Four Popular Brewers Trade Deadline Targets, According To Fans

We recently asked our (smart, cultured, good-looking) forum community about which trade targets they'd like the Brewers to pursue at the deadline. After many users chimed in with their opinions, here are the players who received the most mentions.

The top of the list isn't a surprise, but some of the expected names were not mentioned frequently by Brewer Fanatic users.

Tarik Skubal, LHP, Detroit Tigers - 11 Mentions

To say pitchers this dominant rarely become available at the deadline would be an understatement served two ways. First, pitchers this dominant essentially never become available at the deadline, because second, pitchers hardly ever reach this level of sustained dominance at all anymore. Skubal is defending two straight American League Cy Young Awards, and while the bone chips in his elbow that forced him to have a fancy new surgery will probably prevent him from winning a third in a row, he’s still one of the top five pitchers in the sport at the moment. A massive lefty, he overpowers hitters with two different fastballs (four-seamer and sinker) that flirt with 100 miles per hour and two elite secondary offerings, in his slider and changeup. He even mixes in the occasional curveball to keep you honest and make sure you’re late when the heater comes back around. The stuff is augmented by elite control; he’s stingier about free passes than any other starter in the league. In short, he’s an old-fashioned ace, and no player can match the impact he could have for someone come October. That ‘someone’ probably won’t be the Tigers, though. They can’t get more than two steps forward without taking two steps back this year, even since Skubal’s return, and it would take incredible fortitude (bordering on insanity) for Scott Harris to hold onto Skubal amid a lost season and risk having him leave via free agency, for nothing but small-time draft pick compensation.

Joe Ryan, RHP, Minnesota Twins - 9 Mentions

There’s no actual evidence that starting pitching becomes more important in the postseason than it is for the rest of the year, but that doesn’t stop teams from pining for starters who clear a certain bar for reliability and bat-missing capability. When he’s right, Ryan is that kind of starter. He’s tracking toward what would be his second straight All-Star appearance, and despite a minor elbow scare in early May, he’s taken the ball every turn through the rotation. He doesn’t throw as hard as many of the game’s elite starters, but he has two fastball shapes, multiple breaking balls, and sometimes a splitter that can devastate lefties. He’s always racked up great strikeout rates with his wide arsenal’s disparate movement, and he’s so good at inducing chases that he rarely walks people. So far this year, he’s also toned down what was his bugaboo in the past: giving up too many homers. It hasn’t been enough to truly keep the rebuilding-on-the-go Twins afloat, though, and everyone involved knows the team would prefer to maximize the value they get from him by trading him this summer, rather than waiting until the winter (when teams will cough up much less) or next summer (by which point they’ll have had to pay him another several million dollars). Ryan’s career has followed an unfortunate pattern whereby he often peters out a bit in the second half, but if he holds up well through the All-Star break, he’ll be one of the hottest names on the rumor mill on the other side of it.

Adrian Morejon, LHP, San Diego Padres - 8 Mentions

Morejón is a classic rental; a one-year, $3.9 million deal in his final arbitration year, free agency looming this winter, and the under-the-hood numbers say he's better than his surface line. His 3.33 ERA comes with a 2.55 xERA, a 27.6 K% against a 5.9 BB%, and a career-best 34.6% whiff rate. The contact quality is elite: a 2.1% barrel rate, .249 xwOBA, and a 62.1% ground-ball rate, with his sinker now averaging 99.4 mph — up nearly two ticks from last year. Cheap, left-handed, and expiring, he's an obvious deadline chip.

Clay Holmes, RHP, New York Mets - 5 Mentions

Contractually, Holmes is a de facto rental: the three-year, $38 million deal he signed in December 2024 carries an opt-out after this season and a $12 million player option for 2027, and he's likely to exercise the opt-out since he can beat one year and $12 million on the open market. He holds a career 3.53 ERA across 555.2 innings with a 22.4 K% and a 9.9 BB%, plus a career .297 xwOBA that sits nearly on top of his .289 actual wOBA. Holmes has historically been a worm-killer: a 62.1% career ground-ball rate, a 5.0% barrel rate, and a 48.2% topped-contact rate, all built on a sinker he's thrown at least half the time nearly everywhere he's pitched. He's currently on a rehab assignment from the fractured fibula he suffered in May, so any acquiring team is betting on the track record, as he won't have enough time on an MLB mound to reassert himself.

Who do you want to see the Brewers acquire by the August 3rd trade deadline? Drop a comment and let us know!

View our top trade candidates list, up to nearly 70 names and updated regularly!