Pat Murphy (sort of) clarifies Chad Patrick's Brewers role moving forward

Over the last 14 months, Chad Patrick has gone from earning the final spot on the Milwaukee Brewers' 2025 Opening Day pitching staff to emerging as a breakout starter when injuries taxed the Crew's rotation, to assuming a role in the bullpen down the stretch when those injured players returned, to dominating as a reliever in the postseason, to once again rejoining the starting staff to begin the 2026 campaign.

It speaks not only to the Brewers' method of seeking out roles for their players that will allow them to be their most successful selves, but it also highlights Patrick's willingness to do whatever it takes to help his team win. Bouncing around from the rotation to the bullpen, from long appearances to shorter outings is no easy task for a pitcher, but Patrick has done so with great success, and it's opened the door to new possibilities when it comes to his role down the line.

As previously mentioned, Patrick began the 2026 season as one of the Brewers' five starting pitchers. In fact, with the way the schedule shook out, Patrick toed the rubber in Milwaukee's second game of the season behind Opening Day starter Jacob Misiorowski.

While Patrick's surface-level numbers looked solid through his first seven "starts," two of which succeeded the use of an opener, there was some concern about the underlying metrics and the right-hander's incorporation of his new breaking ball, which Statcast considers a slurve, but Patrick himself refers to as a curveball. Though he boasted a 3.45 ERA at the time, which was inflated by a recent four-run outing against the St. Louis Cardinals, most of his underlying numbers had taken a step back from where they sat last year, explaining that Patrick was missing fewer bats, walking more batters, and giving up more hard contact.

When the results started to fade, the Brewers considered a switch to a new role for Patrick, and last weekend they executed said change. Patrick appeared in a three-inning relief role in Saturday night's walk-off win against the New York Yankees, and didn't allow a single run while striking out five batters. He then made a one-inning outing in relief in game one of the San Diego Padres series on Tuesday night, and once again put up a zero.

The inconsistency in the length of Patrick's outings has left Brewers fans wondering what the future holds for the young right-hander. Manager Pat Murphy offered some clarity on the topic in his pregame press conference on Wednesday night.

Chad Patrick to be used in a variety of different roles on the Brewers' pitching staff moving forward

Murphy wasn't ready to declare Patrick a "starter" or a "reliever" when asked about the right-hander's role on the pitching staff by MLB.com Brewers' beat reporter Adam McCalvy on Wednesday evening, and for a good reason. Patrick, who has experience both starting games and coming on in relief, won't be boxed into a single role moving forward.

On Patrick, Murphy said, "We know he’s a multiple-inning guy, but this role that he’s in right now could be used at the front end for four innings, or in the middle of the game for three or four innings, or in that one-inning role.”

More clarity was offered when Murphy compared Patrick's new role to that of another pitcher on the Brewers' staff, saying, "[It] kind of becomes like an Ashby role. Kind of. So we can do some different things and have some flexibility.”

Reading between the lines, the Brewers are comfortable throwing Patrick in just about any situation, but aren't comfortable with him facing a lineup three or sometimes even two times through. It's not necessarily breaking news -- the Brewers have always had a quick hook with Patrick due to his lack of strong secondary offerings. However, the hope was that the breaking ball Patrick added to his repertoire at the end of the 2025 season would allow him to find more success against opposing lineups when facing them for the second or third time, because he could show the batters a pitch they hadn't seen in the previous at-bat.

Unfortunately, the breaking ball hasn't been quite as effective for Patrick as it was last season, which could be due to the fact that when he implemented it last year, he was already in a relief role, and this season he was using it as a starting pitcher where more factors are at play. Regardless, until that pitch starts to find more success, it's difficult to justify keeping Patrick in a starter's role. Thankfully, his three-fastball arsenal has played great in the bullpen thus far, and Patrick can continue to pitch meaningful innings for the Crew as he works on his secondary offerings.

Overall, expect to see Patrick in a variety of roles going forward. He's bound to start some games here or there, but likely won't go more than three or four innings. More often he will be used to give Ashby some relief in the bullpen, serving as both a one- and multi-inning high-leverage arm. The move does suggest that Milwaukee will call upon one of their talented arms in Triple-A to fill Patrick's rotation spot until Brandon Woodruff returns from the injured list.

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