PHOENIX -- The Brewers opted not to issue uniform No. 39 last season in a subtle show of respect to Corbin Burnes , the homegrown ace who won the franchise’s first Cy Young Award in 39 years in 2021 and represented Milwaukee in a pair of All-Star Games before he was traded to Baltimore on the cusp of a contract year. It was with that history in mind that Brewers equipment manager Jason Shawger offered another right-hander a handful of numerical choices late last month.

Chad Patrick , the Triple-A International League’s reigning Triple Crown winner after leading the circuit in wins, ERA and strikeouts last season, had his car packed for a quick stop at home in Indiana before a return assignment to Nashville to begin the 2025 season. Then plans changed. The Brewers, their starting rotation a jumble before they played a single regular season game, needed Patrick in the Majors, meaning that after wearing No. 78 during Spring Training, Patrick needed a number more befitting a big leaguer.

He preferred something as low as possible, and Shawger’s five or so offerings started with Burnes’ No. 39. As Shawger began to explain the connection, Patrick stopped him. He already knew.

“I figured, why not? He throws a cutter, I throw a cutter,” Patrick said on the eve of Saturday’s matchup of No. 39s at Chase Field, when Patrick won his duel against Burnes but the D-backs won the game in heartbreaking fashion from Milwaukee’s perspective, scoring five runs in a wild bottom of the ninth inning to send the Brewers to a 5-4 loss. “Why not model your game after someone great?”

The choice didn’t get past Brewers manager Pat Murphy.

“I think that’s significant, to be honest with you,” Murphy said. “I wore 21 because I thought about Roberto Clemente, and I thought I hit a lot of balls to right field. That’s where the comparison stops.”

Patrick, 26, has his own similarities to Burnes. Both are right-handers who game-plan off their best pitch, a cut fastball. Both were fourth-round Draft picks, Burnes to the Brewers in 2016 and Patrick to the D-backs in 2021.

Patrick knows he has a long way to go to extend the comparison beyond that, but he’s off to a good start, holding the Royals, Reds and D-backs to a combined one earned run on 10 hits in his first 14 1/3 innings as a big league starter. Patrick would have been able to pitch longer on Saturday -- he was at 77 pitches with the bases empty and a 2-0 lead in the fifth inning -- but the Brewers had a fresh bullpen, so they pulled Patrick rather than have him face the top of the D-backs’ lineup for the third time.

“I was 21, 22 when [Burnes’] name started coming around,” Patrick said. “So you really start watching him pitch, and it’s like, ‘I want to be just like him because he’s one of the best.’ So when the opportunity came, I wanted the number.”

Burnes said Shawger gave him a heads up that Patrick was going to take the number.

“That's cool,” Burnes said. “The fact that I can have that impact on guys that are getting to the big leagues now. He said he grew up watching me, so now I'm starting to feel old.”

So it was that a pair of No. 39s took turns on the mound in what became a pitching duel. The Brewers struck first against Burnes, taking a 2-0 lead in the second inning when the first four hitters of the frame reached safely and Rhys Hoskins (RBI single) and Joey Ortiz (run-scoring double play) accounted for runs. In the sixth, budding Brewers star Jackson Chourio extended the lead to 3-0 by blasting a solo home run that sailed a Statcast-projected 448 feet, and then made it 4-0 when he singled in the top of the ninth and scored on a William Contreras double before the game flipped upside down in the bottom of the inning.

Patrick, meanwhile, showed why Brewers pitching coach Chris Hook, a longtime mentor of Burnes, is so intrigued about what could come. Hook explained Patrick’s appeal like this: “He seems to find the right moment to make a big pitch.”

Take the bottom of the first inning, when Corbin Carroll singled and Geraldo Perdomo walked to open the frame, but Patrick induced a Pavin Smith double play and got Josh Naylor to fly out. Or the fourth, when Patrick wiggled out of trouble after Naylor opened the inning with a double.

Before Saturday, Patrick’s path crossed with Burnes' only once. It was either during the pandemic or during baseball’s lockout, as Patrick remembers it, that Burnes and Josh Hader were in a group of Arizona-based Brewers working out at a high school in Scottsdale. Patrick happened to be there doing his own throwing one day, so he found a spot along the fence and watched Burnes throw a bullpen.

On Saturday night, they met again.