Jack Stern

It may not have seemed that way based on the run column, but from a process standpoint, José Quintana’s start on Friday night was one of his best since returning from the injured list at the beginning of June. “At the end of the day, I feel like I had things way better today,” he said. “Less walks, hitting my spots way better. It was a good game.” It didn’t end how he wanted it to — the veteran bemoaned a one-out walk and RBI double that prompted his removal in the sixth inning — but despite allowing four earned runs in 5 ⅔ innings, Quintana was in many ways better than he has been in some of his more successful starts. He allowed only a 31.3% hard-hit rate, struck out five, and only walked two, the fewest free passes he’s issued in his five outings since that IL stint. “Today, my mechanics were better. I attacked the hitters in a good way. The plan was really good. A lot of weak contact.” Regression in the luck department had been looming for Quintana, who entered Friday with a 2.98 ERA but a more pedestrian 4.62 FIP thanks to a poor 1.44 K/BB ratio. His latest start shrunk that gap to a 3.30 ERA and a 4.41 FIP. Were it not for Rhys Hoskins dropping Joey Ortiz’s throw to first on a would-be double-play turn, Quintana’s three-run fifth inning might have been scoreless. “If we make a play or another play or we do something a little different, he probably doesn’t give up a run,” Pat Murphy said. “Or maybe he gives up one, and we’re looking at a quality start.” The bottom line is that Quintana looked sharper than he did in his last handful of starts. He also attacked hitters differently. Since the start of his second act in 2022, he showed right-handers an even balance of sinkers, changeups, and curveballs low and away and four-seamer fastballs up and in. That’s changed in his first season with the sinker-heavy Brewers, as the southpaw has eschewed his four-seamer for more of those down-and-out sinkers. On Friday night, 22 of Quintana’s 105 pitches were four-seamers, comparable to last year’s usage and by far the most he’s thrown the pitch in an outing this year. He used it to change eye levels at the top of the zone and establish the inside corner against a slew of right-handed Colorado Rockies hitters. “These guys, they are way better away,” he explained. “I think the way I've been pitching this year is staying more down and away, so today we changed that a little bit to go hard in and soft away. I think it worked really good, and the second time through the lineup, we started [throwing] more away and we got more ground balls. It was really good.” Quintana’s four-seamer generated five whiffs out of 14 swings (36%) and was responsible for two of his five strikeouts, but it also allowed his sinker to play up. Showing those inside four-seamers had Rockies hitters rolling over sinkers and changeups away, but it also left them giving up on some comeback sinkers and taking them for strikes. Quintana’s sinker only produced one whiff but yielded 14 called strikes. Even if the results weren’t optimal, Quintana’s command was tighter, and he was getting the right responses from hitters. He also dusted off a pitch that was recently a cog in his arsenal and perhaps should be again moving forward.

It was evident throughout his time in the minor leagues, and a wider audience learned it in his big-league debut: Jacob Misiorowski’s fastball is an outlier pitch. Its velocity, movement, and release point (in three dimensions, with an unusually low release height and enormous extension toward the plate) make it unlike any heater most hitters are accustomed to facing. “He’s standing right next to you, you know?” said Eric Haase, who caught Misiorowski in his third start on Wednesday against the Pittsburgh Pirates. “The extension is a real thing.” “I feel like his [fastball] is a lot harder than mine, just because he's like eight feet out towards home plate,” said fellow flamethrower Trevor Megill. The early results were already exceptional. Misiorowski’s four-seamer did not allow a hit through his first two starts and induced plenty of uncomfortable swings. However, the helpless swings and misses it's capable of generating were more fleeting. After it notched a 33.1% whiff rate against Triple-A hitters this year, MLB opponents whiffed on 19.2% of swings through those first two outings. Misiorowski outdueled Pirates ace Paul Skenes by unleashing that fastball’s full potential for the first time in a big-league start. After he and William Contreras used a more balanced mix his first two times out, the right-hander and Eric Haase let the heater eat. It carved through Pittsburgh hitters, inducing 10 swings and misses. Date 4FB% 4FB Whiff% 6/12 53.1% 29.2% 6/20 47.7% 8.7% 6/25 63.5% 38.4% “Just kind of seeing how they’re handling the heaters,” Haase said. “I feel like if he does get hurt, it’s going to be guys just so much on the heater that they kind of run into a breaking ball out in front. So just trying to pick our spots when it looks good and stay on the heater.” Location was the greatest difference. Misiorowski commanded his fastball more consistently at the top of the zone, where its velocity and gravity-fighting backspin from his low slot work best to yield late swings. “His high fastball is something to be watching,” Megill said. “That thing’s really nice.” It also helped that Misiorowski had an extra notch of that backspin-induced carry. In his first two starts, his four-seamer averaged 16 inches of induced vertical break. On Wednesday, it averaged 17 inches. That's no surprise. Movement and location are linked, and when a pitcher elevates the way Misiorowski did Wednesday, they usually get a bit of extra ride. “I think I was staying pretty true on my delivery and really getting a lot of vert on it,” he said, “so I think that helped a lot.” Misiorowski has teased how high his ceiling can be every time he has taken a big-league mound. His latest effort was enough to outpitch Skenes. It was the first glimpse at how untouchable he can look when that fastball is fully clicking.

Baseball is a game of inches, a truism that takes on added significance in close games. When the Brewers dropped a seesaw series opener to the Pirates by a 6-5 score, Pat Murphy bemoaned that the little things did not go his team’s way, sometimes by their own doing. There were several plays to circle in a one-run loss. In the fifth inning, Jackson Chourio chased two up-and-in fastballs from Chase Shugart, who was struggling to find the strike zone. He hit a soft liner to the mound that Joey Ortiz read poorly, resulting in a double play that quashed a potential rally. In the eighth, Brice Turang was initially ruled safe on an infield single that moved the tying run into scoring position and placed the go-ahead run on base with one out. Replay showed that catcher Joey Bart’s throw beat Turang, who lunged toward the base with his final stride, by a hair. The call was overturned. In the ninth, Jake Bauers rapped a hard line drive around the wrong side of the foul pole, just missing a walk-off home run. Two pitches later, Caleb Durbin had second base stolen, but overslid the base and was tagged out. The Pirates, meanwhile, outhit the Brewers 15 to 9, even though Milwaukee finished with a .290 expected batting average compared to Pittsburgh’s .214. Isiah Kiner-Falefa tucked a triple down the line with a .280 xBA—one that Sal Frelick bobbled as it skipped off the wall—to drive in the game-winning run in the sixth. “Every little [thing],” Murphy said. “Balls foul by an inch, Durbin steals the base and overslides, Turang at first, a perfectly-placed triple in the corner by Kiner-Falefa. One of those days.” One night later, Milwaukee evened the series to set up the Jacob Misiorowski-Paul Skenes tilt as a rubber match. While increased hard contact and more extra-base hits were the main catalysts of the 9-3 victory, as they have been throughout much of the team’s current run, it was the inches favoring the Brewers in a tense second inning that positioned the offense to pull away. After a soft one-hopper got past Caleb Durbin for the first of three singles that loaded the bases against Freddy Peralta with no outs, he was quick enough on a slow bouncer to record the force at home for the first out. After Peralta struck out Kiner-Falefa, Isaac Collins, who leads all outfielders in feet covered within the first three seconds of a ball’s flight, ended the inning with a sliding catch by getting another great jump. “Underrated,” Murphy said of the sequence. “People who came to the game, they might have forgotten that. I think that’s obviously the difference in the game.” The Brewers won’t win on the margins every night, but for the better part of a month, they’ve exhibited more of the traits that served them well last year. They’re covering the extra inches in the field to make plays, and they’re responding quickly when things go against them. And they're closing the gap in the NL Central, enough that it feels more like a game of inches than it did a month ago.

When a line drive struck Brandon Woodruff's right elbow three weeks ago, it delayed what was shaping up to be a controversial roster decision. While Woodruff's stuff was down a few more ticks in his recent rehab starts, the Brewers appeared intent on activating him soon. Pat Murphy implied that Chad Patrick, who owned a 2.97 ERA at the time but has three minor-league option years remaining, could head to Triple-A as part of the roster math. A few weeks later, that decision is drawing near again, and this time, it could be less controversial. Woodruff is slated for a final rehab outing, after a 60-pitch simulated game on Monday in which he said his stuff and command were the "crispest" they've been up to this point in his rehab. He feels that the hiatus was, indeed, a blessing in disguise, as it gave him time to refine his mechanics and put himself in a better position to perform. "My body is starting to move without having to think about it, if that makes sense," he said. "I've been trying to do stuff and feel certain stuff, and now I've used these two weeks here, and I really cleaned a lot of stuff up." Of course, Woodruff must demonstrate in his next rehab start that his stuff has indeed improved and can play against big-league hitters. However, Patrick's performance is also a key piece in the puzzle. He struggled for a third straight start on Monday night, a stretch during which he has allowed 13 earned runs in 15 innings. "He hasn't been quite as sharp with his stuff," Murphy said. "The command hasn't been as good. The cutter has been a little more inconsistent, still really good at times. And people know about him." The rookie has struck out 30.1% of batters in those three outings, and his average fastball velocity has increased, but a 55.6% hard-hit rate and his continued inability to work through an order a third time (.996 OPS) could give the Brewers what they see as fitting justification to demote him when they need to clear a rotation spot. Part of the equation may also be whether Patrick can refine his secondary pitches to create more velocity and movement separation from his three fastballs. He has proven that his cutter can play against big-league hitters, but his changeup lacks run, and his slider has been inconsistent. So far, 88% of his pitches have been some variant of the fastball, which may be contributing to his struggles a third time through the order. "When you're just a (three-pitch) guy, it's going to get vulnerable if you've seen a guy a bunch," Murphy said. With Woodruff on the mend, will Patrick's recent speed bump be a determining factor in upcoming conversations about the rotation? "We'll have those discussions," Murphy said. "But we believe Chad is a major-league pitcher." Patrick still sits on a 3.72 ERA and 3.54 FIP through 17 games (16 starts). His recent performance notwithstanding, he isn't deserving of a demotion. But if he and Woodruff are trending in opposite directions, it could make what looked like a challenging decision last month far more straightforward this time around. The Brewers could shift him to the big-league bullpen and demote DL Hall instead, but optioning Patrick to continue starting in Nashville may soon prove best for maintaining rotation depth and furthering his development.

Throughout baseball, hitting development is still trying to catch up to pitching development, and new bat-tracking technology could emerge as a tool that helps close the gap once front offices, coaches, and players discover how to best interpret and apply it. For now, the Brewers emphasize swing decisions, preaching it throughout all levels of the organization and tracking it with their own internal metric. What constitutes a wise swing decision is more nuanced than swinging at strikes and laying off balls. In non-two-strike counts, the Brewers would prefer their hitters to watch a strike in a location they struggle to hit, rather than take a non-productive swing. It’s why Garrett Mitchell is passive against fastballs in the top third of the zone and why Pat Murphy wants Brice Turang to follow suit. As a result, the Brewers have baseball’s third-lowest chase rate since the start of 2023, but they’ve also taken more strikes (18.1% called strike rate) than any other team in that span. Their 63.1% in-zone swing rate is the lowest for the second consecutive season. On the whole, the Brewers were not more aggressive than usual in Thursday’s series finale at Wrigley Field, swinging at 62.9% of in-zone pitches. However, they offered at 68% of in-zone pitches from starter Jameson Taillon, scoring five of their eight runs within the first three innings against him. Milwaukee’s offense tallied eight hits against Taillon, while posting an average exit velocity of 95 mph. That increased aggression looked more like a response to Taillon’s form than a sudden, concerted effort to take more swings. The right-hander struggled to land his curveball and left plenty of his harder pitches over the heart of the plate. The Brewers capitalized on those mistakes. After Taillon departed, the Brewers were noticeably less aggressive against relievers Genesis Cabrera, Chris Flexen, and Drew Pomeranz, and the latter two held Milwaukee scoreless over its final four innings. It wasn’t that the offense spontaneously abandoned a successful approach, but that Flexen and Pomeranz made more quality pitches around the edges of the strike zone. Perhaps the Brewers could still benefit from attacking more pitches in the zone overall—their 68.2% swing rate on pitches tagged by Statcast as within the heart of the strike zone is also baseball’s lowest—but Thursday served as a reminder that commanding hitters to swing at more strikes can be overly simplistic. There’s more to swing decisions than offering at strikes and laying off balls. A hitter’s hot and cold zones and the pitcher’s ability to locate to the latter are big parts of the equation.

Tobias Myers was more likely to regress somewhat than to take another leap forward in his second big-league season. In contrast to his 3.00 ERA last year, his 4.22 xERA, 3.99 SIERA, and 105 DRA- indicated he pitched like a capable back-of-the-rotation starter. Still, the 26-year-old was returning to the same run-prevention system that enabled him to maximize his stuff, and he seemed positioned for at least a serviceable sophomore season. An oblique injury sidelined Myers in spring training and delayed his season debut to late April. When he did return to the mound, the results did not resemble last year’s valuable mid-rotation production. In six appearances (five starts), he pitched to a 4.95 ERA, 4.53 FIP, and 126 DRA-, with a 1.50 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Spraying pitches outside the strike zone was an issue in Myers's first three starts, but he spent plenty of time in the zone on May 17 against the Minnesota Twins—who smacked him around for 11 hits. The following day, the Brewers optioned him to Triple-A Nashville for the second time this year; he has remained there for a month. The big-league rotation is occupied by five high-performing starters, and Myers finds himself behind Logan Henderson (and, in a few weeks, possibly Brandon Woodruff and Nestor Cortes) on the second tier of the depth chart. He hasn’t done much in Nashville to improve his standing, pitching to a 4.18 ERA and 4.16 FIP without making the process-based changes necessary to turn his performance around. Pat Murphy said after multiple Myers outings that he wanted him to make fuller use of his five-pitch arsenal—particularly a changeup that held opponents to a .163 wOBA last year and induced whiffs on 42.9% of swings. The right-hander, whose changeup usage against lefties had dried up almost entirely from 19.2% last year to 3.4% before his demotion, had a similar assessment after that Twins outing. “I think just mix speeds a little bit better,” Myers said when asked how he can reduce loud contact. “Throw the changeup more, throw the curveball a little bit more. I think that'll open up a little bit more opportunity for the fastball to play. I feel like I was kind of just sitting in one speed zone tonight, fastball-cutter-slider, and just not enough to get them off the barrel.” That fastball-cutter-slider triad worked wonders for Myers a year ago, accounting for 84.4% of his pitches. He often tunneled those pitches off one another down the middle or off the outer third of the strike zone. This year, he’s leaned on those three offerings even more, throwing them a combined 95.6% of the time in the big leagues. The tunneling hasn’t been quite as precise, including too many sliders catching too much plate. Fluctuating velocity hasn’t helped, either. While the observed shapes of his cutter and slider remain distinct far more than they overlap, their speeds are closer since the former has lost a couple of ticks. That decreased the difference between their observed vertical drop from 12.1 inches last year to 10.9 this season. With where his stuff and execution were, his usual method of attack was less successful. Opponents hit Myers’s fastball a bit harder, but most notably, they made much more contact with his slider. Its out-of-zone whiff rate plummeted from 44.7% of swings to 17.6%. While Myers’s curveball has a place as a mix-in pitch for an occasional different look, he must limit its usage because it doesn’t tunnel well with the rest of his arsenal. In the visual below from last year, notice how the curveball’s blue track immediately separates from those of his remaining pitches. That leaves throwing more changeups as Myers’s best bet for disrupting timing without sacrificing deception. He’s flashed the pitch more in certain outings since his demotion, but not consistently. If Myers can’t trust a fourth pitch as a true separator from his harder stuff, his best path back to the big leagues may be as a reliever. His velocity could play up in shorter stints, and he could eschew his cutter in favor of a largely fastball-slider pairing. Role notwithstanding, he has a few boxes to check off to merit a return to the majors. At this moment, that day does not appear especially imminent.

After Triple-A opponents struggled to hit Jacob Misiorowski this year, big-league hitters have started 0-for-14 against him. The right-hander held the St. Louis Cardinals hitless over five innings on Thursday night before departing with right leg cramping that appears unlikely to impact his availability for his next start. He struck out five, but that may undersell the extent of swing-and-miss he flashed – 13 of 37 swings (35.1%) against Misiorowski were whiffs. "It was impressive," Pat Murphy said. "He was impressive every way you look at it." Misiorowski's electric stuff was hardly a secret in the prospect world as he ascended the minor-league ranks, but in his debut, he announced to his new opponents that his outlier arsenal is already unlike anything they are accustomed to seeing. "His pitches are incredible," said Misiorowski's battery mate William Contreras, who guided him through a game plan that mixed those pitches a bit differently than he had in many of his minor-league starts. His trademark velocity was there from the get-go, starting with a first-pitch fastball that clocked in at 100.5 mph. Misiorowski's four-seamer averaged 101.2 mph in his first inning and reached 102.2. That velocity gradually inched downward as his start progressed, but he reached back for triple digits again with his final pitch of the fifth inning. "Me and (José) Quintana, we were sitting together trying to guess how fast the first pitch was going to be," Freddy Peralta said. "When we looked at it, we were like, 'Oh my God, it's going to be a long night for the hitters.'" It's not just raw velocity that makes Misiorowski's heater elite. He slings it from a low-three-quarters slot but generates more backspin carry than most pitchers do from his 21-degree arm angle, averaging 16.7 inches of induced vertical break on Thursday. He also kept it up in the zone, which only adds to its rising effect. The result is a flavor of perceived movement unlike any other four-seamer at the MLB level. Finally, Misiorowski's average extension of 7.5 feet down the mound also shortens the hitter's reaction time, with Statcast estimating that it adds 2 mph of perceived velocity to his pitches. Even when his fastball is "down" to 98 mph, it's still effectively a 100-mph heater. The combination of velocity, movement, entry angle, and extension creates a near-unprecedented pitch that multiple prospect publications scouted as an 80-grade fastball. That fastball is good enough that Misiorowski will be able to dominate with his best pitch alone in some outings. However, he only threw it 52.6% of the time in his debut, the lowest rate of any of his starts this year. Meanwhile, 30.1% of his pitches were sliders, his other outlier pitch. It dismantled the Cardinals, generating whiffs on four of eight swings against it. "Maybe a few more sliders than I usually (throw)," he said postgame. "It was working, so we rolled with it." Misiorowski's slider averaged 94.5 mph and touched 96.4 on Thursday, which would make it far and away the fastest qualified slider in baseball. However, the way it spins and breaks out of his hand more closely resembles a cutter than a slider. Even if it's best classified as such, its velocity would still rank third overall and first among starters. The dominance of multiple pitches stood out to those observing in the dugout and on the field. "It wasn't just maintaining the velocity, it was his mix," Murphy said. "His (slider) was good. Breaking ball was good. Even threw a really good changeup to (Nolan) Gorman at one point." "On my end, what I liked to see out of him was the different pitches he was able to throw and combine them together," said Contreras. It was just one outing, and Misiorowski's four walks were a necessary reminder that inconsistent control will likely lead to peaks and valleys throughout his rookie season. Still, his inaugural showing confirmed that he can execute his unique stuff well enough to overpower big-league hitters right now. That's why he's here. "It certainly bodes well," Murphy said. "We saw (Brandon Woodruff) debut, we've seen (Freddy) Peralta debut – he had a great one. We've seen Corbin Burnes debut, go up and down, and then really get on it. I think we probably have somebody in the same mold."

The wait for Jacob Misiorowski's big-league debut is over. The flame-throwing right-hander has joined the Brewers in Milwaukee and will make his first start on Thursday night against the St. Louis Cardinals. The fact that Misiorowski will begin his MLB career as a starter is significant. While the Brewers maintained their belief that he could develop into a big-league starter, his ascent through the minors was shrouded in concerns that his high walk rate, inconsistent mechanics (made so by a frame so lanky as to be unwieldy at times), and lack of a fourth pitch would push him to a relief role. Misiorowski has mitigated some of those concerns this year. He's slightly cut his walk rate, from 14.4% in 2024 to 12.3% in 2025, but more importantly, his percentage of pitches in the strike zone has jumped from 46.4% in Triple-A last year to 51.7% this year. "He's in the zone a lot more," Pat Murphy said. "Not as many big misses. The counts are better. Just the control in general of who he is. His delivery's a little more compact." The chief baseball decision-maker for the team agrees. "The stuff is the stuff, but just the ability to actually execute is now something that he's much more comfortable with," Matt Arnold said. "He's shown us that it's probably the right time." The 23-year-old also developed his changeup into a bona fide fourth pitch, with solid depth and arm-side fade. Public stuff modeling metrics don't love it, but its separation from his fastball out of the same arm action could help it play up. The right-hander has also worked deeper into games while maintaining his outstanding stuff. After going six or more innings in just three of 21 starts last year, he's already done it four times in 12 starts this season. He garnered attention last month for hitting 103 mph with his 78th pitch of his May 15 start. That's not to say Misiorowski is a finished product. His control evaded him two outings ago, when he issued six walks in a two-inning start on May 31. However, he's largely looked ready to start at the game's highest level for several weeks, something that couldn't be said last year—or even in spring training. The next steps in his development can only be taken by learning from facing big-league hitters. "I think you see it with some of the young guys that we've seen here, whether it's [Chad Patrick] or [Logan Henderson] or [Quinn Priester]," Arnold said. "Continuing to overcome some adversity and show that they can do that at the highest level is the ultimate challenge. I think he's ready for that." Part of the timing decision was that, once Misiorowski demonstrated his readiness for the challenge, the team wanted to reward the progress immediately. "When you have an entity like this, you might be wasting bullets (in the minor leagues) if you don't bring them up soon," Murphy said. Unlike Henderson's sporadic cups of coffee in the majors, Misiorowski's first promotion is not expected to be a one-and-done start. The Brewers plan to make him a full-time member of what was already a full starting rotation. Under the 13-pitcher limit, a six-man rotation would leave the club shorthanded in the bullpen, so it is moving Aaron Civale to a long relief role for now. The veteran has started every game of his big-league career, and the change comes during his platform year in free agency. With those factors in mind, Murphy acknowledged that Civale is "not happy" with his new role. "It's a big move for him," he said. "It's not necessarily that he hasn't been pitching well, because he has been, it's just that we think he's the best candidate to be able to [pitch in relief] right now." Civale is a capable starter, but with Misiorowski in the fold and the other members of a suddenly deep rotation pitching well, his limitations make him the odd man out. Murphy has noted that his struggles in his third turn through an opposing lineup restrict him to shorter outings. Last year, opponents posted an .856 OPS the third and fourth times through, compared to a .732 OPS the first two times through. They've gone 4-for-8 the third time through to begin this year. "You look at his third-time-around numbers, he might be better suited on this year's team right now, to disrupt everything less, if he can be in that long relief role," Murphy said. The Brewers declined to comment on trade speculation, but as a pending free agent, Civale already appeared to be a potential midseason trade candidate. His downgraded status on the depth chart adds fuel to those speculative flames. Misiorowski, meanwhile, has upside as a spark for this year's team and a potential linchpin of future Milwaukee pitching staffs. After the growth he's shown this spring, he's earned this opportunity.

The Brewers showed how highly they thought of Quinn Priester when they paid a steep price to acquire him from the Boston Red Sox in April. At the time, the former first-round draft pick owned a 6.23 ERA in 99 ⅔ big-league innings, but Milwaukee felt he had the tools to become a long-term rotation mainstay. "When I first saw Priester, I remember talking to [Chris Hook] and [Jim] Henderson," Pat Murphy recalled. "We talked about, 'This is a guy we just need to get our hands on and work with him a little bit.' And it'd be nice if we had two or three weeks with this guy before he had to pitch, you know?" Neither Priester nor the Brewers had that luxury, as the 24-year-old immediately joined an injury-ravaged rotation. The early results were uninspiring: a 5.79 ERA, 5.34 FIP, and 5.35 SIERA in his first five outings. Since a seven-run blowup against the Chicago Cubs on May 2, the results have flipped. Priester has posted a 2.51 ERA in his last six outings, with a 61.1% ground ball rate. His 4.03 FIP and 3.93 SIERA during this stretch indicate that Priester has pitched more like a capable back-of-the-rotation starter, but even those marks reflect substantial improvement. Furthermore, the Brewers aren't asking him to pitch in a way that peripheral metrics love—at least, not yet. For now, they want Priester to be a ground-ball machine in front of their infield defense. He's unlikely to sustain his recent level of success in his current form, but some of his overperformance is by design. The turnaround came after a few adjustments. Priester and the Brewers' pitching brass simplified his game plan to emphasize his two best pitches, and moved him toward the middle of the pitching rubber. Priester has a full five-pitch arsenal, including a curveball that received a 70 grade from FanGraphs in 2023. He used his entire mix in his first few outings, but since that Cubs start, he's leaned heavily on his sinker and slider. The results quickly improved. Opponents have since slugged .330 against Priester, with an expected slugging percentage of .350. "He's overpowering people with the sinker," Hook said. "Why would we do them a favor sometimes, you know? At this particular moment, he doesn't need a six-pitch mix." "I think it's a lot of 'If it's not broke, don't fix it' type of thing," Priester said. "We know there's tons of quick outs in the sinker, and we know I'm at my best when they have to respect that pitch. And then the slider's just a natural second off it." The Brewers targeted him largely because of that sinker. It has drawn unassuming reviews from public stuff models (career 0.2 StuffPro and 100 Stuff+) but rates highly within the organization's internal valuations. Its raw movement seems unremarkable from afar, but it sinks more than a hitter expects it to from Priester's high-three-quarters arm slot. "It's a very unique sinker," Hook said. "You look at the movement like, 'Oh, God, that's not that good.' But I think the entry angle and the movement, it's not the expected movement. It just looks different. It's a bowling ball." The sinker-slider combination is playing better from the middle of the mound. Priester used to stand with his back heel hanging off the rubber, but since his start against the Baltimore Orioles on May 19, he's stood roughly seven inches to his right. Brewers pitching coaches had several potential benefits in mind when they approached Priester about moving over. "In one bullpen, Hooky asked if I kind of am uncomfortable being in the middle," he said. "I just had always thought the first base side had helped me out. Then had a couple other people mention, 'Hey, maybe the middle will just kind of help the sinker sink more, just the different angles we can play.' And same with the slider. The slider's going to hold more plate just because I'm now seven inches over on the other side." Because it now appears to stay in the strike zone longer before breaking off the plate, hitters are chasing Priester's slider more. Since he moved on the rubber, the chase rate against it has increased from 36.9% to 42.9%. More important, though, was how sliding over could help the sinker. The Brewers believed it played in the zone, but needed Priester to throw more strikes. From the middle of the rubber, his in-zone rate has improved from 50.9% to 53.4%, his walk rate has dropped from 14.2% to 5.8%, and his first-pitch strike rate jumped from 58.8% to 68.6%. "To me, it's like, 'Okay, we can get this guy in the strike zone, and good things will happen,'" Hook said. "And he can be middle with [the sinker]. I mean, you go, '14 [inches of horizontal break] and 8 [inches of induced vertical break] sinker, that's okay, that's fine.' But there's something different about his. He can play in the middle, and I think he's been aggressive." Priester is now getting ahead of hitters with tons of sinkers down the middle, and it's working. Despite the pitch getting plenty of the plate, opponents have managed just a .292 wOBA on contact, far below the league average for sinkers of .354. His spring training velocity gains with the Red Sox evaporated after his trade to the Brewers, but Priester has rediscovered an extra tick on his sinker in his last four outings. He attributes it to growing more comfortable with his recent mechanical tweaks. "There's some things we wanted to iron out at first, and that takes some thought, and thought kind of slows the body down a little bit," he said. "The more those things have gotten ironed out and required less and less thought, the more it's been easier to get to those velos, because there's not much to think about. It's just, 'Throw the ball. Throw the heck out of it over the plate.'" The current sinker-slider approach is working for now, but it limits Priester's ceiling. He's currently a pitch-to-contact pitcher whom the Brewers have shielded from left-handed hitters by using DL Hall as an opener. He'll need his other secondary pitches down the line, to take additional and more sustainable steps forward. Hook sees potential in the rest of Priester's arsenal, particularly his cutter and changeup, but most of the work on those pitches is happening behind the scenes. For now, the Brewers want him to attack hitters in the zone with his best stuff and use his remaining offerings strategically. "I think sometimes it's like, 'Hey, man, we need to continue to work on this, and we'll give you some space to work it in when it's ready,'" Hook said. "Now we're just going to find the guys that are bad on this pitch and work it in." The Brewers believe those other pitches can play in the future and make Priester a more well-rounded pitcher. "He's handling lineups right now," Hook said. "If we add those other pitches, I think that'll better complement him, and there's probably more whiff in there when he does use them." Priester is a unique project for the Brewers' pitching development system. He was not a minor-league acquisition who could feel things out in a low-pressure environment, nor was he a veteran pickup like Aaron Civale or Frankie Montas. The club has visions of what he can become in the long run, but also had to make him effective this year, knowing it couldn't squeeze years of development into a few weeks. Priester is far from a finished product. He has already made quick progress, but more work lies ahead.

A shutout of the offense left him with a tough-luck loss, but Friday night’s outing was a significant one for Chad Patrick. The 26-year-old worked six innings for a second consecutive start, allowing just one run and providing crucial length as the Brewers begin a 10-day homestand without an off day. If there’s any knock to be made against Patrick’s stellar rookie season, it’s that he has not often worked deep into games. Entering Friday, he had failed to complete five innings in six of his 12 starts. Patrick has kept runs off the board but hasn’t been efficient, and the Brewers have enforced a quick hook in many of his outings. They’ve had valid reasons for handling him that way; Patrick is a young starter who throws a fastball variant 90% of the time, making him vulnerable against good lineups a third turn through the order. It appeared early on as if his latest outing would unfold similarly. Patrick threw 67 pitches through his first four innings, and if the Brewers preferred to shield him from the heart of the San Diego Padres order a third time, he appeared headed for another short start. Instead, he breezed through a 10-pitch fifth, positioning him to start the sixth. “The first three innings, it felt like command was off, and then we kind of dialed it back in there the next three,” Patrick said postgame. Unlike his last start, in which he pitched six innings in a blowout victory over the Philadelphia Phillies, the Brewers sent Patrick back out in a close game. Pat Murphy said they planned to take the same batter-by-batter approach that they have at the tail end of his other starts. In past outings, like his start against the Boston Red Sox on the last homestand, he failed to complete the inning. Patrick allowed traffic amid waning stuff, prompting a call to the bullpen. This time, he continued looking strong, striking out Manny Machado and Xander Bogaerts to bookend a scoreless frame. “We were going to go hitter-by-hitter there,” Murphy said. “And then he looked good and got him out, and we just let him keep going, the next hitter, the next hitter.” To complete that sixth inning, Patrick started turning toward his changeup, a pitch he had used just 5.8% of the time this year. Five of the seven he threw Friday night came in that frame. His inning-ending strikeout of Bogaerts was on a rare right-on-right changeup. With that punchout, Patrick successfully navigated the meat of an opposing order for a third time in a close game. While the Brewers have no qualms about pulling starters early for matchup reasons, every club prefers its pitchers learn how to work deeper into games. “It was kind of planned that way,” Murphy said, noting that Rob Zastryzny was ready for mid-inning relief if Patrick ran into trouble. “But you’re also trying to bring that pitcher along. You’re trying to bring him along to be able to do that, saying, ‘This is the third time around, and I’ve got to execute.’ And he did.” “It’s awesome,” Patrick said of making good on the opportunity. “I honestly thought I was only going to face Machado there, and ended up getting him and kind of locked back in. It was like, ‘Alright, it’s your inning. Go finish the job.’” It was the next step for a young pitcher who had already been indispensable for an injury-ravaged staff and now ranks 14th among qualified pitchers in fWAR this year. “I think that trusting that he can go the third time through,” Murphy said. “Trusting that we believe in him that he can do that. I thought it was a big night for him.” “It definitely brings my confidence up for sure,” Patrick said.

For the second time in less than four weeks, Brandon Woodruff's impending big-league return from shoulder surgery was delayed by an unrelated injury. This one was flukier (and scarier) than the last. Just 12 pitches into what could have been his final rehab outing, a 108-mph comebacker struck Woodruff in his right elbow, forcing his exit from the game. Pat Murphy and Matt Arnold told reporters that X-rays on Woodruff's elbow were negative. He'll return to Milwaukee for further testing on Wednesday. In any case, it's a tough break for Woodruff, who seemingly remains snake-bitten after more than 20 months of hard work to reach this point. If he avoided a serious injury, though, another minor setback may be a blessing in disguise for him and the Brewers. For most of his rehab stint, Woodruff's stuff continued to exhibit the encouraging and somewhat surprising progress he had shown in spring training. Through his first three Triple-A outings with Statcast tracking, his four-seamer and sinker averaged 92.7 mph and regularly touched 95 mph. Meanwhile, his existing pitch shapes were unaltered from his heyday, and his new sweeper and cutter looked like legitimate offerings. That changed when a bout of right ankle tendinitis cropped up last month. Starting in his May 11 outing, Woodruff's velocity dropped an additional couple of ticks, and it had not rebounded since he started a new rehab assignment. Before his departure on Tuesday night, the average velocity of his four-seam fastball was down to 89.2 mph. With a deeper arsenal and his veteran feel for mixing pitches to keep hitters off-balance, Woodruff had a clear-cut path toward succeeding with diminished velocity—when his fastballs sat in the low-to-mid-90s. His outlook is cloudier when they sit in the upper 80s and merely touch the low 90s occasionally. Despite that step back in his stuff, the Brewers suggested that Woodruff's Tuesday start could be his last rehab appearance before his long-awaited activation. That would have required them to send down a starter. During the team's homestand last week, Pat Murphy heavily implied that the casualty could be Chad Patrick, who has pitched to a 2.97 ERA and 3.30 FIP in 13 outings (12 starts) but has options remaining. "What do you do?" Murphy said. "Do you tell Woody, 'No, you're not coming back?'" While a challenging message to deliver after Woodruff's contributions to the franchise and the work he put in throughout his rehab, it's a conversation the Brewers should have entertained, had he emerged from his last start healthy and felt ready to return. In his current form, Woodruff is not one of the five best starters on the 40-man roster, and time remains on his 30-day rehab clock to rediscover the still-recent version of his stuff that had him looking like a viable big-league arm again. Activating him next week at Patrick's expense would worsen the rotation and put Woodruff in a disadvantageous situation when facing big-league hitters in a regular-season game for the first time in nearly two years. This latest setback may have kicked that can down the road. It's an unfortunate development in the moment, but in the long run, both Woodruff and the Brewers could end up in a better position for a successful MLB return.

Good health has proven elusive for DL Hall in his first year-plus with the Brewers. Last season, he spent nearly four months on the injured list, first due to a knee injury and then to a succession of setbacks throughout multiple rehab assignments. This year, a lat injury delayed his season debut until Monday. It took longer than anyone hoped, but the left-hander finally feels good physically. “I feel healthy,” he said, adding with a chuckle, “Healthy’s a lucrative word, I guess.” When he has been on the mound, Hall hasn’t looked like the pitcher the Brewers thought they were acquiring in the Corbin Burnes trade two offseasons ago. FanGraphs scouted his four-seam fastball as a 70-grade pitch at the time, and it induced whiffs on 28% of swings during his stints with the Baltimore Orioles in 2022 and 2023. Last season, it lost several ticks of velocity and carry, reducing it from a plus pitch to a batting-practice offering. Season MPH IVB (inches) Stuff+ StuffPro xwOBA Whiff% 2022 96.2 16.8 113 -0.6 .291 24.6% 2023 95.6 15.6 109 -0.7 .239 30.2% 2024 93.3 14.3 82 0.6 .376 12.5% Hall has attributed some of the missing zip on his heater to pitching with a hampered lower half. He expects it to return now that he’s moving better. “It's just a matter of getting the body right, getting everything cleaned up,” he said. “Just a lot of bad reps went into my body when I was compensating (for) a lot of the injuries I dealt with.” It hasn’t happened yet, though. Hall’s velocity and movement showed flashes early in some of his rehab outings, but for the most part, his four-seamer still looks like a below-average pitch. On Monday, it averaged 93.6 mph with 14.7 inches of induced vertical break, which translated to 79 Stuff+ and 0.2 StuffPro marks. Last October, we speculated that if Hall’s four-seamer remained an underwhelming pitch, he would need an auxiliary fastball to help him protect it. Adding a cutter always made sense for Hall because he has a supination bias, meaning his hand and wrist naturally turn outward from his body when he releases the ball. His four-seamer had an active spin rate of 87% last year, which typically means a pitcher is slightly cutting the ball instead of staying behind it. Realizing that a cutter meshed with his mechanics and could help his diminished four-seamer play up, he started toying with one before his final rehab outing last week. “I've always been able to just get on that side of the ball better than the other side,” he said, “so it's like, ‘Let me just try it.’ So I threw a couple in the bullpen, spotting it up pretty well, good metrics. Was warming up for my last rehab outing, and got a call down and they said, ‘Hey, what does DL think about throwing a few cutters?’ And I was like, ‘Sure, I'll try it.’ “I think with my velo not being where it used to be, I think it's just another tool or weapon that I can use to protect my fastball.” Hall threw five cutters in that appearance and two on Monday. Most encouraging is that he is holding velocity with the pitch. It’s averaged 91.2 mph, just a couple of ticks below his usual fastball. “I think that partially comes from it being like a four-seam,” he said. “I'm basically just cocking my four-seam sideways, so it's pretty similar.” Hall is also hopeful that having separate release cues for the four-seam and cutter will help keep him behind the former, allowing him to generate more of the pure backspin that creates that carry. In addition to flashing the cutter, he also unintentionally debuted another new fastball on Monday. With Hall and Eric Haase unable to get on the same page with the pitch timer expiring, he hurriedly oriented the ball into a fastball grip in his hand. As he went into his delivery, he realized he was throwing a two-seamer. “Haase went back to the first sign instead of going to my curveball,” he recalled. “I was looking for curveball. We hadn't really thrown any all game. Didn't get to it because of the pitch clock, so I just gripped the ball. I had no idea. I literally just gripped the ball, and when I felt the two seams under my fingers, I was like, ‘Oh ****.’ I knew what was about to happen.” bmJNZ3lfWGw0TUFRPT1fQWdSWlV3VUhBQVFBRDFFQUF3QUhDQTRDQUFBRUJ3Y0FWMTBOVlZWWEJBSUJCZ1VE.mp4 Since he struggles to pronate the baseball to create arm-side movement, Hall doesn’t plan to add a two-seamer to his arsenal. With the cutter, he already has a five-pitch mix that he’s been forced to refine without his best fastball. Hall’s MLB four-seam usage dipped under 50% for the first time last year, and it’s dropped further in 2025. Meanwhile, he’s had to lean more on his two breaking pitches and changeup. “It’s been huge for me,” he said of learning to use his full arsenal. “It's not even necessarily by choice either, you know. It was kind of like sink or swim. So it's either figure out how to get outs with other stuff, or drown trying to blow 92 past them. It was a good thing for me, though.” Because he has an option year remaining, Hall may not be a constant member of the active roster. But when he’s with the Brewers, Pat Murphy plans to deploy him and Aaron Ashby as “leverage long relievers” who can bridge the gap between short-range starters and the overworked high-leverage arms, or fill in for the latter when they need rest. Hall is slated to open for Quinn Priester against a lefty-heavy top of the Philadelphia Phillies lineup on Friday night. “DL, Ashby, those guys are guys that can go multiple times during the week, multiple innings,” Murphy said. “I think you’re going to wear out your (Jared) Koenigs and your (Nick) Mears and your (Abner) Uribes and your (Trevor) Megills if you don’t have those couple two, three long guys.” “It just comes down to getting outs,” Hall said. “I think the preparation stays the same. It's obviously a little bit harder. It's not as scheduled, and you never know when (you) might open or long relieve. But it all can be overcomplicated if you want it to be. It just comes down to getting outs.” Whether he remains in that role or slides into another as the season progresses, he’s hoping that being forced to develop the rest of his arsenal will put him in an even better spot if his good fastball returns. “I think I'll get a velo unlock whenever that time comes, hopefully soon. But I think once it does, and then you add in all the stuff I've had to pitch with over the past year-and-a-half, I think it can be pretty cool and pretty special.”

Statcast unveiled its latest round of bat-tracking metrics last week, opening public access to more information about players' swings than ever before. For a more thorough explanation, Brewer Fanatic's @Jason Wang walked through how to interpret the new data on Tuesday. Because MLB did not upgrade to the Hawk-Eye high-speed camera system that makes bat tracking possible until 2020, the information that's new to fans is also a fresh and ongoing study in front offices. In spring training, Pat Murphy revealed that the Brewers' research and development department was analyzing bat path data to determine which types of swings work best at the big-league level. "We're studying bat angle and bat path in the zone, how it gets to the zone, all different things of it," Murphy said. "How it starts in the zone, how long it's in the zone, what angle it is in the zone, and then what's most effective of that. Contact point. We study all of that. It's fairly new. We don't have all the research on it." Hitting is a complex equation of meeting the ball with enough force, at the right time and on the right plane, and the path to getting there differs for each hitter. Most will tell you that their in-game swings rarely feel fully calibrated, so making their window for productive contact as wide as possible is crucial. Without the fancy numbers and graphics now available to the public, several of baseball's greatest hitting minds have concluded that a more vertical, steeper bat path with a slight arc best meets the plane of the incoming pitch, giving a hitter the most wiggle room for making productive contact, even if their timing is slightly off. Ted Williams was saying it back in the 1970s. Murphy agrees. "I think the more vertical bat produces better results when beat," he said in March, more than two months before bat path metrics went public. When a hitter swings late at a pitch but still makes contact, he's catching it closer to the back of home plate. The bat is sometimes coming down as it meets the ball, instead of as it levels out or comes up. That means that when a steeper swing is late, it's more likely to clip the bottom half of the ball. Murphy says that allows a hitter to stay alive for another pitch or hit a near-automatic single. "A more vertical bat, meaning (steeper), produces a potential foul ball, which lets you live again, if you hit the inside of it the right way," he said. "And, obviously, a chance for a 70-30 – 70 miles an hour, 30 degrees is a hit." League-wide in 2025, balls hit with an exit velocity between 65 and 75 mph and a launch angle between 25 and 35 degrees have a batting average of .783. They're the bloop singles that fall into no-man's land between an infielder and an outfielder. Nobody tries to hit a ball like that, but a single is a solid outcome after getting beaten by a pitch. A flatter, more horizontal swing also has its strengths. When late, it's more likely than a steep swing to meet the ball flush, producing an opposite-field line drive. That's why hitters with such swings—Brice Turang and Sal Frelick, for example—are often more comfortable with letting the ball get deep and slashing it the other way. This Turang single from earlier this month against the Minnesota Twins was a successful horizontal swing against a high fastball. turang_single.mp4 Turang's swing tilt—the angle of his bat path, measured 0.4 seconds before contact—on this hit was 23 degrees, much flatter than the MLB average of 30 degrees. It was level enough to help him turn around a high pitch deep in the hitting zone for a line drive, but not too flat. "There's a lot of horizontal bat that can beat a ball back here (toward the back of home plate) and hit you a laser to (the opposite field), and you're like, 'Wow, vertical bat, that would have been a foul ball,'" Murphy said. "But there's some horizontal bat guys, that's all they hit." More often, a horizontal swing hits the top of the ball at contact and produces a ground ball, like this Turang groundout against a fastball in a similar location to the one on which he singled. turang_groundout.mp4 Turang got too flat on this swing, down to 16 degrees. The result was an easy rollover. "If I'm above (the ball), I'm out, right?" Murphy said. "If I hit a ground ball in today's game, you're probably out." Back in March, Murphy invoked Freddie Freeman as an exemplar of a successful vertical bat hitter. The new data backs it up. Freeman's average swing tilt is 42 degrees, making his bat path the second-steepest among qualified hitters. Many Brewers hitters are on the opposite end of the spectrum. As a team, their average swing tilt is 30 degrees, which ties them for the lowest in baseball. Many of their most prominent hitters have more horizontal bat paths. Player PA Swing Path Tilt Jackson Chourio 247 26° Brice Turang 227 30° Christian Yelich 226 36° William Contreras 220 30° Sal Frelick 204 29° Rhys Hoskins 203 34° Joey Ortiz 187 28° Compare the shape of Freeman's swing to those of several Milwaukee hitters. swing_comparison.mp4 A flat bat path does not automatically preclude a hitter from driving the ball. Chourio, for example, has one of baseball's most horizontal swings, but has still flashed power by meeting the ball in a good spot with his 78th-percentile bat speed. However, the new metrics partially explain why the Brewers again have the game's third-highest ground ball rate, despite players and coaches claiming their goal is to elevate balls in play. Because of their bat paths, when many of their hitters mistime a pitch, they hit it on the ground. It's a predicament the organization created for itself by acquiring and developing so many players with flatter swings. Murphy would like that to change. He doesn't want his horizontal bat hitters to forgo their existing strengths and try to become Freeman, but he thinks adding more vertical variations of their existing swings will help them get to certain pitches better. "It's going to lead to more of a vertical bat," he said earlier this week, predicting the adjustment the metrics will spur. "Because really, the ability to kind of do a little bit of both and not just have one horizontal swing is going to be the difference." It's not a simple fix, though. Murphy noted in spring training that hitters are somewhat bound to their natural movement patterns and can't make their swings steeper with a snap of their fingers, something he reiterated after the numbers came out. "It's not something you can do in a day," he said, later adding that the offseason is the best time for broader swing adjustments. "It's recognition, understanding, awareness. Now, what am I going to do about it? And it's probably going to take some time to understand it, because it's not as easy as that. Freddie Freeman does that real simple. (Christian) Yelich does that real simple, you know? So it's like, it's different." For now, the Brewers are directing hitters to swing as little as possible at pitches their bat paths struggle to hit. For those with horizontal swings, that includes high pitches and low-and-inside ones. "You've got to step back and really analyze it," Murphy said. "Right now, it's, 'I don't swing at that.'" In the long run, he hopes the new data will help hitters formulate plans better suited to their strengths and make their swings more versatile. "That's the mode we're in, now that we're tracking this. It's going to allow players to see, like Brice Turang, like, 'No, you don't do damage. No, you don't hit that ball down-and-in as a horizontal bat guy. So how are you going to adjust?'"