Angel Zerpa To Undergo Tommy John Surgery
Brewers left-hander Angel Zerpa will undergo Tommy John surgery on Monday, reports Adam McCalvy of MLB.com. The left-hander will miss the remainder of this season and part of 2027 as well. He is on the 15-day injured list but will be transferred to the 60-day IL whenever Milwaukee needs to open a roster spot.
The news is awful but not surprising. Zerpa hit the IL about a week ago due to forearm tightness. Manager Pat Murphy said the injury was fairly concerning and that Zerpa would be going for further testing. In the following days, it was revealed that Tommy John surgery was a possibility. It now seems that no alternative was available, so Zerpa will go under the knife and face the standard recovery timeline of 14-plus months.
The Brewers clearly felt good about Zerpa’s chances of taking a step forward. He gave the Royals 177 innings from 2021 to 2025, allowing 3.97 earned runs per nine. His 19.7% strikeout rate was subpar but he had a strong 7% walk rate and excellent 57.1% ground ball rate. Milwaukee has a good reputation when it comes to helping players get the best of their talents. With Zerpa featuring upper-90s velocity, perhaps they could have found a way to have him miss more bats. Or maybe his ground ball tendencies could lead to him getting stretched out as a starter.
Milwaukee sent outfielder Isaac Collins and right-hander Nick Mears to Kansas City this past offseason in a two-for-one deal to get Zerpa. Whatever the Brewers had in mind for that deal is not going to pan out in the short term. Zerpa posted a rough 6.39 ERA in 12 appearances to start this year and will now be out of action until next summer.
Zerpa hit three years of big league service in 2025 and qualified for arbitration for the first time going into 2026. He and the Brewers agreed to a $1.095MM salary. He’ll be eligible for arbitration again for 2027 and 2028.
The Brewers will have to decide if they want to tender him a contract for next year when he might miss half of it. Since he is going to miss most of 2026, he won’t be able to secure much of a raise. Assuming the Brewers still feel good about Zerpa’s talent, giving him a bit over a million won’t be too much, since that is barely above this year’s league $780K minimum salary. It’s also possible that the next collective bargaining agreement pushes the minimum even higher. If Zerpa can get healthy and produce good results in the second half of 2027, the Brewers could retain him at a relatively affordable rate in 2028.
Despite having a number of injured lefties, the Brewers still have a balanced bullpen. Zerpa, Jared Koenig and Rob Zastryzny are all on the IL but they still have Aaron Ashby, DL Hall, Shane Drohan and Brian Fitzpatrick taking up four of their eight relief spots. Injuries and underperformance will surely lead to changes throughout the season. Zerpa won’t be able to help out but perhaps Koenig or Zastryzny will.
Photo courtesy of Sam Navarro, Imagn Images
Brewers’ Angel Zerpa Could Require Tommy John Surgery
MAY 3: Murphy specified to Rosiak and company today that Zerpa is weighing a Tommy John surgery.
MAY 1: The Brewers placed lefty Angel Zerpa on the injured list earlier this week after he experienced forearm tightness. Manager Pat Murphy suggested not long after that the southpaw could be facing a lengthy absence. Murphy provided another ominous update Friday, telling the Brewers beat that surgery is on the table (via Todd Rosiak of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).
A specific diagnosis remains unclear. Forearm tightness can be a precursor to a host of serious injuries for pitchers, including UCL and/or flexor tendon damage and irritation of the ulnar nerve, among other possibilities. The nature of the injury and the still under-consideration surgery will determine the length of absence, but it seems the Brewers shouldn’t plan on Zerpa returning anytime soon.
Milwaukee acquired Zerpa from the Royals in an offseason trade sending Isaac Collins and Nick Mears back to Kansas City. The Brewers sold high on both players — Collins in particular — in apparent hopes of acquiring a more controllable, hard-throwing lefty with big ground-ball numbers. Given Zerpa’s solid track record with K.C. and the Brewers’ success in coaxing new levels of performance out of players, there was reason to be optimistic about a potential breakout.
That hasn’t panned out in the slightest. Zerpa has appeared in a dozen games and been roughed up for 11 runs (nine earned) on 16 hits and six walks in just 12 2/3 frames. His 14.5% strikeout rate is among the lowest in the league, and his 10.9% walk rate is a career-worst mark. Zerpa’s sinker is averaging 95.6 mph — down a full mile per hour over last year’s average of 96.6 mph.
From 2021-25 in Kansas City, Zerpa combined to record a 3.97 ERA with a 19.7% strikeout rate, a 7% walk rate and a massive 57.1% grounder rate. He tended to struggle against right-handed opponents, but the Brewers presumably had some ideas about how to help him correct that problem.
With Zerpa increasingly looking like a 60-day IL candidate, any such hopes from the Brewers will be placed on hold. They control him through 2028, so there’s still some hope for down-the-road contributions even if he ends up requiring a major surgery. He’d need to be tendered a contract, but Zerpa is playing this season on a $1.095MM salary, so even the generally frugal Brewers wouldn’t find his salary to be a true roadblock.
Zerpa joined fellow southpaws Rob Zastryzny and Jared Koenig on the injured list when he landed there. Zastryzny is dealing with a back strain. Koenig has a UCL sprain that he’s currently trying to rehab without surgery.
Three lefty relievers on the injured list would normally deplete an organization’s supply, but the Brewers are deeper in southpaw bullpen arms than nearly any team in the sport. Even with Zerpa, Koenig and Zastryzny out, the have Aaron Ashby, DL Hall, Shane Drohan and Brian Fitzpatrick in the MLB bullpen. Fitzpatrick was added to the roster after Zerpa’s injury and just recently made his big league debut. Ashby and Hall both have ERAs under 2.50 with big strikeout numbers but troubling command woes.
Brewers Select Brian Fitzpatrick, Outright Luis Matos
3:45pm: Manager Pat Murphy says that Zerpa’s issue is concerning, per Todd Rosiak of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The lefty is likely facing a notable absence but will undergo further testing and will get a second opinion.
2:45pm: The Brewers announced that left-hander Angel Zerpa has been placed on the 15-day injured list, retroactive to April 26th, with left forearm tightness. Fellow lefty Brian Fitzpatrick has been selected to take his place on the active roster. Milwaukee has had a 40-man vacancy since they designated outfielder Luis Matos for assignment last week. Matos cleared waivers and has been outrighted to Triple-A Nashville, per the Brewers today.
Zerpa hasn’t been in good form this year, his first as a Brewer. He has a 6.39 earned run average and his fastball velocity is down about one mile per hour relative to last year. Details on his injury haven’t yet been provided but the club will perhaps provide some more info in the future.
Regardless of the specifics, his injury opens a path for Fitzpatrick to make his major league debut, a few weeks before he turns 26 in June. A tenth-round pick from 2022, Fitzpatrick isn’t a top prospect but put up some intriguing numbers in the minors last year. He started at High-A and quickly got bumped to Double-A. Between those two stops, he tossed 39 1/3 innings with a 2.06 ERA. He struck out 28.8% of batters faced while limiting walks to a 7.8% clip.
He got promoted to Triple-A in August but struggled, posting a 6.87 ERA over 13 appearances. He returned to that level to start 2026 and has fared much better, with 10 1/3 scoreless innings. He has a 28.9% strikeout rate, 5.3% walk rate and 54.5% ground ball rate. His four-seamer and sinker are both averaging above 93 miles per hour while he’s also throwing a slider and changeup around 83 mph.
Swapping in Fitzpatrick for Zerpa allows the Brewers to keep their bullpen balanced with four righties and four lefties, the other three southpaws being Aaron Ashby, DL Hall and Shane Drohan. That’s with Zerpa, Rob Zastryzny and Jared Koenig all on the IL. Since this is Fitzpatrick’s first time on a big league roster, he has a full slate of options and could be sent back to Triple-A at some point if other guys get healthy or fresh arms are needed.
As for Matos, he was once a notable prospect with the Giants but he struggled to produce in the majors. He languished in the minors a lot and eventually exhausted his option years. Out of options coming into 2026, he got squeezed into DFA limbo and was flipped to the Brewers in a cash trade. His struggles in the big leagues continued for a few weeks and the Brewers designated him for assignment last week.
Since this is his first career outright and he has less than three years of service time, he does not have the right to elect free agency. The Brewers can keep him as non-roster depth and will see if they can get him back on track. They have had some decent results with post-hype hitters, including Andrew Vaughn and Jake Bauers. With Matos, he has a .230/.279/.363 line in the majors but a much better .287/.345/.505 slash in Triple-A.
Photo courtesy of Jeff Hanisch, Imagn Images
The Brewers’ Rotation Options After Peralta Trade
The Brewers traded ace Freddy Peralta and swingman Tobias Myers to the Mets last week. Milwaukee generally, though not always, trades its best players as they approach their final year before free agency. There was never much chance they were going to meet Peralta’s asking price on another contract. That left the front office to decide whether to move him for controllable pieces or hold him through his final arbitration year and collect a compensatory draft pick when he signed elsewhere.
They opted for the former once the Mets put Jett Williams and Brandon Sproat on the table, albeit in a deal that also cost them a potential rotation arm in Myers. It’s obviously not the start of a rebuild for a team that had MLB’s best record and advanced to the NL Championship Series a year ago. They’re counting on their pitching pipeline to continue to produce as they aim for a fourth straight division title.
How will Pat Murphy’s starting staff line up?
Locks
Woodruff is back as the veteran anchor and their clear #1 starter. The righty accepted a $22.025MM qualifying offer, a move that probably surprised Milwaukee’s front office to an extent. President of baseball operations Matt Arnold acknowledged that getting Woodruff back made them more comfortable parting with Peralta (relayed by Curt Hogg of The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel). The 2026 payroll factors into that to an extent, yet Peralta’s $8MM salary shouldn’t have been a hang-up even by Brewers’ standards. There were other players they could have moved (e.g. Andrew Vaughn, Trevor Megill) if ownership mandated a payroll reduction.
The Brewers can feel comfortable about having an established top-of-the-rotation starter. The big question is how many innings they can reasonably expect. Woodruff missed all of 2024 rehabbing from shoulder surgery. A handful of smaller injuries delayed his ’25 debut, and he sustained a season-ending lat strain after 12 starts. He has pitched 131 2/3 frames over the past three seasons. Woodruff enters camp fully healthy, but it’s fair to wonder if he can shoulder 150 innings.
The 25-year-old Priester is now the second-most experienced Milwaukee starter. He and Robert Gasser are the only other starters with more than a year of MLB service time; the majority of Gasser’s service came on the injured list working back from UCL surgery.
Priester began the ’25 season in Triple-A with the Red Sox. Dealt to Milwaukee in a rare April trade of significance, the former first-rounder was a revelation. He tossed 157 1/3 innings of 3.32 ERA ball behind a massive 56.1% grounder percentage. Milwaukee had a stretch of 19 consecutive wins in his outings between May and September. Priester has serviceable but not elite swing-and-miss stuff. It’s a sinker-slider profile geared toward keeping the ball on the ground. That approach comes with some batted ball variability but plays well in front of a strong infield defense.
Upside Plays
Misiorowski was arguably the #1 pitching prospect in MLB when the Brewers called him up in June. He began his career in electric fashion, allowing two earned runs or fewer in six of his first seven starts. Milwaukee didn’t let him work deep into games, but he lit up the radar gun while missing plenty of bats. His performance wavered down the stretch, and evaluators’ longstanding concerns about his command pushed him into a bullpen role for the playoffs. Misiorowski impressed again in October, striking out 16 over 12 innings of three-run ball in a trio of postseason outings.
Overall, the 6’7″ righty finished his debut campaign with a 4.36 ERA across 66 innings. He’s certainly not going to be the back-end innings eater usually associated with a mid-4.00s ERA, though. Misiorowski has ace stuff with walk issues that may yet land him in high-leverage relief. He should get a full look in the rotation this year, albeit with questions about his start-to-start efficiency.
Henderson may not be a Misiorowski-level prospect, yet his 2025 debut was also highly anticipated by Milwaukee fans. He was called up in April and pitched well over four starts before being squeezed off the MLB roster. The Brewers brought him back up after the trade deadline. He made one start before being diagnosed with elbow inflammation and spending the rest of the season on the injured list. The 23-year-old righty allowed five runs while striking out a third of opponents over his first 25 1/3 MLB innings.
Baseball America ranked Henderson 96th on their Top 100 prospects list last week. They credit him with plus control and a plus changeup, while his 93 MPH fastball plays above its velocity because of his release angle and spin. Henderson has always been effective in the minors, posting a 3.26 ERA with a 32% strikeout rate over his career. Can he continue to miss bats at a high rate against MLB hitters without really trusting his cutter or slider? He might also run into some home run trouble as a fly-ball pitcher with average velocity whose fastball works best at the top of the strike zone. There are questions about the ultimate ceiling, but Henderson’s first five starts couldn’t have gone much better.
Sproat will try to immediately replace Peralta in the starting five. He also landed in the back quarter of the aforementioned BA prospect list — a few spots above Henderson, in fact. Sproat has much bigger stuff, sitting 96-97 with above-average to plus grades on his slider, curveball and changeup. His command isn’t nearly as polished. Sproat walked 10.4% of opponents over 26 Triple-A appearances last year, and he was hit around a little bit over four starts as a September call-up. The 6’3″ righty has a shot to be a mid-rotation starter, but the command will need to improve if he’s going to get there.
Back-End Arms
Patrick was a 26-year-old rookie whom the Brewers acquired from the A’s in 2023 for journeyman infielder Abraham Toro. There wasn’t a whole lot of fanfare when he broke camp for his MLB debut last spring. Patrick went on to a seventh-place finish in Rookie of the Year balloting after tossing 119 2/3 innings of 3.53 ERA ball. There’s a decent chance he would have placed more highly had the team’s rotation depth not pushed him to Triple-A when Woodruff returned to action on July 6.
The righty spent six weeks in the minors through no real fault of his own. He worked in a swing role once he was recalled in the middle of August. Patrick pitched well in either role and had an excellent postseason, firing nine innings of two-run ball with 11 strikeouts. He has a six-pitch mix led by a plus cutter that helped him punch out a quarter of opponents. Patrick probably doesn’t have the ceiling of some of his teammates but should enter camp with a leg up on Henderson and Sproat for the fourth or fifth starter role.
Acquired from San Diego in the Josh Hader trade, Gasser had an impressive five-start debut in 2024. He blew out and underwent elbow surgery that kept him off an MLB mound until last September. The southpaw started two games and gave up six runs (only two earned) with four walks and five strikeouts across 5 2/3 frames. His minor league rehab numbers were quite a bit better. The 26-year-old Gasser has a 3.72 ERA with a 28% strikeout rate in just over 200 career Triple-A frames. He’s on the older side for a prospect because of the injury but still looks like a viable back-end starter.
Likely Relievers
Angel Zerpa, Aaron Ashby and DL Hall each have starting experience but fit better in the bullpen. All three were used primarily as relievers last season — with the Royals, in Zerpa’s case — and join Jared Koenig in giving Milwaukee a quartet of big arms from the left side out of the bullpen.
Zerpa has solid command and gets a ton of ground-balls, but his sinker/slider combination leaves him vulnerable to right-handed hitters. He’d probably need to pick up a splitter or cutter if he’s going to turn over a righty-heavy lineup twice in a game. Ashby hasn’t managed to stay healthy as a starter, while Hall’s command is too big an obstacle. They’re all capable of working multiple innings and could get some action as openers, as Ashby did a few times in the postseason to match him up against Kyle Tucker and Shohei Ohtani.
The other two starters on the 40-man roster, Carlos Rodriguez and Coleman Crow, project as up-and-down arms. Rodriguez has decent stuff but has been walk-prone in the minors. He has allowed 18 runs in 22 career big league innings. Milwaukee added Crow to the roster at the beginning of the offseason to keep him out of minor league free agency. He’s the organization’s #30 prospect at Baseball America and has fringy stuff despite impressive strikeout rates in the minors.
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Even without Peralta, Milwaukee has a talented group of starters. Their collective lack of experience behind Woodruff means they’ll probably add a fifth starter or swingman on a one-year deal to reduce the load on their young arms. As is always the case for the Brewers, they’re likely to mix in some tandem starts/openers while shuffling pitchers up and down from Triple-A. Woodruff is their only starter who can’t be sent to the minor leagues, while Rob Zastryzny is their only out-of-options reliever. They’ll have a lot of roster flexibility if they want to incorporate bullpen games or a six-man rotation to keep pitchers’ innings in check.
MLBTR Podcast: The Mets Sign Jorge Polanco, And The Braves, Blue Jays And Royals Make Moves
The latest episode of the MLB Trade Rumors Podcast is now live on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your podcasts! Make sure you subscribe as well! You can also use the player at this link to listen, if you don’t use Spotify or Apple for podcasts.
This week, host Darragh McDonald is joined by Steve Adams of MLB Trade Rumors to discuss…
- The Mets signing Jorge Polanco (2:40)
- The Braves making three signings: Robert Suarez, Mike Yastrzemski and Ha-Seong Kim (17:15)
- The Blue Jays signing Tyler Rogers and Cody Ponce (31:40)
- The Royals extending Maikel Garcia, signing Lane Thomas and trading Ángel Zerpa to the Brewers for Isaac Collins and Nick Mears (46:10)
- The Tigers making three signings: Kenley Jansen, Kyle Finnegan and Drew Anderson (57:25)
Check out our past episodes!
- Winter Meetings Recap – listen here
- An Agent’s Perspective with B.B. Abbott – Also, Cease, Williams, Helsley, And Gray – listen here
- Some “Classic Baseball Trades,” Nimmo For Semien, And Ward For Rodriguez – listen here
The podcast intro and outro song “So Long” is provided courtesy of the band Showoff. Check out their Facebook page here!
Photo courtesy of Nick Turchiaro, Imagn Images
Brewers “Open To” Using Angel Zerpa As A Starter
The Brewers and Royals officially announced the three-player trade (reported yesterday) that sent Isaac Collins and Nick Mears to Kansas City in exchange for Angel Zerpa. Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold spoke to Curt Hogg of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the trade today, and revealed the interesting detail that the club was “open to” the idea of Zerpa moving from the bullpen back to rotation work.
“We have some scouts that think he can do it. He has done it in the past,” Arnold said. “This guy also has postseason experience, too, which we obviously value a lot. Having a guy with that kind of versatility and experience in big games is something we think will really help us.”
As we’ve seen teams move away from traditional pitching roles in recent years, there has been an increased willingness to explore turning relievers (sometimes even career relievers) into starting pitchers. If clubs no longer expressly need their starters to throw more than five innings or take more than two turns through an opposing lineup, stretching a reliever out to handle this increased workload is more of a realistic goal than stretching a reliever to handle seven-plus innings.
Zerpa began his pro career as a starting pitcher, and worked as a starter in three of his first four career games in the majors (in 2021-22). He started only three of his 15 appearances for the Royals in 2023, however, and hasn’t since started a game in anything outside of an opener capacity. Instead, K.C. used Zerpa as a southpaw bullpen weapon, and the hurler posted a 4.03 ERA, 20.8% strikeout rate, 8.0% walk rate, and a whopping 60.6% groundball rate over 118 1/3 innings in 2024-25.
Right-handed hitters were quite productive against Zerpa even as he mostly dominated lefty swingers, and he allowed a lot of hard contact along with his uninspiring strikeout and walk numbers. Zerpa is a hard thrower whose fastball averaged 96.2mph in 2025, but his standard four-seamer hasn’t been very effective over the last two years, while his 96.6mph sinker is his top pitch. The slider was thrown 44.6% of the time in 2025, with a slider used 31.9% of the time and the four-seamer 19.8% of the time. As Hogg noted, increased usage of a changeup might be necessary to help the 26-year-old Zerpa adjust back to starting pitching.
It isn’t the kind of arsenal that immediately stands out as a rotation candidate, and it might be that Zerpa just winds up as a reliever if the Brewers decide against the role change in Spring Training. That said, the fact that the Brewers in particular see starting potential in Zerpa is probably a plus in favor of the experiment working. Milwaukee’s ability to turn unheralded pitchers into capable or even elite starters or relievers has been perhaps the key element of the team’s success over the last decade, so nobody should rule out the possibility that the Brew Crew could help Zerpa unlock another level of performance no matter his role.
Arnold said the Brewers had “been trying to access [in a trade] for a long time,” as “I think that our group felt like this was a really strong arm to access with really, really good ingredients. We’re very excited to get him with our coaches who have done a great job tapping into arms like this for a number of years.”
Zerpa is arbitration-eligible for the first time this offseason, and is arb-controlled through the 2028 season. Because he has primarily operated as a non-closer, Zerpa’s first-year arbitration projection is only $1.2MM. This is a solid price tag even if the left-hander stays in the pen, but he can successfully move into the rotation, he’ll be even more of a bargain over Milwaukee’s period of team control.
One reason why Zerpa may remain in the Brewers’ pen is the club’s current rotation surplus. Freddy Peralta, Brandon Woodruff, Quinn Priester, Chad Patrick, and Jacob Misiorowski line up as the projected starting five, and plenty of other starting candidates (i.e. Logan Henderson, Robert Gasser, Carlos Rodriguez, Tobias Myers) are depth options. The “you can never have too much pitching” mantra applies here since this group is likely to be naturally thinned out by injuries, plus Woodruff and Peralta are both set to become free agents next winter. As trade rumors persist about Peralta, it is even possible the Brewers could suddenly have a big hole atop their rotation this offseason.
Brewers Trade Isaac Collins To Royals For Angel Zerpa
December 14: Both teams have officially announced the trade.
December 13: The Brewers are sending outfielder Isaac Collins and right-hander Nick Mears to the Royals, reports Robert Murray of FanSided. Left-hander Angel Zerpa is heading to Milwaukee in the swap, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN.
Kansas City entered the offseason with a plan to add outfielders. The club made good on those intentions this week. After signing Lane Thomas on Friday, the Royals now add the switch-hitting Collins to the outfield mix. The cost is a controllable lefty reliever, though they get a bullpen piece back in return. Milwaukee clears some of its outfield glut while adding a hard-throwing reliever who is just now hitting arbitration.
The 28-year-old Collins went from relative obscurity to an integral part of Milwaukee’s offense last season. He made the team out of Spring Training and emerged as the club’s primary left fielder. Collins delivered a 122 wRC+ across 130 games. He finished fourth in NL Rookie of the Year voting, just behind teammate Caleb Durbin.
The Brewers were reportedly looking to move some of their outfield depth, with Collins and Blake Perkins mentioned as potential candidates. Jackson Chourio and Sal Frelick are entrenched as everyday options, with Christian Yelich factoring in when he isn’t DHing. Collins, Perkins, Garrett Mitchell, and Brandon Lockridge were in the mix behind that trio. Milwaukee also added Akil Baddoo on a split deal.
Zerpa popped up in trade discussions last offseason, but ultimately remained in Kansas City. He reached 60 appearances for the second straight season, posting a 4.18 ERA over 64 2/3 innings. Zerpa pushed his solid ground ball rate to league-leading levels in 2025. He’d always been more of a grounder-getter than a strikeout guy, but his 63.7% ground ball rate ranked in the 99th percentile last season.
The 26-year-old Zerpa’s 3.97 career ERA doesn’t jump off the page, though his underlying numbers paint a better picture. The lefty posted a career-best 3.38 SIERA in 2025, bringing his career mark down to 3.67. He had a solid 3.50 xFIP this past year. Zerpa has recorded a BABIP above .320 in back-to-back seasons. His ground ball approach can lead to some batted ball variance, but that number could regress in future seasons.
Mears came to Milwaukee in a trade from Colorado in July 2024. He struggled mightily in his first partial season with the team, but provided solid results as a middle relief option in 2025. Mears faltered down the stretch, allowing five earned runs in five September appearances. He also missed time with back tightness that month. Mears tossed 1 1/3 scoreless innings in the NLDS but was left off the NLCS roster.
Kansas City has been linked to several outfielders in the trade market, including Teoscar Hernandez, Jake Meyers, and Brendan Donovan. They were connected to Jarren Duran earlier today. Harrison Bader and Austin Hays have been mentioned as free agent possibilities for the Royals. They entered the offseason with an unproven group of Jac Caglianone, Kyle Isbel, and John Rave in the outfield, with Tyler Tolbert and Dairon Blanco as bench options.
Thomas and Collins aren’t Duran-level additions, but they’re improvements on the in-house choices. The former Brewer should help in particular against right-handed pitching. Collins slashed .280/.390/.415 over 295 plate appearances from the left side. He showed some power as a righty, but hit just .232 with a pedestrian .324 OBP. Thomas will likely grab playing time against lefty starters.
Zerpa is an intriguing fit in what projects to be a lefty-heavy bullpen. Milwaukee already has Jared Koenig and Aaron Ashby locked into leverage roles, with Rob Zastryzny in a middle relief gig and DL Hall as the long guy. Trevor Megill and Abner Uribe should soak up the majority of the save opportunities, with Koenig as the situational closer if multiple lefties are coming up. Zerpa might need one or two of those relievers to get dealt to factor into a late-inning job.
Photo courtesy of Benny Sieu, Imagn Images
Mets, Royals Discussed Starling Marte Earlier This Offseason
The Royals showed interest in Starling Marte earlier in the offseason, per Joel Sherman of the New York Post. Those talks obviously didn’t produce a deal, but Sherman adds that Kansas City hasn’t completely closed the door on the possibility. There’s no indication talks are active, but it’s nevertheless notable that the Royals are still interested to an extent. It shows that Kansas City is still weighing options to bring in an outfield bat and that they perhaps have some financial flexibility even with a player payroll that’s nearly $20MM north of last year’s spending levels.
Of course, the Royals wouldn’t be taking on the entirety of Marte’s salary in a trade. The 36-year-old is entering the final season of a four-year, $78MM contract and is owed $19.5MM in 2025. Coming off a pedestrian .269/.327/.388 batting line (104 wRC+), Marte is no longer productive enough for another team to have interest in taking on the full freight of his salary. The Mets have reportedly been willing to pay down a portion of that $19.5MM.
Health is another factor to consider. Marte missed the final seven weeks of the 2023 season with a groin strain and was out for nearly two months last summer due to a bone bruise in his right knee. He’s been hobbled by ongoing discomfort in that same knee this spring and has yet to appear in a game. Manager Carlos Mendoza did suggest yesterday that Marte could get into a game within the next few days (link via Newsday’s Tim Healey), but presumably any team looking into the possibility of acquiring him would want to see the veteran outfielder get into a few games to demonstrate that he’s healthy enough to be considered likely for Opening Day.
The Royals’ interest in Marte makes some sense on paper. They’ve been looking for an outfield bat for much of the offseason and have come up empty. The Royals have looked into various trade targets and reportedly made offers to free agents Anthony Santander and Jurickson Profar, who instead signed with the Blue Jays and Braves, respectively. Last year’s primary outfield of MJ Melendez, Kyle Isbel and Hunter Renfroe was among the least-productive outfield groups in all of MLB. The Royals plan to give trade acquisition Jonathan India and infielder Michael Massey some work in left field this season, but the broad outfield outlook remains bleak if they can’t get a long-awaited Melendez breakout and/or a return to form for the veteran Renfroe.
When the two sides talked earlier in the offseason, per Sherman, the Mets expressed interest in Royals relievers Hunter Harvey and Angel Zerpa. Kansas City understandably didn’t have interest in moving a quality reliever to buy low on an expensive veteran in his mid-30s.
Unless the Mets are willing to take on the second season of a two-year deal for Chris Stratton, who hasn’t panned out as hoped in K.C., it’s hard to envision them prying a member of the Royals’ bullpen away in a Marte swap. Harvey was excellent for much of the 2024 season but struggled in July before landing on the injured list with what proved to be a season-ending back issue in August. He’s being paid $3.7MM this year in his final season of club control. Zerpa isn’t even arb-eligible yet and is controllable through 2028. He posted a 3.86 ERA with a 20.5% strikeout rate, 7.9% walk rate and massive 58.4% grounder rate in 2024. Both are in line to play notable roles for manager Matt Quatraro.
Royals Receiving Trade Interest In Angel Zerpa
After a solid season in the Royals’ bullpen, left-hander Angel Zerpa is drawing trade attention from rival teams, MLB.com’s Anne Rogers writes. There is no sense a deal is close or even if Kansas City is open to moving Zerpa, but Rogers notes that the Royals could deal from what seems to be a surplus of left-handed pitching.
Cole Ragans sits atop the K.C. rotation and obviously isn’t going anywhere, and Kris Bubic probably won’t be dealt since the Royals want to see how he fares in a return to starting pitching. Zerpa, Daniel Lynch IV, Sam Long, and prospects Noah Cameron and Evan Sisk are the other left-handers on the Royals’ 40-man roster, with Rogers noting that Lynch and Cameron will also be competing for a rotation job in Spring Training.
Kansas City might wish to see how the rotation competition plays out before making any decisions on trades, in order to gauge Bubic’s health now that he is a bit further removed from an April 2023 Tommy John surgery, and to monitor Kyle Wright‘s return after he missed all of 2024 recovering from shoulder surgery. There’s also the fact that Zerpa is not just one of several lefties, but he is currently the top left-handed option in the Royals bullpen. Given how the relief corps was middling on the whole in 2024, the Royals might prefer to add to the pen rather than subtract, especially since the team’s pitching depth already took a hit when Brady Singer was dealt to the Reds.
Still, there’s no harm in hearing what teams might have to offer for the 25-year-old Zerpa, who is team-controlled through the 2028 season. An amateur signing out of Venezuela in 2016, Zerpa has spent his whole career in the K.C. organization, and made it to the majors for a single appearance during the 2021 season. The Royals shuttled him back and forth from Triple-A several times in 2022-23, but Zerpa also dealt with two notable injuries — a patellar tendon tear in his right knee cut short Zerpa’s 2022 season, and a shoulder problem kept him from making his 2023 debut until August.
With a 3.84 ERA in his first 58 2/3 innings (starting six of 19 games), Zerpa broke camp in 2024 in a full-fledged relief role. He just about matched his previous career ERA with a 3.86 ERA in 53 2/3 relief frames last year, along with an outstanding 58.2% grounder rate. Zerpa’s ability to keep the ball on the ground helped him paper over below-average strikeout (20.4) and walk (8.3) rates, and notwithstanding his .325 BABIP, a lot of the hard contact he allowed ended up staying on the ground.
It isn’t your standard recipe for bullpen success, and so it seems plausible the Royals might consider selling high on Zerpa if another club has enough interest. Rogers suggests that rival teams might even be looking at returning Zerpa to a starting role, which might also bump up his value in trade talks to some extent.
Royals Place Chris Stratton On 15-Day Injured List
The Royals placed right-hander Chris Stratton on the 15-day injured list due to a right forearm flexor strain. Left-hander Angel Zerpa was called up from Triple-A Omaha in the corresponding move.
Only 16 days remain in the regular season, so between the calendar and the usually serious nature nature of forearm and flexor-related injuries, it seems likely that Stratton’s 2024 campaign is over. If the strain is mild, Stratton could conceivably return to action if the Royals make a deep playoff run, but the larger concern at this point could be whether or not the 34-year-old could be facing a surgical procedure that could threaten some (or all) of his 2025 season.
Stratton has allowed five runs over his last two appearances and two innings of work, but even if his injury factored into these rough outings, the righty has already been struggling in his first season in Kansas City. Stratton has a 5.55 ERA over 58 1/3 innings, along with a 17.1% strikeout rate and 12.8% walk rate that are both far below the league average. The K% and BB% rates are both career lows for Stratton over a full MLB season, while his ERA is only a touch better than the 5.57 ERA he posted with the Angels and Pirates in 2019.
The right-hander bounced back from that tough 2019 campaign with solid results and a full-time move to relief pitching over the next four years, posting a 3.91 ERA in 255 1/3 frames with the Pirates, Cardinals, and Rangers. That includes a 3.92 ERA and a career-best 7.4% walk rate in 82 2/3 innings with St. Louis and Texas last year, and four more innings in the playoffs as Stratton won a World Series ring on the Rangers’ championship squad.
That performance provided a platform for Stratton to land a two-year, $8MM free agent deal with the Royals this past winter. The deal is technically a one-year contract with a player option for 2025, as Stratton can choose to take either a $500K buyout or remain in the last year of the deal for a $4.5MM salary next season. Between his subpar performance and now this injury, Stratton seems like a lock to pass on his opt-out clause.
While Stratton wasn’t delivering much in the way of results, his absence will leave K.C. short of an innings-eating bullpen arm. Zerpa’s 4.40 ERA over 47 innings could provide a bit of a boost, but Stratton joins Will Smith (back spasms) and Hunter Harvey (mid-back tightness) on the list of injured Royals relievers. In Harvey’s case, MLB.com’s Anne Rogers writes that Harvey has started throwing but the team isn’t yet sure when or if the right-hander might able to return to action.