Lathund

I've always been surprised with how low this board (And fans in general) have been on Pratt. Or well, not super surprised, since most fans will just do some very basic stat line scouting. But it was always clear that he was far higher regarded by prospect evaluators in general, and the Brewers in particular. So while many people viewed him as just surplus trade bait, at least I thought it obvious the Brewers vieweed him as their SS of the future, someone close to making their debut too. But I gotta say, I still didn't see this coming. Which isn't to say I don't like it; $6.25m AAV is great value for the team. With his defense and base running, he could end up with Orlando Arcia's bat and the deal would still be OK, albeit obviously not what anyone wanted. If he's a below average hitter (say 90 wRC+) it's good value. If he's anyhting more, it's a steal. I think there's disconnect between how fans think, and how front offices think, when it comes to valuing defense at key positions. Like the value of running a guy with above average or better defense out at C/SS/CF every day, not needing to platoon or a defensive sub, even if they are even close to average on offense. One way to illustrate this is Dansby Swanson. Look at the FA deal he got after reaching free agency with a career 94 wRC+. As a Cub he's averaged 4 WAR/year with a 101 wRC+.

Willson played 1B in the WBC, William didn't.

Record: 92-70 Playoffs: Yes, NLC winner. No team in the division will be truly bad, so the records will be fairly closely clustered together. MVP: Jake Bauers. It's more of a breakout than MVP, since I don't think he'll play enough. But he'll have the highest wRC+ on the team (min. 100 PA). Team Cy Young: Kyle Harrison. ROY: Brandon Sproat. Most Surprising Player: Joey Ortiz. Won't be surprising to me, but with how people have written him off, an above average offensive season alongside excellent defense will be a surprise to many. Most Disappointing Player: Luis Rengifo. He's OK as a stop gap, but I think his defense and general lack of production will mean a short side platoon/PH role only. My other candidate would be Yelich.

Will Alec Bohm be better than a Hamilton/Rengifo platoon, with likely help from Jett Williams at some later point? Likely so, in my opinion. Will he, with his impending free agency after the season, be enough of an improvement to warrant giving up a MLB-ready starter and a top 70 or so prospect with excellent SS defense, and paying $10m on top of it? Absolutely not!

I think the roster is pretty set. Black might be the first man up in case of a 1B/DH/OF injury, but very unlikely he starts on the ML roster. Bauers showed real progress in both results and underlying numbers last year, should absolutely see what he can do before moving on. If he struggles, Black is a logical choice to replace him. My dark horse would be Brandon Lockridge. The role held by Perkins is to take some of Mitchell's appearances against LHP, defensive replacement and to give rest days to the other OFs. If the Brewers think Lockridge has taken steps forward at the plate, he can fulfill all those roles. Both Perkins and Lockridge have options remaining, both make minimum salary, so not much between them. Perkins has the edge, but not by a lot. For all the things Brewers probably love about Perkins (The defense in particular, generally puts up competitive at bats etc), I don't think they're enamoured by his offensive profile. For someone with so little power, that's a pretty bad strikeout rate.

1 year of service is 172 days, and with off days, allstar break etc. the full season is something like 12-14 days longer than that usually. So someone with zero service time would only need to stay down ~2 weeks. Henderson has 75 days, Harrison 1 year and 102 days, Sproat has 22 days. So Sproat would have to be down little over a month, Henderson roughly half the season, and Harrison 4+ months. With the starter depth they have, Sproat is probably a likely candidate to not reach a full year this season. The other two might, or might not, but I don't think it's likely that they won't, and if it happens it's more of a case of unusually good injury luck and not something planned. I also probably could have typed that without the double negatives and made it a lot easier to follow.

Worth pointing out as well that throwing is just one part of catcher defense. Quero was generally viewed as being good allround. Blocking, framing, game calling. He'll be a good defensive catcher even if the arm never is as good as it was. And first year back is too early to judge, I think it'll be better this year. As for a comment above, I think it's fairly reasonable to expect more than 85 wRC+ too. Hopefully he can have a healthy start to the season, and a couple of months of AAA ball should give us all a better view of what he can do. Worth remembering he has only 250 PA in AAA, and those came after missing a full season, his age 21 season. ~1200 PA total isn't a whole lot either. Getting a good backup catcher doesn't really mean anything for Quero. If he really is too good for AAA he'll get a chance through injury or roster expansion. Or forcing a move. Having too many good catchers, when some of them have options, is never a problem.

Zerpa/Collins trade: B. This is only a D if you don't even try to look beyond the most surface level stats. There is some variance here for sure, which is why it's hard to give an A. But it's such an obvious upside play even looking at public metrics. Projections tend to be quite conservative, but even they believe a lot in him. But the real thing is the stuff. The Stuff+ model has his 2025 as tied 13th in baseball (min. 60 IP), tied with Uribe. Just having filthy pitches in and of itself won't always translate 1:1 to results, but it's not as if he is a total project either. Already showing average-ish results, some small tweaks could unlock a lot. You get Chris Hook some of the best raw stuff in all of Baseball, that upside is fine paying for. Collins will never sniff 122 wRC+ again. He'll be around a league average hitter limited to only corner OF, where he plays well. If Zerpa had more than 3 years, or was more of a starter (They talk about stretching him out, but I think that's just a backup plan, or to go multiple innings in relief), I'd give it an A. Peralta/Myers for Williams/Sproat: A-. You can't judge a trade like this by "Are we better right now than before the trade?" because the answer will always be no. If the opposite was true, the other team wouldn't have made the trade. But for a year of a very good starter (but not an ace) we got two MLB-ready top 100 prospects who will both contribute a lot in 2026. It's not at all unlikely they will produce more WAR than Freddy. I will drop the grade a tiny bit because of Myers. I don't think he's some amazing pitcher, and he'd be far down the depth chart. I just feel that even as back of the rotation type, 5 years of that should be worth a bit more. So basically I think the Brewers could perhaps have squeezed out a bit more value from the trade, but the overall return is very sound. Durbin+ for Harrison+: B+. I've written at length about it elsewhere. Long term (Assuming a normal level of injuries etc) Brewers win this easily. Durbin's skill set has a hard ceiling, which isn't far from what he did in 2025. Harrison has a ton of raw talent. Drohan's 2025 changes shows a really good pitcher underneath. Brewers have 6 prospects who can conceivably play 3B in the near future who have been rated in various top 100 lists, including a top 3 prospect in all of baseball. It's a no-brainer to sell high on a very useful but limited 3B. Again though, the short-term fit brings the grade down a bit. And it kinds feels like they could've given up less; but that presupposes that Boston straight up believes Durbin's surface numbers. Which I doubt; if we all can see the risk in Durbin's offensive profile, so can Craig Breslow. Red Sox put themselves in a mess with their infield situation and had to shore it up short term, which they did. They don't view Durbin as some long term foundational piece either I don't think. But he is very useful for now,. Free agency: C+. It's not a negative grade really, it's just a reflection of how little happened. Which is fine, there wasn't a lot that needed doing, and they didn't miss out on much that would've fit in what I presume is a tight budget. Sanchez is a perfectly croumulent pickup at a solid price point. I don't see the point of giving Baddoo a major league deal (Even if he has options). Some minor league contracts that look OK (McGuire, and one or two of the pitchers will pan out, they always do) but nothing to write home about. So fililng the vacant backup catcher spot and getting some OF depth and AAA shuttle pitching. It's.. fine.

Perhaps not super bold but.. - Brewers will lead the majors in ERA. Rotation and bullpen both. - Joey Ortiz will look much more like his 2024 form and will be a 3 WAR player. - A prospect not on the 40-man yet (Brock Wilken most likely. Possibly Fischer or Adams) will man 3B by some time midseason - Jake Bauers will be the Brewers best first baseman in 2026. - Anthony Seigler will have a higher wRC+ than Caleb Durbin in 2026. - Brewers will have multiple reliever of the year candidates, with at least two Brewers relievers getting points in the Cy Young voting. If I wanted to be really bold I'd say it's Angel Zerpa and Aaron Ashby. And one that I don't consider bold: Looking at the season as a whole, 3B won't be a major weakness. Might not be a strength either, but as we summarize the season, it won't be viewed as the reason we didn't beat the Dodgers in the NLCS.

Brewers had three catchers active towards the end of 2024 specifically so they wouldn't have to DFA Haase. Keeping him around both as backup at the time, but also enabling them to tender him a 2025 contract. Adding McGuire to the active roster now serves no purpose, assuming Sanchez and Contreras are healthy. Contreras will play more than most catchers, Sanchez is a solid backup and will get some DH time. If not adding McGuire makes him opt out, then so be it.

The issue is that it doesn't save innings for the rest of the staff, it adds to them. A traditional starter can throw 160-200 innings because they regularly have 4-5 days rest inbetween starts. Someone who pitches shorter stints with fewer days of rest will have their arm fall off if they cover 160+ innings in a season. So if you replace 2-3 starters with 2-3 pitchers who cover 3 innings at a time, the rest of the 'pen will have to cover more innings. So you'd have to have more of those 3 inning relievers there to compensate. Which also means you'd have less room for pitchers who can maximize their effort in shorter stints. You mentioned fixed rest as an old convention. But consider that in a game which over the last couple of decades has changed tremendously with the analytics revolution, that the basic concept of the rotation hasn't changed to the same degree. Nor has the other end of the pitching spectrum changed greatly either, i.e the use of 1-inning relievers. There was the trend with guys like Hader and Andrew Miller which seemed to portend change, but we went back to more traditional usage. Less about chasing saves, and teams have started using their closer more in tied games and such, but fundamentally it's still mostly 1-inning stints. Because whether they knew it at the time or not, some of the old ways turned out to be pretty good ways of doing things. Sabermetrics challenged old conventions with data and analysis; many didn't hold up to scrutiny, but some did. The usage of the traditional rotation and the traditional closer are good for very different reasons though. For starters I'm mostly of the opinion that it's physiological. Going out and pitching at max effort will result in lots of minor damage to muscles and ligaments and such, which causes inflammation, which weakens these structures while it's ongoing, increasing injury risk. So fundamentally you can handle that differently. You can wait out these processes, i.e keeping a longer amount of time between outings to allow for more healing. Or if you're going to pitch despite it (i.e more often), you have to limit the damage done each time. Which isn't to say that pitching exactly every 5th/6th day is the optimal way, and there will be plenty of individual variation. Just that the structure has remained somewhat similar despite all the new data for a reason, The usage of closers has remained similar to the traditional use, but by very analytical means. Basically using Hader like 2017-2019 Hader (i.e 2-3 inning stints) gives you a better chance of winning any game he pitches in, than if he went for mostly 1-inning stints. But the effect of having him in (1) fewer games, (2) in games where he wouldn't have been needed (i.e Brewers score 5 runs after Hader has pitched the 7th), and as a consequence, (3) more frequently not having him available when you need him, eventually cancels that out over the regular season. Postseason is different, and teams do use relievers very differently there. What I'm getting at is kind of the same thing as in my last post. That in terms of the average length of outing for your pitching staff, you want basically an inverted bell curve. As in you want to have your pitchers at around 5 innings per outing or 1 inning per outing, as opposed to 3 per outing. Now another aspect is also what pitchers you have at your disposal. If you somehow were to have Josh Hader and 12 clones of Josh Hader on your pitching staff, then simply having everyone go 2-3 innings all the time might be the way to go. Or if your entire pitching staff is guys who are really really bad third time through the order, but who also don't benefit much from going all out for one inning. But generally, you don't. So taking the relationship between how much rest you get inbetween starts and how many innings can be covered, as well as the benefits of being able to utilize matchups and high leverage etc, the traditional usage acutally makes sense. It gets the most innings out of your best pitchers (your starters), and it allows you to use your "closer" types as often as possible in the situations you want them in. It could see some more flexibility, sure. And I feel like the Brewers already do that a fair bit. I would argue that the benefits of a flexible pitching staff lies not in changing much in what your rotation does or what your closer and two setup men do, but in the usage of the pitchers inbetween those two groups.

Expecting Turang to not live up to his 2025 numbers offensively is perfectly reasonable. Probably even likely. But projecting him to be worse than his overall career numbers is something I just can't fathom. It's not even DRC+ not believing the slash line wasn't deserved, it's DRC+ not believing in DRC+. Aaron Ashby's projection is perhaps even more insane; 27 years old, career 83 DRA- and 85 cFIP, coming off a 73 DRA- and 76 cFIP season. Velo and Stuff+ took a big step forward and were excellent too. Naturally, PECOTA projects a 98 DRA-, expecting him to be far, far worse than his career norms and put up his worst season so far. I'm not some anti-projections type of guy, I find them very useful and I put a lot of stock in them. But PECOTA has been so comically wrong about the Brewers the past couple of years. I think they've been off by 14 and then 17 games the last two years. Clearly there is something about their recent/current crop of players the model and/or their depth charts model cannot handle. PECOTA isn't alone in this, other projection systems were off by a lot too, but it is PECOTA we're talking about here. Regression to the mean is a key part of projections. But I don't know how reasonable it is that, at a quick glance, that it expects every pitcher with a better than average DRA- to be worse than their career average (Often significantly so, and in one case, Zerpa, go from 88 DRA- to 113), and every pitcher with a worse than average career DRA- to improve. It seemingly has zero faith in even its own model. Regressing hard towards the league average is probably a good way to get the overall accuracy of your system up, because that generally is what happens. But it also seems kinda pointless, and tells you nothing about any individual. At that point, wouldn't Marcel just be better with a lot less work? On the hitter side it at least seems less generic. Like it expects Chourio to be significantly better than his career numbers to date (by DRC+), it expects Contreras to be better than his. And while it expects Yelich and Sanchez to be much worse than their career numbers, it's not entirely unreasonable given their age. Some headscratching one there too, but overall I think it's fine to expect fewer runs scored even if I disagree with the scale. Anyway, probably not much point going on here. Projection systems don't do well with the Brewers, and at least some projection makers acknowledge that and try to figure out why. Dan Z made some adjustments, BP mostly seem to shrug and say that small market teams are impossible to project well, but at least they acknowledge it. What frustrates me more are the "experts" and media types and writers who are so unwilling to learn though. They predict the Brewers to suck every year because they don't do things traditionally and therefore it must be bad. They then say something about how the Brewers always manage to surprise us and that perhaps we should expect it. And then they predict them to suck again. Some attempts to understand why they are so wrong over and over would be appreciated. Clearly Brewers don't just get lucky 8+ years in a row, there is method to the "madness". Yet very little interest in the actual how.

But a full piggyback rotation is the opposite of flexible roles, it's setting 10 (or 8 if you go shorter stints on shorter rest) pitchers to a fixed, inflexible role. And when you have 10 pitchers locked in like that, you only have three guys who can cover. The same pitchers you'd normally want for the 8th-9th in the close games. If you have someone pitching 4-5 innings at a time, you have to more or less keep them on their rotation schedule. Maybe you can use them one day earlier, but that's it. With having something more akin to a traditional rotation as a base, you then have 8 pitchers instead of 3 to use flexibly. So flexible usage would be things like if, say, DL Hall hadn't pitched for 5+ days but the rest of the 'pen has worked hard, then a "piggyback" with the starter and DL would make sense. Same thing if your 4 best single inning types hadn't pitched for a week, you'd be better served with a game where they follow the starter as opposed to having a piggyback "follower" do it. Flexibility is good, but what the OP proposes isn't flexible at all. Something more flexible would be something like having the kind of 5½ man rotation they've mostly used (i.e a 5-man rotation but where they usually pitch on 5 days rest), but where you have multiple 2-3 inning relievers. They can pitch more often than every 5th day, meaning you can use them much more flexibly, pick more desirable matchups. As opposed to being stuck with whichever piggyback guy was scheduled that day. The reason the 5 (or now 5½) man rotation has stuck around is that there are a lot of innings to cover in a season. The built-in rest of a rotation like that is how you get to cover it. It also means giving a larger share of your innings to your best pitchers, in addition to allowing you a bigger bullpen to leverage wisely. A consequence of which is that you maximize the chances of having your best relievers available when you most need them. The main point is that you don't want 10 guys locked into a schedule. The way to improve on the OPs suggestion would be to make it 4 "piggyback" guys on a 4-game rotation in addition to your 5-man rotation. So looking to get 5+3 innings instead of 4+4 every day. That gives more innings to your best starters, and another arm to use flexibly. Covering the 7-8 innings a day with 9 pitchers instead of 10. But then you could be even more flexible by having 3 guys in that multi-inning role. Because sometimes your original starter is efficient and goes 7, 8 or 9 innings. And sometimes they'd go 5-6 but you only use Koenig/Uribe/Megill to close it out. So you don't really need even the 4 "piggyback" guys to cover all the innings. This is getting long, but essentially my point is that you get the right kind of flexibility by using as few pitchers as possible to cover the bulk pitching roles, i.e the inflexible ones that require more fixed, bult-in rest (i.e a rotational schedule). And on the opposite side of the spectrum, by keeping the overall innings load as low as possible for your Megills and Uribes, so that they can be available when you need them most. Even if that is 3 days in a row, or 5 out of 7 days or whatever. Then there is finding the right balance of in-between roles. Like you want some bulk coverage for shorter starts, but you also want to be able to play matchups or use the better guys for high-leverage middle inning spots etc. If I was to form a pitching staff I imagine it'd be something along these lines: 5 starters, who pitch every 6th day a lot of the time. 1 spot starter/long reliever. Allow the rotation 5 days rest when needed, and save the bullpen when that's needed. You'd look to get a starters workload ouf of all 6 of these guys. 3 multi-inning (2-3 innings) pitchers. Can act as piggyback "bulk pitching" when needed, or more flexibly when that's called for. Would pitch every 3rd-4th day. Would look to get 80-100 innings out of these roles. This'd be Ashby, Hall and probably Zerpa as the roster stands. 4 leverage/matchup 1-2 inning pitchers. So Koenig, Uribe, Megill and ?? (Anderson, Rob Z, Yoho, Drohan).

I think piggyback rotations will struggle with either covering enough innings over a whole season, or not having enough flexibility with their high leverage relievers. They'll also run into real trouble if one of their piggyback starters leaves early after injury or poor performance. If your bullpen (i.e not including the "follower") has to cover 5 innings, that will have knock-on effects. I think a more likely scenario is that based on bullpen usage, matchups etc, we will see some multi-inning openers and things of that nature. There might be scenarios where a multi-inning reliever is rested and the bullpen in general isn't, that's where we might see a piggyback start. But I think we should expect that much of the season will be a conventional rotation, but one where they will very often pitch only every 6th day, via the aid of off days and spot starts, but not an actual 6-man rotation.

I think this is an extremely Brewers-y trade. In that it's a somewhat odd trade roster-wise, but seemingly a very good value trade. I liked Seigler more than most, I think his AAA data and the underlying numbers suggest he can be a solid hitter, despite the poor initial results. But, he also won't be much more than a solid or above average hitter; decent average, high OBP, little power. If he could play SS, or was a really good 3B/2B/LF/RF, or a passable catcher, he'd still be a Brewer. But he's sort of inbetween; with neither a bat good enough to warrant a spot on it's own, nor the defense to justify the bat. He might have a 2 WAR season, but he'll never have much more. So not a big deal either way, not with so many promising infielders coming up. Monasterio for Hamilton is a wash. Same age, Hamilton is a slightly worse hitter, a slightly better defender, and a much better baserunner. In a bench role, whatever small differences aren't going to matter much. I liked Monasterio though, seemed to have a great attitude, managing well with very limited and inconsistent opportunities. Brewers know Hamilton well though, so I presume they like him. Drohan I've never heard of before. But his development seems very Brewers-y. Struggled a bit in his first few years. Started throwing a cutter and a more Sweeper-like slider alongside it in 2024. Struggled massively with control that year. Sorted it out in 2025, massively cutting the walk rate while maintaining the increased strikeout rate, posted really good AAA numbers. Age and injuries keeping his prospect status down, but seems a prime candidate to have a good few years with the Brewers. I'm actually really surprised to see Durbin traded. But the logic is probably quite sound; he's got the speed, defense and contact skills to have a high floor. Almost guaranteed to put up 1-2 WAR, likely to put up more. But the ceiling also isn't high; with his skillset, can he really be meaningfully better than he was in 2026? I don't want to put too much emphasis on that last point though; I don't think the Brewers were low on Durbin. But that brings us to Harrison; He peaked at #18 (Pipeline), #26 (BA), #20 (BP) 2 and 3 years ago. He's still only 24. He improved his velo this year, Pitching+ already rates him as above average, Brewers are going to tweak his secondaries somewhat and he'll immediately be a solid MLB starter. Heck, he already was this past season; Sub 4 FIP/xFIP, ERA and xERA slightly above 4. It's Quinn Priester redux. People tend to write off top prospects who don't perform straight away. Harrison is a big get, and I think the Brewers simply found the value too good to pass up. I don't think they wanted to lose Durbin, but they have one of the best prospects in the game (Made) who could be at 3B a year from now. Pena is a top 30-40 prospect who also could play 3B. Pratt is also a top 50-70 prospect type who is likely a SS, which opens up for the others to play 3B. Fischer is a top 100 guy, noone really doubts the bat, great 3B prospect if he sticks. Wilken and Adams have also been fringe top 100 contenders. There is just so much talent at Durbins positions. It makes sense to make the team temporarily weaker there to greatly strengthen the LHP ranks.

Make good use of the platoon spltis of Vaughn and Bauers, and I'll put the 50th percentile (Or most likely, or median, or o/u) around 115-120 wRC+. That's basically Vaughns career split vs LHP, and Bauers 2025 split vs RHP. So given that it doesn't include the changes he made as a Brewer, it probably underestimates Vaughn a bit. And while I believe in the changes Bauers made (And whatever it was the Brewers sought to unlock when they traded for him) the sample size is very small, and might overrate him. But yeah, I think that we can go into the season with a realistic expectation of solidly above-average production from 1B. I don't see any real benefit from Yelich moving to 1B now. All it'd do right now is to push the current 1B to DH more, and might as well keep Yelich DHing. After 2026 Bauers will be a free agent and Vaughn will be expensive and likely traded. That might be a time to start considering it. But that's also when you'd expect Burke, Adams and Fischer to be ready. Decent chance at least one of them looks good enough that you'd want to give them a chance. I expect Yelich will remain a DH and (very) occasional LF for the rest of his Brewers tenure.

Vaughn made real changes when he got to the Brewers. Yeah it's a matter of luck too; a near-average .313 xwOBA with the Sox, but a .230 wOBA, due to things like running a BABIP 70 points below his career numbers. Just getting average luck the rest of the way would've seen meaningful improvement. But he made real changes to the tune of putting up a .377 xwOBA, with an almost exactly mathcing wOBA. There is some noise and uncertainty in xwOBA too, sometimes you get better batted ball results even by doing the same thing. But not by this much. And not when walk rates, strikeout rates, swing decisions etc. all improve. He is genuinely better. Will he put up a 140 wRC+ again? Maybe not, but count on him outperforming his career numbers by a fair bit. Bauers was another one who showed real improvement to underlying numbers. His improved production looked real as well. I don't envision a strict platoon, Vaughn will play against plenty of righties too, but there is the potential to get the best out of both of them. For the first time in a while, I think it's fairly safe to say that the Brewers will get solid production out of 1B. Not elite, but it's hard seeing it being less than above average unless injuries hit *real* hard.

I'm still a big believer in Mitchell's abilities. The kind of athleticism that gives a higher ceiling than most. He just has never been healthy long enough to ever settle in, to get enough exposure at this level to see whether he can adapt to the pitching, or if they will adapt to him. He might never be healthy, but I do hold out hope. And with how cheap he still is, the potential payoff, the presence of minor league options, there is no reason not to be patient.

I don't see any good reason why Pratt should repeat AA. He played a full year there, was above average offensively for the league. Time to challenge in him AAA. If playing time is an issue he can get some work at 3B and 2B. Williams can play several different positions. Rotate positions, utilize the DH spot. Injuries will happen (At AAA and MLB level) as well. No need for a prospect to play literally every single day, starting 5 days a week (Instead of the maximum 6) is fine, and you can easily get that for all of the "major" infield prospects in AAA (Pratt, Williams, whoever else ends up there out of Adams, Wilken, Burke).

Yeah the deadline trades become very tricky for a team likely to be in the division race every year. Kind of has to be a decision in the offseason whether to trade or keep. Sure, if the team crashes and burns and are out of it by the deadline, sell. But in the vast majority of scenarios there will be a lot to play for by the time the deadline comes around, and hard to sell.

I'm open for trading just about any reliever for the right kind of return. But I think a reliever trade is unlikely to return a major league caliber position player. Relievers just aren't valuable enough for 1-2 years of one to be worth giving up more years of a good position player. And the teams who could use Megill could probably also use a good SS/3B/OF bat. So the route for a Megill trade to help us in the short term is probably to trade prospects for a proven player, and for a Megill trade to help refill the system.

Their bench was terrible before this, keeping Shaw as a utility player makes a ton of sense. Injuries will happen, rest days. Hoerner is a FA after 2026 too. So the smart thing to do would be to keep him around. If he's traded, I doubt it'll be intra-division. And if it was, it would be expensive. I wouldn't be too keen on him regardless.

Remember Keston Hiura and the hole in the swing due to his 61%-ish contact rate? That was the lowest in the majors in the last 10 years among players who got 1000 PA, alongside Keon Broxton and Joey Gallo. Spencer Jones had a contact rate just below that, but in AA and AAA. For comparison, Keston was around 70% in AAA. I don't know if you can make it as a major leaguer, no matter the power, with *that* kind of swing and miss. Which is why I'm not keen at all on Jones. High ceiling, yes, but so very unlikely to get to it.

A deal where Luis Gil is a major part of the return would be very disappointing. Shiny ERA, but ugly peripherals, velo is down, injury prone, already in arbitration. If we're talking yankees major league starters, Will Warren looks worse on the surface but would be far more intriguing to me. I also don't generally see why the deal has to include a MLB-ready starter. Brewers have a lot of them, and whoever it is would be more of a #4/#5 type at best. Get the best package possible, and use the money saved to get a veteran FA starter if they feel they need one. Or make a separate trade.

Bregman is an improvement over Shaw, and Shaw improves their bench. Cubs are obviously better right now than they were yesterday. But I can't say I'm particularly bothered. He's not as good a hitter as Tucker is, and was for them last year. Been a pretty consistent 4 WAR player for the last few years. Good chance he is one in 2026 too if healthy. Maybe another year or two after that, even. But the Cubs paying $35m AAV for his age 32-36 season doesn't really bother me. They're not getting any kind of discount, it'll be your standard FA deal where they pay the market rate for good production for 2-3 years, and years 4 and 5 are the price for getting those first 3 years. They have 11 impending free agents (Or mutual options, essentially the same thing) after this year. Their team is really old (Which, tbf, the 11 free agents will take care of to some degree), they don't exactly have a great farm system with lots of talents knocking on the door. Theirs is a short window. They'll be a threat to the Brewers this year, even if their moves so far have mostly been replacing their losses so far (Cabrera aside). But they'll need to completely rebuild their team next year, without a great farm system to help them. 2026 might be their best shot this window, and they're really not looking like a team to challenge the top teams tbh.