What's Next for the Brewers After Corbin Burnes Trade: Payroll, Rotation, Adames

There's no denying that trading Corbin Burnes for Orioles shortstop prospect Joey Ortiz, left-handed hurler DL Hall, and a valuable 2024 Draft pick makes the Brewers worse for the coming season. Ortiz and Hall are promising players, but each also has their warts, and neither has more than a couple of short stints in the big leagues to recommend them. Burnes was the workhorse and ace of Milwaukee's rotation for the last four years, and moving him leaves a huge hole in the starting corps, which the two young players do not adequately offset.

That this happened just over a week after the Brewers signed Rhys Hoskins to a two-year deal (with an opt-out after 2024) made it more jarring than it otherwise would have felt, because until Hoskins came aboard, everyone understood there to be some chance that Milwaukee would cash in Burnes for a bushel of future value. Had it come before the Hoskins deal, it would have been less surprising, but it also would have felt more ominous. As it is, Arnold was quick to reassure everyone that this doesn't signify a conscious step back from contention for the coming season.

Matt Arnold on how trading Burnes impacts the Brewers' 2024 chances: "I wouldn't look at this as any kind of rebuild at all."

— Curt Hogg (@CyrtHogg) February 2, 2024

However, he also hedged when asked about whether the savings involved in this deal (just under $15 million) will be rolled back into the payroll immediately, through some other means. While the team will naturally and inevitably protect any sense of moving backward in this kind of trade, Arnold was loudly quiet on the issue of whether the move was part of a multi-step plan to get even better in 2024. It sounds much more like the focus is beyond this year, even if they are being careful not to fully lean into trading short-term wins for eventual, potential ones.

Arnold on if the salary shed will go back into the current ballclub: "We, honestly, have invested in our ballclub. It depends on the situation. We've invested in Rhys Hoskins, Jackson Chourio."

Says they have the support of ownership to do what they need.

— Curt Hogg (@CyrtHogg) February 2, 2024

This helps explain why the Hoskins signing was possible in the first place. Moving Burnes brings them back down to the neighborhood of $105 million in projected payroll, and they do have a little breathing room between that and the ceiling on which the front office and ownership have agreed, but any more additions probably need to be close to cash-neutral. They don't need to cost nothing, but it's unlikely the team will go into the season with a payroll of $120 million or more, and the above quotes reflect that. When an executive calls attention to past spending in answer to a question about future spending, it's because he doesn't foresee much of the latter. 

There are a number of ways the Brewers can still get better again, though, without taking on substantial additional money. The free-agent market has crawled along, such that a few big names and a fistful of lesser but potentially solid contributors remain available. The most pivotal question, after this deal that adds high-risk, high-reward talent to a roster that already seemed awash in that very thing, is whether the Crew will be looking to make those modest upgrades; to stand pat, more or less; or to jettison other expensive players whose team control is dwindling, like Willy Adames or Devin Williams. On that issue, Arnold's answer felt a bit foreboding.

"It's hard to say," Arnold says to @Todd_Rosiak's question of if more trade-offs from the MLB club should be expected. "At times, these deals come together very quickly. In other cases, they take a long time. Certainly open to more conversations."

— Curt Hogg (@CyrtHogg) February 2, 2024

That sounds like a guy who is pondering an Adames deal, if the right one comes along. The Dodgers still don't have as a good a shortstop as you expect a team that great to have. Atlanta, the Giants, and the Marlins are all theoretical fits on an Adames trade, in varying fashions and degrees. Dealing away the incumbent shortstop wouldn't need to mean taking a step back in 2024, just as Arnold insisted that dealing away Burnes doesn't mean that, because Ortiz is a no-doubt shortstop who brings some offensive skills in his own right, so the team would suffer rather little by letting Adames go--but that assumes that they find good value for him, and not in the form of prospects a year or two away, but rather someone who can help the big-league team right away. Maybe a controllable starter project like Bryce Elder or Edward Cabrera could fit that set of criteria, but it's tougher to imagine an Adames trade that makes the team better in the short term than one that makes them worse.

While Arnold (and, over a longer span and in clearer terms, Mark Attanasio) has always sought to avoid any semblance of rebuilding, there's something worse for the Brewers than a 69-win setback of a season in 2024: a 79-win, relatively narrow miss, in which they burn up their remaining team control on Adames, end up having to trade Williams, and lose their grasp on the NL Central for multiple seasons involuntarily, rather than letting it go briefly in order to get a firmer grip the following year. Before this trade, I had the Crew as favorites in the gallimaufry of the 2024 NL Central, but it was a close thing. I think they've lost any edge they held, now, and probably stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Cubs and Reds, a step behind the Cardinals.

Something else needs to happen here. It can be a full commitment to a youth movement (distinct from a rebuild in that, given the extraordinary talent of Jackson Chourio, Sal Frelick, William Contreras, Tyler Black, Ortiz, Hall, Robert Gasser, Aaron Ashby, Abner Uribe, and more, they can endeavor to win even as they play the kids every day), or it can be a nimble flip-and-climb move in which they firm up some areas of the roster via trade or bargain shopping in the endgame of free agency. It just needs to be something. If they stop right here, they've left themselves in the very unhappy medium space of the division, and they've made the ascension from there harder.

What do you most want to see next from the team, after this deal? Lay out your blueprint for the next six weeks, to get the team to Opening Day with a clearer sense of purpose.