Looking At The Brewers’ Rotation Depth Options
The Brewers have won the National League Central two years in a row and three of the last four. They will be looking to defend that title in 2025 but might face a steeper challenge than in years past. The Cubs have had an aggressive offseason, adding Kyle Tucker, Matthew Boyd, Ryan Pressly, Ryan Brasier…
The Brewers have won the National League Central two years in a row and three of the last four. They will be looking to defend that title in 2025 but might face a steeper challenge than in years past. The Cubs have had an aggressive offseason, adding Kyle Tucker, Matthew Boyd, Ryan Pressly, Ryan Brasier and more. The Reds added Brady Singer, Gavin Lux, Austin Hays and will be getting several players back from injury. The Pirates have had a quiet winter but have a rotation loaded with young talent, fronted by Paul Skenes and Jared Jones. The Cardinals planned to do a teardown but ended up standing pat, so they’re going into the year with a very similar roster to the one that finished above .500 last year.
Milwaukee hasn’t done a lot to remake its roster relative to last year. They have added Nestor Cortes and Caleb Durbin but lost Willy Adames, Devin Williams and others. Whether the team is better or worse than last year is debatable.
The rotation wasn’t a strength in 2024. Their starters put up a collective 4.09 earned run average, putting them 17th out of the 30 teams in the league. Their bullpen was one of the best, however. Their relievers had a collective ERA of 3.11, second only to the Guardians, which helped the team cruise to that division title. That was despite Williams being injured for much of the year.
Going into 2025, the rotation looks like it could be in a similar situation overall, though with some personnel changes. Of the seven players that made at least nine starts for the club last year, four of them are gone. Frankie Montas and Joe Ross hit free agency at season’s end, the former by declining a mutual option. Bryse Wilson was outrighted and Colin Rea had a club option turned down, so they also hit the open market as well.
Freddy Peralta, Tobias Myers and Aaron Civale are the three holdovers. Cortes was brought in from the Yankees as part of the Williams trade. In an interview this week with Todd Rosiak of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, manager Pat Murphy confirmed that those four make up his rotation core to start the season. Brandon Woodruff, who missed 2024 recovering from shoulder surgery, will be in there at some point but probably won’t be ready by Opening Day.
“I would think those four guys are [penciled in],” Murphy said, “and you can put Woody in there, too. But you can’t have him ready to start the season; he probably won’t be. But I think it’s pretty safe to say that those five guys are starters that, when healthy, are going to get opportunities.”
Taking things easy with Woodruff makes sense after his lost season, but that means the club will likely have to reach into its depth. Perhaps that will only be for a short time, but injuries are inevitable over the course of a season. For the long term, the need will be even greater. Civale and Cortes are both slated to be free agents after the upcoming season. Woodruff will certainly join them, as his deal has a $20MM mutual option for 2026 with a $10MM buyout. That was basically designed so that he would re-sign but with the club able to kick most of the payment down the line until the end of 2025. Peralta can be retained for 2026 via an affordable $8MM club option but is slated for free agency after that.
That means Myers is the only guy slated to still be on the roster when November of 2026 rolls around. Even he is not a lock to keep a spot going forward, as his strong 2024 season came after several years of poor minor league numbers. In short, the long-term rotation is wide open. Can the Brewers fill some of that in with guys already in the system? Let’s take a look at some of the options.
Ashby, 27 in May, seemed like a potential rotation building block a few years ago. He tossed 139 innings in a swing role over the 2021 and 2022 seasons. His 4.47 ERA wasn’t especially impressive but his 27.1% strikeout rate, 9.7% walk rate and 57.8% ground ball rate seemed like a solid recipe for success.
The Brewers were intrigued enough to make a bet on the lefty, signing him to a five-year deal during the 2022 campaign which guaranteed him $20.5MM and also came with club options for 2028 and 2029.
Unfortunately, shoulder problems got in the way. Arthroscopic surgery wiped out his 2023 season. He returned last year and was kept mostly in a relief role, but with some good results. Down the stretch, he tossed 19 2/3 innings over 12 appearances with a 1.37 ERA, 36.8% strikeout rate, 3.9% walk rate and 51.1% ground ball rate.
With those numbers, it might be tempting to keep him in a bullpen role, but the club seems interested in stretching him out. Back in November, Murphy said the club still hopes to see what Ashby can do as a starter. He still has one option year and can be sent to the minors if the club would like.
Hall, 26, was a first-round pick of the Orioles in 2017 and went on to be a top 100 prospect. He came to the Brewers as part of the Corbin Burnes trade last offseason. He hasn’t lived up to that prospect hype just yet.
He has pitched in the past three seasons but logged only 76 innings. His 4.74 ERA doesn’t impress but his 25.1% strikeout rate, 9.4% walk rate and 46.5% ground ball rate make for a decent mixture. A left knee sprain hobbled him last year, limiting him to just 84 frames between the majors and minors. In 2022 and 2023, the Orioles shuttled him between the majors and the minors, as well as moving him between starting to relieving. He tossed 98 innings in 2022 between the majors and minors, then 71 1/3 in 2023. His minor league work has generally featured big strikeout numbers but also plenty of walks.
Hall is still a work in progress but the Brewers probably don’t want to give up on him, given the upside here. Like Ashby, he has one option year remaining, so pitching out of the Triple-A rotation isn’t off the table. He has one year and 74 days of service time, meaning he is currently slated for five years of club control, though a lengthy optional assignment could push that to six. Either way, he’s cheap and controllable for a long time to come.
Gasser, 26 in May, won’t be an option in the short term but is definitely part of the long-term plans. A former top 100 prospect, he debuted with a splash last year by posting a 2.57 ERA in his first five big league starts. Unfortunately, he required Tommy John surgery in June, wiping out the second half of his 2024. He’s now slated to miss most or perhaps all of 2025. He has less than a year of service time at the moment and the Brewers therefore have six years of club control over him.
Misiorowski, 23 in April, is not yet on the 40-man roster but is one of the top pitching prospects in the league. He reached as high as Triple-A last year, though the club eased off his workload by having him pitch shorter stints out of the bullpen to finish the year. Between Double-A and Triple-A, he tossed 97 1/3 innings on the year with a 3.33 ERA. He struck out 30.5% of hitters and got grounders at a 45.8% clip but also gave out walks 14.4% of the time. Though the club eased off the gas, that innings total is still his personal high thus far.
The righty is clearly going to factor into the mix at some point, but there’s clearly still some development going on. 2025 will likely be about reining in the control and getting the workload beyond the 100-inning mark, but it’s entirely possible that he throws some big league innings this year.
Rodríguez, 27 in March, is a wild card at the moment. He spent 2024 in a multi-inning role for the Yakult Swallows in Japan. He logged 45 innings over 32 appearances with a 1.80 ERA, 24% strikeout rate and 6.5% walk rate. Whether the Brewers view him more as a starter or a reliever is unknown.
Rodríguez, 23, made a limited MLB debut last year. He tossed 12 1/3 innings over three starts with a 7.30 ERA. Over the past three years, he has logged 365 2/3 innings on the farm with a 3.49 ERA, 27.4% strikeout rate and 10.4% walk rate. Most prospect evaluators consider him a capable back-end starter but he’s still young and has a couple of options remaining, so he’ll likely be in the Triple-A rotation until circumstances change.
These two were each just added to the 40-man roster in November, to keep them out of the Rule 5 draft. Henderson, 23, is considered more of a legit prospect but he is still a question mark. Elbow surgery limited him to just 13 2/3 innings in 2022. He got that up to 78 2/3 in 2023 and then 81 1/3 last year. His minor league numbers are strong overall, with a 3.11 ERA, 34.1% strikeout rate and 6.9% walk rate. However, he mostly gets by with a fastball/changeup mix that leads some to predict he’ll end up in the bullpen. Patrick is considered more of a depth/spot starter.
Bruce Zimmermann/Thomas Pannone/Easton McGee
These three signed minor league deals with the club this offseason. They all have a bit of major league experience and give the club some non-roster depth. Zimmermann has a 5.57 ERA in 158 1/3 innings and Pannone a 5.46 ERA in 118 2/3 innings, while McGee hasn’t allowed a run in his 9 2/3 innings.
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Though the Woodruff timeline creates some uncertainty, there are plenty of intriguing options here for the short term. But as mentioned, the Brewers will likely see three starters departing at the end of the year and a fourth after 2026. Ideally, guys like Ashby, Hall, Misiorowski and Gasser would step up take those spots, because the club usually doesn’t have a lot of spending power for bringing in free agents. That makes 2025 a key season in Milwaukee, since their future rotation plans are completely in flux.
