Chris Hook has spent enough time around Brewers pitching to know when the October picture is murky and when it’s taking shape. Right now, he likes what he sees.
A year ago, Milwaukee went into the postseason with Freddy Peralta at the front and a lot of uncertainty behind him. Hook remembered it plainly: “Last year, it was Freddy [Peralta] and then ‘we’ll figure it out,’” he said before the Brewers finished off a franchise-record 98th win Sunday night in Baltimore.
“I think we have a little better sense of who it will be this year. And I think our guys have been battle-tested.”
That contrast matters. Last October, Quinn Priester looked like a steadying force during the regular season, but Hook knew he was dealing with an injury that was then called a wrist issue and is now known as the early signs of thoracic outlet syndrome.
Priester wound up missing the entire 2026 season. The Brewers still had to piece things together once the playoffs began, beating Game 1 behind Peralta, then taking Game 2 with a bullpen game and three relief innings from Jacob Misiorowski after he had fallen out of the rotation late in the regular season.
Priester started Game 3 at Wrigley Field and lost, then Peralta struggled in Game 4 at Wrigley. Milwaukee had to turn to another bullpen game in Game 5, this one started by Trevor Megill, just to close out the series and advance to the NLCS.
This year looks much cleaner. Milwaukee enters the postseason with the second-best staff ERA in baseball at 3.54 and a starters’ ERA that ranks fifth at 3.64, with Misiorowski driving a lot of that progress. Logan Henderson is trending up, Dustin May has a plan, Robert Gasser has been on a roll, and Shane Drohan has settled into relief after the Brewers moved him there to manage his innings.
Hook isn’t pretending everything is perfect. He’s saying the Brewers are in a much firmer place.
“I think we’re in a good spot,” he said. “We’ve seen consistency.
We’ve seen them in tougher games. It’s been a good run for them.”
Misiorowski is the clearest example of how different this October feels. He has Game 1. Henderson, who was only building back to about 30 pitches around this point last year and missed the NLDS and NLCS rosters, is now positioned to start either Game 2 or Game 3 of the NLDS.
May appears to be the other likely starter unless something shifts. Milwaukee paid a steep price at the Trade Deadline, sending two premium prospects to St.
Louis for May and lefty reliever JoJo Romero with October in mind. May has been uneven since a comebacker hit him on his first pitch Aug. 26 in New York against the Mets, but the Brewers still value what he brings in this setting.
He was also one of the club’s top targets after it missed on Tarik Skubal.
“I think for experienced guys that have been in that moment, I throw all the regular season away,” Hook said. “That’s a different moment [in October], if you’ve been there before and you’re able to handle it. I think he’ll be fine.”
The Brewers’ pitching plan got a little more deliberate over the weekend. After a long meeting in Pat Murphy’s office on Saturday, Henderson was pushed to Wednesday in Philadelphia so May could start Tuesday and get two chances to pitch before the regular season ends. That gives May the lead in the rotation order for now, though everything can still be rearranged during the layoff before the NLDS begins six days later.
While the relievers were going through their throwing program Saturday afternoon, May and Hook had a long conversation on the field. Hook said the challenge with a midseason addition is often overlooked.
“I just told him that I think it gets really overlooked when you get a guy midseason and he has to come in and perform,” Hook said. “We’re trying to feel him out.
That’s usually what Spring Training is for. That’s why you have six weeks of Spring Training.”
Hook said that applies across the board, not just to the younger arms. Misiorowski, Henderson, Gasser and Drohan are all beyond their previous career highs in innings, and May is at a career high too, with 140 2/3 innings because of his injury history.
Still, Hook likes what he sees from May between starts and believes better results are coming. May thinks his struggles have more to do with pitch selection than stuff, and because he’s one of the rare pitchers in baseball who can wear a PitchCom device to call his own pitches when he wants to, he may use that in his final two starts.
“His work has been great,” Hook said. “I told him, ‘What you’re doing in-between starts and how you look, I’m just looking for positive moments because I know they’re going to come.’ We trust what’s inside him.”
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