From the Milwaukee Journal:
Hudson, who has a 1.73 earned run average as arguably the team’s most valuable reliever this season in 62 ⅓ innings.
The last part of that sentence, though, is a critical piece of the roster decision.
Since becoming a reliever in 2019, Hudson’s previous career-high innings thrown in 64 ⅓ last season. This year, including his outings during a rehab assignment in early August, Hudson has already thrown 65 ⅓. The big southpaw’s velocity has been in decline as the workload has increased, too; his average fastball was 91.8 mph through the end of May, but in August was 90.2 mph and in Monday’s outing dipped to 89.3 mph.
But Hudson had still been pitching well of late in terms of production. He hadn't allowed a hit over his last four outings and had allowed only three hits total in 11 ⅔ innings since coming back from an oblique injury that shelved him for two weeks in late July.
“Bryan’s been a huge part of this. I believe he was an all-star and deserved to be an all-star, and I believe that he’s been a huge, integral part of this,” Murphy said. “But (the decision was made) because he has options and because we haven’t liked everything we’ve seen about how the ball’s coming out and how he’s responding and that type of thing. When you just look at the actual stuff that’s going on, we hope that we can get him a little refresher and rest to get it back to where he was earlier in the season.
“We felt like because we’ve got so much depth on the pitching staff, that this would be a good time to get him a refresher, get his mechanics (right) and be a refresher so he can come back as strong as he wants.”
Murphy indicated some time off will be part of Hudson’s plan with Nashville, as well as scheduling his outings in advance.