What to Expect From New Brewers Reliever Jake Woodford

The final days of spring training include plenty of roster movement across baseball, as non-roster invitees exercise the opt-out and upward mobility clauses in their minor-league contracts. The Brewers are not strangers to adding some of those newly available players to their roster shortly before Opening Day. They did it again on Tuesday afternoon, acquiring right-hander Jake Woodford from the Tampa Bay Rays in exchange for minor-league pitcher K.C. Hunt and cash considerations.

Woodford, 29, has pitched in parts of six big-league seasons for the St. Louis Cardinals, Chicago White Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates, and Arizona Diamondbacks. He spent the spring in Rays camp, where he recently exercised his upward mobility clause after they reassigned him to minor-league camp. He'll get a big-league opportunity in Milwaukee, which added him to its 40-man roster while placing outfielder Akil Baddoo on the 60-day injured list with a left quad strain. 

Woodford, who has primarily started in the minor leagues but has made 86 of his 111 big-league appearances out of the bullpen, is expected to fill a multi-inning relief role.

"I think he's built up to 40-plus pitches," manager Pat Murphy said. "He definitely has a history, and obviously, we're excited about acquiring him."

"We have some history with him," president of baseball operations Matt Arnold said, referring to Woodford's time in St. Louis. "He's an interesting arm that can play a valuable role in a number of different spots in our bullpen, or potentially even at the front of games."

A former first-round pick by the Cardinals in the 2015 draft, Woodford showed flashes of his potential during his first few big-league seasons, but he has since struggled while working as a low-leverage innings eater. In 256 career innings, he's pitched to a 5.10 ERA, 4.84 FIP, and 111 DRA-, according to Baseball Prospectus.

Woodford has reinvented himself over the last couple of years, lowering his arm slot and modifying his arsenal. Now working from a low-three-quarters delivery, his sinker has more depth, and his four-seamer plays better at the top of the zone as a flat, upshoot fastball. A few years ago, he replaced his slider with a cutter and ditched his curveball, and he developed what appears to be a kick changeup last season. Finally, Woodford averaged a career-best 93.2 mph with his sinker and four-seamer in 2025.

After those changes, Woodford profiles as a platoon-neutral reliever whose stuff may be closer to clicking than last year's 6.44 ERA suggests. The Brewers seem to believe he'll be more than a temporary mop-up reliever, as they parted with Hunt—who had an unremarkable showing in Double-A last year but was the organization's co-Minor League Pitcher of the Year in 2024—to acquire him.

"We like the platoon flexibility there," Arnold said. "Obviously, being right-handed, with us having a few more lefties, makes some sense. And his ability to be built up and pitch multiple innings is also something we value."

The Brewers do not make sweeping changes to a pitcher's arsenal or identity during the season, and that need not be the case for Woodford. All that's left for his development is plugging him into the right run-prevention unit and finding the best way to sequence his pitches. The Rays already had him on the right track this spring.

Woodford excelled at missing barrels last year, allowing just a 6.9% barrel rate, 33.6% hard-hit rate, and an average exit velocity of 86.1 mph. His .365 expected wOBA on contact was slightly lower than the league average of .369. His sinker flashed potential to eat up right-handed hitters, yielding an average launch angle of -3 degrees and inducing plenty of chases inside.

The issue was that Woodford allowed too much contact, in front of a Diamondbacks defense that ranked 23rd in baseball with -4 Defensive Runs Saved and posted -2 Outs Above Average while he was on the mound. His stuff was difficult to square up, but it wasn't deceptive. Except for those inside sinkers to righties, none of his other pitches to other locations generated truly uncomfortable swings. Woodford's 16.4% whiff rate ranked in the 2nd percentile among all pitchers, and his 24.4% chase rate ranked in the 12th percentile.

Throwing more cutters could help alleviate that problem. It produced a decent 24.0% whiff rate last season, held hitters to a .276 xwOBA, and was one of the two pitches in Woodford's arsenal with a positive run value. Baseball Prospectus's pitch tunneling metrics estimated that hitters only had a 48.1% chance of recognizing it as a cutter by the time they had to decide whether to swing, meaning it was also his most difficult pitch to identify. That was because it spun very similarly to his other fastballs before separating from them with slight glove-side movement.

The cutter was Woodford's least-used pitch last year, but throwing it more could make pitch recognition tougher for hitters, potentially leading to fewer comfortable swings and more chases against his other pitches. Woodford doubled his cutter usage with the Rays this spring, even making it his primary pitch against left-handed hitters.

Peripherals from small spring training samples are hardly a reliable measure of improvement, but there are signs that throwing more cutters is making Woodford more effective. His chase rate jumped to an above-average 31.6% in his 7 1/3 Grapefruit League innings. To account somewhat for facing lower-level hitters in exhibition games, it was still a better mark than his 27.5% chase rate in Triple-A last season.

The Brewers could still make a few more tweaks after Woodford arrives in Milwaukee, including throwing more high four-seamers to introduce more swing-and-miss into his game. Knowing how they usually operate, though, they'll likely lean into his sinker and cutter to induce batted balls that their defense can turn into outs.

Because he is out of options, Woodford will join the big-league roster, but he may not be active on Opening Day. Traded players get a 72-hour grace period to travel to their new club.

"It's a possibility," Arnold said of Woodford being active by Thursday afternoon. "The logistics around getting him here are something we're still working through."

If he doesn't arrive in time, it seems the Brewers will begin the year with the current group of 26 players they have left on the active roster, with Easton McGee occupying the final spot in the bullpen. McGee looks like the obvious candidate to be optioned to Triple-A once Woodford joins the team, but with Arnold emphasizing adding a right-hander to balance a lefty-heavy relief corps, the club could feasibly option DL Hall instead. Either way, the front office still has a few moving parts to navigate with the start of the regular season one day away.