When the Milwaukee Brewers sent Caleb Durbin and Andruw Monasterio to Boston before the season, the focus was, understandably, on the former top 100 prospect Kyle Harrison. (That has worked out quite well so far!) After that, people’s eyes likely wandered to David Hamilton, who was expected to get a pretty decent amount of work as the replacement for Monasterio as the Brewers’ primary backup infielder (and has). It was easy to overlook the third player in that return, a 27-year-old pitcher who had not yet thrown a pitch as a major leaguer.
But to call Shane Drohan’s 2025 season “intriguing” would be an understatement. Drohan, who was a fifth-round pick in 2020 out of Florida State, spent 2021-2023 toiling in the minor leagues before the White Sox selected him in the 2024 Rule 5 Draft. But he missed the first half of that season with a nerve issue before the White Sox — who lost 121 games in 2024 — couldn’t find a place on their major league roster for him and sent him back to Boston. In total he pitched only 16 1/3 professional innings in 2024, and heading into 2025, his career ERA was hovering right around 4.50.
But, with due credit to Boston’s pitching development system, Drohan figured something out in 2025, despite missing significant time with forearm inflammation. So what changed? Drohan’s four-seam fastball, according to MLB Pipeline, had one of the best whiff rates in Triple-A even though it averaged a fairly modest 93.3 mph. Drohan also showcased an improved slider, and in 12 games (11 starts) that covered 47 2/3 innings last season, Drohan pitched to a 2.27 ERA, he struck out 67 batters (12.7 per nine), and walked only 16 (3.0/9, a vast improvement over his previous minor league seasons).
That’s not a huge sample size, but it was enough for the Red Sox to add him to the 40-man roster to protect him from another Rule 5 Draft, and it was enough for the Brewers to ask for him in the Durbin trade.
Drohan has started for his entire career, and he began the 2026 season in Triple-A Nashville’s rotation. But after just one start for the Sounds, Milwaukee needed a spot starter on April 8 and summoned Drohan for his major league debut (against his former team, the Red Sox). Things didn’t go particularly well: Drohan struggled badly with his command, walked four batters, and allowed three runs in just 2 2/3 innings in what became a 5-0 loss. Drohan was sent back to Nashville the next day. But he did have some fun trivia: his first career strikeout was of the guy he was traded for, Durbin.
Drohan made two more appearances (one of which used an opener) in mid-April for the Sounds and looked quite good — he allowed just three earned runs over 10 1/3 innings and had 11 strikeouts to three walks in that time — and by the end of the month he was back in Milwaukee. But this time Drohan was in a different role: Milwaukee was asking him to fill the bulk relief role that has been held at times over the last few seasons by players like Bryse Wilson, Tyler Alexander, Tobias Myers (in 2025), and, briefly earlier this season, Carlos Rodriguez.
Since returning to the big leagues on April 24, Drohan has made six appearances, none of which were starts. He has thrown at least three innings in half of those appearances. He has allowed just three earned runs in 14 innings, giving him a 1.93 ERA in that span. He has struck out 13 batters and, impressively, walked just two (half of the number he walked in the 2 2/3 innings of his major league debut).
This isn’t necessarily a situation where Drohan has increased his effectiveness because of shorter bursts as a reliever. That could be a little bit of a contributing factor, but Drohan threw 71 pitches on April 24, 60 on April 30, and 40 on May 8, with shorter outings sprinkled in between his longer ones. And while his role is ostensibly one that will include some mop-up duty, it’s getting harder to say that Drohan isn’t ever pitching in high-leverage situations. Only two of the six games that Drohan has pitched in since coming back are losses, and while two of the wins were blowouts, the score was within three runs — technically save situations — at the time when he entered. In the four wins in which Drohan has pitched as a Brewer, the team’s lead has been three runs or less when he entered in three of them, and he earned a three-inning save in the other.
It remains to be seen how sustainable Drohan’s improvement is. Even including last year’s minor league numbers, it’s a pretty small sample we’re dealing with here. He does not boast an overpowering fastball. But there are good underlying indicators. Drohan currently sports a 2.39 FIP, and there’s a pretty solid amount of red on his statcast profile: his xERA (2.73) is in the 88th percentile, his barrel percentage (4.0%) is in the 87th percentile, and he’s solidly above average in xBA, average exit velocity, chase percentage, hard-hit percentage, and groundball rate. FanGraphs’ Stuff+ model has Drohan as slightly below average overall, but it likes his slider quite a bit, and his fastball, curveball, and changeup all rate as perfectly usable. If he stays in the bullpen, the fact that Drohan has a reliable four-pitch mix is going to be rough on batters who only get to see him once.
Drohan looks like he might be overqualified for the mop-up role that he was sort of slotted into. That might be a very good thing for the Brewers. As Aaron Ashby and DL Hall have shown, having guys who can give you length in the bullpen who can be relied upon at any time are valuable weapons, and even if Drohan never gets a real shot in the Brewers’ rotation — Robert Gasser and Coleman Crow are still healthy and available at Triple-A — he can still be a valuable long-term contributor for his new team.
I expect to see a continued shift in how smart teams like the Brewers (and, eventually, everyone) thinks of starters and relievers. As innings continue to trend downward amongst starters, it will be more and more important for teams to have multiple relief pitchers who can go multiple innings. Drohan, along with Ashby and Hall, gives the Brewers at least three of those guys who can all be relied upon, with Chad Patrick as a possible fourth depending on how his role shakes out.
Once again, we’re seeing a situation where the Brewers have identified an undervalued asset, and once again, it looks like the Brewers are ahead of the curve on how they’re going to deploy their bullpen. The Red Sox deserve credit for helping Drohan turn a corner, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s making a difference not in Boston, but in Milwaukee.