It hasn’t been a good week for the Brewers on the injury front (obviously), but they’re on the verge of getting one of their best arms back from the IL, general manager David Stearns tells Adam McCalvy of MLB.com (Twitter link). Right-hander Brandon Woodruff threw to hitters yesterday, and the organization is “very pleased” with how Woodruff looked in that session. Stearns adds that the expectation is that Woodruff will be able to pitch in a big league game “sometime within the next week.”
Woodruff, 26, hasn’t pitched in a game since July 21 due to what is clearly a rather significant oblique strain. He’s been rehabbing for a bit now but won’t have the luxury of ramping back up with a minor league affiliate, so he could be used in short stints his first few times out, McCalvy adds. There’s not much time to build him back up to a full starter’s workload, though perhaps if the Brewers secure a Wild Card spot and advance into divisional play, he’d be an intriguing multi-inning weapon either out of the ’pen or in a truncated (by design) starting capacity.
Prior to landing on the IL, Woodruff had been the Brewers’ most valuable starter. Through 20 trips to the hill and 117 2/3 innings, he’d turned in a 3.75 ERA with averages of 10.4 K/9, 2.2 BB/9 and 0.92 HR/9 to go along with a 43.6 percent ground-ball rate. Woodruff’s 11.6 percent swinging-strike rate and 33.5 percent opponents’ chase rate were both improvements over the 2018 campaign, as was his 96.2 mph average fastball velocity.
Fielding-independent metrics and Statcast both loved Woodruff’s work on the mound as well. He logged a 3.09 FIP and 3.46 xFIP while generally excelling at limiting hard contact. Woodruff’s average opponents’ exit velocity was in the 93rd percentile among big league hurlers at just 85.7 mph, and only five percent of MLB starters limited opponents in terms of barreled-ball rate.
The Brewers have rattled off six consecutive wins and suddenly find themselves tied with the Cubs for the second Wild Card spot in the National League. Not only that, they’re just four games back of the Cardinals for the NL Central lead and have a three-game series in St. Louis set to begin tomorrow. It doesn’t sound like Woodruff will factor prominently into that series, but his looming return is all the more important to the Brewers now that they’re squarely back in both the Wild Card and division races with 17 games to play.
Man, the Cubs really let the Brewers back in the race. Well, at least they got a 10 game homestand (Bucs, Reds, Cards) coming up after today.
That should bury them
I predict the Cardinals are going to regret only scoring 2 runs in 2 games at Coors field while the Cubs were dropping games in San Diego.
Lol who cares? The Cubs and the Brewers are both terrible teams that will be cleaned up by the Nationals in the wild card game.
All it takes is to get in the tournament and anybody has a chance
Love my Cubs, but neither they nor the Brewers have a snowballs chance in hell in a 1 game playoff vs. Scherzer. They just don’t.
Who’s to even say the Nats get in? They have a 3 game lead on the Cubs and Brewers with still 16 to go. Who’s to say the Nats couldn’t go 8-8 with the Braves, Phillies, cardinals and Indians still on the schedule. Seen crazier things when the cubs blew 5 games with 25 to go last year
Brewcrew08, perhaps the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning for others.
You really think that Max cant have one bad start in a wild card game to sink them? All it takes is a hot team coming in and a few bad pitches by Max and they’re eliminated. Why is it so crazy to think a team cant knock off the mighty Nats with the countless years of postseason success they have been having lol
How many postseason series have the Nats won? Get in and anything can happen. Ask the 2011 Cardinals.
Hopefully they do what they did last year and go on a run and they make it fun for the last 3 weeks. Are we possibly getting healthy at the right time. Who could be this years Kratz maybe Spangy? Could Burnes, Suter, Peralta,Faria, William’s and Jackson take it to another level for a month. Counsel is going to be on the top of his game as much as the players do to make this happen. This is going to be the last year to take advantage of 40 man roster in September. Arcia do it for the twins ,give them a story when they were born.
All of a sudden Pomerantz and Black look like last year’s Knable and Jeffers…and Suter is suddenly crazy good –
There will be a three team tie for the second wild card spot…Cubs, Brewers, and Mets. That would be fun.
Considering there are 5 teams within 2.5 games of the last WC spot the last few week should be exciting. The best team on paper may not win this. It could go to whoever stays healthy or whoever is lucky.
Hello