Brewers Get Troubling Pitcher Update With Playoffs Looming

The Milwaukee Brewers have the best record in baseball and a National League Central title already in hand, but one of their most important pitching questions remains unresolved with two weeks left in the regular season.

Left-hander Kyle Harrison, a first-half standout who once looked like a playoff rotation lock, has collapsed over the past month. That slide has drawn concern from analysts and forced manager Pat Murphy to rethink how — or whether — Harrison fits into October plans.

Harrison is 10-5 with a 4.25 ERA, 136 strikeouts and 35 walks in 112 1/3 innings. Those season totals hide the split. He posted a 3.01 ERA across 17 starts before a forearm issue sent him to the injured list on July 9. Since returning in early August, his ERA has sat near 7.00 in seven appearances totaling 27 innings.

The last four outings have been the worst stretch. Harrison has allowed 21 earned runs in nine innings, a 21.00 ERA, including a four-run relief appearance against Cincinnati in which he failed to record an out and a 1 2/3-inning start Thursday in a 7-4 loss at Pittsburgh.

Opponents have hit .344 against him from July through September, with a 1.033 OPS and a hard-hit rate of 44.5 percent, according to club splits reported by MLB.com. In March through June, those figures were .213 and .622.

Velocity and fastball ride have also dropped since the injured-list stint, several reports have noted. That combination has turned a midseason All-Star candidate into Milwaukee’s most closely watched roster question.

Murphy said Harrison will pitch again before the regular season ends.

“We’re going to throw him in there again,” Murphy said. The manager has not committed to a starting assignment or a middle-inning role.

Harrison has not surrendered the fight for an October job.

“I’m not going to give in, not going to give up,” he said after the Pittsburgh start. “I’m going to keep working and fighting.”

The Brewers enter Friday’s series opener at Baltimore at 95-58, two games ahead of the Los Angeles Dodgers for the National League’s top seed and a first-round bye. Milwaukee’s staff ERA of 3.58 leads the NL.

Jacob Misiorowski and Logan Henderson are expected to start Games 1 and 2 of any postseason series. Misiorowski has a 1.89 ERA, 243 strikeouts and a 0.81 WHIP in 166 1/3 innings. Behind them, the picture is thinner.

Deadline addition Dustin May is 7-9 with a 4.49 ERA and 133 strikeouts and is scheduled to start Friday at Camden Yards. Robert Gasser is 4-5 with a 4.30 ERA in 96 1/3 innings and has allowed two earned runs or fewer in four straight outings. Shane Drohan has a 6.15 ERA in 26 1/3 innings since Aug. 3.

Postseason rosters shrink to 26 players and a maximum of 13 pitchers. Last year Milwaukee carried 12 pitchers into Game 1 of the NLDS. Depth matters if the Brewers reach a best-of-seven series, when four starters or bulk arms are typically needed across five days.

President of baseball operations Matt Arnold said the club is already mapping those decisions.

“We’ve already been doing work,” Arnold said. “Don’t worry about us doing work. We’ll be ready.”

ESPN analyst Bradford Doolittle recently called Harrison Milwaukee’s biggest disappointment of 2026 after the left-hander went from an 8-2, 3.01 ERA first half to a 7.00 ERA after the break. Fan and beat coverage has framed the same issue: the Brewers may not be able to trust him as a starter unless the next appearances look like May and June.

Murphy has praised Gasser’s recent work as one possible answer.

May’s last start offered a reminder of his ceiling: six shutout innings in a 20-0 win over the Reds. His overall line since the Aug. 3 trade from St. Louis still includes a 6.17 ERA in 23 1/3 innings, leaving both May and Harrison as high-variance options rather than settled ones.

Brandon Woodruff remains on the 60-day injured list with a shoulder issue and is not expected to factor in immediately. Grant Anderson is also on the injured list. Those absences make every healthy inning from Harrison, May, Gasser and Drohan more valuable — and more scrutinized.

Milwaukee still has nine regular-season games to sort the staff, including this weekend in Baltimore and a series at Philadelphia. The standings give the Brewers room to experiment. The calendar does not.

If Harrison cannot trim the hard contact and restore the fastball that carried him through the first half, Milwaukee’s October rotation will likely run through Misiorowski, Henderson and a mix of Gasser and May, with Harrison competing for a relief look rather than a start.

That is the concern hanging over a team that otherwise looks built for a deep run: the best record in the majors, a locked-up division, and one left-hander whose late-season numbers no longer match the pitcher who helped get them there.