Brewers Close to Getting Back Four Key Players--and Making Some Tough Decisions

In addition to Joe Ross (who was already there) and Devin Williams (transferred there from High-A Wisconsin), the Brewers sent Jared Koenig and Gary Sánchez on rehab assignments to Triple-A Nashville this weekend. It's possible that all four of those players will return to the team at or before the end of the month. Williams is the biggest name, of course, and could be the biggest difference-maker in the mix, but Pat Murphy confirmed Saturday that the team still wants Ross as a fixture in the starting rotation.

No matter who pitches where or for how long, the team has some huge and fascinating roster decisions to make in the coming days. Presumably, they will further add to a team that is well-positioned to reach the postseason and has earned a chance to get there with some momentum and a real opportunity to reach the World Series. If they do, though, they'll be stuffing more talent into a vessel already packed pretty tightly, and there will be some good players lost if more are to be gained.

The bullpen has pitchers (Joel Kuhnel and Rob Zastryzny) who were never meant to be long-term fixtures, and right now, there are only four players (Freddy Peralta, Aaron Civale, Colin Rea, and Tobias Myers) written into the team's starting rotation in front of Ross. The tricky part is figuring out who the third pitcher off the current roster would be. Kuhnel can be optioned to Nashville, and Zastryzny would be an unsurprising designee for assignment. Right now, though, both Ross and Williams are on the 60-day injured list, so whenever they're reinstated, the team will need to create two 40-man roster spots, not just one.

They also face the problem of needing to create a third 26-man roster spot, but having most of their lower-leverage bullpen arms (Jakob Junis, Joel Payamps, Bryse Wilson) be out of options. We might see Elvis Peguero optioned to Nashville, and with Williams, Trevor Megill, and Bryan Hudson as the main trio of high-leverage workers, that could be fine, but again, any further external upgrades would mean expelling someone else.

These are all good problems to have, and given the nature of injuries and this team's luck this season, they might not even have the pleasure of needing to solve them. Right now, Murphy and company are happy to be staring down a potential surplus of valuable players, rather than scrambling to cover a deficit. At the trade deadline, though, they could be looking to move some players currently on the 40-man roster (or even the active one) to create space for new and returning faces.

To imagine such a move, we don't have to look farther than the opposing dugout in their first game out of the break. The Twins need pitching help, having had less depth than the Brewers when the year began and not much better luck than the Brewers have had at keeping key contributors healthy. Peguero is not at all the Twins' type of reliever, but Ross is very much their flavor of back-end starter, and with Chris Paddack hitting the injured list as the team reconvened after the layoff, they need just such a player. Ideally, from Minnesota's perspective, they would land someone with more upside than Ross--perhaps the kind of hurler who would push third starter Bailey Ober down to fourth on the depth chart. But the Twins' ownership has myopically slashed payroll this season, and looks unlikely to veer back in the other direction either at the deadline or this winter.

That means that the team needs cheap help, with equal emphasis on the two words of that phrase. The Brewers could be in position to provide it. Ross was a bargain-basement addition for them this winter, and Koenig is a late-blooming journeyman on a league-minimum salary. Either would be a fit for the Twins' greatest needs (starting depth and a southpaw for the bullpen), and neither would tax their tight budget.

The Brewers probably wouldn't get immediate help in return for either player, but if the front office adjudges that they can improve the roster most by prioritizing external options or retaining a given player, then whoever doesn't fit onto the crunched roster (be it Ross, Koenig, Sánchez, Eric Haase, Payamps, or someone else) has to be moved. The good news is, they each have enough value to bring back something, even if it be only depth for a farm system that always has to be strong for the Brewers to maintain their impressively consistent competitive streak.

We saw a version of this move last summer, when Milwaukee got Bradley Blalock for Luis Urías and Evan McKendry for Alex Jackson in a pair of swaps with AL East teams. It's a thrilling testament to the depth of the organization that they might be in position to make another couple of depth-conserving, talent-consolidating moves at this deadline.