Brewers starter Quinn Priester may be facing a season-opening injured list stint. Manager Pat Murphy told reporters that the righty is slightly behind schedule in his buildup and isn’t a lock for Opening Day (link via Curt Hogg of The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).
Priester battled wrist soreness at the end of last season. He avoided an IL stint and was healthy enough to make two playoff appearances (albeit with poor results). The team and pitcher decided to take things a little slower than usual over the offseason to reduce the risk of the wrist flaring back up. He’s throwing but hasn’t made any appearances this spring.
There’s minimal concern about this being a long-term issue. Priester seems likely to get some game reps before camp is finished. He might not have time to build into a starter’s workload within the next three weeks, though. A season-opening injured list stint would allow them to send him to the minors for a rehab start or two if he’s not completely ready. He’d only miss two turns through the rotation if he has a minimal IL stay.
Milwaukee acquired Priester in a mid-April trade with the Red Sox a year ago. The former first-round pick had fallen down Boston’s depth chart. Milwaukee plugged him directly into a big league rotation that was struggling with injury. Priester ran with the opportunity, pitching to a 3.32 ERA across 157 1/3 innings. His strikeout and walk profile was more solid than great, but the sinkerballer got grounders at a 56.1% clip. He allowed three runs or fewer in all but four of his 29 appearances.
Brandon Woodruff is also questionable for the start of the regular season after last year’s lat strain. The two-time All-Star has a better shot of starting the season on the active roster than Priester does. Woodruff has thrown batting practice and is scheduled to make his Cactus League debut on Saturday, Hogg writes.
Woodruff would be the obvious choice to start on Opening Day if he’s sufficiently stretched out. Jacob Misiorowski is the only other pitcher who seems locked into the season-opening rotation. The flamethrower made his Spring Training debut this afternoon against Great Britain in a World Baseball Classic exhibition; he tossed 38 pitches and struck out five over two innings.
Logan Henderson, Robert Gasser, Chad Patrick and trade pickups Brandon Sproat and Kyle Harrison are all competing for rotation roles. Milwaukee will rely heavily on one of the deeper bullpens in the league and should be aggressive in shuttling pitchers back and forth from the minors. Woodruff and lefty reliever Rob Zastryzny are their only pitchers who can’t be optioned.
The Red Sox gave up on him too soon. Hindsight is 20/20 but they never really gave him a real shot after tinkering with his pitch mix.
Yep. I expect Harrison will turn out the same
Sounds great!!
And Drohan. Including both of them for Durbin seems like a lot for a player of his value.
The Red Sox didn’t trade Drohan and more for Durbin. They acquired Caleb Durbin, Andruw Monasterio, Anthony Seigler, the 67th draft pick from the Brewers in exchange for Kyle Harrison, Shane Drohan, and David Hamilton. The book isn’t closed on that trade. The book isn’t closed on the Priester trade either after one year. The Red Sox drafted Marcus Phillips with the 33rd pick which was part of the return for Priester.
HBan22
Pirates too.
Still haven’t got much of a return on that trade.
I hate wrist soreness. Don’t normally get it from baseball activities though.
Not to worry, Brewers only have approximately 19 other starting pitching candidates to choose from.
I mean they have a pitching factory, I’m sure they’ll pluck one from their farm and be a productive big league pitcher.
A pitcher you didnt name DL Hall pitched 3 innings vs Brewers mash-up of a team today. That upside prize in the Burnes trade that been ironically mostly on the DL.
Obvious headline missed: Brewers are praying for Priester.
Livin’ on a prayer! Woah woah!
Is this a reverting to the mean? Guy could not have done better last year. Maybe he woke up an$ felt like a Pirate again
4ip, 3h, 0r vs LAD in the NLCS = poor results 🤷
His first postseason start was the poor results. I guess he could have said mixed results instead of poor results.