The Brewers announced they’ve placed starter Aaron Ashby on the 15-day injured list, retroactive to June 17, due to left forearm inflammation. Star reliever Josh Hader has been activated from the restricted list — he’d taken a bit more than the allotted three days on paternity leave — to take Ashby’s spot on the active roster.
Forearm inflammation is always an eyebrow-raising diagnosis for a pitcher, but Ashby downplayed any long-term concern when speaking with reporters (video provided by Adam McCalvy of MLB.com). The southpaw indicated he’d felt some discomfort when trying to throw a breaking ball during yesterday’s bullpen session, necessitating the IL stint. He quickly added that an MRI conducted today didn’t reveal any structural damage, however, and expressed a desire to get back to throwing after a few days of rest.
It seems as if Ashby’s IL stint could be relatively brief, although the club will surely exercise caution with a young arm of his caliber. Regarded as one of the game’s top pitching prospects after a promising debut effort late last season, Ashby has started eight of his 14 outings this year. He’s tossed 55 innings of 4.25 ERA ball, but his excellent 27.5% strikeout rate and 62.2% ground-ball percentage demonstrate a rare combination. Ashby and Alex Cobb are the only pitchers (minimum 40 innings) to generate both strikeouts and worm burners at that kind of clip this season.
Ashby becomes the third Milwaukee starter to land on the shelf. Freddy Peralta will be out until after the All-Star Break due to a shoulder issue, while Brandon Woodruff has missed the past few weeks with a high ankle sprain and a bout with Raynaud’s syndrome. That leaves Milwaukee with a four-man staff of Corbin Burnes, Adrian Houser, Eric Lauer and Jason Alexander at the moment, although Woodruff is expected back soon after beginning a minor league rehab assignment last week.
This’ll be a tough stretch for the Crew. Pitching has carried them so far, and those Redbirds never let up on the Brewers. I’m not sure why Hiura is still in there at this point. They hesitated with Cain for good reason, but I think There are plenty better options at 2nd until Wong gets back.
We need Big Red back in there and healthy for the stretch run!
Hiura? I don’t know, man. I wish he’d return to his rookie form, but he also has an OPS higher than Wong, Urias, Yelich, Taylor, and McCutchen. He’s not even close to the lost cause production that Cain was putting up.
If counsell could convince Hiura every game was his first back from his latest demotion, he’d hit .400 with 65 HR.
Unfortunately, he can only be jockeyed up and down so many times, and he’s bad on defense so they can’t keep him in the lineup more than 2 games in a row (and 1 of those is as the DH).
When I look at the typical lineup, I just don’t know what to think. How does a team with one guy hitting over .250, and only 3 guys with barely over a .300 on base percentage 70 games into the season have the division lead?!
The pitching has been good, but not as good as last year, arguably. So the plan is to hope your team gets hot like the Braves did last year? Is that a plan or a wish?
At least Hiura found a way to get on base before Taylor smashed one out!
Waiting for Stubby to tell us who should be called up for a cup of coffee to play 2nd
Hey now, only I’m allowed to pile on stubby! Kidding..and I’m sure he already has, I just don’t recall who.
I think a lot of us are wondering why Peterson isn’t in there somewhere every day, for now at least.
I don’t know what they can (or should) really do as far as trades. I hate trading pitching depth (and we really don’t have much of that right now anyway) for a bat, and in general they’ve traded so many prospects the past 4-5 years the talent pool is a bit shallow IMO.
Yeah, Jace seems to do better off the bench, but he can be a clutch dude with risp, although I haven’t looked at his numbers for that just off the bench.
Troubling trend with Brewer pitchers this season. Hope he’s back at minimum time injured. Getting near that point you see a trade for a bat hoping to inject some more life in the offense. Just can’t wrap my head around 3 straight years of batters under-performing projections. How the minors top batters disappear by year 3. When and who was the last time the team added a significant minors batter to the roster longer than 2seasons that wasn’t traded for? Lucroy?
Looked up a comparison on Cardinal roster vs Brewers. Milw has 2 batters under the age of 30 with 50PAs or more who they drafted. Cardinals have 8 this season already. Milw must be near the bottom of that stat.
It’s funny because MIL must be at the top of a similar pitching stat (Burnes, Woodruff, Williams, all homegrown).
Yet a few years ago, it was reversed. Only homegrown hitting (Weeks, Fielder, Braun, Cain, Haniger), but no pitching (Jungmann, Bradley, Medeiros, so far Kirby all busts). Of course, Haniger and Cain were traded away, but point remains.
Funny how the mindset ten years ago was frustration we could develop hitting but no pitching. And now we can develop pitching but no hitting. Ughh
It’s almost like recently the organizational mindset is they don’t even care about hitting…except HR’s of course.
It still perplexes me how Counsell, who rarely hit HR’s and had to rely on small ball or situational hitting as a player, refuses to even consider the ideas as a manager. Just once I’d like to see a Brewers hitter TRY and beat the shift with a bunt or half swing, but nope..just keep slapping it right at somebody. That is, if they can actually make contact while swinging for the fences.
Couldn’t agree more Manny
Agree on CC not playing some smart small ball. Keep hitting in to shifts down more than 1 run trying to tie the game with nobody on. He must want the hitters to not succeed so that 0 Fer start to season could be beat.
NoSoup. What gets me is they are using 1ST rd selections on hitters and not getting positive production from them at the MLB level. Just off top of my head-Gatewood, Grisham, Ray, Hiura, Mitchell, Lutz, and Turang. I’ll give the last 2 more time before adding to this list. Often times all these picks were heralded as great selections or value in making them. You would think 50pct at least produce for you. It’s maybe 1 of 7(Hiura) worse only 1 provided any trade value thus far(Grisham)