This is the part of a season that does not produce headlines for the sake of drama, but it matters anyway: the slow, necessary business of getting key arms back on the mound. For the Brewers, Abner Uribe and JoJo Romero both took that step in Grand Chute, each throwing one inning in rehab outings for the Timber Rattlers.
Uribe’s frame was clean enough to count as progress. He worked a scoreless inning, allowing one strikeout and one walk, and the message from the outing was exactly the one Milwaukee needed to hear: get through the inning, feel healthy, and keep building. That is not flashy. It does not need to be. For a reliever trying to get back to being himself, health is the headline.
Uribe said the goal was simple enough: perform well and come out of the game feeling healthy. He also made clear that the work is not just physical, with confidence part of the equation as he continues pushing back toward major league readiness. That is the real point of these rehab appearances. They are not only about whether the arm holds up. They are about whether the pitcher can start trusting it again.
Romero also takes a useful step forward
Romero’s return path has been even more layered. He had surgery in mid-July to remove his appendix, then later joined JoJo Romero and Dustin May in early August after the trade deadline brought him to the Brewers. In his rehab outing against the South Bend Cubs, he started and threw a scoreless inning, which is exactly the kind of tidy first step that matters when a pitcher is trying to settle in and get moving again.
Romero said the process has been helped by building some familiarity with the guys around him, and by the simple fact that he is just excited to be back out playing baseball again. He also noted that he already knows American Family Field well from four years of using the visitor bullpen, which at least gives him some comfort as he works back toward the Brewers’ big league plans.
None of this makes a bullpen suddenly whole. But it does make the timeline feel a little more real. Uribe and Romero are both in the same obvious place now: not fully back, but clearly on the road there. And for a Brewers team that needs reliable relief innings, that is exactly the kind of progress worth paying attention to.
