Short On Options, Brewers Will Soon Need to Embrace Change in Bullpen

Nick Mears is out of options. It's a huge part of why he was available at a relatively low price last month, when the Brewers swooped in and snared him from the Colorado Rockies in a trade before the deadline. Mears has warts, and although he also has good stuff that could eventually make him a strong middle reliever for high-leverage situations, the growing pains and uneven progress that were somewhat inevitable for him all have to be the Brewers' problems now--unless they want to risk losing him on waivers, while he still has three years of team control remaining.

Mears was poor again Thursday, as the Brewers dropped a series against the Cardinals by losing 3-0. Obviously, the offense was the greater problem in that contest, but Mears showed (not for the first time, even in just four weeks with the team) an inability to handle a tight game situation. In 46 batters faced with Milwaukee, he has put up excellent strikeout and walk numbers, but hitters are teeing off on him. He's in the middle of the plate way too often, with stuff not nearly good enough to sneak past big-league hitters in those spots.

The sunk-cost fallacy will keep Mears on the roster, unless he happens to suffer an injury that allows the team to place him on the injured list. They won't risk losing him any time in the balance of this season. However, Mears's place on the playoff roster is not safe by any means. Unless he rapidly turns things around, he'll be superseded in the team's plans by either Jacob Misiorowski or Craig Yoho.

By now, both of those names are highly familiar to Brewers fans. Less familiar, perhaps, are the hurdles to adding each to the team at this stage of the season. Neither hurler is on the 40-man roster, and neither even needs to be added thereto this winter, to shield them from the Rule 5 Draft. To call up either, the Crew would have to designate someone for assignment. That's one challenge. The other is finding room on the active roster, despite the lack of optionability for many of their key relievers--and even Mears, who can't be reasonably described that way right now. The team waited as long as they could before optioning Elvis Peguero back to Nashville, but they had to send even him down to make room for the returning Trevor Megill. At full strength, the team has more relievers than their roster can hold, and while that's often a good problem, it's still a problem.

On Sept. 1, of course, it gets a hair easier. The slight expansion of MLB rosters will give the team an extra spot in the bullpen. If the team wants to get a look at both pitchers, though, they'll need to make a very difficult decision in the next handful of days. Furthermore, if they envision either or both as a playoff contributor, calling them up before rosters expand is the easiest way to make that possible. If they're not on the 40-man by the end of August, special exceptions have to be pursued for them to be eligible to pitch in the postseason.

Misiorowski is a more complicated case, and it might make sense to just leave him where he is. Yoho, however, would mark a clear upgrade over Mears, and the team should call him up as soon as possible.

Yoho has become famous for his screwball, which (like Devin Williams) he calls a changeup. Unlike Williams, he pairs that pitch with a sinker that also has extreme arm-side run, rather than a four-seam fastball, which makes him unique even from Williams. As the video from Josh Norris of Baseball America above shows, he also throws from a very low arm angle, which adds to the deception of that uniquely heavy scroogie.

What few realize, though, is that Yoho also has a pretty interesting curveball. It's a slowish roundhouse thing, but given the extreme horizontal angle he presents to hitters and the way both the sinker and the screwball run to the arm side, the curve's opposite direction of bite takes on tons of added utility. You can see him drop that pitch through the back door for a called strike on the outside corner against a lefty late in the video above. Already, in limited action, he's done that three times since joining Nashville.

That third offering has helped Yoho overwhelm minor-league hitters, and it probably wouldn't have quite the same effect on big-leaguers. Still, the sinker and screwball alone are good enough to get a lot of outs in key settings, and Yoho has shown nothing but poise during his brief pro career. He's ready for the challenge, and the Brewers have no reason not to give him a try--other than the opportunity costs, which could be vast and even prohibitive.

Two losses in St. Louis won't change the course of the Brewers' season. They'll still win the division relatively easily. Soon, though, they need to figure out a way to make room on the active roster for the best version of their bullpen, including at least one unique rookie. As has been the case all season, this Brewers pitching staff feels like the Ship of Theseus: it continues apace toward its destination, undaunted and undeterred, but planks in the deck of the ship keep needing to be replaced. This time around, doing that will mean losing some treasured parts of the original group.