{"id":325611,"date":"2025-09-19T04:55:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-19T04:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/325611\/"},"modified":"2025-09-19T04:55:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T04:55:10","slug":"an-updated-milwaukee-brewers-playoff-roster-projection-brewers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/325611\/","title":{"rendered":"An Updated Milwaukee Brewers Playoff Roster Projection – Brewers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTrevor Megill<\/a> had hoped to return to action this week against the Angels, but the enormous righthander felt soreness after his last bullpen session and the team pushed pack that planned reinstatement. That’s fine. They have every reason to be cautious, right now, as the team still holds a comfortable lead in the race for the top seed in the postseason bracket. They did reinstate righty reliever Nick Mears<\/a> Wednesday, and he immediately got an inning against the visiting Angels in a 9-2 Brewers win.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe biggest questions facing the team, as they begin in earnest to sketch the roster they’ll submit when the National League Division Series begins in just over two weeks, have to do with their injured but convalescing pitchers. Megill, Mears and Jose Quintana<\/a> headline that discussion. That Megill sincerely intended to return this week suggests he should be healthy enough to pitch by the time the playoffs begin, but what if that soreness won’t subside? The injury with which he’s dealing, a flexor strain, usually requires considerably more time than he’s planning to give it before returning to full-strength action. Quintana had hoped to avoid being placed on the injured list with the calf strain he suffered over the weekend, but he was shelved Wednesday, to make room for Mears’s return.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to those three, Logan Henderson<\/a> and DL Hall<\/a> are working their way back, with the NLDS being their target date for a return, too. It seems unlikely that the team would trust either enough to thrust them back into the mix that rapidly, with few good ways to get them live reps before the stakes go through the roof, but then again, each has looked terrific for portions of this season, and the team’s depth isn’t what they had hoped it would be even a month ago.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tLet’s do a back-of-the-envelope NLDS roster right now, to see where questions remain, and how some of the above might shake out in the broader context of constructing a winning roster for a best-of-five series with three off days built in.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tCatchers
William Contreras<\/a>
Danny Jansen<\/a>
No controversy here. Barring injuries, both Contreras and Jansen will make the roster, and no other backstops will join them.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tInfielders
Andrew Vaughn<\/a>
Brice Turang<\/a>
Joey Ortiz<\/a>
Caleb Durbin<\/a>
Andruw Monasterio<\/a>
Rhys Hoskins<\/a>
Jake Bauers<\/a>
Here, things get more intriguing. Would the team really carry three first basemen and, in effect, only one backup at the other three infield spots? It seems like a lumpy way to build a roster, but Pat Murphy<\/a> clearly wants to get Joey Ortiz out of the game in favor of a more qualified bat when Ortiz’s spot comes up in a high-leverage offensive situation. Having Bauers and Hoskins available would facilitate that. Isaac Collins<\/a>, meanwhile, could play some third base in a pinch, so there’s more coverage than meets the eye if they go without Anthony Seigler<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tOutfielders
Christian Yelich<\/a>
Jackson Chourio<\/a>
Sal Frelick<\/a>
Blake Perkins<\/a>
Isaac Collins
Brandon Lockridge<\/a>
Carrying six outfielders, to go with seven infielders and two catchers, feels extravagant. It feels like something out of the 1980s. On the other hand, consider a scenario: Hoskins bats for Ortiz with the team down by two runs and with two runners on in the seventh inning. He singles, scoring one and sending the trailing runner to third. Do you want Hoskins (or even Andruw Monasterio) running the bases, or would you rather have Brandon Lockridge take over as the go-ahead run? Lockridge could also pinch-run for Contreras in certain situations, or for Vaughn.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tPitchers
Freddy Peralta<\/a>
Brandon Woodruff<\/a>
Quinn Priester<\/a>
Jacob Misiorowski<\/a>
Trevor Megill
Abner Uribe<\/a>
Jared Koenig<\/a>
Aaron Ashby<\/a>
Nick Mears
Chad Patrick<\/a>
Rob Zastryzny<\/a>
Carrying 15 position players would leave just 11 slots for pitchers, which sounds like too few. In truth, though, the Brewers only need three starters in the series, so it still leaves a full eight-man bullpen. There’s a day off between Games 1 and 2 of the NLDS, to get the two leagues’ series out of phase with one another and ensure content every day for the league’s broadcast partners. Then there’s one between Games 2 and 3 for travel, and if the series goes the full length, there’s another travel day between Games 4 and 5, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a series that requires just three starters and in which there can only be one back-to-back set of games, you don’t need more than 11 pitchers. The relievers will get as much from the rest days as the starters will. Ashby, Misiorowski and Patrick give the team ample possible length. Zastryzny is the matchup lefty, and at the end of the game, it’s a daily m\u00e9lange of Mears, Uribe, Koenig and Megill\u2014assuming, of course, that some combination of the team’s three stout starters and the multi-inning weapons of Misiorowski and Ashby don’t get them all the way to the ninth.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tYou can make cases to include Tobias Myers<\/a>, Grant Anderson<\/a> and\/or one of the returning long men, in place of Patrick or Zastryzny or at the expense of one of those bench pieces. At this moment, though, it looks like the Brewers can get by with 11 hurlers, and these 11 would make sense.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThere’s still a lot of injury disaster left to avoid. There’s still a lot of calendar to chew up, while the team waits for the winner of what looks like an inevitable Padres-Cubs tilt in Chicago to start the postseason. Right now, these 26 seem well-positioned to make the NLDS roster, but a great deal can change before the time comes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trevor Megill had hoped to return to action this week against the Angels, but the enormous righthander felt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[7583,24971,5,131,130,1094],"class_list":{"0":"post-325611","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-andruw-monasterio","9":"tag-anthony-seigler","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-jose-quintana","12":"tag-rhys-hoskins","13":"tag-trevor-megill"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115229184715448997","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}