Did the Brewers Play it Too Safe at the Trade Deadline?

There’s no denying that the Milwaukee Brewers have been one of the best teams in Major League Baseball to this point in the season.

Fresh off the heels of their most impressive showing of the season, going into Truist Park and sweeping the Atlanta Braves in dominating fashion, the Brewers now hold the largest division lead among any division in Major League Baseball at 7.5 games.

Moreover, they have the second-best run differential in baseball at +106, and they’ve done it with a top-10 offense and a pitching staff that, as a whole, has been one of the best in the National League with an ERA of 3.74.

Still, there are questions as to whether the Brewers did enough to bolster their starting rotation to be considered legitimate World Series contenders.

While there is definitively some validity to the sense of hesitation to completely buy into the Brewers this season, Milwaukee’s pitching staff deserves their flowers for what they’ve been able to accomplish through the first 117 games of their 2024 campaign.

For example, not many people had high expectations for Colin Rea heading into Opening Day. Somewhat of a journeyman, Rea left Major League Baseball after several struggling seasons in 2022 and spent the year pitching in NPB. He made his way back to MLB in 2023, where he was a fine fifth starter in Milwaukee’s stacked rotation.

Flash forward to 2024, and he’s been one of, if not Milwaukee’s best starter this season. Across his 122.1 innings of work, he is pitching to the tune of a 3.38 ERA, which is the 8th-lowest in the National League, to go with a WHIP of 1.18 and an opponent batting average of .232, which are both in the top 15 in the NL as well.

Rea is far from the flashiest pitcher, but he simply knows how to make the right pitches at the right time, and he’s learned how to use the incredible defense behind him to generate outs.

Another example of a Brewers starter who has completely overperformed expectations is Tobias Myers, Milwaukee’s rookie who has burst onto the scene this year. Myers has bounced around to six different organizations since being drafted in the sixth round by the Baltimore Orioles back in 2016, failing to get any big league action until this year with Milwaukee in which he has seized the opportunity entirely.

Since June 1st, Myers has made 11 starts, pitching to a 1.75 ERA, which is the best mark in all of baseball over that stretch. On the year as a whole, Myers has a 2.79 ERA and a 1.08 WHIP, which is a level of production nobody could have anticipated heading into season. He now finds himself in a position to potentially get the ball in game two or three of a postseason series, should the Brewers be in that position.

Point being, strip away the names from the stats, and there’s potentially an entirely different sentiment around Milwaukee’s starting rotation and the sustainability of its level of production.

With that being said, there is great risk in relying upon that grouping of players come October. Postseason baseball is an entirely different beast, and the Brewers had an opportunity to bring in reinforcements to hedge against possible regression in their rotation.

While they did bring in a handful of arms, they aren’t the level of impact starters fans were hoping to see. They prioritized quantity over quality at this year’s trade deadline, and we’ll see how that ends up playing out for the Crew come October.

Brewers Trade Deadline Recap

For an organization that has one of, if not the deepest farm system in all of baseball, they had an opportunity to acquire a high-end starter or two in an effort to take them over the hump, but that’s not the avenue they took when all was said and done.

Now, they did make some moves, and the trades that they did make will surly help them in their pursuit for a second-straight division title.

Back on July 3, the Brewers acquired Aaron Civale from the Tampa Bay Rays, and while the move didn’t happen at the trade deadline, it is still a noteworthy transaction that is worth mentioning.

However, Civale has yet to really settle in with Milwaukee. In his six starts with the Brewers, Civale is pitching to a 4.88 ERA with a FIP of 5.48 and a WHIP of 1.44. He’s been touched up a bit in several of his outings, including a recent one against the Washington Nationals in which he allowed seven hits and five runs in just four innings of work.

To his credit, he followed that up with 6.1 innings of two-run ball against the Cincinnati Reds at home.

As it currently stands, Civale could be out of the picture when it comes to Milwaukee’s potential postseason rotation.

Acquired RHP Nick Mears from the Colorado Rockies

The Brewers added some depth to their bullpen at the deadline, acquiring reliever Nick Mears from the Colorado Rockies in exchange for right-handed pitching prospects Bradley Blalock and Yujanyer Herrera.

Both Blalock and Herrera were considered to be fringe-to-back-end top-30 prospects within the Brewers’ organization, but the Brewers were able to turn the two arms into a controllable reliever with a very encouraging player profile.

The 27-year-old is under contract until 2028, and it’s easy to see why the Brewers were so intrigued. On the surface level, it hasn’t been a great season for Mears, as he was sporting an ERA of 5.56 with a WHIP of 1.50 with the Colorado Rockies prior to being traded to Milwaukee. However, his expected ERA of 3.11 and FIP of 2.98 suggest that there’s more to like than his ballooned ERA would suggest.

Sitting in the mid-to-upper 90’s with his fastball, Mears generates great extension on his four-seam and has great strikeout material. He’s sporting a whiff rate of 27.2% to go with a zone contact rate of just 79.9%, and in turn he has a career-high strikeout rate of 28.8%.

Mears’ impressive Stuff+ metrics, per FanGraphs, are a testament to how good his pitches have performed this season. His four-seam has a Stuff+ of 140 on the year, and his two secondary pitches – a slider and curveball -have a rating of 111 and 125, respectively.

His arsenal can be extremely effective when he’s commanding his pitches, but overall control has been his shortcoming throughout his young major league career (12.5% career walk rate).

Still, not only does he have impressive wipeout stuff, but his quality of contact metrics are equally as encouraging. He’s in the 93rd percentile, according to Baseball Savant, in hard-hit rate at 31.2%. Likewise, he’s well-above average in average exit velocity (87.9 mph), and he’s sporting a barrel rate under six percent on the year.

Under team control for three more seasons after this, Mears has the potential to be an important piece of this bullpen moving forward.

Acquired RHP Frankie Montas from the Cincinnati Reds

The Brewers were in the running for some of the top names on the market, such as an Erick Fedde or Jack Flaherty, but their only addition at the deadline was a step down from those two names in terms of impact on the mound.

The Brewers brought in Frankie Montas from the Cincinnati Reds in exchange for righty Jakob Junis and outfielder Joey Wiemer. Overall, while the trade really does feel like a win-win for both sides, it fails to move the needle for Milwaukee’s starting rotation.

Montas, 31, has a mutual option for $20MM next season. It’s likely the Brewers will decline their portion of the option, making him a rental addition for the Brewers this season.

Montas was pitching to an ERA just over five to go with a WHIP of 1.44 in 19 starts with the Reds this season prior to coming over to Milwaukee. While his expected metrics were a bit more optimistic (4.66 xERA, 4.91 FIP, 4.61 xFIP, 4.68 SIERA), he’s far from being the impact starter he once was with the Oakland A’s a few years back.

However, the Brewers brought him in to fill innings at the back of the rotation to get them to the postseason, and that he is capable of doing, even if he’s not lighting up the box score.

It wasn’t a poor acquisition by any stretch, but Brewers fans were expecting more from the front office. They were expecting the Crew to go out and bring in a starter who can have an immediate impact at the top of their starting rotation.

Instead, their two additions of Montas and Aaron Civale might not even factor into their postseason rotation at the end of the regular season.

Brewers Trade Deadline: Was it Enough?

The Milwaukee Brewers added pitching depth, but how impactful will those additions be to increasing their chances at making postseason run? That remains a point of contention.

The Brewers continue to be a fascinating team to monitor this season. It’s hard to deny the level of success they’ve been able to sustain this season, and they deserve an enormous amount of credit for that feat.

And yet, there’s still hesitation when it comes to predicting a deep postseason run for Milwaukee, and it doesn’t feel as if the moves they made at the deadline did anything to minimize those concerns.

Milwaukee has once again leaned into the same general philosophy that they’ve embodied for the past handful of seasons; make it through the regular season, and see what happens after that.

And while it certainly has led to plenty of winning and competitive seasons, it has yet to yield them any postseason results.

Since losing in game seven of the NLCS to the Los Angeles Dodgers back in 2018, the Brewers are 1-8 in their last nine postseason games. They’re fresh off a season in which they won 92 games and had plenty of buzz heading into the playoffs a year ago, only to get swept at home by the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League Wild Card Series.

For a team that failed to get over the hump with a three-headed monster at the top of their rotation that included All-Stars Corbin Burnes, Brandon Woodruff, and Freddy Peralta, it’s hard to push back on the feeling of resistance to buy into this ballclub when their potential second an third starters in a postseason series – Colin Rea and Tobias Myers – have yet to throw a single pitch in the playoffs.

All in all, the Brewers made some fine additions by bringing in a couple of veteran starters and an enticing bullpen arm to help them defend their division crown. However, the trades don’t move the needle when it comes to their postseason outlook, and that’s where much of the disappointment stems from when looking back at their 2024 trade deadline actions.