Brewers and Astros Are Shaping Up To Be Perfect Trade Partners
Milwaukee is short on infield depth and Houston is willing to deal. Could the two sides end up connecting?
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Sometimes, two MLB rosters get to the point where it almost doesn’t make sense not to make a trade. It’s starting to feel like we’ve reached that territory with the Milwaukee Brewers and the Houston Astros.
On Monday, the Brewers made a bit of a surprise swap with the Red Sox. The trade saw third baseman Caleb Durbin, utility players Anthony Seigler and Andruw Monasterio, and a draft pick get sent to Boston for pitchers Kyle Harrison and Shane Drohan as well as infielder David Hamilton.
The return made plenty of sense for Milwaukee. Harrison and Drohan give the Brewers two young, controllable pitchers, something the team always targets, who happen to be lefties, which is an area they needed to bolster.
In Hamilton, the Brewers reunite with a player with which they are already familiar from when they drafted him in 2019 and add someone who fits their prototype: a solid defender with speed on the basepaths who can play multiple positions.
It was the players they traded that raised some eyebrows. Durbin, Seigler, and Monasterio accounted for Milwaukee’s entire third base depth chart. Even with Hamilton being added, the trade ravaged the Brewers’ infield depth.
Meanwhile, over in Houston you have a team in the Astros who are on the other side of the spectrum with more than enough infield depth. One of those extra pieces is 26-year-old Isaac Paredes.
Paredes was acquired from the Cubs prior to the 2024 season as part of a solution to backfill the roster after losing longtime infielder Alex Bregman. The plan originally worked, as he ultimately finished the season with an .809 OPS and 20 homers.
Unfortunately, his season would be cut short as a hamstring injury put him on the 60-day IL late in the year, limiting his campaign to 102 games. Houston’s season would be cut short as well when they missed the postseason for the first time since 2016.
Now, after playing a big part of Houston’s 2025 plans, Paredes could have his playing time cut. With Yordan Alvarez back at DH and Carlos Correa back on the team after last year’s trade deadline to play third, Paredes currently projects to come off the bench per RosterResource.
In an effort to return to the playoffs, the Astros may look to boost the pitching staff to a higher level. While 2025 AL Cy Young candidate Hunter Brown returns as ace, the unit took a big hit this offseason when Framber Valdez signed with the Tigers in free agency.
That leaves Houston with some questions behind Brown. Will Christian Javier improve after an average return from Tommy John last year? How will Tatsuya Imai look in his first MLB season? Which starters will step up at the back end of the rotation?
So, the Astros have extra infielders and a potential need in the starting rotation. The Brewers need infielders, particularly at third base, and have strong starting depth. Sure sounds like a match made in heaven.
The Brewers and Astros are Shaping Up to be Perfect Trade Partners
It’s been a while since the Brewers and Astros have connected on a major-league trade, having only made a couple minor deals since 2015. Of course, the big swap they made that year was a doozy.
At that year’s trade deadline, Houston acquired Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers in exchange for Josh Hader, Adrian Houser, Domingo Santana, and Brett Phillips. Some big parts of baseball history for both teams happened as a result of that deal.
It’s hard to imagine that any current trade between the two sides would have an impact of that magnitude. Regardless, even a lesser trade could help both teams out immensely.
For the Brewers, it appears that if they address any position, it will indeed be third base. While the team’s positional flexibility really could lead them to acquire a player to insert at any of the second base, third base, or shortstop positions and shift the rest of the infield roster around that move, that apparently won’t be the case.
According to Brewers manager Pat Murphy via Todd Rosiak of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the team plans to run back Joey Ortiz at shortstop and Brice Turang at second this spring, leaving the third base equation to be figured out as they go. They did sign Luis Rengifo on Friday, but that’s not the kind of move that will keep them from making another.
And the Astros might be happy to oblige. After making an outfielder swap of Jesus Sanchez for Joey Loperfido on Friday morning, GM Dana Brown says the team is “not done yet” with trades per Chandler Rome, Houston’s beat writer for The Athletic.
Even though Houston hasn’t specifically stated that they continue to target starting pitching, if anyone knows the value of having depth at the position, it’s them. The team used 15 starting pitchers in 2025 and start the year with Ronel Blanco and Hayden Wesneski recovering from Tommy John.
The Brewers understand that pain as well, which is exactly why they stockpiled starters for 2026. They used even more starting pitchers last year, having 17 pitchers toe the mound to kick off a game.
Of course, one has to look at the potential negatives to a trade as well. For the Brewers, it could be Paredes’ potential fit at a new home stadium in American Family Field. Paredes hit 20 bombs in 2025, but if all of his games were played in Milwaukee, that number would’ve been just 13 according to Baseball Savant.
Paredes is a notorious pull hitter, as all of his 92 career homers have been hit out to left, so it’s not exactly a problem that can be easily fixed. So the Brewers might question if he would provide enough offense to make a trade worth considering.
For the Astros, it could be the quality of pitcher they might acquire. With a chunk of the Brewers’ young pitchers potentially untouchable in their eyes, Houston might feel that it would make just as much sense to roll with what they have versus who they might actually receive via trade.
There are always pros and cons to consider in any trade, though, which is why front offices do so much pre-work before executing a deal. Still, it feels like there are too many pros to ignore when it comes to a possible Brewers-Astros swap.
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Matt Carroll is a writer for Just Baseball and former site expert at Reviewing the Brew. He studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently…