“We have some scouts who think he can do it. He’s done it in the past,Arnold said.This man also has postseason experience, which we obviously appreciate. Having a guy with that kind of versatility and experience in big games is something that we think will really help us.”
As we have seen teams move away from traditional pitching roles in recent years, there has been a greater willingness to explore how relievers (sometimes even career relievers) can be turned into starting pitchers. If clubs no longer explicitly need their starters to throw more than five innings or take more than two innings through an opposing lineup, stretching a reliever to handle this increased workload is a more realistic goal than stretching a reliever to handle more than seven innings.
Zerpa began his professional career as a starting pitcher and worked as a starter in three of his first four games in the Majors (in 2021-2022). However, he started just three of his 15 appearances for the Royals in 2023 and has not started a game outside of an opener capacity since. Instead, KC used Zerpa as a left-handed bullpen weapon, and the pitcher posted a 4.03 ERA, 20.8% strikeout rate, 8.0% walk rate, and a whopping 60.6% groundball rate over 118 1/3 innings in 2024-2025.
Right-handed hitters were quite productive against Zerpa, even though he mostly dominated left-handed swingers, and he allowed a lot of hard contact, along with his uninspiring strikeout and walk numbers. Zerpa is a hard pitcher whose fastball averaged 96.2 mph in 2025, but his standard four-seamer hasn’t been very effective over the past two years, while his 96.6 mph sinker is his top pitch. The slider was thrown 44.6% of the time in 2025, with a slider used 31.9% of the time and the four-sieve 19.8% of the time. As Hogg noted, greater use of a changeup might be necessary to help the 26-year-old Zerpa readjust to starting pitching.
It’s not the kind of arsenal that immediately stands out as a rotation candidate, and Zerpa may simply end up as a reliever if the Brewers decide not to make the role change in Spring Training. That said, the fact that the Brewers in particular see starting potential in Zerpa is likely a plus in favor of the experiment’s success. Milwaukee’s ability to turn unknown pitchers into capable or even elite starters or relievers has arguably been the key element of the team’s success over the past decade, so no one should rule out the possibility that the Brew Crew could help Zerpa reach another level of performance regardless of his role.
Arnold said that the Brewers “tried to gain access [in a trade] for a long time,” as “I think our group felt like this was a really strong arm to get access to with really, really good ingredients. We are very excited to get him in with our coaches, who have done a great job tapping into weapons in this way for a number of years.”
Zerpa will be eligible for arbitration for the first time this season and will be under Arb control through the 2028 season. Because he has primarily performed as a non-closer, Zerpa’s first-year arbitration projection is only $1.2 million. This is a hefty price tag even if the southpaw stays in the pen, but if he can successfully transition into the rotation, he will be even more of a steal during Milwaukee’s period of team control.
One reason Zerpa may remain in the Brewers’ fold is the club’s current rotation surplus. Freddy Peralta, Brandon Woodruff, Quinn Priester, Chad PatrickAnd Jacob Misiorowski line up as the expected starting five, and plenty of other starting candidates (e.g Logan Henderson, Robert Gasser, Carlos Rodríguez, Tobias Myers) are depth options. The “you can never pitch too much” mantra applies here, as this group will likely be naturally depleted by injuries, and Woodruff and Peralta are both set to become free agents next winter. As the Peralta trade rumors continue, it’s even possible that the Brewers will suddenly find themselves with a major hole in their rotation this offseason.
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