LAS VEGAS -- Two days after a trade that brought him back to the Brewers for cash, righty reliever Joel Kuhnel joined his new team on Monday. He arrived just in time to provide intel not only on the team that designated him for assignment last week, the A’s (while they play a regular-season homestand in Sin City as their new stadium is under construction about 15 miles away on the Las Vegas Strip), but on the Triple-A ballpark he called home earlier this year.
Las Vegas Ballpark, Kuhnel said, will probably be more popular with Brewers hitters than Brewers pitchers.
“Be cautious,” he said. “The ball flies.”
His advice to fellow pitchers?
“It’s hard to hit a home run when the ball is on the ground,” Kuhnel said.
The Brewers were going to play this series in a Triple-A ballpark one way or the other, since the A’s are playing the bulk of their home games in West Sacramento at the home of the Giants’ top affiliate until their Las Vegas stadium opens for the 2028 season.
With this homestand against the Brewers and Rockies at the home of the Las Vegas Aviators, the A’s Triple-A team, the teams are playing the first MLB regular-season games in Las Vegas since 1996. The Oakland Coliseum was undergoing renovations that year, so the A’s played their first six home games at Cashman Field, where Pat Murphy remembers the dugouts were particularly deep into the ground.
“I think it’s a great experience,” Murphy said of returning with the Brewers. “You know, why not? It’s a beautiful ballpark. And get used to it, because we’re going to be playing here [in Vegas] in the future.”
Brewers players took full rounds of infield and outfield work before batting practice to acquaint -- or reacquaint, in the case of Jackson Chourio, Sal Frelick, Jake Bauers and Joey Ortiz, who played a pair of split-squad Spring Training games here in 2024 -- themselves with a venue that was new to most. That was particularly important for outfielders like Garrett Mitchell, who spent the afternoon getting a feel for the flight of the baseball, the high desert sky and the contours of the wall.
“BP is where you really get a test of what it’s like,” Mitchell said. “But I’ve played in places where they have high skies and the ball flies, so this really isn’t much different.”
It was particularly familiar to Kuhnel, who began the season with the Aviators before moving to the A’s and making 25 appearances before he was DFA’d.
Adding to the odd nature of this week, this isn’t his first stint with the Brewers. He made seven appearances for Triple-A Nashville in 2024 and spent a week in the big leagues with Milwaukee in July, but never got to pitch.
Now the Brewers have called him up to the active roster again. They optioned right-hander Craig Yoho back to Nashville to clear a spot for the series opener against Kuhnel’s old team.
“The whole thing’s kind of weird, but at the end of the day it’s still baseball,” Kuhnel said. “I have a job to do.”