hit a batter—and he was lucky it wasn't worse. Harrison was bailed out by a teammate; Patrick received grace from the opponents instead. An overeager swing in a bases-loaded plate appearance released the pressure valve for him, but it couldn't erase his shakiness.

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This is at least the third time in the last month and change that Patrick has taken the mound and been unable to locate the plate, throwing nearly (and, in one case, more than) half his pitches to non-competitive locations. In his last 15 appearances, he has an impressive 2.04 ERA, but that number is a lie. Of the 78 batters he's faced in those outings, he's walked 12 and hit three, and he's uncorked four wild pitches. In only one of those games (August 25 against the Mets, when his mistakes clustered in the strike zone, rather than outside them) has Patrick materially hurt the Brewers' chances to win, but the process doesn't back up the results.

For the season as a whole, some disturbing trends are developing around Patrick's combination of stuff and command. He's never been a guy whom most of the stuff models like, and those metrics can underrate him, but this is still worth noting. The following is a heatmap for overall grade from PitchingBot, based on location, for Patrick's whole season.

Every pitcher's chart of this type looks vaguely like this. Pitches near the edges of the zone are the most valuable a pitcher can throw. Pitches far from the zone are huge negatives. Those right down the middle are more of a mixed bag, and much depends on your sheer stuff or your deception. Patrick's doesn't look exactly like everyone else's, though. Because his raw stuff doesn't grade overwhelmingly well, he needs to stay out of the middle of the plate more than most hurlers; he hasn't done that successfully this season. He also scatters his pitches more than most pitchers do.

Specifically, Patrick serves up a Dangerous Miss (defined on FanGraphs's PitchingBot Visualizer tool as a pitch with below-average command and overall grades that is in the zone) on 6.2% of his pitches, which is above the average of 5.0%. That's not his most worrisome number, though. The average pitcher throws a Waste Miss pitch (one with below-average command and overall scores, outside the strike zone) 36.5% of the time, which is far above the league standard of 30.7%. His Squandered pitch rate (pitches in the top third of his offerings for stuff grade, but in unhelpful locations) is 12.0%, clear of the league's 10.9% mark.

These are just numbers, but they tell a story. Patrick has always been more prone than most to the especially wild pitch, and the Brewers can't thrust him into high-leverage postseason situations if he can't mitigate that tendency. For now, they need to deemphasize him within their October pitching plan, just as they're already doing with Harrison. The problem with that dual decision is obvious, though: they need someone to get those outs. The playoff pen can't consist entirely (or even mostly) of Aaron Ashby, Trevor Megill and Abner Uribe. Rightfully, Pat Murphy is loath to hand the game over to the likes of Antonio Senzatela and JoJo Romero when the score is close and the stakes are high. Keeping his starters in for seven innings apiece isn't viable, though.

For those reasons (and plenty of his own), DL Hall has emerged as the No. 4 hurler out of the Milwaukee bullpen. Since he came off the injured list at the beginning of August, he's posted a 2.03 ERA that is much more honest. Of the 100 batters he's faced, he's walked just nine, and he's struck out 29. Hall was one of the elite swing disrupters in the game even before hitting the shelf. Since coming off, though, he's been great in a more conventional way. Whether it was a mechanical adjustment (his arm angle is a bit lower) or simple healing, the velocity that went missing for Hall over a year ago is back. Hall always talked about the possibility of finding the heat again. It took so long that even he was beginning to plot out a life without the ability to sit 96 and touch 99, but lo, he's suddenly able to do it again:

A new focus on throwing his two main breaking balls (the slider and curve) with power has given them a velocity bump equal to or exceeding the one he's found on the fastballs. That's produced more whiffs and allowed him to attack with those pitches more, leaning on his changeup much less.

Hall's PitchingBot Visualizer tells the story of the difference between him and Patrick.

Better at finding the edges and staying competitive with his misses, Hall has:

a 3.9% Dangerous Miss rate
a 34.0% Waste Miss rate
a 10.3% Squandered rate

As the surface-level numbers suggest, this is a pitcher turning the corner. Because of his background and recent usage, he's also capable of roaming between roles. He should be able to fill the spaces the team has long hoped Patrick might, and the ones into which they tried unsuccessfully to squeeze Harrison over the last fortnight. He can't be the full-fledged starter Harrison is, but there's some real reason for hope that Robert Gasser can now be the team's No. 3 playoff starter. Hall just needs to slot in alongside Ashby and round out the high-leverage suite for Murphy heading into the postseason.

In a perfect world, Patrick, Harrison and more would be fully operational with one week left in the season, and there would be less pressure on Hall. This is no perfect world, but the Brewers' depth and their deftness in player instruction and development are paying timely dividends. What Patrick and Harrison can't give the team, at the moment, Hall can. That ought to be enough—assuming, of course, that everything else that has to fall into place to produce a pennant-winning run does so.