Milwaukee Brewers 2023 Positional Previews: Relief Pitchers, Part Two

A month ago, nothing was certain when it came to the lower half of the bullpen hierarchy for the Brewers. For the final three spots, there seemed to be as many as five or six credible candidates. Now, however, most of that uncertainty has been eliminated. Of the four roster spots open for pitchers beyond the nine men we’ve already discussed in our pitching previews, three are pretty much sewn up. The spring training battles have largely been decided, and the pitching staff has taken shape.

Gus Varland: The Late Charge

To the team’s credit, the Brewers didn’t give up on Varland, or even deprioritize him, after a rocky start in the Cactus League. On the contrary, he’s been given increasingly valuable chances to prove himself, and as camp has progressed, so has the Rule 5 pick and erstwhile Dodgers prospect. 

Velocity matters, and the fact that Varland has consistently pushed his heater up to 95 and 96 miles per hour (touching 97 in his outing Thursday) has helped nudge him forward in the competition for a bullpen job. Roster math and the rules always carry more weight than some fans would prefer, too, and the fact that Varland would have been lost if he hadn’t earned a place on the 26-man roster right away afforded him a bit of grace. What jumps out most, though, is the biting slider that he’s seemed to command with increasing consistency in each outing. 

It’s not hard to find a reliever who throws in the mid-90s anymore. It’s not hard to find one with a good slider. Varland hasn’t yet shown enough to be thought of as a budding star of the relief corps. If he can sharpen his command of the fastball, keep the slider as tight as it has looked recently, and throw both with conviction to both lefties and righties, though, that potential is there. In the meantime, he’s a fine bridge guy for medium-leverage situations, and the team might use a phantom injured list stint to try to keep him around even if he encounters some adversity early in the regular season.

Bryse Wilson: Ahead of the Curve?

As I wrote in Parts Two and Three of our starting pitching preview, Eric Lauer’s lousy spring has widened the spectrum of potential roles Wilson could fill for Milwaukee to open the season. One month ago, I wrote about the way Wilson raised his arm slot near the end of 2022, and how his baseline of skills could fit both that new mechanical profile and the Brewers’ organizational proclivities when it comes to developing pitchers at the big-league level. He’s stuck with that mechanical adjustment this spring, and he’s been fairly successful, especially thanks to improved command of what looks increasingly like a modern sweeper. 

Wilson still doesn’t profile as a full-fledged starter, absent some further and very unexpected evolution. At this point, though, he’s looking like an easy and valuable inclusion in the bullpen, as a long man and as a piggyback candidate for Lauer or Wade Miley, both of whom might need to keep starts short to begin 2023.

Adrian Houser: A Study in Stubbornness

In no way is the above subtitle a dig at Houser. On the contrary, stubbornness is an essential characteristic for success among professional athletes. The competitiveness of the field and the difficulty of the endeavor make it so. The obdurateness that prevents, say, a right-handed power pitcher lacking a credible weapon against left-handed batters from acceding to efforts to convert him into a reliever is one side of a coin, the other side of which is the resiliency to keep working and find success after giving up a huge home run or having an entire year of misery and frustration.

That doesn’t make it any less true, though, that stubbornness heads off many potentially brilliant bullpen careers. The guys who convert from starter to reliever and go from an afterthought to a star–Liam Hendriks, Daniel Hudson, and Kendall Graveman, to name a few recent exemplars–tend to have two things in common:

1. They had no real choice but to embrace the conversion to relief, but
2. They realized that fact and took it in stride.

Many hurlers who could be near-elite setup men languish in Triple-A rotations or bounce along the waiver-wire carousel instead, seeking places where they might be allowed to continue pursuing a starting role, and letting the potential magic in their arms get away from them, 75 meaningless pitches at a time.

That’s too harsh a way to frame Houser, but at 30 years old, the man born on Groundhog Day is coming up on a real danger of falling into a rut. He’s had four years to establish himself as a starter for this team, and all he’s demonstrated is sufficient competence to stay employed. Now that he’s being forcibly moved to the bullpen, he still sounds more interested in an improbable return to rotation glory. If he shifted his focus to paring down his arsenal and maximizing his stuff, though, he could become a versatile and potent weapon for Craig Counsell. This is the moment to set stubbornness aside. Houser needs to recognize it.

Javy Guerra: A Man, a Plan, a Fastball

The lanes were wide open for Jake Cousins, Joel Payamps, Abner Uribe, or some unheralded non-roster invitee to claim the final spot in the bullpen this spring, especially while Guerra was away. He went to pitch for Panama in the World Baseball Classic, leaving innings and eyeballs free for the taking in Maryvale. None of those who remained were especially impressive, though, and Guerra has a capacity to purely overpower opponents that can be wonderfully valuable in the middle of a game. Imagine a team trying to get used to Miley’s cutter, which often slips under 90 miles per hour but is basically his fastball, only to have Guerra come in on his heels, throwing nearly 100 from the right side, with the ability to give it either sinking action or more of a cut-ride profile. 

Out of options, Guerra could prove impossible to keep if the team tries to slip him through waivers. The odds of Payamps sticking around are a bit better, and the upside he has–not only in a vacuum, but relative to the other pitchers who will make up this bullpen–is a bit worse. That makes Guerra the likely selection.

Others, and a Couple of Key Questions

Payamps is unlikely to stick around if he doesn’t make this roster, but the team still has plenty of depth for the inevitable emergencies of the long season. Jake Cousins will probably get the first call from Nashville, if and when it’s a reliever the club needs. His strikeout upside is huge, but control problems are a persistent and pernicious problem. The same goes for Cam Robinson. 

If the Brewers have another Peter Strzelecki in their system, it’s Ryan Middendorf, an undrafted free agent last June who shot through their system after signing and has caught Counsell’s eye this spring. He’s typical of what sometimes feels like a bottomless system when it comes to intriguing relief arms.

To close, though, let’s pivot back to the short-term outlook for the parent club. They will carry 13 pitchers at all times, but whether that takes the form of six starters and seven relievers or five starters and eight men in the pen remains to be seen. A middle course is likeliest, with Wilson (and perhaps Houser) working long relief and making multiple spot starts. The thorniest navigation, for Counsell and for Matt Arnold, will be the fact that this unit is a bit more locked into place in terms of optionable arms and veteran status than is their preference.

By midseason, this bullpen will look different. It’s unlikely that every relevant hurler will be healthy and effective even for those few months, but even if they are, Justin Wilson and Aaron Ashby will disrupt the picture. There will be roster- and elbow-based attrition. The Brewers probably have the depth to weather it all, but no segment of any team’s roster is more susceptible to sudden and total reversal of fortune than these last few arms in the bullpen. Milwaukee is no exception.