Jason Wang

Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images Last December’s trade to acquire Ángel Zerpa in exchange for Isaac Collins and Nick Mears was a surprising move to many. There were layers of complexity to the front office's thesis, but most of it was based on the idea that Zerpa had far more upside than the pieces that Milwaukee was sending to Kansas City. It seems obvious, but deriving the future value calculation is easier said than done. Luckily, our very own Jack Stern did an excellent job discussing what he could bring to the table. Fans didn’t get to see much of Zerpa in spring training, because he spent his time representing Team Venezuela in the World Baseball Classic, but his participation in the tournament arguably offered more optimism than any work in the Cactus League could have. On the way to winning it all, Zerpa posted a flawless 0.00 ERA over 5 ⅓ innings pitched with three hits, two walks, and eight strikeouts—one of which came against a young up-and-comer by the name of Shohei Ohtani. His stock quickly reached an all-time high, at least in the eyes of Brewers fans, but after seven regular-season appearances, his numbers don’t seem to be those of the pitcher Milwaukee thought they were getting. Across eight innings, Zerpa has a 6.75 ERA, with an 11.1% strikeout rate and below-average peripherals across the board. It’s worth pointing out that four of his six earned runs came on April 12 against the Nationals. In this outing, he gave up four hits and one walk while getting just two outs. Part of this was Washington playing a particularly aggressive brand of baseball, looking to steal bases and put balls in play by any means necessary. One could argue that this added an atypical amount of pressure, but it’s still not enough to explain why Zerpa hasn’t looked dominant at all this year. As a sinker/slider pitcher with league-average velocity, it’s expected that his run prevention comes mostly in the form of ground balls, and he does have a respectable 57.1% ground-ball rate. However, striking out one in nine hitters is just too low to be effective in the long term. He’s not expected to miss too many bats with his sinker, but opposing hitters are making quality contact too often, averaging .286 with a .429 slugging percentage against the pitch. Although he has only thrown it nine times, his changeup already carries a run value of -3. It has only been put into play once, ending up as a home run for Willson Contreras. Otherwise, it has lackluster numbers across the board. Part of the issue could be its similarity to his sinker, coming in just 5 MPH slower and sharing similar movement profiles. It has never been a particularly effective weapon for him in the big leagues, and it may be time to make (pardon the pun) a change. Nonetheless, it’s far too early for the Brewers to be out on Zerpa. Reliever ERAs are notorious for being easily inflated, especially early in the season, and he’s far from the only bullpen arm whose results have been subpar. Eight innings may not be enough to decide whether he’s suitable for the team, but there’s enough data to raise some important red flags. Whether it ends up being his sequencing, pitch mix, or some other esoteric mechanical adjustment, Milwaukee will likely need to change something if they want this bet to pay off. View full article

Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-Imagn Images Brandon Woodruff is a Milwaukee Brewers lifer. He was drafted by the organization in the 11th round in 2014, and it’s safe to say that he has greatly surpassed expectations since then. Over his career, all of which he has spent in the Brewers organization, he's pitched in nine big-league seasons to a 3.11 ERA and 3.21 FIP. Sadly, fans haven’t seen quite as much of him as that implies. Injuries have limited him to just 750 innings over that span, and he has pitched more than 100 innings in just three seasons. Things have gotten especially bad since he turned 30, as he's pitched a total of just 136 ⅔ innings over the past four years. For the first several years of his career, he was an outstanding starter, thanks to his stuff staying intact through various injuries. Unfortunately, it's clear now that his stuff will not come all the way (or, arguably, even most of the way) back from the major shoulder injury that kept him off a big-league mound for 20 months. The most notable difference is his average fastball velocity, which has dropped from 95.5 mph in 2023 to just 92.9 mph in 2026. Woodruff is undeterred and has continued to adapt his pitching to fit his new limitations. Upon his return in 2025, he added a new cutter and sweeper, while phasing out his slider and decreasing his four-seam fastball usage. This allowed him to pitch to a 3.20 ERA and 3.17 FIP over 64 ⅔ innings, but can he repeat the same success this year? In his first start of the year against the Rays, he struck out six over five innings. Overall, it was a strong outing, but it highlighted that his sinker may not stick around in his arsenal for long. Of the four hits he gave up, three came against his sinker, and two of those were solo home runs. Looking back, it should be unsurprising that two 90-mph sinkers located in the heart of the zone ended up in the seats. The sinker seems to have suffered the most from the dip in velocity, as Woodruff no longer has the ability to sneak it by hitters who fouled it off consistently in the past. Conversely, his four-seam fastball is still effective, thanks to its impressive 17.9 inches of induced vertical break. He also commanded it remarkably well, hitting William Contreras’s glove precisely where it was set up multiple times. His new cutter has also been effective and shares remarkable similarities to Chad Patrick’s, coming in in the upper 80s and featuring more movement than your average big-league cutter. Given how effective it has been since debuting in 2025, it’s feasible that it’s used more frequently against right-handed hitters instead of his sinker. We didn’t get to see much of his secondary pitches, since 56 of the 67 total pitches he threw against the Rays were fastball variants, but if 2025 was any indication, his changeup could play an important role this year. Hitters really struggled against Woodruff’s off-speed pitch last season, slugging just .063 while whiffing 35.4% of the time. Woodruff seems undecided on his sweeper thus far, throwing it occasionally but without enough consistency for it to really have a dedicated place in his arsenal. When he did throw it last year, it didn’t seem to do what he wanted and would end up in a suboptimal part of the strike zone. It’s an overplayed stereotype that pitchers who lack the stuff to be competitive must instead rely on being “crafty,” but in the case of Woodruff, that seems to be exactly what he’s doing. Precise command will be the name of the game, and if the ability to miss bats isn’t there, he’ll have to settle for soft contact—even if it’s something he hasn’t been historically good at. Fastballs up in the zone and changeups down and away should be his bread and butter moving forward. If he is intent on keeping one or both of the sinker and cutter, he’ll have to figure out how to get more ground balls out of them. At 33 years old, Woodruff isn’t quite over the hill, but his days of dominating hitters in the zone with upper-90s velocity are behind him. Luckily, if there’s any team that can get the most out of him, it’s the Brewers. This is likely the last year that he’ll stay in Milwaukee’s rotation, given their logjam of young pitching talent rising up the ranks, but if it's the year the Crew finally returns to the World Series, it will be the crowning achievement of Woodruff's long service to the franchise. View full article

jake ur gonna ruin someone's day!!

Definitely part of it too! @Jake McKibbin and I actually talked about it briefly in our post-game reaction:

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images Brandon Sproat was a highly-touted prospect in the Mets organization for quite some time. He had lukewarm numbers across 121 innings in Triple-A last season, posting a 4.24 ERA and 4.18 FIP and causing his prospect ranking to dip from being No. 1 in the Mets system in 2025 to No. 5 in 2026. Nonetheless, the Brewers remained interested and acquired him as part of the Freddy Peralta trade. He made his Brewers debut Sunday, amid considerable hype, but he had a tough time of it. He needed 86 pitches to make it through just three innings of work, giving up six hits, four walks, and seven earned runs. Before that, the Brewers’ pitching staff had limited the White Sox to a total of just three runs in the first two games of the series. So what went wrong? The biggest issue seemed to be command. Sproat had a hard time finding the zone consistently, and when he missed, he missed big. For the most part, opposing hitters were laying off pitches outside of the zone and punishing anything that ended up right down the middle, which was far too frequent a problem. # of pitches Zone % Chase % Whiff % Sinker 36 66.7% 16.7% 30.0% Cutter 19 47.4% 10.0% 11.1% Sweeper 15 53.3% 42.9% 37.5% Curveball 11 27.3% 12.5% 0.0% Changeup 4 25.0% 33.3% 0.0% Every pitch had at least one glaring issue in this outing. The sweeper performed admirably on the surface, posting strong chase and whiff rates, but he did leave a few too many up in the zone. He got away with it for the most part, but also gave up a 403-foot home run to Everson Pereira. The cutter really struggled to do much of anything. Fewer than half ended up in the zone, and the ones that did were simply too juicy for the White Sox lineup. After loading the bases in the first inning, a cutter located middle-middle was the pitch that ended up in the seats for a grand slam. The curveball was simply all over the place, often starting way out of the zone and staying there. It didn’t generate a whiff because there was only one swing, a foul ball by Edgar Quero. Of the eight that landed outside of the zone, this was the only one tempting enough to chase; the rest were mostly waste pitches. To Sproat’s credit, the sinker did seem effective, and also landed in the zone two-thirds of the time. It seemed like the pitch over which he had the most command, and although it did give up three hits, none were for extra bases. A few were arguably defensive miscues, more than truly earned hits. Being a rookie starter is tough enough as it is, and the pressures of being a top prospect and newly acquired trade asset don’t exactly help. Throw in the implicit pressure of the home crowd being amped up for a potential sweep to kick off the season, and it’s easy to see why the 25-year-old Sproat may not have had the smoothest debut in the world. He was also working with rookie Jeferson Quero, who caught him in some bullpens this spring but never in game action. That could have contributed to some issues with pitch selection and/or receiving, which also cropped up. Aside from the confounding variables, a sample of one outing simply isn’t enough data to make a decision on whether he’s deserving of staying in the big-league rotation. His numbers in spring training were far more encouraging, particularly his 28.3% strikeout rate and his 29.6% whiff rate. It will take time for him to start looking like the prospect that has been promised. The Brewers don’t necessarily need him to be a front-line starter right away. However, command issues will continue to limit him if unaddressed, and moving forward, that should continue to be a priority for the young starter. View full article

Kinda crazy to think that the Brewers are such a well-rounded team that one of their biggest weaknesses was backup shortstop.

need to see this jake woodford toe the slab in milwaukee

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images When Joey Ortiz was acquired from the Orioles in the Corbin Burnes trade, it was more or less assumed that he would inherit shortstop from Willy Adames. He was the No. 63 overall prospect in baseball in 2024, according to MLB Pipeline, and even though he was playing a new position (third base), his rookie year was quite encouraging. His first year after moving back to shortstop was less than ideal. A year-long offensive slump limited him to a 67 wRC+. His defensive contributions (depending on which figure you look at) were just good enough to keep him above replacement-level, but the future of the position isn’t as clear as it once seemed. There’s still time to turn things around. Ortiz is 27 years old, and there’s reason to believe that his performance at the plate last year was the exception, not the rule. Much of his offensive struggles came from a steep decline in plate discipline rather than a holistic degradation of talent. A side-by-side comparison demonstrates that other than his chase rate increasing and walk rate decreasing, most of his numbers remained in line with 2024. 2024 2025 Barrel % 4.6 3.0 LA Sweet Spot % 26.6 27.4 Squared Up % 23.0 23.3 Whiff % 17.1 16.0 K % 20.2 14.6 Chase % 24.7 33.3 BB % 11.0 5.3 Surface-level spring training statistics only matter so much, given their limited sample and the variance of opposing competition, but his 10.9% walk rate thus far is at least trending in the right direction. His power also seems to have returned, with his average exit velocity jumping to 91.9 mph and his 90th-percentile EV making a similar leap to 107.2 mph, both marked improvements on where those metrics were last season. In other words, there’s still hope for Joey Ortiz, but it’s far from a sure thing. The uncertainty of it all is exactly what led a savvy team like the Milwaukee Brewers—who take no unnecessary risks—to go about getting a backup with a chance to become the starter. Although they sent much of their 2025 infield depth to the Red Sox in the Caleb Durbin trade, the front office replenished it by acquiring David Hamilton in that very deal. They'd also scooped up Jett Williams from the Mets in the Freddy Peralta deal. Williams is currently MLB Pipeline's 51st-ranked prospect and carries all the usual characteristics of a player who has made it this far in a 5-foot-7 frame. He’s fast, pulls the ball in the air frequently, and is athletic enough to play in the outfield, or at multiple spots around the infield. Hamilton is the far superior defender—perhaps over Ortiz, as well as Williams. The dynamic Williams spent most of his minor-league season in Double-A last year but also played 34 games in Triple-A, posting a cumulative 136 wRC+ with 17 home runs and 34 stolen bases. His well-rounded offensive profile already seems sufficient for a step up in competition, as he's been excellent in spring training, slashing .375/.500/.625 over his 20 plate appearances. Of course, he’ll also have to maintain his success in Triple-A. His time in spring training was somewhat truncated by a quad injury he sustained at the end of February, and given a larger sample, any current issues (can he make enough contact? Is his plate discipline good enough to handle the best pitching in the world?) would have been clearer. Milwaukee is in no rush to call up Williams, and have already assigned him to minor-league camp. Hamilton is the more significant short-term threat to Ortiz's playing time. He's batting a less impressive .231/.294/.371 this spring, but he brings elite speed (and aggressiveness on the bases) and that excellent glove, so there's a chance he'll force the issue at either short or third base. Williams, meanwhile, will prepare for his time in the big leagues by playing multiple positions, as his long-term home is probably either second base or center field, anyway. In the medium term, Cooper Pratt is the one who might take over shortstop from Ortiz, unless the incumbent shortstop reasserts himself sharp-like. Pratt only had a 107 wRC+ in Double-A last year, but the potential is obvious, and his glove is ahead of his bat. Behind him (and gaining fast) are Jesús Made and Luis Peña. There's a swamp-like fluidity to this group, but from it, the team is almost certain to get something great—but that's not guaranteed to happen this year. It can be tempting to look at this year as a holdover year before the organization’s most promising prospects blossom into full-fledged big leaguers. However, what the team has on the table is far from a group of replacement-level journeymen. While it may not be clear who will receive the most playing time at the role, Milwaukee has no shortage of promising options. View full article

Trevor Megill trade incoming? Might not be until next year (assuming no lockout) since he does hit free agency in 2028 but that would be fall in line with the Brewers' MO.

thank u for ur response prospect jesus

Curious to hear more. Prospects are always super hard to evaluate for me since future value is based on data that isn't as easy for me to find so I kinda just blindly trust and then wait to see what happens in the big leagues. As Spencer pointed out, 107 wRC+ doesn't really jump off the page as a quality for a No. 4 prospect in a stacked system but I just kinda assume the underlying data mentioned is what people are weighing more heavily.

The things I would do to be 6 feet tall and 175 pounds...

TIL what moxie means

Image courtesy of © Dave Kallmann / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images He wasn’t quite as flashy as his 6-foot-7 fellow rookie, but don’t get it twisted: Chad Patrick played a significant role in Milwaukee’s success in 2025. He posted a 3.53 FIP (the best figure of anyone on the Brewers with more than 80 innings pitched) and accumulated 2.6 fWAR, second only to Freddy Peralta on the team’s pitching staff. To those who didn’t get a chance to follow him very closely, this might come as a surprise, since none of his peripherals are particularly impressive. Outside of a 25.2% strikeout rate, his Statcast metrics are pretty average across the board. So, can he continue his success in 2026, or will opposing hitters finally figure him out, necessitating a decrease in workload or leverage? Chad Patrick’s Strengths Patrick’s primary pitch was his cutter, which he threw 41.1% of the time. Unlike the famous cutter of former Milwaukee ace Corbin Burnes, it’s more of a hard slider than a fastball, coming in at an average velocity of just 87.9 mph. As a result, though, it gets significantly more movement than your typical cutter, which allowed him to get a whiff rate of 27.2% on it. It did run into a few barrels here and there, but overall, a hard-hit rate of 39.7% isn’t bad. For context, Drew Rasmussen had the most valuable cutter by Run Value last year, and it had a hard hit rate of 42.3% and a whiff rate of 26.8%. To complement this pitch, Patrick also threw a sinker and a four-seam fastball, which were remarkably similar in both usage (23%) and velocity (94.1 mph). His heater was particularly effective due to its 16.6 inches of induced vertical break and his ability to consistently command it at the top of the zone. His sinker didn’t miss many bats, but it was great at generating soft contact, as is expected. It didn’t stand out compared to other sinkers around the league, but it was an effective tool nonetheless, especially for getting double plays when needed. His trio of fastballs was responsible for most of his production last year. He typically attacked right-handed hitters with sinkers and left-handed hitters with four-seam fastballs, while doling out cutters to everyone. Chad Patrick’s Weaknesses His fastballs are dandy, but his secondary pitches fail to meet the same lofty standard. For the majority of his time in the big leagues, he used his slider against righties and changeups against lefties, but his offspeed stuff was getting battered. He held onto it through the end of the season, but ended up slowly phasing out his slider in favor of a slurve that had encouraging results over a small sample. One of the most challenging aspects of being a starting pitcher is needing to face the entire lineup multiple times. At minimum, a six-inning appearance requires facing everyone in the lineup twice, so the ability to give hitters different looks is necessary for long-term success. This is where Patrick’s lack of a truly effective arsenal of breaking balls really hurts him. When facing hitters for the second time in a game, he holds them to just a .597 OPS. When facing them for the third time, this balloons to an .875 OPS. It’s a significant issue that eventually pushed the team to option him later in the season. If the slurve ends up sticking around for the long haul (and if he’s able to refine his offspeed offerings, in general), he could have a very compelling five-pitch mix. If he enters 2026 still holding onto the stuff that worked in 2025, it may be tough for him to hold down a stable spot in the Brewers’ rotation. What Should Chad Patrick’s Role Be In 2026? In 2024, there was a young hurler by the name of Tobias Myers who posted similarly strong numbers in his rookie campaign, keeping an injury-battered rotation afloat. The next year, he pitched just 50 ⅔ big-league innings, spending the rest of the time in roster purgatory with 12 starts in Triple-A. He was eventually included in the Freddy Peralta trade, the final signal that Milwaukee simply didn’t believe in his ability to sustain the success he found in his freshman season. The possibility that Patrick follows a similar path isn’t out of the question just yet. Milwaukee has an excess of starting pitchers, and most of them are younger than Patrick is, with more upside. Given the return from the Mets and Red Sox trades this offseason, acquiring young starting pitching depth seems to have been the guiding theme for the front office this winter, giving guys like Patrick more competition for a coveted spot in the rotation. For starters (see what I did there?), he probably won’t be in the bullpen. There’s no room there, either, especially since the Brewers already have two long relievers in Aaron Ashby and DL Hall. He’s more than likely going to be a starter, but whether it’s in Milwaukee or in Nashville depends on how he stacks up against his teammates in spring training. With even a slight step forward, he’d be a solid back-of-the-rotation arm, but regression or stagnation could push him far enough down the roster to spend a significant portion of the season in the minor leagues. Thanks to his strong numbers last year, he’s starting (ohp, did it again) with a good reputation, but baseball—like all sports—runs on “what have you done for me lately?” It’s an inquiry that only Patrick can answer, but there’s no doubt that he has the pieces and wherewithal to prove himself at the big-league level. View full article

Figured that Yoho would be higher. I know he didn't do great in his eight big league appearances but his 21 ERA- and 55 FIP- across 43 appearances in Triple-A are still pretty mind-blowing to me.

pat murphy recounting brandon woodruff's start on july 6, 2025

robert manfred would highlight that this is a skill issue. In all seriousness, I think MLB has a irrational hatred of Iowa since it's literally the most blacked out state.

I totally forgot that Vinny Capra was Milwaukee's Opening Day third baseman. Milwaukee having their own proprietary method of evaluating player defense to be more forward-looking is pretty interesting though. Kinda seems like Willy Wonka and the Defensive Factory.