Brewers Designate Javy Guerra For Assignment

3:55pm: Bush will be shut down for two to four weeks, per Todd Rosiak of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

3:04pm: The Brewers announced a series of roster moves Monday, all pertaining to the bullpen. Right-hander Javy Guerra has been designated for assignment, with his spot on the 40-man roster going to veteran lefty Alex Claudio, whose contract has been selected from Triple-A Nashville. Milwaukee also placed righty Matt Bush on the 15-day IL with tendinitis in his right rotator cuff and recalled right-hander Jake Cousins from Nashville.

Guerra, 27, was once one of the top prospects in baseball when he was a shortstop, but he converted to the mound several years ago and has been trying to establish himself as a flamethrowing reliever. He’s seen MLB time with the Padres, Rays and Brewers but has yet to find much consistency. So far in 8 1/3 innings with the Brewers, who acquired him from the Rays in exchange for a PTBNL (Victor Castaneda) back in November, he’s tossed 8 1/3 innings but allowed eight runs on 10 hits, nine walks and a pair of hit batters.

Guerra has averaged a blazing 98.4 mph on his heater this year and 98.1 mph overall in parts of five big league seasons on the mound, but command has regularly been an issue. Overall, he’s tallied 52 innings of relief work between those three previously mentioned clubs and walked nearly as many batters (12.1%) as he’s struck out (14.5%). The Brewers will have a week to trade him or attempt to pass the out-of-options righty through waivers.

Bush’s injury comes on the heels of some pronounced struggles for the 37-year-old this year. He’s pitched 7 2/3 innings but been tagged for seven runs on six hits and six walks with eight strikeouts. It’s a small sample, but that’s a 17.1% walk rate through his first nine appearances, which is nearly 10 percentage points higher than the combined 7.7% mark he posted from 2016-22. Add in that Bush’s average fastball is down from 97.4 mph in 2022 to 94.8 mph in 2023, and there are a few pretty glaring signs that he perhaps has not been pitching at full strength. The Brewers have not yet provided a potential timetable for his return.

Claudio, 31, is a familiar face for Brewers fans, having spent the 2019-20 seasons pitching in the Milwaukee bullpen. He returned on a minor league contract over the winter and has gotten out to a nice start in Nashville, allowing a pair of runs with a 5-to-2 K/BB ratio and a mammoth 73.3% ground-ball rate in his six innings of work so far.

Hearty ground-ball rates are nothing new for Claudio, who’s posted a career 59.8% mark over the life of 347 2/3 innings at the big league level. He struggled upon departing the Brewers organization, pitching to a 5.51 ERA in 32 2/3 innings with the 2021 Angels, but Claudio’s broader body of MLB work is solid: 3.60 ERA (3.83 FIP, 3.67 SIERA), 17% strikeout rate, 6.5% walk rate, 59.8% grounder rate, 14 saves, 51 holds. He does have emphatic platoon splits, however, which makes the three-batter minimum a particularly disadvantageous rule change for Claudio.

Cousins, 28, has given up five runs in 4 1/3 innings with Nashville so far, though virtually all of the damage against him came in one outing. What’s surely of greater intrigue to the organization is that he’s punched out 11 of the 24 batters he’s faced so far (45.8%).

Cousins has just 43 1/3 innings of big league work under his belt to this point in his career, but he’s averaged 95.9 mph with his sinker, 95.3 mph with his four-seamer and notched a massive 17% swinging-strike rate. His 14.7% walk rate and six plunked batters (out of 184 faced) show command that needs some serious refinement, but Cousins has the stuff to miss bats in droves. If he can throw more strikes, as he’d done so far in Triple-A (two walks in 24 batters faced), he has the potential to become a legitimate high-leverage arm. That’s far easier said than done, of course, but it’s easy to see why the Brewers continue to be intrigued by Cousins.