{"id":349533,"date":"2025-12-15T05:45:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/349533\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:45:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:45:07","slug":"brewers-open-to-using-angel-zerpa-as-a-starter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/349533\/","title":{"rendered":"Brewers “Open To” Using Angel Zerpa As A Starter"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Brewers and Royals officially announced the three-player trade (reported yesterday<\/a>) that sent Isaac Collins<\/a> and Nick Mears<\/a> to Kansas City in exchange for Angel Zerpa<\/a>.\u00a0 Brewers president of baseball operations Matt Arnold spoke to Curt Hogg of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel<\/a> about the trade today, and revealed the interesting detail that the club\u00a0was \u201copen to\u201d the idea of Zerpa moving from the bullpen back to rotation work.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have some scouts that think he can do it.\u00a0 He has done it in the past,\u201d Arnold said.\u00a0 \u201cThis guy also has postseason experience, too, which we obviously value a lot.\u00a0 Having a guy with that kind of versatility and experience in big games is something we think will really help us.\u201d<\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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).\u00a0 He started only three of his 15 appearances for the Royals in 2023, however, and hasn\u2019t since started a game in anything outside of an opener capacity.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Zerpa is a hard thrower whose fastball averaged 96.2mph in 2025, but his standard four-seamer hasn\u2019t been very effective over the last two years, while his 96.6mph sinker is his top pitch.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 As Hogg noted, increased usage of a changeup might be necessary to help the 26-year-old Zerpa adjust back to starting pitching.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t 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.\u00a0 That said, the fact that the Brewers in particular see starting potential in Zerpa is probably a plus in favor of the experiment working.\u00a0 Milwaukee\u2019s ability to turn unheralded pitchers into capable or even elite starters or relievers has been perhaps the key element of the team\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Arnold said the Brewers had \u201cbeen trying to access [in a trade] for a long time,\u201d as \u201cI think that our group felt like this was a really strong arm to access with really, really good ingredients.\u00a0 We\u2019re very excited to get him with our coaches who have done a great job tapping into arms like this for a number of years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zerpa is arbitration-eligible for the first time this offseason, and is arb-controlled through the 2028 season.\u00a0 Because he has primarily operated as a non-closer, Zerpa\u2019s first-year arbitration projection<\/a> is only $1.2MM.\u00a0 This is a solid price tag even if the left-hander stays in the pen, but he can successfully move into the rotation, he\u2019ll be even more of a bargain over Milwaukee\u2019s period of team control.<\/p>\n

One reason why Zerpa may remain in the Brewers\u2019 pen is the club\u2019s current rotation surplus.\u00a0 Freddy Peralta<\/a>, Brandon Woodruff<\/a>, Quinn Priester<\/a>, Chad Patrick<\/a>, and Jacob Misiorowski<\/a> line up as the projected starting five, and plenty of other starting candidates (i.e. Logan Henderson<\/a>, Robert Gasser<\/a>, Carlos Rodriguez<\/a>, Tobias Myers<\/a>) are depth options.\u00a0 The \u201cyou can never have too much pitching\u201d 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.\u00a0 As trade rumors persist about Peralta, it is even possible the Brewers could suddenly have a big hole atop their rotation this offseason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brewers and Royals officially announced the three-player trade (reported yesterday) that sent Isaac Collins and Nick Mears…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349534,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[173615,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-349533","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-angel-zerpa","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}