Brewers Deal for Short-Term Relief, Long-Term Catching in Deadline Deal With Guardians

[Jack Stern]

Image courtesy of Ken Blaze-Imagn Images

The Brewers began their trade deadline activity on Saturday morning with a four-player deal with the Guardians. Reliever Craig Yoho and outfielder Blake Perkins went to Cleveland, while catcher Bo Naylor and reliever Codi Heuer joined Milwaukee.

In optioning both Naylor and Heuer to Triple-A Nashville, the Brewers reinforced that the deal is (for now) a swap of peripheral players. None of the four had clear roles in their former organizations, but each may be more appreciated by their new teams.

Naylor is the most notable piece coming back. The Guardians' first-round pick in 2018, he enjoyed a productive rookie year, hitting .237/.339/.470 (123 wRC+) in 67 games. He didn't make much loud contact, though, and his approach of catching fastballs out in front to pull them in the air left him vulnerable against secondary pitches. Those aspects of his profile quickly caught up to him, and he's hit just .192/.266/.351 (74 wRC+) since the start of 2024.

Patrick Bailey, Austin Hedges, and David Fry all surpassed Naylor on Cleveland's catching depth chart, but he has a clearer path to playing time in Milwaukee. Reports have been mixed on whether the Brewers are shopping incumbent backup catcher Gary Sánchez, but if he's dealt in the next 50 hours or so, Naylor could take his place. Even if Sánchez stays, he'll be a free agent after this season, and William Contreras will hit the open market after 2027.

Once that catching core thins, Naylor could be ahead of Jeferson Quero as the next man up. Quero was an excellent defensive catcher with a promising bat, but his development was stalled by a shoulder injury two years ago, and Will Sammon and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic report that the reason why he's been exclusively a DH since June 28 is a biceps injury.

Even if Quero rounds into better form on both offense and defense, Naylor could have more upside, particularly at the plate. Despite his subpar hard-hit rate in the big leagues, he was scouted with above-average raw power. The Brewers diverge from much of baseball in emphasizing deep contact and an all-fields approach over pulling the ball in the air, so they could make Naylor's bat more consistent and tap into some doubles power with a more balanced approach.

In any case, Naylor looks like a potential supporting piece for the stretch run, then a more important long-term piece if things go according to plan. The 26-year-old is controlled through 2030 and is first-time arbitration-eligible this winter, but the Brewers could push that back one more year if he remains in Triple-A for the rest of the season. He's more likely to help than Perkins, whose defense in center field and left-handed swing cratered after he fractured his shin last spring.

It's the opposite tradeoff in swapping Yoho for Heuer, as the former is a rookie reliever with enticing stuff, while the latter is a non-tender candidate in a few months. After the Brewers selected him in the eighth round of the 2023 draft, Yoho skyrocketed through the minor leagues with an arsenal of elite east-west movement and debuted last season. The writing was on the wall for his time in Milwaukee, though, as the big-league coaching staff remained reluctant to trust him over concerns about his control and whether his stuff could deceive more disciplined hitters.

The Brewers will replace him with Heuer, who owns a passable career 3.76 ERA, 3.97 FIP, and 4.20 SIERA but has spent most of the season with Triple-A Columbus. As a 30-year-old journeyman, he lacks Yoho's upside, but the Brewers probably believe his arsenal gives him a higher floor as a middle reliever they can shuttle between Nashville and Milwaukee.

Like Yoho, Heuer throws from a low right-handed slot and naturally pronates when he releases the baseball, giving him a solid fastball-changeup combination. The difference is that he has less raw movement and a tighter velocity spread. His mid-90s fastball runs less than Yoho's, his changeup has less downward movement and is 8 mph faster on average, and his short gyro slider is more useful than the big 77-mph curveball Yoho could not control.

The Brewers' top assignment for Yoho was to throw more strikes. They also felt hitters could pick up his changeup too early because of its low velocity and big movement, prompting Pat Murphy to say last month that it was "not a swing-and-miss" pitch, even though Yoho has gotten whiffs on 33.1% of changeup swings in his limited big-league career.

With shorter shapes and closer velocity across his pitches, Heuer may be better-equipped right now to throw strikes and make his pitches look similar to each other out of his hand. According to the tunneling metrics at Baseball Prospectus, batters have an 82.4% chance of correctly identifying Yoho's changeup by the time they must decide to swing or take, and a 69.5% chance of identifying his sinker. For Heuer's changeup and four-seamer, those chances are 56% and 78.7%, respectively.

Even though those pitches have less actual movement, their perceived depth to the hitter is similar to Yoho. Standing 6-foot-5, Heuer is three inches taller than Yoho and throws from a slightly higher slot. His pitches move downward less, but because he's throwing them from a higher release, they approach home plate at more of a downward angle.

Vertical approach angle looks at both movement and where the pitcher releases the ball, making it a great metric for measuring how much carry or drop a pitch appears to have to a hitter. Vertically, Heuer's stuff looks strikingly similar to Yoho's. His secondaries have actually gotten more swings and misses, both this season (the table below) and for their careers.

Yoho, meanwhile, could be a better fit with the Guardians, who throw significantly fewer fastballs (57.9% as a team) than the Brewers (67.3%, once again the highest rate in baseball). Even if he pans out as a high-leverage arm in Cleveland, the Brewers would only lose so much future value in giving up on a talented one-inning reliever. It's fair to question whether they truly gave Yoho's skill set a fair opportunity and shipped him out too quickly for what they believe is the better short-term version of him.

For now, though, the Brewers have probably made their bullpen slightly better today and their catching mix slightly better in the future. More moves are almost certainly coming as the trade deadline nears.

View full article

[Local Man Brewer Fan]

As it appears unlikely that the 2 catchers on the current roster will still be Brewers in 18 months, it makes good sense to trade for a player they might be able to develop into a quality backup. And their track record of being able to maximize value from pitchers always leaves me with some optimism. I am not sure this has anything to do with the immediate push for the WS, but an opportunity to round out the roster for more complete position coverage for the next couple of years seems like a reasonable gamble.