TRADE: Brewers Acquire Aaron Civale from Rays, Jump Starting Pitching Market

The Tampa Bay Rays have sputtered and struggled in the daunting AL East this season, and when they elected to make an early move in the pitching market, the Brewers met them there. Aaron Civale should slot right into the middle of the only weak segment of the Milwaukee roster, the starting rotation.

This is a significant deal. Civale, who turned 29 last month, has ugly surface-level numbers this year (a 5.07 ERA, for instance), but he's under team control through 2025. He's also just a year removed from a 2023 season in which he was the Rays' prized deadline acquisition and posted a 3.46 ERA. In 87 innings pitched this year, he has 84 strikeouts and 27 walks. 

Home runs have been the major problem for Civale; he's allowed 16 of them on the year. Not a hard thrower by modern standards, he nonetheless has some upside, as evidenced not only by his 2021 and 2023 seasons but by his pitch mix, which includes a lot of the things (several pitches, multiple fastball looks, little reliance on offspeed stuff) that the Brewers love. We're likely to see Chris Hook and company go to work with Civale, not to overhaul his arsenal, but to tweak pitch usage and find a more successful mixture.

In return for Civale, the Crew surrendered Gregory Barrios, a middle infielder who showed good upside with the bat this year during his time in Appleton, but who never figured to be a substantial part of the team's infield future. Matt Arnold and his staff seem to have bought low on Civale, with the hope and expectation that they can get more from him than the Rays have. That said, they needn't necessarily be done after this, and they certainly kept their powder dry for a bigger trade later this month, if they elect to go in that direction.

There will be much more to come, from various angles, on this trade, but for now, let us know what you think. Was Civale the right target? Did the Brewers do well to jump the market, or should they have waited a bit longer to see what is out there?