They opted for the former once the Mets set it up Jet Williams And Brandon Sproat on the table, albeit in a deal that also cost them a potential rotation arm in Myers. It’s clearly not the start of a rebuild for a team that had the best record in MLB a year ago and advanced to the NL Championship Series. They’re counting on their pitching pipeline to continue to perform as they pursue a fourth straight division title.
How will Pat Murphy’s starting staff line up?
Locks
Brandon Woodruff
Woodruff is back as the veteran anchor and their clear No. 1 starter. The judge accepted a qualifying offer of $22.025 million, a move that likely surprised Milwaukee’s front office to some degree. President of baseball operations Matt Arnold acknowledged that getting Woodruff back made them more comfortable parting with Peralta (Relayed by Curt Hogg of The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel). The 2026 payroll plays a role in that to some extent, but Peralta’s $8 million salary shouldn’t have been an issue even by Brewers standards. There were other players they could have moved (e.g Andreas Vaughn, Trevor Megil) if ownership mandated a pay cut.
The Brewers can feel comfortable having an established top starter. The big question is how many innings they can reasonably expect. Woodruff missed the entire 2024 rehab period after shoulder surgery. A handful of minor injuries delayed his ’25 debut, and he suffered a season-ending lat strain after 12 starts. He threw 131 2/3 frames over the past three seasons. Woodruff enters camp fully healthy, but one wonders if he can handle 150 innings.
Quinn Priester
The 25-year-old Priester is now the second-most experienced Milwaukee starter. He and Robert Gasser are the only other starters with more than a year of MLB service time; Most of Gasser’s service came on the wounded list and worked back from the UCL operation.
Priester started the ’25 season in Triple-A with the Red Sox. The former first-rounder, who was traded to Milwaukee in a rare April trade of significance, was a revelation. He threw 157 1/3 innings of 3.32 ERA ball behind a huge 56.1% grounder rate. Milwaukee racked up nineteen straight wins between May and September. Priest has serviceable, but not elite swing-and-miss stuff. It is a sinker-slider profile that aims to keep the ball on the ground. That approach comes with some variability in the batted ball, but plays well for strong defense in the field.
Upward play
Jacob Misiorowski
Misiorowski was arguably the No. 1 pitcher in the MLB when the Brewers drafted him in June. He started his career in electric fashion, allowing two earned runs or fewer in six of his first seven starts. Milwaukee didn’t let him work deep in games, but he lit up the radar gun while missing a lot of bats. His performance faltered down the stretch, and long-standing evaluators’ concerns about his command pushed him into a bullpen role for the playoffs. Misiorowski impressed again in October, striking out 16 batters in 12 innings with three runs in a trio of postseason outings.
Overall, the 6’7″ righty finished his debut campaign with a 4.36 ERA over 66 innings. However, he certainly won’t be the back-end innings eater usually associated with a mid-afternoon ERA. Misiorowski has great stuff with running issues that can still give him high leverage. He should be a full look in the rotation this year, albeit with questions about his start-to-start efficiency.
Logan Henderson
Henderson may not be a Misiorowski-level prospect, but his debut in 2025 was also highly anticipated by Milwaukee fans. He was called up in April and made more than four starts before being pushed off the MLB roster. The Brewers brought him back after the trade deadline. He made one start before being diagnosed with elbow inflammation and spending the rest of the season on the injured list. The 23-year-old right-hander allowed five runs while striking out a third of opponents in his first 25 1/3 MLB innings.
Baseball America ranked Henderson 96th on their Top 100 prospects list last week. They give him plus control and a plus changeup, while his 93 MPH fastball plays above his velocity because of his release angle and spin. Henderson has always been effective in the minors, posting a 3.26 ERA with a 32% strikeout rate throughout his career. Can he continue to miss bats at a high rate against MLB hitters without really trusting his cutter or slider? He could also run into trouble if he’s an average-velocity fly-ball pitcher whose fastball works best at the top of the strike zone. There are questions about the ultimate ceiling, but Henderson’s first five starts couldn’t have gone much better.
Brandon Sproat
Sproat will try to immediately replace Peralta in the starting five. He also landed in the back quarter of the aforementioned BA prospects list – a few spots above Henderson, in fact. Sproat has much bigger stuff, sitting 96-97 with above-average to plus numbers on his slider, curveball and changeup. His command isn’t nearly as polished. Sproat walked 10.4% of opponents in 26 Triple-A appearances last year, and he was hit in just over four starts during the September call-up. The 6’3″ righty has a chance to become a mid-rotation starter, but the command will have to improve if he wants to get there.
Arms at the back
Chad Patrick
Patrick was a 26-year-old rookie who the Brewers acquired from the A’s in 2023 as a journeyman infielder Abraham Toro. There wasn’t much fanfare when he broke camp for his MLB debut last spring. Patrick finished seventh in Rookie of the Year voting after throwing 119 2/3 innings of 3.53 ERA ball. There’s a decent chance he would have been drafted higher had the team’s rotation depth not pushed him to Triple-A when Woodruff returned to action on July 6.
The right-winger spent six weeks in the minors through no fault of his own. He was working in a swing role when he was recalled in mid-August. Patrick pitched well in both roles and had an excellent postseason, firing nine two-run innings with eleven strikeouts. He has a six-pitch mix led by a plus cutter that helped him eliminate a quarter of the opponents. Patrick likely doesn’t have the ceiling of some of his teammates, but should enter camp with an edge over Henderson and Sproat for the fourth or fifth starter role.
Robert Gasser
Acquired from San Diego in the Josh Hader Trade, Gasser had an impressive five-start debut in 2024. He blew out and underwent elbow surgery that kept him off an MLB mound until last September. The southpaw started two games and gave up six runs (only two earned) with four walks and five strikeouts over 5 2/3 frames. His minor league rehab numbers were a lot better. The 26-year-old Gasser has a 3.72 ERA with a 28% strikeout rate in just over 200 career Triple-A frames. He’s on the older side for a prospect due to the injury, but still looks like a viable back-end starter.
Probably saviors
Angel Zerpa, Aaron Ashby And DL-Hal all have starting experience but fit better in the bullpen. All three were used primarily as relievers last season — with the Royals, in Zerpa’s case — and joined Jared Koenig by giving Milwaukee a quartet of big arms from the left side of the bullpen.
Zerpa has solid command and gets a ton of ground balls, but his sinker/slider combo makes him vulnerable to right-handed hitters. He should probably pick up a splitter or cutter if he wants to turn over a pretty tough lineup twice in a game. Ashby has not been able to stay healthy as a starter, while Hall’s leadership has been too much of an obstacle. All are capable of playing multiple innings and could get some action as openers, as Ashby did a few times in the postseason to beat him. Kyle Tucker And Shohei Ohtani.
The other two starters on the 40-man roster, Carlos Rodríguez And Coleman Crowproject like arms going up and down. Rodriguez has decent stuff, but is prone to running in the minors. He allowed 18 runs in 22 career big league innings. Milwaukee added Crow to the roster at the start of the offseason to keep him out of minor league free agency. He’s the organization’s #30 prospect at Baseball America and has some weird stuff despite impressive strikeout rates in the minors.
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Even without Peralta, Milwaukee has a talented group of starters. Their collective lack of experience behind Woodruff means they will likely add a fifth starter or swingman on a one-year deal to reduce the burden on their young arms. As is always the case for the Brewers, they will likely mix in some tandem starts/openers as they shuffle Triple-A’s pitchers up and down. Woodruff is their only starter who can’t be sent to the minor leagues Rob Zastrizny is their only out-of-options reliever. They will have a lot of roster freedom if they want to incorporate bullpen games or a six-man rotation to control the pitchers’ innings.
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