José Quintana Brings Final Brace to Revamped Milwaukee Brewers Pitching Staff

Last year, the Brewers opened the regular season with a starting rotation of Freddy Peralta, DL Hall, Colin Rea, Jakob Junis, and Joe Ross. Durability concerns surrounded that group; Junis had not started full-time since 2019, Ross missed the previous two seasons recovering from Tommy John surgery, and Hall's brief big-league experience was almost exclusively in relief.

The worst-case scenario quickly unfolded. Hall, Junis, and Ross struggled to work deep into games and were injured by the end of May, combining to start just 18 games. That threw Pat Murphy's pitching staff into an immediate all-hands-on-deck scramble, which ultimately included 17 different starting pitchers and necessitated midseason trades for Aaron Civale and Frankie Montas.

The Brewers made it work, which is a credit to their outstanding pitching development system. It's not an ideal way to operate, though, so they moved to prevent a repeat shortage of legitimate starters. Fast-forward a year, and the club has rebuilt its rotation around experience and durability. The bow on top is José Quintana, who will join Peralta, Nestor Cortes, Tobias Myers, and Civale after signing a one-year deal with a mutual option for 2026.

Quintana's not the most exciting pitcher, nor does he have the rosiest 2025 projections. There's a reason he lingered on the market this long before settling for Milwaukee's $4-million guarantee. While he posted a 3.75 ERA in 31 starts last year, most ERA estimators (4.56 FIP, 4.52 xERA, 4.57 SIERA, 116 DRA-) painted him as a below-average starter. That's less concerning to the Brewers, who have overperformed their FIP by the widest margin in baseball since 2023 thanks to excellent defense.

Jake McKibbin explored what makes Quintana successful and why that recipe might work again under Milwaukee's run-prevention system. The true value in this deal, though, is his consistent availability. He's started at least 30 games in nine of his 13 seasons. Even if Quintana regresses to a middle ground between last year's results and peripherals, he'll still round out the rotation with greater stability than the previous options promised.

The starting staff could have survived without another addition, but only with a carousel of arms requiring extra maintenance from Murphy, Matt Arnold, and Chris Hook. Neither Aaron Ashby nor Tyler Alexander have started more than 19 big-league games in a season, and the former is awaiting a second opinion for an oblique injury. DL Hall was placed on the 60-day IL to make room for Quintana and faces a lengthy absence due to a lat strain. Connor Thomas and Chad Patrick have no MLB experience. Brandon Woodruff's live bullpens have gone as well as one could hope, but he remains on a delayed build-up schedule and has not enjoyed a fully healthy season since 2021.

With Quintana in tow, Murphy will open the year with four starters who started at least 30 games last year. Instead of being forced to get creative and stretch his relievers out of the gates, he can set a more traditional rotation and better pace his bullpen.

"I'm really happy he's on our side now," Murphy said after Wednesday's Cactus League game against the White Sox. "I believe in the person. I believe in his preparation—that he can come out fast, and I think he'll really help us out.

"Great job by Matt Arnold, getting that done. He did it personally. I mean he worked at this for a while, personally, and I think it's great."

You can see the labor that went into the deal in the details of it. Murphy badly wanted the reinforcement of an extra arm, and Arnold concurred, so if they had simply had $4.5 million to hand to Quintana for 2025, they would have done so a few weeks ago. Instead, working in the very fine margin between his existing payroll and the limits of his budget, Arnold hammered out a deal with Quintana and his representatives that will pay the pitcher just $2 million in 2025; a $250,000 roster bonus for making the team (almost a certainty, but not technically a guarantee); bonuses at five different tiers for games started and four for innings pitched; and a $2-million buyout on a $15-million mutual option for 2026. That degree of creativity demonstrates both the rigidity of the constraints within which Arnold needed to work—even if he meets every incentive in the deal, Quintana will only make $3.5 million before that buyout in November—and the level of urgency the front office and the coaching staff felt.

The addition also clarifies how the bullpen will look on Opening Day. Alexander and Thomas cannot be optioned to the minor leagues; Alexander will almost certainly make the team as a long reliever. That's a blow to Elvis Peguero, Elvin Rodriguez, Abner Uribe, Grant Anderson, and Grant Wolfram, most of whom will now be optioned to Triple-A, regardless of their spring training performances. The chances of Thomas being returned to the St. Louis Cardinals (or claimed elsewhere on waivers) just rose significantly.

It's in the best interests of the team, though. All of these pitchers will get big-league innings throughout a 162-game regular season. Quintana's presence takes weight off their shoulders and ensures the Brewers have the pitching depth they'll need.