Which Pitchers Could Brewers Target to Diversify Their Team-Wide Pitch Mix?

No team in baseball leans more heavily on heaters than the Milwaukee Brewers. That, at least, has been the state of things over the last few seasons. In 2024, no team threw four-seamers, sinkers or cutters as a higher percentage of their total pitches than the Brewers. We documented this phenomenon throughout last season, most explicitly in this Jack Stern gem from May. Partially because they threw so many heaters, they also ranked third-to-last in MLB in offspeed pitch usage. Only the Pirates and Cardinals threw fewer changeups and splitters than did the Crew.

It's hard to pick nits with an approach that has been as successful as Milwaukee's has over the last several seasons. Chris Hook is one of the most respected pitching coaches in the game, and with good reason. He has gotten the most possible production from several pitchers who lack the high-end talent—especially the swing-and-miss stuff—around which most other teams build their pitching staffs, and part of that process has been a heavy reliance on moving fastballs that engender weak contact and play into the hands of the team's superb defense.

That path to pitching success comes at a cost, though, and can become especially volatile when facing tough teams who apply extra pressure via elite power, speed, or both. It also puts tremendous pressure on the defense; a fastball-forward pitching plan means a heavy reliance on fielders for run prevention.

In November, baseball analyst Ethan Mann published a study on the way hitters' swing speeds and lengths changed when they saw the same pitch type twice in a row. It's all worth your time, as Mann delved into various nuances of it, but the thrust of his findings was fairly simple: hitters adapt and get more aggressive on successive swings against fastballs and against breaking balls. The only pitch category that defies hitters' attempts to swing more dangerously when they come back to back are offspeed offerings, and naturally, the Brewers used those as little as any team in baseball in 2024.

Going back to the well with fastballs and breaking stuff can be dangerous, and not being able to turn to offspeed pitches limited the Brewers staff's ability to strike out opposing batters in 2024. Partially because of their approach, the Crew's hurlers ranked 15th in strikeout rate, 16th in strikeout-minus-walk rate, and 22nd in fielding-independent pitching (FIP). If they want to find more whiffs in 2025, they might need to find some pitchers who are willing to deploy their offspeed stuff more often.

Of course, the budget remains fairly tight, and guys with elite offspeed weapons (like reliever Tommy Kahnle and Japanese import Roki Sasaki) will be hard to obtain. Let's focus, then, on a few profoundly flawed but interesting potential targets who fit the Brewers' profile but also have good offspeed pitches.

Cal Quantrill - Free Agent RHP
It hasn't been a very good few years for Quantrill, who landed with the Rockies last offseason when the Guardians decided to move on. Pitchers the Guardians give up on and in whom the Rockies see something tend strongly to be bad pitchers, and indeed, Quantrill went only from a 5.24 ERA (and 139 DRA-, suggesting he was 39 percent worse than the league-average pitcher, according to Baseball Prospectus) in 2023 to a 4.98 ERA (and 131 DRA-) in 2024—and that was considered a minor victory.

That's the bad news. The good news is, Quantrill does do some things well. He sits around 94 miles per hour with his fastball, which is a sinker. He has a pitch that you could call a firm slider or a sliderish cutter, and one you could call a very tight curve or a very slow slider, but however you name each offering, there are compelling characteristics to each. Then, there's his splitter. He throws his splitter a lot, and although it's not the type of offspeed pitch that tends to rack up huge whiff numbers, he enjoyed excellent results on it even as he ramped up usage of it in 2024.

The Brewers would have a lot of tips for Quantrill. He's a good candidate for a rearrangement of his arsenal, including a cleanup of those messy, blended breaking options. He's probably a candidate to reinstall his four-seamer or (his arm slot suits this) a harder, truer cutter. The splitter would also give the team something they've been missing, in terms of pitch type representation. Quantrill could be had for about $5 million, and has unexplored upside, even if the ceiling is still fairly low.

Buck Farmer - Free Agent RHP
Farmer, 34 next month, is not an option to start. He is, however, a reliever with an unusually deep arsenal, which the Brewers tend to like. He throws a four-seamer, a sinker, a slider—and a changeup. It's the same arsenal Joel Payamps throws, although Farmer's fastball is a few ticks slower and he's a tick less effective overall. The slider is a bit sweepy, pairing nicely with the sinker to righties, and the changeup plays gorgeously off the four-seamer to lefties.

Farmer has been more solid than spectacular, even at his best, but now that he uses all four of these offerings, he's a balanced and useful middle reliever. He held lefties to a .308 weighted on-base average (wOBA) in 2024, the best figure he's posted against them since 2018, and the changeup is an important part of the picture.

Chris Paddack - Twins RHP
Throughout his career, Paddack has struggled not to find a good changeup, but to satisfactorily pair it with a usable breaking ball. The change is his gift, and he throws it a robust 26% of the time. He doesn't rack up whiffs with it the way some hurlers do, but Paddack's command of the pitch is superb. He can dot the bottom of the zone with it, and occasionally bury the pitch below the knees for swings and misses.

Paddack excels in extension at release, a trait the Brewers adore. His fastball plays up for that reason, and his change plays nicely off it because of the way he pronates through his release point. Paddack could operate in a multi-inning relief role, but for the Brewers, he's too tempting a project as a starter. They could land him at little cost from the Twins, who are eager to dump a portion of his $7.5-million salary for 2025, and he would be a promising addition to the back end of their rotation, as depth and insurance. He would also bring aboard a needed infusion of feel for the changeup.

Alternatively, of course, the Brewers can coach up their existing pitchers, in the hopes of getting them to succeed with offspeed stuff more than they have in the past. Not doing so with most of their incumbents has been sound logic, but they need to push the boundaries of their player-development operation somewhat to explore the benefits of keeping hitters off-balance more consistently in 2025.