Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of © Jovanny Hernandez / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images Rather than sit and wait until the final few days, the Milwaukee Brewers have proactively explored trades that would be more aggressive than their typical deadline upgrades, sources familiar with the team's movement said this week. A member of a front office who heard from the Brewers recently said that the team is "starting conversations, where they used to be more of a listening [team]" at this stage in July. Rumors of a potential reunion with Freddy Peralta, a splashy pursuit of Tarik Skubal, or even an all-out blockbuster to acquire Mason Miller and create the hardest-throwing starter-closer combination in baseball history have all swirled around the organization. Much of the smoke, however, has no real fire to it, according to people with knowledge of trade conversations in multiple front offices. The Brewers aren't seen as motivated enough to give up any of their true top prospects. Their second-tier guys would be the cream of the crop in many farm systems throughout baseball, but even those players felt "off-limits" in deals for mid-tier targets, according to a source with another team. Milwaukee isn't willing to sell Josh Adamczewski, Bishop Letson or Tyson Hardin for pennies on the dollar just because they have lots of talent lying around. The team is focused on moves that would bolster their pitching staff; that much is true. They've talked to the Detroit Tigers about several pitchers, including the obvious candidates (Tarik Skubal and Jack Flaherty, whom they've explored acquiring in the past; Casey Mize, a fellow impending free-agent righty starter) and some less obvious ones (Drew Anderson and Kyle Finnegan). They've reached out to the Angels to gauge the availability of Reid Detmers, but didn't find the asking price reasonable, a source said. They've closely monitored the rehab and return of Shane Bieber to the Blue Jays. Of that group, Skubal and Detmers are the two who would move the needle for most Brewers fans. Unsurprisingly, though, they seem the least likely of the bunch to actually come to Milwaukee; the team and its could-be suitors just don't seem close to agreeing on the right value for either hurler. Instead, a creative deal is more likely. Intradivisional trades for Dustin May or Brady Singer are viewed as more realistic. Giants southpaw Robbie Ray is "a really good one to watch," according to one league source, who noted that the Brewers have an "up arrow" next to Ray because of the changes he's made to his arsenal this season. Assuming all goes well with his ramp-up, Kyle Harrison figures to retake the second spot in the Brewers' starting rotation down the stretch, alongside the overpowering Jacob Misiorowski. The team needs help more in terms of depth than in terms of top-end quality, and they place a high value on young players other teams might trade more freely. Don't hold your breath for a repeat of the Summer of CC Sabathia in Milwaukee. That the Brewers have even looked into the possibility is exciting, but it signals their broader willingness to chase greatness, rather than a specific plan to acquire one player. They're far more likely to make a smaller move, because a smaller move is all that's needed, and the Brewers only make the moves they need to make. No team in baseball is better-positioned to give up prospects for a chance to win a championship, except that for the Brewers, the only way to keep building toward a championship is to retain prospects and maximize their value. More importantly, the team rightly thinks they have as good a chance at a championship as anyone this year, even if they only add at the margins. View full article

Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-Imagn Images "Four innings from Bryse was huge," Pat Murphy said after Tuesday night's 4-0 loss to the Mets. It was encased in the undertone that is part of a manager's armor after losses; the public demands an attitude of resignation and contrition. It sounded almost like he didn't mean it. He did. Earlier that day, Murphy circled back around to Lance McCullers Jr., who had made his Brewers debut in Monday's 8-3 win. McCullers threw three innings after a short start by Jacob Misiorowski, and although he gave up two runs in the third of those frames, Murphy was effusive in his praise for the smooth landing by his newest acquisition. "Just how important it was," Murphy said, when asked why he was eager to talk more about McCullers after discussing him postgame Monday night, "that a kid goes into the game, that hasn't thrown a lot of innings this year and hasn't (obviously) thrown for us yet, and goes into a game, a 5-1 game in the sixth, and did so very well." Murphy mentioned both Monday night and Tuesday afternoon that asking McCullers to pitch that third inning was a tall order, and perhaps not the best thing for the player himself. In the skipper's eyes, though, it was the best thing for the team, and he was very grateful to the erstwhile Astros starter for his selfless approach to that appearance. All of that sounds like manager-speak. It's easy to praise players who play only when the stakes are low; it costs the manager nothing and garners some goodwill in the clubhouse. It doesn't necessarily mean anything. Murphy isn't that kind of politician, though. When he calls out a player in a positive light, it's because he sees real and forward-looking value in what they did. Wednesday's game couldn't have made it more clear why Murphy was so enthusiastic about McCullers and Wilson doing what they did. Because they gave the team 21 outs over two days in which the game was not in doubt late, the 'A' bullpen was fresh. Whether heading off calamity by putting in one of his leverage arms with a good-sized lead or refusing to give up on a game ("nobody can take me off that," he said during one recent pregame media session, in reference to his Win Tonight credo) and sending them in when the team trails by a narrow margin, Murphy knows that he leans hard on his top arms. To do so less, he needs to trust the guys at the bottom end of the bullpen hierarchy more than he has felt able to trust some of the recent options. He trusts McCullers and Wilson, though. His excitement about McCullers's openness to change and his team mentality are palpable. He knows Wilson and is willing to deploy him more flexibly than he would use a player of identical skills but who had proved less to Murphy about his dedication to the team. Logan Henderson pitched well for Milwaukee Wednesday, with nine strikeouts and no walks in five innings of two-run ball. The team got him out of the game after 80 pitches, though, as they continue to monitor and manage his workload in light of his spotty health history. That left them with 12 outs to protect what was, initially, only a one-run lead. Aaron Ashby often pitches in games like Monday's or Tuesday's, when Murphy feels less confidence in his long relief options or more desperate for a win. Thanks to McCullers and Wilson, though, he stepped onto the mound in the sixth having not pitched since Sunday. He was sharper than has been his recent norm, with extra life on everything, and he cruised through two innings while allowing just one baserunner. Abner Uribe and Trevor Megill hadn't pitched since Saturday, and as high-octane one-inning guys, they almost looked a bit rusty after three days down. The lack of fatigue saved them, though. Each buckled down and got the outs they needed, and an insurance run added by Christian Yelich in the sixth inning helped the Brewers hold on for a 4-3 win. That game can get away easily. The Mets pitched well and didn't make any of the defensive mistakes that are so much a part of their brand this year. Winning that rubber match required that Murphy be able to cover the back half of the game with his three top arms, and Wilson and McCullers made that possible over the two previous nights. Whenever a long reliever works so much that they'll be down for a couple of days, you have to hold your breath for them for a minute. Wilson did hero's service to the team on Tuesday night, but if the team weren't just coming out of the All-Star break (and if they didn't have the day off Thursday to reset their bullpen), he might have been gone by Wednesday. He survived, and is still around, which will be a relief to Murphy again sometime soon. "I think I've kind of just embraced this role that I'm in now," Wilson said. "At this point in my career, this is what teams want from me, to be available, to be ready to take the ball and go right after guys, keep forcing soft contact, keep competing." The burly right-hander was ecstatic when, after he was released by the Cubs last month, the Brewers had interest in a reunion. He called his previous stint with the team "the two best years of [his] career" and mentioned how much he trusts and likes the coaching staff, as well as many of his teammates. His locker in the home clubhouse at Uecker Field is right next to Ashby's, just as the two were arranged when Wilson was here last. He's extremely comfortable with the team, and willing to do whatever is asked of him. That was true when he first arrived, too, and was always part of what made Murphy so happy to have him. The manager talked about Wilson's selflessness with the media even before the calendar turned to March in 2024, his first year at the helm. Wilson also has something working for him this time around, part of his constant effort to reinvent himself and befuddle batters: a split-change. "It's more of a split-change grip," he acknowledged, saying he made the switch early this season. "I felt like, just the way I had to manipulate the ball with my old grip"—he used to throw a four-seam straight changeup, the most basic version—"I really had to force the inside of my hand through it, and I think hitters could see that." The righty knows he won't miss many bats with this version of the change. That's fine. He's always thrived on soft contact, and intends to keep doing so. One extra source of excitement for him about returning to the team lied in the reliability of the defense he'd be pitching in front of. He also feels like, if lefties are less able to spot his changeup right at release, they'll have to be a bit less aggressive against the rest of his arsenal. Murphy often talks about a player being "the right person," by which he means that they fit into the clubhouse and augment the team dynamic via their work habits, attitude and interpersonal skills, as well as their talent. He's already applied that term to McCullers and Wilson, and he seems to be right on both counts. The season rips at you. It looks for loose threads and pulls them until you unravel. A team must be an exquisitely stitched garment, and when patches are needed, they must be done with care and use high-quality fabric. That's what Murphy believes the team has done with the latest additions to the bullpen, and the way the Mets series unfolded was an excellent example of how those seemingly intangible things can become tangible. McCullers and Wilson can't have big roles on great teams at this stage in their respective careers. However, having them in small roles can made the difference between a good team and a great one, and the Brewers very much aspire to be the latter. View full article

That's the miscommunication Murphy referenced. He slowed because he thought Vaughn would take the ball; the two of them just haven't played much in that shaded alignment this year. Earlier in the game, Vaughn had ranged considerably farther for a similar grounder; Turang got caught assuming.

Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images It's nothing personal. Shane Drohan appreciates the time and believes it wasn't wasted. If the kick-change had worked for him, it might have made a huge and delightful difference for him. Sometimes, that pitch unlocks a lot of good things: more swing-and-miss, more deception throughout the rest of the arsenal, and greater confidence in filling up the zone without running into barrels. The problem is: it didn't work for him. "Yeah, I tried out the kick-change this spring, tried to make it work," Drohan said Tuesday in Milwaukee, between starts. (He'll go again next on Friday, against the Rockies.) "And I really felt like I found a feel for it, in a couple of my starts at Triple-A. But it just wasn't working; I couldn't quite lock it in and make it fit with the rest of my stuff." Instead, Drohan has gone back to the straight change he threw for most of his professional career, including last season in the Boston system. "I feel like that was a really good pitch for me," he explained. "It was worth a shot, but I ultimately decided to just go back to what had worked and feel more comfortable commanding the whole arsenal." Drohan was called up for his big-league debut on April 8, as an emergency starter. That appearance started with promise, but it went off the rails. After that, he spent the better part of two months in a relief role. When he returned to the starting rotation at the beginning of June, he did so having already abandoned the pure kick-change, but with a modified split-change he was trying in its stead. That pitch never felt comfortable either, though, and working through the opposing lineup multiple times meant he needed a changeup he could trust. On June 13, the straight change came back into his mix, and it's stayed there ever since. It's easiest to see this by mapping the average movement of his pitches in both dimensions by start. Here, I've placed a box around the cluster into which the straight change he's settled on fits. It's not the version of a cambio on which he produces the most depth, and it can't move as much horizontally as either of the other versions he's tried out. either. It has one key advantage, though: he knows where it's going. Though he hasn't gone full superstar, Drohan has been a remakrable success story for the Brewers this year. Since getting the straight change back online, he's made seven starts, totaling 38 1/3 innings. In that time, he owns a 3.29 ERA and has struck out nearly a quarter of opponents. The changeup doesn't have to miss bats; it just has to make hitters respect that quadrant of the zone. Once they do, he's more effective everywhere else, to boot. Over his first All-Star break as a big-leaguer, Drohan did something unusual: nothing. Noted in the spring for his fierce belief in the importance of getting away from the game mentally, he made sure not to get away from it physically last week. "I stayed right here [in Milwaulee]," he said. "I didn't want to go home and have those couple of days, and then have to mentally overcome the idea of, 'Ah, it's time to go again,' so I just stayed here, relaxed a little, but I also tried to get moving, threw a little, stayed active, too. It was important to me not to have that letdown; to stay engaged." Drohan is older and smarter than the average rookie, but that still seems like a surprising bit of maturity and self-knowledge. In that way, it's similar to his experimentation with the changeups, and the abandonment thereof. He knows what will make him most likely to succeed, and he's disciplined enough to pass up the only vacation offered to players over the seven-month baseball season in the name of maximizing those chances. He's good at keeping perspective and seeing life beyond the game. He's also open to change. Make no mistake, though: Drohan intends to be a vital cog for the Brewers all year, and beyond. View full article

Image courtesy of © Michael McLoone-Imagn Images Pat Murphy is working hard to be both accountable—"I blame myself first. I didn't communicate it the right way, I guess," he said of a Cooper Pratt baserunning mistake Monday night—and positive. But the manager has made it clear that he's not as impressed with his team's play as their record might lead an outsider to expect, or as the rest of the baseball world always seems to be. In his eyes, the team is not playing up to its potential, and the difficulty of this year's National League means they'll have to get back into a groove down the stretch in order to maintain their great playoff position. If Murphy was at all worried that his team was learning the wrong lessons from a string of wins in which they didn't always play well enough to deserve the result, he can take reassurance from Tuesday's 4-0 loss to the Mets. In that contest, every mistake seemed to haunt Milwaukee—and there were lots of mistakes. Brandon Sproat couldn't command his fastball well enough to get the grind-it-out Mets lineup into swing mode, and they tortured him with a series of difficult innings. By and large, he worked out of trouble, surrendering just one run through his first four frames. That tally came on a solo homer, ironically, on a night when four walks and a series of clean singles meant the Mets seemed to have traffic at all times. Sproat's stultifying pace seemed to leave the Brewers offense a bit stagnant in their turns, so it was 1-0 when the top of the fifth rolled around. Finally, inevitably, Sproat's luck ran out. After two straight flyouts gave the starter a chance to get through five innings with the team very much in the game, he made a final mistake, issuing a walk to Bo Bichette with three straight misses after getting ahead 1-2. Murphy went to Chad Patrick to finish the frame, but instead, things unraveled. First, Francisco Lindor hit a grounder that took a bad hop as Brice Turang tried to dive and collect it. Worse, it deflected off Turang's glove into no-man's land in shallow center field. Garrett Mitchell couldn't charge and fire fast enough to Pratt covering second to prevent the near-groundout from turning into a Lindor double, putting two runners in scoring position. Then, the disaster became less subtle. Carson Benge hit a harder grounder, but one that went almost straight down and began a lazy two-bounce journey toward the area just to the right of first baseman Andrew Vaughn. However, the Brewers were playing their infield shaded toward that side of the diamond—a rarity for them—and Vaughn misread the play. Instead of collecting the ball himself and throwing to Patrick covering first, he took off for the bag, leaving Turang to try to run down the bounder. It eluded him and dribbled into right field, scoring two runs. It could easily have gotten even worse. Charging the hit, Luis Lara ill-advisedly threw behind Benge from right field, allowing the Mets rookie to take second. Patrick settled down and kept the game 3-0, but the damage was done. Turang, the team's defensive whiz, came up short on two plays in a row, but none of Vaughn, Mitchell or Lara covered themselves in glory, either. Murphy called it an instance of "miscommunication" after the game. The only really promising chance the Brewers had to rally came in the bottom of the sixth, but it was thwarted by more poor communication. Pratt and Joey Ortiz started the frame by reaching base, setting the table for the top of the order. After a bad at-bat by Chourio resulted in a strikeout, Turang worked a 2-2 count, and then a ball popped away from Mets catcher Luis Torrens. It clanked off his mitt despite being close to the zone, and it trickled far enough away for both runners to advance. Unfortunately, Pratt (perhaps screened by the pitcher, Zac Thornton) made the mistake of assuming too soon that the ball had been caught cleanly. By the time he saw that a chance had existed, it was gone—but it was no longer safe to stay at second base, either. Ortiz had correctly diagnosed the play as a chance to move up, but didn't check his lead runner before trying to do so. Compelled to take off way too late for third, Pratt was dead on arrival. Murphy said the greater share of blame there rests on Ortiz, but counts it as a double error, so to speak. "Yeah, it's on Joey to follow the runner, but it's on Cooper that you can't be indecisive," the manager said. Pratt's mistake the previous night was in the same class; he didn't break on a ground ball to the right side on which he could have scored from third base. You can't win every game, and though Murphy is famously and proudly devoted to trying, he doesn't expect his team to be perfect. Occasionally, getting punished for slip-ups with an L on the standings page is important. It teaches the team to be as close to perfect as possible, to maintain their margin for error. Tuesday night, then, represented a good learning experience, even if it was a lousy result for Sproat against his old team. The Brewers are still running a higher winning percentage than they did in either of Murphy's previous two seasons at the helm. If they can avoid repeating that sloppy performance, they'll be fine—and given the personalities of Murphy, Pratt, Vaughn and the rest of the team, it seems likely that they'll fix these problems in a hurry. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jeff Hanisch-Imagn Images Teams with forever loaded farm systems sometimes fall into the trap of thinking too much about The Shortstop of the Future. In the Brewers' case, fans are dreaming and drooling at the notion of Jesus Made coming to the majors sometime soon and assuming his place at short, where he could easily spend an entire decade for the team (if they can sign him for that long). Generational players are fun. They present-proof the fan experience; they give you something to look forward to and someone to focus on even when times are hard. Right now, though, times are easy for the Brewers, and they're not looking toward the future. On Monday night, their thunderous win over the Mets included home runs by both Cooper Pratt and Joey Ortiz, the shortstop and third baseman of the right-this-minute. For Pratt, it was the first homer of his career. "Cooper's very capable, very capable," Pat Murphy said after the game, acknowledging the raw power evident in Pratt's swing and his frame. However, the manager also said what he says about almost every player who's only been in the majors for a month or two: "He's got a lot to learn in the game." That learning has been happening lately. Pratt collected two other hits and stole a base Monday, and is batting .313/.404/.458 in July. As he's settled into the majors and found more opportunities to put his 'A' swing on the ball, he's tapped into more hard contact, even if it took almost 100 plate appearances to finally clear the fence. "I didn't go in trying to hit [a homer]," Pratt said after the contest. "I mean, it was in the back of my head, but I was just trying to hit a fastball, and got the slider, and it snuck out." cU93clFfWGw0TUFRPT1fVWdCUlVsTlhCMVlBQUFNRlZRQUhVbE1DQUZnQ0JRQUFCRk5SQ0FBR0JsVmRBVlpS.mp4 Indeed, though it will be memorable because of the occasion and the opposing pitcher, ex-Brewer Freddy Peralta ("I don't think I'll ever forget who I hit it off of," Pratt said with a chuckle), this was not a ball he got all of. Peralta left a sweeper on the inner half, and it ran into Pratt's barrel, though he was early enough that it still got off the end of his bat a bit. No matter. In fact, that's one of the things that made the long ball exciting. It was a reminder that Pratt is big enough, strong enough and capable of swinging fast enough not to need to hit the ball perfectly to generate power. Later—after Peralta departed—Ortiz hit a homer that snuck out in a different sense. His was a missile, but on a low line, and it stayed up long enough to clear the fence for his fifth home run of the year. That doesn't sound thrilling, but remember, a month ago, Ortiz lost his full-time starting gig, and even his place on the 26-man roster appeared in jeopardy. Pratt was promoted at the tail end of a home stand, and took over at short, moving Ortiz into a platoon with David Hamilton. It took Ortiz a few days to adjust to what was happening—to absorb it. Starting when the Brewers hit the road just after Pratt's arrival, though, Ortiz is batting .273/.305/.468, even though he ceased to be in a platoon of any kind when Hamilton landed on the injured list. What changed? "Reality," Murphy said, bluntly. "'Look, they went outside [of me] at shortstop. The kid's gonna come up and play shortstop. Not a lot I can do about it, now.'" Instead of spiraling downward, Murphy said, Ortiz has embraced the attitude that he can still play in the big leagues a long time, because of how good a defender he is—and a more relaxed mindset has carried over in the batter's box. "I think a ton of bricks was off his shoulders," the manager said. The team also talked to him right away when the change was made, with Murphy offering him as an exemplar Miguel Rojas of the Dodgers. Rojas was a little-known and little-wanted journeyman early in his career, but his excellent defense and positive contributions in the clubhouse gave him the runway to eventually emerge as an everyday player. If anything, Ortiz has better offensive tools than Rojas, so the comparison is apt, but it also leaves room for the Brewers' Third Baseman of the Present to excel. Murphy said Hamilton will go to Triple-A Nashville on a rehab assignment Tuesday, and that the team misses what his speed brings to the table. Ortiz isn't even guaranteed to have his spot to himself a week from now. All three incumbents must feel the slowly gathering pressure of Jett Williams, Made, Andrew Fischer, Luis Peña and others, progressing toward the majors and making their cases as possible left-sided infielders of the future. Monday was a reassuring and exhilarating reminder of the power of staying grounded in the present, though. As Milwaukee tries to make the most of a historic season by Jacob Misiorowski and a core of position players as good as they've had since 2018, it doesn't matter much whether Pratt and Ortiz can hold down their positions for the next five years. For the next five minutes, they're safe, because in the last five weeks, they've been an excellent pairing at a vital spot. If they become the shortstop and third baseman who race toward the mound to celebrate the Brewers' first-ever World Series title, they'll have five decades to dine out on the memory, no matter how long they stay in their places after that moment. View full article

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images The unreserved catharsis of it was breathtaking. William Contreras didn't hurl his bat into the sky to show up the Marlins; he did it because he needed to. He plainly felt good about the high line drive he smashed to left-center field in the bottom of the ninth Sunday; he stood and admired its flight. But in the close-up replays of the event, you can see that he was also judging the ball, unsure it would go out for the game-winner, willing it to do so—and maybe even praying. Not until after it caromed off a piece of ballpark behind and above the wall did he turn and perform his feat of strength. As he threw the lumber, he spread his arms to the heavens, and that's clearly where his attention went, too. He had to pause after a moment and judge the flight of a second projectile, because when he threw the bat, for a moment, he ceased to care or perceive where it was. His gaze was fixed on something you couldn't have seen even if you were standing right next to him and craning your neck the same way—something that wasn't up there. Eventually, he had to turn his attention to what really was, so he wasn't thwacked by his own falling club. Contreras needed that homer, and so did the Brewers. That's an odd sentiment, at first reading, because Contreras just got back from his third All-Star Game, and the team is still comfortably in first place in the NL Central. Life is all about reference points and recency, though, and recently, the Brewers have run into that old frenemy, Trouble, around every corner. Trouble always lurks in Pittsburgh just before the All-Star break. Trouble always lurks in Brandon Woodruff's shoulder. Lately, Trouble has been unyielding in its invasions, and the team is feeling the drag. Of course, for Contreras and several fellow Brewers, there's also Trouble's big brother, Tragedy, with whom to deal. The earthquake(s) that struck Venezuela last month devastated the country Contreras calls home, the one he represented in the World Baseball Classic and for which he won that championship this spring. When the sad accounting is complete, the death toll will be over 10,000. The damage is catastrophic. Whatever joy there was in Contreras's bat throw, there was also a healthy measure of defiance. He was roaring his refusal to be governed by Trouble and Tragedy. That's the Brewers in a nutshell. When they seem to be cornered or compromised in a way they could surely no longer survive, that's when they thrive. Somehow, they withstand a parade of injuries and other setbacks and keep winning games, anyway. That has been such a prevailing pattern since Pat Murphy and his devotion to relentlessness took over in 2024 that it feels almost as if this team is invincible. We know that they aren't. We know that the blow of Woodruff being out for the year hurts, and that that comes on the heels of several smaller (for now) injuries that threaten to erode the greatness of this team. We know they're not guaranteed to keep finding this almost-magical success in October, because (to paraphrase Billy Beane) Murphy's **** doesn't work in the playoffs—at least, ot yet. Still, that bat-launch on Sunday might well be the one most emblematic of this team. They weather the storm, and then they become the storm. They may not defy God, but they're not afraid of him, either. Contreras isn't a slugger who goes deep 30 times a year; Sunday's was only his 10th long ball. But he made it count, and the team and its fans got to celebrate an unexpected triumph, capping a weekend of them, even as they all quietly mourned the losses they share and the ones that are personal to each. Moments like that make it a little easier to imagine another flavor of unreserved catharsis the team hopes to unleash: the feeling of finally bringing a World Series championship back to Milwaukee. View full article

The Brewers will not have to fund or provide staffing support for his rehab once the contract ends. I suspect he'll sign a very team-friendly deal through 2028, though, so that the team CAN provide that support and they can keep working together.

That's a good shout. Alexander, only with better command of the sinker, more physicality and the ability to be optioned to the minors.

Image courtesy of © Troy Taormina-Imagn Images It's not hard to see what the Brewers like about Colton Gordon. He's not a standout guy, but he has upside. The 6-foot-4 lefty gets down the mound well and has plus extension, which the Brewers always love. He's shown the ability to work east and west with a sweeper and a slow but slurvy curveball, and he's shown the feel to create depth with his changeup. There are just two problems: he doesn't throw hard, and so far, he sucks. In 95 1/3 innings over 24 appearances in the majors going back to 2025, Gordon has a 5.95 career ERA. This season, he's spent most of his time in the minors—not because the Astros haven't needed him, but because he's surrendered six home runs in 50 batters faced and his ERA is on the wrong side of 11.00. He's had steady and impressive success at Triple-A Sugar Land over the last two and a half seasons, with an ERA under 4.00 each year as a starter, but that hasn't carried over to the majors. He throws 91 miles per hour, and the shapes of his fastballs just don't work. He has below-average carry on his four-seamer, even for a low three-quarters arm slot, and he doesn't get the heavy action you'd like on his sinker, either. Nothing sets up his softer stuff well, so despite what looks like a plus sweeper in a vacuum, he runs into barrels way too often and can't consistently miss bats the way he needs to. On the other hand, he fills up the strike zone exceptionally well. Between Triple-A and the majors, Gordon has faced 958 batters since the start of last season. He's only walked 52 of them. He's allowed more homers (27) than free passes (22) in his brief big-league career. Though that sinker lacks the movement you'd prefer to see from it, he locates so well with it that hitters rarely do damage. He has good feel for the sweeper to the glove side and the curveball as a backdoor offering against righties. He's just in the middle of the plate with that hittable four-seamer far too often. As the Brewers take control of Gordon, they probably do so without grand plans. He's good depth to have, with a demonstrated ability to start and throw strikes and one more year of optionability beyond this season. However, they might also have multiple ways to unlock him and get more from him, in the short and the long term. First, expect them to ask him to lean into his sinker and cutter a bit more, at least for the balance of this season. The former should work well against lefties, and even against righties, using that pitch more at the expense of the four-seamer should allow the defense to work behind him. Gordon's cutter has been more slider-like this season than in the past, and is slowly replacing a true slider as his sixth pitch, but Chris Hook and Jim Henderson might ask him to tinker with the harder, more fastball-flavored version of that offering for a bit. Just as importantly, though, the team will almost surely make some mechanical changes. You can see a Brewers-like pitcher in the body of Gordon, but not in the way he moves it. He starts on the third-base side of the rubber and uses a fairly extreme crossfire stride pattern. The Brewers are likely to move him to the first-base side and try to get him on a slightly straighter line to the plate, without losing the facility with the zone that is his trademark skill. With a bit better posture near release, he can also naturally lower his arm slot and add deception to his fastball. TkFOMzJfWGw0TUFRPT1fQlFsVFVGTUhVUUlBV1ZwWFVnQUhCQTlVQUZnRlZGTUFCd0JUVWxaV0J3VURWbEFB.mp4 As strange as it sounds for a 27-year-old with subpar velocity and so much polish in terms of strike-throwing, the Brewers will see Gordon as a ball of clay with real potential. His delivery doesn't fit their preferences, but it shows the mobility they need to make the changes they'll want. His pitch mix is unimpressive, but the differences between the pitching philosophies of the Astros and Milwaukee leave ample room for tweaks even before they make any big physical changes. Gordon is insurance, for now, for a team that needed reinforcement because of injuries and medium-term durability concerns among their stable of existing hurlers. He can be a lot more, though. As Bob Howsam built some great teams as the general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1960s and the Cincinnati Reds from the late 1960s through the late 1970s, he gained a reputation for frequently extracting a throw-in player in trades who turned out to be much more than that. Matt Arnold is getting exceptionally good at the same thing. Not all multi-player deals have that dynamic, but just as the one that brought in Kyle Harrison, David Hamilton and Shane Drohan felt that way, this one does. Lance McCullers Jr. has the big name, and he's at least a bit more likely to help the Brewers for the balance of 2026. They would not have made this deal without also acquiring Gordon, though, and a year from now, Gordon's stock is likely to be higher than it is right now. He's a quintessential Brewers pickup, and an excellent candidate to get a boost from a spin through the H & H Car Wash. View full article

Good question. His swing is both longer AND slower. He's right next to Ernie Clement, Nico Hoerner and Jeff McNeil—guys who can really hit when they're hot, but who have almost no power.

Look, if you have to misspell a word, make it 'positivity,' right? Thanks!

Image courtesy of © Jeff Curry-Imagn Images The temptation is to assume that Luis Lara's whole game is speed and contact and defense. The temptation is to think that he'll have to survive on singles and create his value mostly via run prevention. You expect this kind of player to spend most of their time on the bench. You expect them to hit at the bottom of the batting order, where they're asked mostly to lengthen the lineup and set the table for the guys at the top. That might even be true, for the most part. Lara is not a future superstar, by anyone's reckoning. For as long as he's been on the prospect radar, he's been talked about as a likely role player with a high floor but a low ceiling. That's still the way most people talk about him, and it's the kind of player who signs the kind of contract he signed with the Brewers before his debut in the majors. He's a small guy—not just short, as many good hitters are, but genuinely small, with a strong but slight frame to go with his 5-foot-7 height. He's never going to carry more than about 180 pounds on his frame, and right now, he weighs under 170. Even one week into his big-league career, though, you can see what I've seen since first watching Lara swing in Arizona, during spring training back in 2024: this guy has some juice. His swing is not geared for power, and it has some elements of the defensiveness the Brewers like their young hitters to demonstrate when they first come to the majors. It also whips, in a way that (say) Sal Frelick's never has. YkJMeExfWGw0TUFRPT1fVUFaWUJWQldYd01BVzFNRlV3QUhDUVJlQUZrRFZ3Y0FDbEFOQlFJTkJ3ZGNWVmRT.mp4 With all due respect to Frelick—a fine all-around hitter, and (for the moment) still a better overall player than Lara has had time to become—he could not do this. On a 1-2 pitch, plainly waiting back a bit to guard against something offspeed, Lara nonetheless not only caught up to a fastball at 97 MPH on the outer third, but turned on it and laced it to the gap in right-center field. That's just one swing, but it's an exceptionally impressive one. Pitchers will learn not to make mistakes like that to him when they're ahead in the count, so don't count on a whole lot of hits that look like this one, but then again, the ability to even scare pitchers out of throwing you that pitch in that situation is a valuable one. Lara has 17 tracked, competitive swings from the left side since he came to the big leagues. On them, his average swing speed is 71.0 MPH, and his swing length is 6.8 feet. That puts him in a fascinating sweet spot: Typically, the shorter your swing, the slower. This is not groundbreaking, because if you think about it, it's almost tautological. To generate maximal bat speed, you try to extend. You attack the ball. You trade some directness for extra magnitude in the arc of your assault. Lara has one of the shortest swings in the league, which is helped by the fact that he's one of the shortest players—but that, alone, doesn't explain it. See the red dot above? That's where Lara's lefty swing would fit on the scatterplot, if he had enough swings to qualify. It drops him neatly into a line that contains three of the best pure hitters in the National League this season: Brice Turang, Freddie Freeman, and Otto Lopez. Being even a little faster with your bat than is predicted by your swing length is valuable. That means you're genuinely quick with the wrists and able to flash through the hitting zone, without a deep load or a long arc from the start of your swing to that zone. Right now, Lara isn't in great position to fully avail himself of this easy bat speed. He hits the ball so deep in his zone that he's often just starting to work uphill to the ball when he makes contact (or misses, high or low). As we talked about earlier this month with Cooper Pratt, the Brewers ask rookies to let the ball travel and prioritize swing decisions early in their time in the majors; that's making Lara pretty late pretty often. But the signs of a quick stick are unmistakable, whether your trust your scouting eye or the data. In time, I think Lara can more consistently hit for power than does Frelick, which makes for an interesting and onrushing conundrum. Frelick is part of what will quickly become a logjam in the outfield, if it doesn't count as one already. Lara has a long-term contract on extremely team-friendly terms, and we all know that he'll be better than Frelick as a defender. If he's also a disciplined hitter and will slug even .050 better than Frelick—that much seems almost certain to me, but I've been a believer in Lara since before most and might be biased about how real what we've seen so far will prove to be—then trading Frelick becomes a conversation worth having as soon as this week. Typically, teams like to trade prospects to bolster their contending team at the trade deadline. The Brewers have turned so many good prospects into good big-leaguers lately, though, that they're starting to overflow with the latter, and a team with a good pitcher whom Milwaukee might prize might well prefer Frelick to a further-off, riskier but higher-upside bet like Josh Adamczewski, or even Luis Peña. In the right deal, Frelick might have substantial value, and trading him (with the understanding that the team's present and future outfield will be well-tended by the likes of Lara, Garrett Mitchell, Jackson Chourio, Jake Bauers, Brandon Lockridge, Jett Williams, Braylon Payne and Adamczewski) might be the best plan. Frelick is a great competitor and is well-liked in the clubhouse; losing him midseason would be tough. At this point, though, the team has enough glue guys to survive a disruption like that, and Lara brings his own brand of intensity and positivity, anyway. He also looks likely to be a more well-rounded offensive force than Frelick is, because his bat has power potential that Frelick's lacks. Even for the Brewers (who don't crave power as much as most teams do these days), that matters a great deal. View full article

Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images It's going to be ok. Probably. Jacob Misiorowski has just enough fatigue that it made sense to skip his final start before the All-Star break and to hold him out of the game Tuesday night. Kyle Harrison has just enough irritation in his elbow to make it worth shutting him down here in the middle of July, when the schedule provides the weary Brewers four days off, anyway. The team and the players themselves each insist that there's nothing to worry about, and we all foresaw that there would need to be some point at which the club eased off the gas in terms of workload for one or both of its newfound aces. Let's be optimists, rather than doomers. Even embracing that mindset can't save you from some worry about Brandon Woodruff, though. It sure feels like the erstwhile workhorse of this team has run out of gas. He's on the IL with a second bout of dead arm, and watching his velocity evaporate within a start makes it essentially impossible to envision handing him the ball with the season on the line sometime in mid-October. Woodruff will try to work his way back into the mix, and every Brewers fan should root for him to have as much success with that as possible, but no longer can he be part of the team's firm plans for the stretch run or the playoffs. Logan Henderson just returned from the injured list, but doesn't have a track record that permits much faith in his staying power. Chad Patrick and Aaron Ashby are showing their wear after over a year of being worked hard. DL Hall is on the shelf. Quinn Priester is out for the year. Shane Drohan, Robert Gasser and Brandon Sproat have all shown promise, but also inconsistency, and none has ever managed the physical and mental grind of a full big-league season before. Coleman Crow is becoming increasingly important to this team's medium-term plans, and he's something like a poor man's version of Henderson or Drohan. It's a sign of privilege to have this many names to rattle off when rounding up a rotation mix in mid-July. The Brewers have built one of the best developmental systems and most robust talent pipelines in baseball, including the dozen guys already mentioned in this article. Most teams would be more severely hampered by even fewer injuries and/or constraints. Unfortunately, the baseball gods don't give hustle points, and they don't patiently repeat themselves. When they say 'you can never have too much pitching,' they mean it, and it's a threat, not a funny little aphorism. Despite all that depth and all that quality, the Crew are getting thin. Somehow, though they did every possible thing to avoid this, they're going to need to trade for pitching help before next month's trade deadline. Specifically, despite all those guys who can give them length out of the pen or are capable of being a mid-rotation starter, the Brewers need a starter. Remember Jose Quintana? Last year, Quintana was underwhelming for the Brewers, but he was cromulent. He ate 132 innings for Milwaukee, including often being a vital bridge starter when the team was scrambling. In other recent seasons, that role has been filled by Aaron Civale, Bryse Wilson, and Julio Teheran, to name a few. Often, the team is able to scoop reliable sixth starters off the scrap heap relatively early and cost-free. They've signed pitchers (like Quintana) to low-dollar one-year deals. They've swapped for guys (like Civale and Priester) during seasons, but at points at which they were highly available. By being so proactive, they've usually been able to avoid an acute need for pitching help in July. This year, though, they tried to leave open runways for the pitchers they acquired over the winter (including Drohan, Harrison and Sproat) and for some arms returning from injuries (Gasser and Henderson). That made sense, but now, it leaves them with an unexpected need for that low-ceiling innings eater they've so often had in the past. Quintana is out there. His numbers look atrocious, but that's because he's pitching his home games at Coors Field. Presumably, though, the Brewers would like to aim a little higher. They have lots of options. The Giants will be open to moving Robbie Ray, who's in the last year of his long-term deal and has stopped missing bats the way he used to. The Nationals' Foster Griffin, the Reds' Brady Singer, the Diamondbacks' Eduardo Rodríguez and the Orioles' Trevor Rogers are all in some version of the same situation. None of those guys would start a playoff game for Milwaukee, but that's not what the Brewers need. They just need someone who can absorb a share of the workload over the final two months, so that the rest of the team is fresher and the club is as well-positioned as possible when they get to October. It'll be a needle to thread for the Brewers front office. They don't want to end up in a roster crunch that costs them anyone important. They need to add help, but still have space for their best arms when those guys are back to full strength. They can operate on a six-man rotation for much of the rest of the season, but need to communicate well enough with each of their guys to ensure that those asked to spend time in Nashville or in the bullpen are open to the changes. The team is in too good a position to sacrifice the depth of their league-best farm system just to gild the lily. If they don't act at all, though, they might regret it. After all, clearly, the baseball gods intend to enforce 'you can never have too much pitching' in an especially draconian way for them this summer. 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Image courtesy of © Joe Puetz-Imagn Images Though the Brewers finally lost a game against the Cardinals Wednesday night, Garrett Mitchell did the same thing he's done in several recent Brewers wins: hit the ball hard, often. He had two hits, including a double, pushing his OPS for 2026 to .831. Though he still has just eight home runs, that was his 18th double, to go with three triples. He's batting .276/.366/.465 on the campaign, though for many, the most important column on his Baseball Reference page is 'PA'. Already, Mitchell has come to the plate 293 times, nearly matching the combined total (302) he had in 2024 and 2025. Before this season, Mitchell had only once collected more than 78 plate appearances in a month; that came in August 2024. In no previous season did he even appear in the majors during May or June. This year, he's had at least 79 plate appearances in each month. At last, he's had the runway to take off as a player. Many worried that when he finally found that runway, he would crash and burn. His profile at the plate—with an extreme swing-and-miss tendency and too many ground balls—seemed like it might doom him to a future as a fourth outfielder, or (if injuries eroded his raw talent) even less. There were some calls last offseason for the Brewers to move on from Mitchell already, and if he hadn't been extremely cheap to retain, they might even have done it. The takeoff has gone off without a hitch, though, and the air flow over Mitchell's wings appears to be well-balanced. It's not just about being healthier than ever, and it's not just about getting more reps and more experience against top-flight pitchers. It's also because Mitchell has made a real and crucial swing change, which probably looks subtle but has changed his game in a radical way. We can use Statcast's excellent visualizations of players' swings in animated movement-tracking form to spot the tweaks Mitchell has made. To do so, let's start by comparing what Mitchell looked like in 2024 (the only other time he's gotten enough playing time in a season for Statcast to build a composite animation of him) to what he looks like now, at the first major checkpoint of the swing—when his hands drop into the slot from which his swing fires. This is our starting point, because it is (in one sense) the starting point of the swing, but it's also a large share of the difference we're going to dig into. In the past, Mitchell had what hitting people call a "long front arm" early in his swing. Look how much higher he's ratcheted his front shoulder in the image on the left, and how it's already turning outward more than he's doing this season. As a result, note the fact that his hands are more centered within his frame on the right, even though he's positioning them to extend his arms through the swing already. Mitchell's weight begins to shift forward a hair sooner this year, but his front shoulder stays closed longer and his hands stay back a hair better. Now, here's where Mitchell was in each season, at the next major checkpoint in a swing—the moment when his attack angle becomes positive. In other words, this is when his bat stops working down from behind his shoulder into the hitting zone and starts moving slightly uphill, to get on plane with the incoming pitch. The differences are much more subtle here, because already, most of them are just remnants of the change he made to how he starts his swing. On the right side of each image, notice the difference in the two numbers below the attack angle. At the moment when he begins to get on plane with the pitch, his bat is angled more toward the opposite field this season. His swing is also flatter, with less downward tilt from his handle to his barrel. Why? because the change to keep his front shoulder in a bit longer early in the swing has allowed him to flatten out the swing to catch up with pitches above his belt. In the past, the early rotation of his upper body forced him to create a steeper plane. If he didn't do so, back then, he would sap his own power and be too short through the hitting zone, ending up with a weakly-hit ball off the end of the bat. This year, because of that earlier change, Mitchell can be more linear and longer through the hitting zone even if he needs to swing flatter than is his default. He still has the option of dipping more for low and bendy pitches, but he doesn't lose bat speed or the ability to cover his preferred timing window, either way. Mitchell is also swinging notably faster this year, by the time he reaches his contact point. That's because of the slightly later rotation of the shoulder, too. There's more torque in his swing; it's more violent. Swinging a bit flatter has meant a few more whiffs and no fewer ugly swings, but it's allowed him to wait longer to make his swing decision, which has contribued to his very strong walk rate. He's also able to square up a wider variety of pitches, so despite a bit more error baked into his address of the ball, there's less glaring a hole in his swing. Will Mitchell remain this good all year, if he stays healthy? It's hard to say. He still swings and misses a lot, for a guy who doesn't hit for all that much power and often hits it on the ground. But maybe a quick comparison to two players with similarly superb bat speedcan elucidate why what Mitchell is doing is working, even if it's not working as well for him as for either of them. First, here are visuals of Kyle Schwarber's swing at the same two moments as we studied above for Mitchell. Schwarber has almost identical bat speed to Mitchell's, and like the new version of Mitchell, he swings fairly flat. On the left, you can see that his hands get into their firing position without the long from arm; he's ready to rip through the ball. However, Schwarber doesn't create as much early bat speed as Mitchell does. The Brewers center fielder has his hands much deeper in the hitting zone when he gets his barrel out from behind his body than Schwarber does when he gets to the same point. On the right, you can see that Schwarber is coming much closer to square to the path of the incoming pitch than Mitchell is when he starts to work uphill. He's going to catch the ball farther in front of his body, with his bat angled much more toward the pull field. That's why Schwarber produces titanic pull-side power so consistently, whereas Mitchell does so rarely. Again, though, Mitchell is ahead of Schwarber in producing early bat speed. He can be late and still hit the ball hard; Schwarber doesn't have that luxury. Here are the same two images for fellow Brewers slugger Jake Bauers. Bauers creates that early bat speed and keeps his hands back, just like Mitchell. He gets around the ball more, like Schwarber, which is why he's produced more power than Mitchell has. However, he's compelled to be steeper to the ball, just as Mitchell was a couple of years ago. He's put himself in great positions to be on time, but when he's not, he doesn't have much chance to catch the ball with his barrel. His timing window is somewhat narrow; so is Schwarbers. Increasingly. Mitchell's is wide, giving him a margin for error in one dimension that he's sacrificed in another. Mitchell is unique. No one else who swings this fast is this oriented toward the opposite field. He's creating so much bat speed while still getting into the hitting zone that he can afford to catch the ball deep. It's a quintessentially Brewers way to hit; only they could help a player with so much bat speed engineer such a non-damage-focused approach. And yet, it seems to be the perfect one for him. It's preserved much of what made him intriguing over his previous, injury-plagued stints, but it's also introduced more adaptability. Whatever his flaws, Mitchell is emerging as something very close to an All-Star center fielder. His rejiggered swing gets the credit for that, and in turn, the Brewers and the player get a lot of credit for the diligent adjustments and perseverance to achieve that transformation while keeping Mitchell healthy and ready to play every day. View full article