A New Opportunity Has Arisen for the Brewers to Get Better, and They Might Take It

What the San Francisco Giants did to J.D. Davis is unfair, and they might not be done hearing about it or paying for it. After the Giants signed (first) Jorge Soler and (recently) Matt Chapman this offseason, they were left without room for Davis, a third baseman and DH slated to make $6.9 million after winning an arbitration case this winter. They tried to trade him, but found no takers that would save them enough money to justify the move. Instead, they tried to avail themselves of a loophole for arbitration-adjudicated salaries under the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the league and the MLB Players Association (MLBPA), and released Davis. In theory, that saves them the lion's share of the award Davis earned, because they released him more than 15 days before Opening Day.

As was deftly covered at MLB Trade Rumors, it's not quite that simple. The CBA sets a clear standard for when that clause can be used, and Davis's circumstance doesn't appear to meet it. A grievance that might get Davis significant restitution should be in our future. That's unlikely to be resolved in short order, though, and it wouldn't change the new, essential fact of the matter: Davis is now a free agent.

The Brewers have thrived for the last several years (and showed themselves to be especially savvy this winter) by being willing to change directions quickly and aggressively. They don't overcommit themselves to a single plan; they adapt and react. Thus, while they seem to have spent right up to the budget mark set by owner Mark Attanasio for this season, they might just be able to create some room for Davis, who would be an awfully strong addition to their lineup at the position (third base) where they have, perhaps, the least clarity right now.

That's because of another (mostly) unexpected development that has tilted the picture in the NL West this spring. Coming into camp, the Los Angeles Dodgers expected to play Gavin Lux at shortstop this year, with Mookie Betts as his partner on the double-play pivot. A fortnight into the Cactus League season, that plan is kaput. Lux showed insufficient arm strength for short, and then some signs of the yips even after switching sides with Betts and becoming a second baseman. He's fast working his way out of the picture for the Dodgers altogether.

You can see where this is going, by now. The Dodgers, the unexpectedly semi-desperate team of destiny, need a shortstop. The Brewers have one, and if they want to pursue Davis in free agency, they need to clear some money from their books. What if the Brewers traded Willy Adames for Dodgers pitching prospect Kyle Hurt, then slated Joey Ortiz and Brice Turang for shortstop and signed Davis to play third?

If Hurt's name doesn't ring a bell, it's because the Dodgers are overflowing with such pitching talent that he just hasn't managed to escape the enforced anonymity of being merely good on a team full of all-timers. It's not a perfect comp, but you can sort of think of Hurt as a right-handed DL Hall. He was a fifth-round pick in the COVID-truncated 2020 MLB Draft, by the Marlins, but was traded to the Dodgers before he threw his first professional pitch. He put up some ugly overall numbers in the LA system in 2021 and 2022, but maintained high strikeout rates, and in 2023, he was just plain good. At the highest levels of the minors, he piled up 152 strikeouts over 92 innings of work, and he had an impressive MLB debut late in the season.

Hurt is big, and he throws hard. He lacks the fastball command you want to see from a starter most of the time, but (like Hall) he has both of the traditional flavors of breaking ball and a downright nasty changeup. The latter, like Hall's, is one of the best cambios among all pitching prospects right now. Long-term, it's hard to say whether Hurt will be a starter or reliever, but he's definitely a multi-inning weapon, and he's MLB-ready. Already coming up on his 26th birthday, he'd better be. Like Hall, he's an electric arm available only because he's taken such a long time (chronologically) to find a foothold in the majors and because it's not fully clear what role he'll fill in the long run.

The Dodgers don't need Hurt as badly as most teams would need a pitcher with such upside. Trading him for an impact player at a position of need is a luxury, but one the Dodgers can afford. To be sure, for his part, Hurt would be an exciting addition to an already imposing Brewers pitching staff. The question is whether the benefits would justify the costs.

That's a trickier thing to assess. In one sense, Adames is a player with just one season of team control left, playing on an eight-figure salary for 2024. At Baseball Prospectus, the PECOTA projection system forecasts a 103 DRC+ for Adames (three percent better than league-average production), but it projects Davis for a 99 mark that is within the margin of error. At FanGraphs, ZiPS projects Adames for a 112 wRC+, and Davis for a 107. They're very comparable hitters, and the Brewers would get a high-end pitcher with six years of team control in the process of a likely cash-neutral, short-term value-neutral swap. On the field, it makes a world of sense.

Off the field, it gets harder to justify. Adames is very important to this team's fabric. He's a leader and a beloved figure. Though Davis has a solid reputation as a clubhouse citizen in his own right, bringing him in on the eve of the season wouldn't lend itself to any kind of leadership role for him. This maneuver would have uneasy echoes of the 2022 trade deadline. It needn't automatically play out the same way, but that's the pitfall the team would need a rock-solid plan to avoid if they went forward with such a radical solution.

I think it's a worthwhile risk, on balance. The Dodgers are the team most likely to pay a handsome price for Adames, be it now or in July. By doing it now, the Brewers could rip that Band-Aid off sooner, letting the scab form and life return to normal by mid-April, with the new era of Ortiz at shortstop underway and a very dangerous lineup in place. It's unlikely that Matt Arnold would trade Adames for Hurt alone, but a far-off secondary piece should balance the scales well. Adames has, inevitably, less trade value than Corbin Burnes, but getting a good analog of Hall (and the ability to sign Davis and play Ortiz right away at his best position) in exchange for him would come close to matching the value the team got for Burnes.

A lot of things have to happen for this to go from idea to reality. The Brewers have to slightly prefer sustainability and long-term competitiveness to 2024 World Series odds, but they also have to believe Hurt is a difference-making hurler for their versatile mix, and therefore a booster to those odds. They have to persuade Davis to sign with them, though that should be doable, because the team is fast developing a reputation for treating players in tough situations with respect. Witness their release of Austin Nola to pursue a big-league opportunity after they signed Gary Sánchez last month.

The final thing is selling the Dodgers on giving up Hurt, who ranks 86th on FanGraphs's Top 100 prospect list and is one of the half-dozen best prospects in their excellent farm system, to acquire a one-year solution at shortstop. That should be feasible, too. The big challenge here is doing all of these things in a very short time window, while keeping Pat Murphy in the loop so that he can effectively manage the clubhouse and keep unwanted intangible effects from canceling the tangible benefits of this twinned move. Is it likely that the team does this? Of course not. The odds are always stacked against this kind of complicated series of transactions. If they can pull it off, though, the Brewers might be in a better position to both make a deep run this October and keep getting bites at the apple thereafter.

What do you think of this proposal? Would you try it? Do you worry about the on-field ramifications of it, or only about the potential havoc within the clubhouse? Let's discuss, while we wait to see what becomes of Davis and of the Dodgers' unfortunate middle-infield dilemma.