How Production From The Gary Sanchez Signing Could Indicate A Future Willy Adames Trade

Player acquisition is about winning each plate appearance, not about filling positions.  
November through February is the initial asset development phase for the 2024 Brewers team. Over this period, the goal is to compile the assets necessary to maximize production through approximately 6,100 separate plate appearances by the Brewers and their opponents during the season. 

The Brewers, especially this offseason, are generally not looking at players from a starter-nonstarter perspective or even totally from a left-right platoon perspective; instead, they are looking at this from the perspective that each additional asset provides a greater likelihood of a positive outcome during each plate appearance by the offense or defense than if it wasn’t made.    

Adding Sanchez to take bats as the designated hitter means greater depth in the outfield, as those outfielders won’t consume DH plate appearances. The young outfielder producing positive outcomes less often will get fewer at-bats in this mix.  Each acquisition has ramifications at other positions.  In this case, the overall potential for positive outcomes will be improved at the DH and two outfield positions. 

An offseason is a sequence of related events.  
Each season should be addressed through a continual improvement strategy during which the team adds assets that improve the likelihood of positive outcomes during each plate appearance. 

Why did the Brewers sign Eric Haase, Jake Bauers, and then Rhys Hoskins and Gary Sanchez to play the same positions? It's because an offseason isn’t a single event like some fantasy baseball league draft day. It is a string of chronological events. When they signed Haase and Bauers, the Brewers didn’t know that they would be able to sign Hoskins and Sanchez later. Haase and Bauers were efficient signings to improve the roster at that moment. 

Could they have offered more at the moment and signed Hoskins and Sanchez? Maybe, but unlikely, both players probably wanted to see how their market played out. If the Brewers did want to sign them in December, it likely would have cost more than signing them later in the winter. That cost would have been more than the sunk cost in Haase and Bauers. And if the Brewers are lucky, they can slide Haase and Bauers through to provide depth waiting in the minors. 

Replacing the outcome of players who leave doesn’t have to come solely from that player's position on the field.  
There are a variety of ways to replace a loss of production. It could be from directly replacing that player or, more likely, it is through adjusting the mix of production on the whole team. 

The Brewers traded Corbin Burnes and realized they could not replace that output with a single player. Instead, they are leaning into a different pitching philosophy, focusing on using a variety of pitchers to cover multiple innings for several games. And they are coupling this with better offensive production, signing Hoskins to provide as many winnable games as they got from Burnes in 2023.   

By signing Sanchez, the Brewers have prepared to trade Willy Adames. Whether that happens this week or at the trade deadline, the Brewers likely feel they have the players to replace his production. The addition of Joey Ortiz in the Burnes trade gives them a major-league-ready shortstop with a defensive skill set that is ranked very highly. 

Offensively, Gary Sanchez (.482 slugging and .780 OPS in 2023) is a slight upgrade over Willy Adames (.407 slugging and .717 OPS in 2023). Sanchez will likely not reach Adames’ 638 plate appearances as the DH and backup catcher. But with even 500 plate appearances and playing most of his games in Milwaukee, Sanchez should eclipse Adames’ 24 home runs on the season. 

This doesn’t mean that Willy Adames will be traded, but signing Sanchez preemptively fills a potential hole in the lineup if Adames is traded.