What Can Brewers Count on from Logan Henderson in 2026?

During spring training, Pat Murphy was exuberant about Logan Henderson's future—and he was far from alone. Henderson turned heads throughout camp, and there was considerable hope among the Brewers fan base that he would quickly be promoted into the big-league rotation. A fourth-round pick in 2021, he has been on fans' radar screens a long time, and indeed, he seemed to be on the cusp of a major contribution by the early stages of 2025.

In a way, that proved true. Henderson made one start in mid-April and three in the middle of May for the Crew. However, the team showed surprisingly little eagerness to entrust him with a full-time role in the big leagues. He dutifully rode the Milwaukee-Nashville shuttle, but by mid-June, it looked like a breakout was going to waste against Triple-A hitters. Henderson had a 1.82 ERA and a 33.7% strikeout rate over his first 13 appearances, and his teams won 12 of the 13 contests. 

By the time more opportunities opened up with the parent club, though, Henderson's window of dominance had slammed shut. He simply wasn't as good, starting around mid-June. In his next eight appearances, he had a 5.35 ERA and an underwhelming 22.2% strikeout rate. He did get the call for one more start with the Crew at the beginning of August, and just in time, because he then suffered a flexor tendon strain and missed the rest of the year. He accrued big-league service time during that stint on the shelf, but wasn't available to them during the playoffs—and probably wouldn't have been their top choice at any point, anyway.

There were two problems with his performance, even before the arm injury (or perhaps because of it, but before he aggravated it enough to force him out of the rotation). First, Henderson's raw stuff ticked down as the season progressed. His velocity was down about a mile per hour, by the time of that one start in August. It had trended in the wrong direction throughout June and July, too.

Henderson has good fastball shape, with more rising action than a hitter expects based on his low release point and three-quarters slot. Still, that loss of velocity is a problem for him. For one thing, his swing-and-miss pitch is the changeup, and lost velocity on the heater gives hitters fractionally more time to distinguish those two offerings and make better swing decisions. For another, a little less power on a fastball at the top of the zone can be the difference between a whiff or a pop-up and a home run.

Secondly, Henderson's locations shifted for the worse as the season progressed. Here's where his pitches were distributed in the first sample cited above, through mid-June:

Here's the same chart for his appearances starting in mid-June:

Fewer of his fastballs stayed up above the zone; more of them ran down into barrels. He lost the strike-to-ball curveball, down and away from righties. Everything trended lower and more to Henderson's glove side, which compromised both his fastball and his changeup. With both his stuff and his command going pear-shaped, Henderson struggled mightily.

If he's fully healthy entering 2026, there's good reason to hope he can get back to the form that made him such a hot name in the first half of 2025. He appears to have dodged a bullet, for now, as he didn't require surgery after the strain this summer. Whether the Brewers can count on him as a significant part of their starting rotation, though, depends on factors that are even harder to gauge than usual. Entering the offseason, the team has to treat Henderson as a nice-to-have, rather than a need-to-have, for next year. Hopefully, he can end up being very nice to have, indeed.