LOS ANGELES – The Milwaukee Brewers won the Narrative World Series this weekend at Dodger Stadium.
Widely chided across the league for not landing Tarik Skubal at the trade deadline, the Brewers, in their first chance to face the left-handed ace wearing Dodger blue, beat him. And they did it with the pitcher they chose to hold onto over a Skubal splash.
Right-hander Logan Henderson made another stride as a burgeoning frontline starter at all of 24 years old with his latest – and perhaps greatest – start. Facing the pitcher he was firmly involved in trade discussions with the Detroit Tigers for two weeks ago, Henderson outdueled him with seven innings of three-hit, one-run ball with six strikeouts on Sunday, Aug. 16, as the Brewers picked up a series win at Dodger Stadium with a 6-2 decision.
It was Henderson’s 17th start in the big leagues and his 17th time holding the opponent to three or fewer runs.
“This is who he is,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “He’s just really consistent. It’s not that he’s not capable of a dud here and there, but he’s just really consistent. He understands what he’s doing.”
A hanging changeup to Max Muncy burned Henderson in the fourth inning but proved to be his lone blemish of the game.
At 66 pitches through six innings and with his team nursing a 2-1 lead, it felt like a carbon copy of Henderson’s first start on the road trip on Aug. 10. A tiring Henderson normally would have been out of that game after six innings but was sent back out for the seventh with the three top leverage arms available and ultimately allowed the game-deciding two-run homer.
This time, Henderson buckled down, working to strand a leadoff walk and get through seven for the first time in his professional career.
“Really happy to get through seven today,” he said. “Left a bitter taste in my mouth last outing. It was really good. It was a really good team win.”
This wasn’t the most dominant you will see Henderson, who didn’t get a single fastball whiff until the sixth and carried a hard-hit rate of nearly 50%, but it was an example of what makes him so effective.
Henderson put together some unimpeachable sequences, especially early on.
In Muncy’s first at-bat with a man on in the first, Henderson had him well out in front of a changeup for strike one, then went back to it twice with two strikes to record the swinging strikeout.
With Teoscar Hernández leading off the third, Henderson surprised him with a cutter up for a swinging strike one, then got an uncomfortable swing on a sweeper fouled off for strike two. That was the first sweeper – a pitch he doesn’t throw a ton – that Henderson threw all game, but he caught Hernández completely off-guard by doubling up on it for a strikeout.
To cap the inning, Henderson got ahead, 0-2, on Shohei Ohtani with a pair of fastballs, showed him a changeup and then went back to an elevated fastball away. Ohtani took it but then flailed at a changeup down and away that tunneled perfectly off an earlier heater in the at-bat.
“His fastball sets up everything,” Murphy said. “The changeup was great, and to hold the Dodgers, that lineup, to one run in seven innings was amazing. He was outstanding. Hats off to him.”
After running low on the fuel gauge in San Diego, Henderson had plenty in reserve this time around.
Henderson hadn’t recorded a single fastball whiff on 28 swings all day when he made the most daring call of the start: Challenging Ohtani on one over the plate in their third matchup. He blew it past him at 94.5 mph – his fastest pitch of the day.
The next pitch, Henderson reared back and hit 95.3 mph, his firmest fastball of the season, and got a late swing from Ohtani for a lazy fly to left.
It was the embodiment of convicted pitching.
“I didn’t know that. Dang,” Henderson said when informed he didn’t have a swing and miss on the fastball before that. “I wanted to get him out. I think there’s a pretty good lefty pocket after him and I’m sure if I don’t get him out there maybe we make a call to the bullpen. That’s arguably the best player in the game, so I wanted to get him out. That’s where the extra juice came from.”
In the seventh inning in San Diego six days prior, Henderson’s fastball velocity dipped below 90 mph. He reached 94.7 mph to Muncy this time and 95 in his last at-bat against Kyle Tucker, who took him to 11 pitches before hitting a dribbler that Henderson made a pouncing play on.
“That is a sign of him taking a step up,” Murphy said.
Leveling up his game is all Henderson has done through his first two years in the majors, and this outing showed why the Brewers were wise to ultimately not give him up for Skubal.
It’s not that the Brewers were entirely unwilling to part with Henderson for Skubal. Sources said the Brewers were flexible in their offers to the Tigers before they ultimately found out they lost out to the Dodgers. Ultimately, the idea of giving him away was too much to stomach and the Tigers’ request of Henderson plus another prospect was simply too much.
This start showed why.
Since Henderson debuted in April of 2025, the only starting pitchers (min. 50 innings) with a better strikeout-to-walk ratio are Jacob Misiorowski and Skubal. This year alone, Misiorowski leads baseball with an insane 34% K-BB%. Next is Henderson at 26.3%, ever-so slightly ahead of Skubal.
“There hasn’t been a pitch in a situation this season that’s looked too big for him,” Brewers first baseman Jake Bauers said. “The location of the pitches, the pitchability in terms of mixing his pitches. Knowing when to go to the cutter against lefties, because he doesn’t throw it much but there’s moments where you’re like, ‘Oh, damn, I didn’t even think about a cutter there.’
“But what impresses me most is the poise. You can feel it. You can feel it on defense. You look at him and he looks rock-steady.”
Misiorowski gets the headlines – and rightfully so – but in Henderson the Brewers have a star. They were right to hold onto him, a move that elicited a thank you directly from the pitcher to president of baseball operations Matt Arnold himself.
Not only do the Brewers have another five years of club control on one of the game’s brightest young arms, but who’s to say he doesn’t even outpitch Skubal post-deadline and into October?
He just did.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: By not trading Logan Henderson for Skubal, the Brewers were 100% right
Reporting by Curt Hogg, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Curt Hogg, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
