The Milwaukee Brewers added Brandon Woodruff to their World Series roster on Friday, putting the two-time All-Star back in play for a series that starts with Game 1 against the Tampa Bay Rays at American Family Field in Milwaukee. Woodruff had been headed for season-ending surgery after leaving a July start with an injury to his throwing shoulder.
The move matters because Milwaukee did not have to make it. Woodruff was still not fully healed in time for the National League Division Series or NLCS, and someone with knowledge of the situation had called his status 50-50. Even so, scans in August showed enough improvement for him to start a throwing program, and the Brewers decided the upside of carrying him was worth the risk. In a roster built for October, that is not a small choice.
Woodruff gives Milwaukee a pitcher with a career record of 55-30, a 3.10 ERA and 918 strikeouts over 790.1 innings, but the numbers only explain part of why his name is on the Brewers roster. Injuries have limited him to 21 starts combined over the past three seasons, and his path back has been uneven enough that the team had to judge not just whether he was healthy, but whether he was useful enough to carry through the World Series. That is a different calculation than simply activating a player off the injured list.
The larger issue is how Milwaukee will use him. Woodruff has not pitched out of the bullpen since his second MLB season in 2018, so the Brewers are not just adding a healthy arm. They are asking a starter’s body to take on an unfamiliar role in a series where every inning will matter. Jacob Misiorowski is starting Game 1 against Nick Martinez, Logan Henderson appears most likely to start Game 2, and Dustin May, Robert Gasser and possibly Woodruff are in the mix after that.
The Rays made a smaller change to their own roster, replacing Brody Hopkins with Garrett Cleavinger, who posted a 4.79 ERA this season after a 2.35 ERA over 67 appearances last year. But the bigger story in Milwaukee is Woodruff, because the Brewers are in their first World Series since 1982 and both teams are chasing their first championship. For Woodruff, the next step is not whether he made the roster. It is whether Milwaukee trusts him enough to hand him the kind of inning he has not worked in years.
