Opportunistic at Trade Deadline, Brewers Added on Margins While Doubling Down on What They Have

[Jack Stern]

Image courtesy of © Dave Kallmann / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The 2025 MLB trade deadline has come and gone. Amid a flurry of activity throughout the league, the Brewers, owners of baseball’s best record at 64-44, emerged from deadline week with veteran backup catcher Danny Jansen, reliever Shelby Miller, an injured Jordon Montgomery, and speedy 28-year-old outfielder Brandon Lockridge. They parted with starter Nestor Cortes, infield prospects Jadher Areinamo and Jorge Quintana, cash, and potentially a player to be named.

The Brewers are slightly better now than they were at the start of the week, with no hits to their long-term outlook. By those measures, they had a respectable deadline. It’s also worth remembering that in-season swaps made weeks before the deadline still count and have been among their most successful moves. Willy Adames, Rowdy Tellez, and Aaron Civale all became integral contributors to past rosters, as have Quinn Priester and Andrew Vaughn this year.

A modestly active deadline was unsurprising and even justifiable. The Brewers can credit their stinginess for helping them remain contenders every year. Maintaining prospect depth and avoiding serious long-term financial commitments has made it easier to replace struggling, injured, or departing players. It also affords them the flexibility to retool the roster in-season when things aren’t working, a trick they pulled off successfully this year at third base and throughout the pitching staff. When they do splurge, it’s for controllable talent like Priester.

The asking prices at this year’s deadline were mostly incompatible with Matt Arnold’s established approach. That’s what makes the Miller dea—taking on some of Montgomery’s salary to avoid paying with prospects—a creative and laudable solution to the roadblocks the club faced in supplementing their colledtion of high-leverage relievers. Still, it feels as though the Brewers could have done more. While Jansen fortifies the catching depth behind William Contreras and has some untapped power, the light-hitting Lockridge’s baserunning and defense feel redundant on a scrappy roster that could have used reinforcements in other areas.

Hitting home runs is the best way to hedge against playoff randomness, but the Brewers do not hit nearly enough of them. They still rank 27th in isolated power and 23rd in homers. Even in a hot July, they remained below average in the power department. In a potential playoff series, the viability of their singles-and-steals offense remains heavily at the whims of batted-ball luck and defensive faux pas by opponents.

The infield depth has been tenuous all year. Joey Ortiz has the third-worst wRC+ among qualified hitters, and an injury in the infield would press Andruw Monasterio or an unproven Anthony Seigler into a starting role. Oliver Dunn and Tyler Black are the next men up in Nashville.

Milwaukee made no serious upgrades in those areas, though. Instead, they’ve doubled down on their incumbent players, the brand of baseball they play, and their approach to building a roster, believing their established formula will get them to October and win postseason games. Perhaps it will.

As badly as he has struggled, the front office remains high on Ortiz’s skill set and his glove at shortstop, even as defensive metrics have given him mixed reviews. There wasn’t much of a shortstop market, either, with only Carlos Correa moving to Houston, the lone team for which he would waive his no-trade clause—and Correa made a permanent move to third base, as part of that trade.

Speaking of the hot corner, average offense and excellent defense have Caleb Durbin on pace for 4.2 bWAR over a 162-game span. Seigler’s at-bats in a small sample have been much better than his .185/.233/.185 slash line suggests; he’s made respectable contact while rarely whiffing or chasing, which translates to an above-average .349 xwOBA and 104 DRC+.

In the power department, a red-hot Vaughn has slugged 5 home runs in 16 games since his promotion from Triple-A Nashville, anchoring the middle of the order with some thump. He won’t remain that dominant, but perhaps the Brewers have bought into sustainable improvement from him and Contreras as in-house solutions to their slugging woes.

Given the returns on the pitching market, it seemed the Brewers could capitalize on their stable of MLB-caliber starters. Instead, knowing from recent experience how quickly that depth can dry up, they dealt only Cortes (for an underwhelming return) and kept their remaining starters. 

It was a reasonable strategy, but whether it was the best one for this year’s team and trade market is debatable. The Brewers seem to think it was, and they’re about to learn if they were correct.

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[Sugarrayray]

Great summation of this process.

The only thing that genuinely confuses the heck out of me is - why did the Brewers have to give up Jorge Quintana to “give” the Padres a viable starting pitching candidate. Unlike taking on Montgomery, Cortes could possibly help the Padres. I feel like Jorge Quintana could be worth more than Lockridge alone.

[Brian]

I was wishing for a better backup SS:  In case Ortiz go's down or hitting disappears completely. 

[gregmag]

Very sound analysis. I like the pitching situation. I don’t get Lockridge. I wish they had upgraded the infield depth. I strongly assume they know what they’re doing.

[long ball]

This deadline stunk. 

I'm content with the players we added in Shelby Miller and Danny Jansen. It's not sexy, but I think both players are useful. I wanted them to do more, but I understand that's not really the way the club has operated.

 

The part I'm not content with is trading away Cortes. I like Cortes a lot and I think he will perform well for the Padres the rest of the way. I expect he will out perform Quintana the rest of the way as well. As Jack previously reported, the Brewers weren't interested in moving to a 6 man rotation, but even still I think there were useful ways to deploy Cortes due to the need to limit the usage of Woodruff and Misiorowski.

 

What exacerbates the annoyance of moving Cortes is that it appears like we salary dumped him. I know we sent some cash to SD as well, but my guess is the money we sent SD was minimal and the additional salary we took on from AZ about equals out to dumping Cortes. I am making this assumption because we attached a prospect to Cortes and the player we got back and I'm not sold that Lockridge really offers anything that Avans and Cameron can't do for us in the event we need a fill in 5th outfielder.

[Joseph Zarr]

Great summation, Jack. 

My only concern, and maybe you can clarify this with your clubhouse access, is this solely a cash exchange whereby the Brewers take on $2 Million in Montgomery's salary owes or is there actually a serious PTBNL stipulation embedded in the contract language? I personally realllllly don't want a random late season Handelfry Encarnacion like player headed to Arizona. Not after we all randomly experienced the loss of one RHP John Holobetz late in the Priester trade.

It would be helpful to know the actual likelihood.

[wntrtxn21]

I was really bummed that Arnold did nothing to upgrade the infield depth. If anyone goes down all they have is Monasterio (.184/55 OPS+) and Zeigler (.185/21 OPS+).  Arnold had plenty of opportunities and the prospect depth to do it. I understand doing next to nothing to upgrade the lineup, but getting bench depth was doable. 

[izzi]

They traded the wrong veteran pitcher. Watch tonight to see the guy they should've traded

[ghostdrew]

Any thoughts resigning Jordan Montgomery in the off-season cheap option no risk vet if all goes good with rehab and a nugget I found was siegler  Durbin and lockridge  all played together in 2023 with the Yankees.

[Brewfan70]

Definitely a bummer of a day yesterday. We all have seen our past prospects like Lewis Brinson and others. No reason not to have taken a chance this year. Murphy can’t work wonders forever. Also, I feel a bit lied to from Mark A on the broadcast last week. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice… guess I should have known better 

[Team Canada]

3 hours ago, ghostdrew said:

Any thoughts resigning Jordan Montgomery in the off-season cheap option no risk vet if all goes good with rehab and a nugget I found was siegler  Durbin and lockridge  all played together in 2023 with the Yankees.

Some punctuation would make it easier to parse what you're saying.

[CheeseheadInQC]

I wonder if the apparent velo drop in Cortes’ rehab starts explains some of that deal. Everyone saw Quintana as the throw-in, but if the Brewers were going to DFA Cortes anyway, maybe it was Lockridge for Quintana with Cortes as the throw-in.

[ghostdrew]

7 minutes ago, Team Canada said:

Some punctuation would make it easier to parse what you're saying.

Sure thing but do you have a thought on my statement.