There was a time, not so long ago, when bullpen roles felt rigid. The setup man handled the eighth. The closer handled the ninth. Everyone else filled in the gaps and tried not to make a mess of things. But if there’s one quiet constant of Brewers baseball over the last several years, it’s this: they’ve understood the value of the multi-inning reliever better than most.
This isn’t some trendy, Rays-style opener experiment. It’s more practical than that. The Brewers have consistently built bullpens that don’t just survive when a starter exits in the fifth inning; they stabilize the game. And that stability often comes from the guy who throws the sixth and seventh instead of just one clean inning with the bases empty.
Modern starting pitching just doesn’t last the way it used to. Even good starters are carefully managed the third time through the order. Injuries pile up. Pitch counts climb. October-style urgency seeps into random Tuesday nights in June. If your bullpen is constructed entirely of one-inning specialists, you’re asking for burnout by August.
The Brewers have largely avoided that trap.
Think back to how they’ve deployed arms over the past several seasons. Whether it was a converted starter finding new life in relief or a swingman shuttling between roles, Milwaukee has consistently found ways to squeeze two or three innings out of pitchers who might be pigeonholed elsewhere. When a starter exits after four innings, it’s not a scramble. It’s often a bridge.
And that bridge matters more than the ninth inning sometimes.
We spend a lot of time talking about closers, and understandably so. High-leverage outs are dramatic. But the highest leverage point in a game frequently arrives in the sixth with two on and one out, not the ninth with the bases empty. The Brewers have shown a willingness to let their better non-closer arms handle those spots and keep going if they’re efficient. That’s not old-school long relief. That’s targeted aggression.
It also protects the bullpen as a whole. If one reliever can give you 2 1/3 clean innings on 28 pitches, that’s two other arms who get a full day off. Over 162 games, those saved bullets add up. Milwaukee’s ability to keep its late-inning arms fresh deep into seasons hasn’t been accidental. The approach fits the organization’s broader identity.
The Brewers are rarely the team with the deepest rotation on paper. They don’t wade into the top tier of free agency for 200-inning workhorses — just look at them trading aces like Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta before they inevitably lose them to free agency.
Instead, they build layers of pitching. Optionable depth. Pitchers with starter backgrounds who can slide into relief. Relievers who can stretch beyond the standard three outs if the matchup and pitch count allow it.
It’s flexible, and flexibility is currency in today’s game.
There’s also a developmental angle here. Milwaukee has long shown a knack for identifying pitchers with one or two standout traits and maximizing them. A fastball with unusual ride. A breaking ball with elite spin. In shorter bursts, those traits can dominate. But when those pitchers prove capable of turning a lineup over once without losing effectiveness, the Brewers don’t rush to cap them at a single inning. They experiment. They stretch them to 30 or 40 pitches. They see what happens.
Often, what happens is that the middle innings stop being a liability.
That might not show up in the save column, but it shows up in win expectancy. It shows up in series wins where the bullpen doesn’t feel fried by Sunday afternoon. It shows up in September when key relievers still have life on their fastballs.
If you want some easy current examples, look at Aaron Ashby and Jared Koenig, not to mention the now-departed Tobias Myers, all of whom filled that role at different points in 2025.
None of this means the Brewers have reinvented bullpen strategy. Plenty of teams deploy multi-inning arms. But Milwaukee has made it a habit rather than a contingency plan. When things go sideways early, they don’t panic. They patch the game together with purpose.
In a division that rarely offers much margin for error, that matters.
The art of the multi-inning reliever isn’t flashy. It won’t generate jersey sales. But it’s one of the reasons the Brewers so often feel competitive even when a game starts tilting in the wrong direction. They don’t just chase the final three outs. They control the gray area in the middle, and more often than not, that’s where games are actually decided.