Brewers announce two pitchers have earned spots in opening day rotation
· Yahoo Sports
PHOENIX – An injury to Quinn Priester and a cautious build up for Brandon Woodruff have left the Milwaukee Brewers opening day rotation in a bit of flux, but Pat Murphy set some things in stone three weeks before the season begins.
Chad Patrick is in the opening day rotation. Jacob Misiorowski, same thing.
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“Write that down,” Murphy said.
The remaining three spots are in the air, but this much is not: The Brewers are trudging toward one of the least-experienced season-opening starting rotations in baseball.
Priester seems bound for the injured list as he and the team sort through his enigmatic wrist injury. Woodruff is on track to be ready around the start of the season and is fully healthy, but a late-season lat strain last September has the Brewers being slower with his ramp-up process.
Those are the two seniormost members of Milwaukee’s staff – and Priester doesn’t even have two years of active big league service time. Woodruff is the only starting option with 40 starts in the majors to his name.
Robert Gasser is at one year, 136 days of service time, but the vast majority of that has been spent on the IL recovering from Tommy John surgery. Kyle Harrison is at a year and 102 days, but everyone else on the depth chart – Misiorowski, Patrick, Logan Henderson, Brandon Sproat and Shane Drohan – are under one year.
Murphy isn’t ruling out Aaron Ashby or DL Hall as starters just yet, either. The Brewers are going to keep stretching out both, though the likely scenario remains they begin the year in the bullpen.
“Looks daunting, doesn’t it?” said Murphy of the inexperience.
Brewers viewing Patrick as a starter, not reliever
Because of all of this, it was an easy call for Murphy and company to ink Patrick and Misiorowski for the opening day roster.
While the flamethrowing Misiorowski felt like a no-brainer coming into camp, Patrick’s status was a bit more uncertain because of his showing out of the bullpen in the postseason. The 27-year-old right-hander started 23 games for the Brewers last year as a rookie but was moved to relief for the postseason and made six appearances there. Among those was his electric outing in Game 5 of the National League Division Series against the Cubs, escaping a jam in the sixth and covering five critical outs in Milwaukee’s 3-1 win.
“We got to cover the innings,” Murphy said. “We have such a lack of experience on the mound. We got to cover the innings. We can always back him down from that if other guys come up. But if we put him in the ‘pen now and we need a starter, what are we doing?”
This will be Patrick’s second opening day roster, but he found out in much less dramatic fashion this year. A year ago, he had his car packed, expecting to go to drive back to his home in Indiana for a quick pit stop before reporting to Class AAA Nashville when he got the call he was joining the team in New York. This time, he found out from reporters.
“Thanks, guys,” Patrick said.
Pitching deeper into games a key in Year 2
The casual nature of the announcement is indicative of where Patrick is in Year 2. After a stellar rookie year in which he had a 3.53 ERA over 27 games and took seventh in National League Rookie of the Year voting, Patrick is arguably the biggest known quantity outside of Woodruff on the staff.
The next step is pitching deeper into games.
“I want to say last year I didn’t get many of those opportunities,” Patrick said of facing a lineup a third time through, “and I hope this year’s a little bit different.”
Patrick faced the order a third time in 18 of his 23 starts but only faced an average of four hitters before being pulled in those games. Opponents had a .875 OPS against him and he gave up four homers, seven doubles and a 48% hard-hit rate.
Patrick averaged just a tick over five innings per start last year, in part due to often being pulled before the lineup turned over for a third turn through because his repertoire lacked a viable secondary offering. Oftentimes, too, his pitch count would simply climb too high too fast, as Patrick averaged 16.8 pitches per inning.
“He’s got to develop,” Murphy said. “He’s got to be more efficient, strike-throwing. Stay out of the 20-plus pitch innings. He’s got to develop that slower pitch.”
Patrick is doing that. For most of his career he struggled to develop a reliable breaking or off-speed pitch, which made the addition of a functional slurve late last season a key development. Patrick showcased the pitch well in his March 6 outing, generating three whiffs on five swings against it.
“It’s trying to get strikes with it and gets swings and misses,” Patrick said. “It’s something different versus seeing cutters and fastballs all the time. It’s more so for the hitter to be able to respect the fastballs more. I think it’s there. We’re going to keep making adjustments on it and keep throwing it.”
If the slurve functions as intended, that should lead to deeper outings and more innings for Patrick. On a staff chock full of questions about how many innings they can give this year, that could be critical.
“We’re turning the dial, turning the radio dial,” Murphy said. “When you were listening to the radio when you were young, if you turned that dial just a little it went from static to crystal clear. We’re trying to keep turning the dial to get it [right].”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Chad Patrick, Jacob Misiorowski named to Brewers opening day rotation