Quinn Priester's Wrist Issue Likely to Land Him on Injured List to Open 2026 Season

The Milwaukee Brewers are considering sending Quinn Priester to see a wrist specialist, manager Pat Murphy admitted Thursday. Priester, 25, is still feeling discomfort in his wrist, and Murphy acknowledged that some of that irritation is "moving up his arm."

Already, the right-handed starter has undergone an MRI, which showed only inflammation in his wrist and no damage in his elbow. However, despite some good days, he has yet to successefully stack healthy days to the point where he and the team are ready to put him on a mound in a competitive setting.

"Just not responding as quickly as we'd like it to," Priester said, though he tried to strike an optimistic tone overall in meeting with reporters about the delay in his preparation. He threw a live batting practice session early in camp, but hasn't been able to throw another one since—a layoff of roughly two weeks, so far. However, he's continued to play catch during that time, and said the most difficult part to navigate has been inconsistency.

"I guess that's the part that's difficult, is some throws, I'll be able to feel it, and then some throws I don't," he said, admitting that the inability to ascertain exactly what's wrong has been a source of frustration. 

Because he's now likely to need another week or more to get back into competitive work, Priester is virtually guaranteed to start the season on the injured list. If his wrist responds better to treatment or the team gets an easily remediable diagnosis for the problem after a visit to a specialist, he could be back on a big-league mound by mid-April, but there's too much uncertainty around the situation to pin down that timeline right now.

Priester said he first felt a similar issue last summer, during the Brewers' five-game series at Wrigley Field. That time, it responded relatively well to treatment, and he was able to pitch through it. When it recurred last month, though, the same interventions no longer seemed to work.

"It kind of sucks, just taking it day by day trying to get past this, but, you know, [I'm] confident that it's nothing big, that it's just something that the body is probably reacting to after a really intense season last year," he said. He pitched an even 162 innings between the regular season and the playoffs, and noted that in addition to that being his heaviest sheer workload, there was added intensity (and thus, added stress) associated with pitching all of those innings in the majors. 

With Priester almost certain to be shelved, the door opens wider to Brandon Sproat, Kyle Harrison and Logan Henderson, (probably) in that order. After Jacob Misiorowski and Chad Patrick, those three are the top arms in line for starting rotation spots to begin the season, though Brandon Woodruff and Priester could return relatively quickly.

Koenig, Murphy Unconcerned About Spring Struggles
Jared Koenig lost 6-8 pounds this offseason, as part of a shift in the focus of his conditioning work. He stressed that it was not a plan to overhaul his body in any sense, and that it traced more to a long 2025 season and the changes it wrought in his offseason strength work. As someone who easily adds weight during the season (a rarity in the majors, but less so with relievers), he expects not to have any trouble getting back the bulk missing from his frame right now.

He'll need, at some point, to put that restored weight behind his fastball, which has dipped from its usual home in the mid-90s to 92-93 MPH in his first two Cactus League outings of the year. That diminished velocity has led to ugly numbers, but Koenig was unconcerned about them—and even less fazed by the velocity, which he expects will rebound. In a camp that has featured several Brewers pitchers ramping up slowly outside the quasi-competitive arenas of the Cactus League, Koenig pushed the coaching staff to let him do his preparatory work in that very space—even if it came with some lumps.

"I told them I just wanted to pitch in more games," he said. "I don't like sim games. I just don't like facing teammates. It's hard for me, especially, to want to throw what I want to throw [against fellow Brewers]."

It's early enough that Koenig isn't sweating velocity at all, but he's especially unconcerned because he feels that he gets stronger—better able to push himself without danger—in June and July, rather than the spring. For now, he's focused on continuing to get into games and test himself against real opponents, even if it be with lower stakes than in the regular season.

Koenig is working on a sweeper, but said he's only gotten to throw one in a competitive setting so far. After struggling with right-handed batters last year, he also dedicated himself to shoring up his cutter over the winter, with his longtime trainer Matt Rossignol, near Koenig's home in the Santa Cruz, Calif. area. Using Trackman data for feedback and lots of video work, he feels he's honed that pitch anew, leaning on his nearly decade-long relationship with Rossignol, who has become so close that he officiated Koenig's wedding.

For his part, Murphy has lost no faith in Koenig at all. On the contrary, he continues to see him as a linchpin of the bullpen plan. Asked whether the combination of a left-leaning bullpen and better overall depth could push Koenig back into consideration to be optioned to Triple-A Nashville, Murphy said he thinks of the big southpaw as an unsung hero of the last two seasons, and that he views him as an indispensable high-leverage arm, right along with Abner Uribe, Trevor Megill and Aaron Ashby.

It might not be full-throttle come Opening Day, but expect Koenig to be in the thick of the team's bullpen plan all year. Despite a slow start to the spring, neither Koenig nor the team is worried.