Zach Davies latest Brewers starter to land on Injured List, Jake Faria and Devin Williams to be called up

Zach Davies has seen his ERA climb almost a full run in his last three starts, giving up 17 earned runs on 20 hits (including 6 home runs) in his last 13 innings.

Now the right-hander is the latest victim of the Brewers’ bad pitching injury luck this year, reportedly landing on the injured list.

Jake Faria, who was acquired just last week in the Jesus Aguilar trade, will be making his debut with the Brewers after a scoreless inning with Triple-A San Antonio. Devin Williams is also being called up to make his major league debut.

Devin Williams has had a long road to the majors after being the Brewers’ 2nd round pick in the 2013 draft (their first pick that year after losing their first rounder for signing Kyle Lohse), including a long recovery from Tommy John surgery, but made the Rising Stars game as a reliever this year and has reportedly hit 100 mph with his fastball out of the pen.

As Adam McCalvy notes, Davies’ injury means the entire Opening Day rotation is now currently not in the starting rotation.

That doesn’t even count the time additional depth pieces like Gio Gonzalez and Chase Anderson have spent on the injured list. While plenty of digital ink has been used to analyze/criticize the Brewers’ decision to start the year with Brandon Woodruff, Corbin Burnes and Freddy Peralta in the rotation, it would have been virutally impossible for any GM to come up with enough depth to cover that amount of injuries and ineffectiveness over the course of a season. Even with a Dallas Keuchel signing, Stearns would have needed virtually an entire second rotation to cover that kind of attrition.

The Brewers had really good luck in a lot of areas last season, and that included injuries. It feels like almost everything that went right last year has gone wrong this year, and yet the team is still only 2 games out of a playoff spot and are a good week away from possibly holding one of those spots.

For what it’s worth, the Cubs are also struggling with injuries right now, with Willson Contreras likely out for 4 weeks with the hamstring injury he suffered against the Brewers and Craig Kimbrel also going on the injured list today.

There’s a lot of baseball left.

UPDATE:

A 40-man move needed to be made to add Williams to the roster, and the Brewers just announced that it would be Jimmy Nelson being moved to the 60-day injured list to clear a spot on the 40-man.

Nelson has been making rehab appearances for Triple-A San Antonio, throwing 1.2 scoreless innings this afternoon while allowing a hit and a walk, striking out 4. He could still potentially be back in September, but that would require another 40-man move at the time.