Priester's secret in road to recovery: Sitting up straight

MILWAUKEE – Baseball injuries sometimes reveal unexpected silver linings, and Brewers right-handed starter Quinn Priester believes he’s found one that will make his mother happy: Better posture.

One of the things that helps fend off symptoms of his neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome -- a pinching of nerves on the right side of his neck and down his arm -- is to focus on keeping his shoulders back, like he’s trying to pinch a pencil between his shoulder blades. It makes a difference not only when he throws, since Priester has a tendency to hunch ahead of his delivery, but in everyday life.

“Anything rolling forward isn’t going to be good for me,” Priester said ahead of Wednesday's game against the Rays. “If I go and throw and roll forward, or play video games doing this stuff [with his shoulders hunched], it’s not very good. It’s being conscious of knowing how that affects stuff at the field. Even watching TV.

“Is that everything? No. But it does matter. So I try to do everything well at all times.”

Priester, a Brewers standout last season when he went 13-3 with a 3.32 ERA, is about to begin the next phase of his comeback. While the rest of the team departs on Thursday for the first road trip of 2026, Priester will depart for Phoenix, where he will begin facing hitters with an inning at the team’s complex on Saturday or Sunday. Tentatively, he will pitch there three times before beginning a rehab assignment with Triple-A Nashville, though he’s not thinking that far ahead.

Priester was feeling that good kind of soreness on Wednesday morning while playing catch, the result of a multi-inning bullpen session the day before, followed by his first upper body-focused weightlifting since his diagnosis in Spring Training. He’ll throw a light mound session again on Thursday before catching his flight.

“I hadn’t thrown two innings since, shoot, it was February,” Priester said. “Some soreness is welcomed.”

For now, everything is one step at a time, and with proper posture. That focus has reminded Priester of a former Pittsburgh teammate, Bailey Falter, who had a habit of sitting on the bench with perfect posture all the time.

“I would always give him crap, but now I’m like, ‘Shoot, I should have learned from him,’” Priester said.