Too Many Starting Pitchers: Which Of Nestor Cortes & Aaron Civale Should The Brewers Trade?

Agree. The quantity of starters is high, and several in the minors too.

But, unless this is a “soft” retool year which this trade argues against, then they need the quality.

Last year it was Peralta, Rea and Myers (and Gasser for a few starts) who covered the quality innings until Civale arrived. But with Rea gone, Myers no longer a rookie and unknown entity where regression can occur, Gasser in the shelf. That leaves Hall (ineffective as a starter last year). Woodruff (coming back from serious injury) as the other MLB starters. Sure Miz, Henderson or Patrick could be a quality starter, or Ashby or another arm could cover starts.  But by keeping Peralta, Cortes and Civale at the top of the rotation you have some quality innings on a consistent basis.

Civale or Cortes are sure fire candidates for a trade deadline deal if this is in fact a down year (and boy it’s hard to always stay competitive with losing quality like Hader, Burnes, Adames and D Williams in a 2.5 year span). If not one or the other pitch their way to being a QO’d free agent and another early round pick.

So in some sense I guess I agree with @Jason Wangthat a starter could be traded but disagree it will be this offseason - and expect next trade deadline if it happens.

3 hours ago, Terry said:

I get that Ashby as a starter back in 2022 is sometimes frustratng, but saying that he's terrible is a stretch. I'm all board on the starter experiment if he's healthy.

He was mostly bad all last year as a starter. I know he had a start or two in the bigs, but in Nashville he had a few nice starts, but had issues with control/command and had big innings that limited any effectiveness as a starter. Once he went to the bullpen he went from a DFA candidate to a 40 man roster pitcher. I don't see him as a starter at this time point based upon both his injury history and the results of last season, in addition to the fact he wasn't great as a starter prior to the injury. I would love to be wrong, but counting on him or DL Hall to be starters when both look like solid bullpen arms is not the best if you are trying to truly compete. If this is a retool type of year - go with what you have and see if you get lucky - then yes stretch them out and see what happens. If this is a year they want to try to go for a 3rd consecutive division title, then can't expect him to be a starter.

1 hour ago, SF70 said:

1. Peralta 2. Myers 3. Cortes 4. Woodruff 5. Ashby/Hall 6. Patrick 7. CRod 8. Hunt 9. Henderson 10. Duplantier 11. Ashby/Hall 12. Minor-league signing. 13. Misiorowski

Like above, with Peralta and Cortes yes you have 2 MLB starters. Woodruff is coming off major injury. Myers had an amazing season, but I am not ready to anoint him as a top/middle of the rotation piece quite yet. The rest are young and/or limited as starters. The Brewers have been excellent at running out less experienced arms in the past and found ways to make them work (Jason Alexander for example; or how we had a near Cy Young two half seasons from Eric Lauer), but having 3-4 pitchers you can count on consistent, reliable innings is so important to not tax the bullpen. Plus pitchers can get injured, and we need starters to be insurance in case of those things.

2 hours ago, Terry said:

And I don't think the team had ever considered him as a DFA candidate.

I will admit I have no idea what the team was thinking, but there was some discussion amongst folks here that he could be a DFA candidate given his incredibly poor results last season. 

2 hours ago, Terry said:

So...a starter with a 4.06FIP and 3.72xERA is bad nowadays I see.

That was his line from 2022, and his ERA 4.81 as a starter and WHIP 1.45 as a starter, and his FIP was 4.52 not too bad I agree, but far from a great track record, so that was part of the thinking - he was OK/decent as a starter, then got hurt, and was awful as a starter last year.

Last season in the minors outside of his 5/25 - 6/5 run of three quality starts at AAA, was a disaster. His season was salvaged by his move to the bullpen in August, where he thrived as 1-2 IP reliever.

I stated I would love to be wrong about him, but it got to the point where I would not even watch his starts in July because he would just blow up - his 63 walks and 73 hits in 65.2 IP as a starter in AAA. That is not good no matter how you cut it. Not sure what it was - maybe focusing on just an inning or two, and allowing to max out on his pitches as a reliever clicked for him. But nothing there screams - we have a solid #4 or #5 starter for this season if we want to compete.

OK. I suck at the advanced metrics, and know enough to get me in trouble. So I will agree with what you have there, as I don't know enough to have a good discussion about it. And will agree he did have good stretches in 2022.

19 minutes ago, Terry said:

If he can get his BB/9 under 4.0 (not an easy task I know), he get the ingredient of at least being a no.3 starter.

This I agree with which is why I say I would love to be wrong. But his control issues are not new, and were downright awful last year.  Having watched about 10 of his starts at AAA (give or take), outside of that 3 start span where he still struggled with command, I am not sure anyone would walk away feeling confident about his future, which is why some of us (at least 1 or 2 posters also mentioned it) postulated that we thought he *could* be a DFA candidate because no team would stash him on the 40 man roster with his poor results and take on guaranteed salary (and I didn't explain the DFA comment earlier, it was in the context of opening up a 40 man roster, and that few teams would risk that claim). But his change as a reliever was so great to watch, that is became must see video when he entered the game.

But I don't think at this time point I would rely on a lot of IFs to pencil him in as a possible starter now. I like Ashby a lot and hope he becomes a #3 starter, that would be awesome, but he looked nowhere near that last year, and he had a magical August/September, but I'm not ready to assume he can be a reliable starter, and his value as a long reliever and late inning reliever may be good for a team that's competing. If they were out of contention then yeah see what Miz, Ashby, Hall, Henderson can do, but expecting them to fill out the starting rotation, or assuming Woodruff is health, or assuming no regression for a guy like Myers is just so many question marks, even for an organization so good at pitching development.

Bottom line - I agree he has the stuff, the potential, and has shown in flashes that he can be good. But with injury, inconsistencies, and only a 1-2 month resurgences (as a reliever) I put Aaron as a big question mark for 2025 right now. I want the stuff/potential to come together, but his command (lack thereof for most of last year and even higher BB rates prior) will be one of the keys for his success if he can overcome, which may not be an easy thing to do.