The Milwaukee Brewers are coming off an 86-win season and trying to add to that success. Despite what appears to be one of the most favorable free agent markets in recent history, David Stearns seems to be turning to the trade market for improvements. In this discounted market, Stearns would be mistaken going to the trade route rather than spending in free agency.

The Brewers are rumored to be in trade talks with the Miami Marlins for Christian Yelich.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Source : Brewers have put together a trade offer &amp; have shown strong interest Marlins OF Christian Yelich. Other teams remain in the mix.</p>&mdash; Craig Mish (@CraigMish) <a href=”https://twitter.com/CraigMish/status/955907465538822144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>January 23, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

Yelich is the most valuable piece on the trade market. He’s barely twenty-six-years-old, and under a $43.3 million contract through 2021 with a $15 million team option for 2022. He’s been worth 15.8 WARP in four-and-a-half major league seasons. Yelich is a borderline superstar on an extremely team-friendly contract.

Yelich’s talent level and contract situation not only makes him the most coveted piece on the trade market this offseason, but he’s also one of the most valuable assets in the league period. He’s going to garner a haul.

A trade for Yelich like starts with one of the Brewers young outfielders, Domingo Santana or Lewis Brinson, both of which are under favorable contract situations of their own. Santana or Brinson alone won’t be nearly enough to acquire Yelich. A hypothetical trade will likely cost one of the two outfielders and probably two of the Brewers top ten prospects or one of their top three prospects. Yelich’s age, skill, and contract allow the Marlins to ask for the world.

The Brewers have one of the strongest farm systems in the league, which is one of the reasons they are in on players such as Yelich and Chris Archer. Rather than blowing up the farm system Stearns has spent the past few seasons building, he has the option of going to the free agent market to find outfield and pitching improvements.

The Brewers ended the last two seasons with the lowest payroll in the league after finishing with the 15th highest payroll in 2014, according to Cots Baseball Contracts. In other words, the organization should have money to spend.

The front office should be looking to add pieces to this young core coming up through the system, not shedding pieces to add talent. Especially when assets on the free agent market are to be had.

If the Brewers are set on improving center field, they should look no further than Lorenzo Cain. Cain is much older, not as talented, and would likely cost a bit more financially than Yelich. However, the veteran Cain wouldn’t cost anything in prospect loss, save a compensatory pick in this years draft. The Brewers could then use their deep outfield to trade for rotation or relief help.

There are plenty of options on the free agent market for Stearns to add to the starting rotation. Yu Darvish, Jake Arrieta, Lance Lynn, and Alex Cobb are just a few names who have yet to find a home. In Darvish’s case, he wouldn’t cost a compensation pick. The Brewers should be doing everything they can to add pitching in this market while they are still available. If all else fails and the team is desperate for pitching, then turn to the trade market.

There’s no reason to ruin what the Brewers have going, as far as their farm system goes. A farm system is something to build around. The Chicago Cubs won their first championship in 108 years by building and holding onto a strong farm system, and then adding veteran talent around them, most through free agency. The Brewers should be looking to go the same route, particularly in this team-friendly free agent market.

Although it’s tempting to jump the gun and acquire an Archer or Yelich, especially when you have the assets to make that possible, it’d be ideal for the Brewers to hold onto their prospects, stay out of the trade market, and build around their young prospects rather than using them as trade assets.

Photo Credit: Gary A. Vasquez, USAToday Sports Images

Relevantly, this includes the Brewers, who have not addressed their complicated outfield situation.  Last year, the outfield rotation was pretty well established.  Ryan Braun played left field, Domingo Santana played right field, and Keon Broxton split time with a few other players in center field.  Heading into 2018, though, the calculus was expected to be different.  One of those players that got a small portion of the center field at bats was Lewis Brinson, who is the club’s consensus top prospect and is at the point of his career where he needs major league at bats to continue his development.

Brinson is not the only youngster fighting for playing time, though.  Brett Phillips also performed well last year in minimal playing time (.293 TAv, 4.3 FRAA in 37 games), and he appears to be a capable like-for-like replacement for Broxton.  And given that Phillips’ prospect pedigree (Baseball America ranked him 80th in all of baseball this offseason), he likely has a higher ceiling than Broxton, thus incentivizing the club to prioritize Phillips ahead of Broxton.  Additionally, Hernan Perez and Jonathan Villar both got some playing time in the outfield last season, and the fact that they can play both infield and outfield increases their value because they are more versatile than is Broxton.

For these reasons, a common thought at the beginning of the offseason was that the Brewers would look to trade one of their outfielders.  Santana was a possible trade chip, as he now has a track record of being a productive big league hitter, and he is probably be the most attractive non-Brinson asset that the Brewers could dangle to bring back a front-line pitcher.  If Santana were to be dealt, Broxton could serve as a fourth outfielder and platoon with Phillips in left field.  He would also provide Brinson insurance in case something went wrong with the club’s top prospect.

If the Brewers decided to keep Santana, though, Broxton himself could have been a trade chip.  He was not so productive last year that the club could not replace him, and Phillips appears ready to step in and be the fourth outfielder.  A Broxton trade is trickier than a Santana trade because Broxton’s trade value as a cost-controlled role player is harder to determine, but it was nonetheless a possibility if the Brewers needed a way to address their roster logjam.

Three months into the offseason, though, nothing has been done to address this issue.  The slowness of the free agent market appears to have impacted the trade market as well; Gerrit Cole is the only pitcher of note to have changed teams this offseason, so Santana could still be included in a trade (for Chris Archer, for example).  The Brewers have therefore been hesitant to commit to a particular path, as trading Santana might encourage them to keep Broxton.

One might think that if Broxton is replaceable, then they should simply deal him and get a replacement if they also trade Santana.  As mentioned above, however, it’s unclear whether Broxton has much trade value.  He is still in his pre-arb years, but he is already 27 and so he isn’t a highly touted prospect who teams will be clamoring to get for the next four seasons.  He has accumulated 2.3 WARP in 700 plate appearances, which makes him a roughly league average player but not a standout.  He is therefore a valuable player to have on a big league roster, but he is not likely to be the type of player who returns a lot in a trade.  He may therefore be more valuable to the Brewers on the field (if they need him) than he would be to another team.

The Brewers’ front office is smart and capable of dealing with this problem, and they have shown they are not afraid to lose players for nothing even if there might still be some residual value.  It is here where the slowness of the market comes into play, however.  If a Santana trade happened or were ruled out in December, the Brewers would have had a couple months to figure out how to best use Broxton’s roster spot (whether it be on Broxton or on someone else).  Now, however, they are in a time crunch.

If they have decided that they will be keeping Santana, then Broxton is basically expendable.  And if they decided that in December because they had passed on all the potential deals, they would have had two months of watching the waiver wire to find players who were a better fit for their roster than Broxton.  I do not believe they have made that determination yet, though, so their roster is still in flux.

As I wrote two weeks ago about the second base situation, this is not an insurmountable problem.  It is, however, a way that the slowness of the market impacts the clubs beyond just delaying any roster decisions.  The Brewers will have less time to assess their options, and any potential waiver wire acquisitions may be more contested as teams are looking to finalize their rosters heading into spring training.

Photo Credit: Kim Klement, USAToday Sports Images

According to Cot’s Contracts, the Milwaukee Brewers finished with the cheapest 40-man roster salary for the second straight year in 2017, with a meager $78.8 million spread across the roster. The team has all of $25 million committed beyond 2018, invested in only two contracts: Ryan Braun’s and Eric Thames’s. The Brewers have a team that was a surprise contender in 2017 with all of the major pieces coming back in 2018, aside from the injured Jimmy Nelson, and they could be getting an impact player if Lewis Brinson can take the next step. From 2008 through 2014, the Brewers ranked no worse than 18th in final 40-man year end salary. Mark Attanasio’s pocketbook has been able to take the strain in the past, and it should be able to take another big contract or two this year as well.

Thanks to the anti-competitive behavior (my fancy word for “collusion” that may not be technically against the rules) we’re seeing in the free agent market, there is some talent remaining unsigned, sitting there for the taking without requiring the Brewers to cash in any of their precious minor league assets. Of ESPN’s top 20 free agents this offseason, 13 remain unsigned. Of particular interest to the Brewers are the pitchers; Jake Arrieta or Alex Cobb would be major upgrades over the likes of Junior Guerra or Brent Suter in Milwaukee’s rotation.

The current market suggests there might be bargains, too. Not a single player has received a deal longer than three years or pricier than $60 million. Addison Reed signed this past week with the Twins for just $17 million over two years, well below what many expected for a reliever entering the market as one of the better closer candidates available. Not only is the market looking shockingly cool, but as spring training approaches, players will want to avoid becoming the Kyle Lohse of 2013, who went unsigned deep into March and wound up making about 60 percent of even the lowest estimates of what he could earn.

This is where the Brewers need to pounce. Anti-competitive behavior like this could wind up helping teams with smaller budgets. A reduction of super-long free agent deals worth nine figures has almost no impact on the way the Brewers assemble their squad. The Brewers were never going to make those deals anyway, and their biggest contracts will almost always be handed out to homegrown superstars. Milwaukee’s free agent splashes have generally come on players entering the decline phases of their career. But if free agent prices come down across the board, the Brewers should be able to be active players for more and more players, players who would otherwise receive prohibitively expensive offers from large-market clubs for the Brewers to even consider them as a target.

Consider the New York Yankees of the 1980s. Steinbrenner pulled the Yankees up from years of mediocrity by investing heavily in free agents. His club won four pennants in six years from 1976 through 1981, not coincidentally the first few years of free agency. But in 1982, they dipped to fifth place, and the Yankees wouldn’t reach the postseason again until 1995, the first season after the strike.

In his autobiography A Whole New Ball Game, Marvin Miller discussed how Steinbrenner’s willingness to play into his fellow owners’ collusion scheme was an act of cutting off the nose to spite the face:

“Steinbrenner’s unwillingness or inability to recognize opposition to him first became apparent to me with the beginning of the owners’ collusion in 1985. Although he was the first to utilize free agents, and the most successful in building winning teams, he became a coconspirator by depriving his club of the opportunity to sign free agents. I was astonished at the time because it was so obvious that he was the principle target (along with the players) of the owners’ planned collusion, but apparently this thought had not occurred to him. Ted Turner, Gene Autry, and a few others were also targets, but George was the owner they most wanted to curb. Yet he seemed incapable of understanding that a club like the Yankees — one with no success (or talent) in building a team through effective trading, and without a record of effective player recruitment and development in the minors for some time — would certainly fall out of contention if it could not sign free agents. But he agreed and joined with his ‘brother’ owners in a scheme aimed at himself.”

I don’t know if there is active collusion going on in today’s MLB, but there’s no doubt that large market teams are currently choosing not to leverage their financial muscle, their single greatest team-building asset. If the Brewers can, they need to capitalize on this opening. It’s hard to imagine another time when their money can do more, especially when you consider just how close this Brewers team came to the postseason in 2017.

The Yankees could have been a dynasty throughout the 1980s, but Steinbrenner’s inability to get over the idea that free agents were taking him for a ride cost him a decade’s worth of winning. If teams like the Yankees, Dodgers, and Cubs want to make that same mistake here in 2018, let them. Let them wring their hands about long-term deals and the luxury tax like suckers. If the Brewers want to shock the baseball world and make it back to the postseason,  they need to take advantage of this opening and strike now.

Photo Credit: Jim Young, USA Today Sports Images

Previous:
Cashing Out OFP 2 (Midseason 2017)

Related:
Roster Surplus and Depth Questions
Refining WARP and OFP Pricing
2013 Prospect Class: Impact

Even the crown jewel of the system features rather extreme question marks for advanced minors prospects, as Lewis Brinson is a 70 OFP, potential All-Star Centerfielder that Baseball Prospectus christened with the risk note, “He may not hit major-league pitching. Wheeee!;” Luis Ortiz maintains a solid 50-55 OFP 3/4 starter, but as the innings pitched base fails to advance that “set up reliever” role looms larger and larger; Ryan Cordell was cashed out for Anthony Swarzak, a perfectly assessed trade ($0.0 day-of surplus, a perfectly even swap) to bolster the MLB roster that improved the club’s chances of reaching the playoffs. That Stearns cashed out Cordell’s role risk and repetition within the system at the perfect time leads one to wonder whether he’ll have the acumen to accomplish the same with Brinson and Ortiz, or whether the Brewers will go “all-in” with the risk profiles of both prospects. If you’re disinclined to desire Brinson as a headliner in a Chris Archer-type deal, recall superstar Carlos Gomez, who took three MLB teams to hit; in the case of Go-Go Gomez, would you have rather traded the all-tools, slow-growing CF for Johan Santana or J.J. Hardy?

What makes it difficult to assess Stearns’s trades thus far is that most of them feature nebulous concepts that cannot be captured at one point in time. The Adam Lind trade is a great example of this type of gamble, and it remains one of the GM’s best trades until (or, arguably, even if) none of the high-risk RHP reach the MLB. Even the Jonathan Villar trade is difficult to capture in terms of overall value; Villar is an incredibly useful MLB player, one that can offer a profile that is all-risk, all-discipline, solid power and speed around the diamond (see 2016), but one that can simply fail to click in a given year (as 2017 showed). To some extent, even the Khris Davis trade remains difficult to assess in terms of upside, for as Jacob Nottingham continues to improve catching defense (according to several scouting reports from 2016-2017), a “back-up catcher with pop” becomes somewhat intriguing (there are not many of those lying around, even if Brewers fans have recent memories of Jett Bandy they are wishing to shed).

The Jean Segura-Chase Anderson trade should demonstrate the difficulty of assessing trades in general, as well as the difficult of assessing Stearns’s trade. Since the Brewers traded a contract reserve player (Segura), they traded significant surplus, and now that surplus is further extended by the Mariners (since Segura has performed quite well in his change of scenery). But, nearly every Brewers fan knows that this surplus was not “real” in Milwaukee, or not applicable in Milwaukee; Segura was working on mechanical adjustments, and completely retooled his mechanics with the Brewers organization, to no avail. He literally ran out of time in Milwaukee, and is an example (like Villar) of how players can thrive with new opportunities (and, probably, new coaching and new vantage points on mechanical adjustments). Chase Anderson, on the other hand, pitched his first better-than-replacement WARP in 2017, thanks to mechanical adjustments and arsenal / approach adjustments. Anderson is to Milwaukee as Segura is to Arizona and Seattle, in this sense, but Anderson’s contract extension does not agree with his historical performance. One is inclined to price Anderson at his 2017 maximum, or even suggest that the righty can further improve, but this is not included in this surplus assessment. So, the Anderson-Segura trade looks awful, even including Isan Diaz’s excellent prospect surplus value to Milwaukee; my inclination is to criticize this ranking, and also learn from it: why are we, as Brewers fans, insistent that this is a typically good trade? Why might the trade be a bad one for Milwaukee? Or an indifferent organizational event?

Of course, the other problem is that former President Doug Melvin is simply smoking Stearns in terms of overall surplus returned to the organization. Obviously, this could serve as a lesson for Stearns’s trades (be patient, look what Domingo Santana and Zach Davies turned into), but Lewis Brinson and Luis Ortiz should not necessarily be viewed as 1:1 comparisons to Santana and Davies.

If 2017 was the year that the Brewers proved worthy of contending consideration, 2018 may be the year that defines Stearns’s tenure, both in terms of his ability to deliver a playoff appearance (that is absolutely one criterion for assessing a successful 2018; failure to make the playoffs in 2018 is a knock against the organization) and in terms of delivering on the future surplus of his major outstanding trades (either weave Brinson and Ortiz into immediate MLB wins, cashing out the surplus that way, or make the correct decision to wait out Brinson’s risk at the MLB level. No pressure!).

On Theory

In presenting the above trade tables, I would like to reply to some common criticisms of my surplus model, and speak to the current “Wins Above Replacement don’t mean Wins” controversy that is spreading around the Internet.

• First, one criticism of expressing Overall Future Potential (OFP) in monetary terms is that OFP is an extremely abstract concept that includes many components.
  • On a recent Milwaukee’s Tailgate podcast, former BPMilwaukee-Chief J.P. Breen described these shortcomings in useful, succinct terms: OFP includes everything from a player’s potential top ceiling to their position within a system (are they at Class-A or Class-AAA?) to multiple sources of scouting profile risk (which might be described as a player’s “floor.” Is their floor “useful MLB depth” or “won’t reach the MLB”? That’s a huge difference).
  • Ryan Topp added an excellent point about assessing a prospect’s ultimate ceiling as something that may never be attainable precisely because of risk; his example of Brewers RF prospect Demi Orimoloye was perfect, as Topp noted that if one was simply assessing Brewers prospects by absolute ceiling, Orimoloye would have one of the strongest, but his rawness and development distance from the MLB simply cloud that ultimate ceiling beyond usefulness.
  • I want to make it abundantly clear that I do not ignore these concerns, and in fact take them very seriously, while acknowledging that an OFP surplus rank is indeed one snapshot in time. This is why I use post-hoc analysis to return to surplus rankings during each season and during offseasons, and to judge trades and prospect rankings at one point in time (such as midseason 2015 for Josh Hader) as well as years later (such as preseason 2017 Josh Hader, and now, useful MLB reliever Josh Hader).
  • That one player such as Josh Hader can take a journey from 50 OFP to 60 OFP to #3 Starter Prospect to Impact MLB reliever should show the usefulness of tracking this concept over time (this also provides data to assess the type of “role appreciation” or “role depreciation” that occurs over time).
  • So, think of an assessment of OFP Surplus as “the future value a prospect potentially offers an organization, depreciated by historical risk.” One of the benefits of baseball analysis is that even as the game changes, there remain many congruent roles throughout generations, and so tracking the historical value of one type of OFP grade (such as 70 OFP from the 2013 Baseball Prospectus Top 10 list) can be calibrated with the history of the game (what is the projected value of each class of player, expressed over 18,000 careers?).

• Similar criticisms are made against using WARP (Wins Above Replacement Player) to assess a player’s future surplus value.
  • In my analyses, I use a harsh depreciation tactic to discount future production, using the general assumption that injuries, ineffectiveness, and aging curves affect MLB players, and that WARP is hardly a linear concept from year-to-year.
  • Additionally, recent discussion has questioned the relationship between wins and WARP, a position to which Jonathan Judge has provided excellent critique. There is not much to this debate that I can add that Judge has not already covered, but it is worth emphasizing that common fan, analyst, and writer usage of WARP fails to treat the metric as a tool to assess marginal performance.
  • In a sense, WARP cannot track with wins because its purpose is not to assess wins; if you want to assess wins, wins occur at the team level, not the individual level, and it is spurious logic to breach that fact with a basic question about whether individual players can be assessed their fair share of “wins.”
  • WARP is valuable precisely because it abstracts players from wins, and instead assesses them on marginal concepts (beginning with the relationship between Runs Scored and Runs Allowed, and the assumption that a minor league player would have a different production value should they be called up to replace an MLB regular). With this assumption in mind, WARP is perfectly transactional; it can be translated into dollars (typically assumed to be paid on the “free agency market”), and it can be used to compare players across teams, park environments, and leagues.
  • Keeping this in mind, it baffled me that Bill James would raise such a critique of WAR-family stats in the first place, for his criticism simply missed the concept validity of the statistic (i.e., you can’t ask a statistic to measure something it was not intended to measure). So, I understand that WARP is a problematic stat in many cases, but for the purpose of translating MLB trades into value statements, it is an excellent snapshot statistic that should indeed be updated by post-hoc analysis in every case.

• Again, these are value snapshots at one point in time. I believe my trade assessment method works precisely because MLB teams do indeed trade immediate MLB wins for future MLB wins (in the form of prospect potential), they do indeed trade players for cash and prospects (in many different combinations), and I hypothesize that because these transactions occur and we know they occur, we can measure their effectiveness. Obviously, a quantitative analysis based on surplus is not the only way a trade can be judged. A trade can be judged in terms of franchise narrative, in terms of player narrative (ex., “needs a change of scenery”), or even through different quantitative means (MLB trades could simply be assessed in terms of scouting grades on the player “tools” exchanged in the deal. This would be an entirely different system of analysis than the one I use).

• Keep in mind that these trade assessments are not absolute, they are not even intended to “hold” over long periods of time (ex., “day-of trade value” is crucial to assessing a team’s motives for a trade, but it is hardly the only point in time a trade should be assessed). But, since the Brewers spent July 2015-July 2016 rebuilding the franchise, I found it worthwhile to track the value of trades, since the value of the club would not simply be judged in terms of absolute team wins over that time period.

Photo Credit: Richard Jackson, USAToday Sports Images

Stearns has already spoken this offseason about how the way the core group of players gelled and succeeded together allows the org to “accelerate the timeline” of competing. The GM has indicated that the focus this offseason will be improving the Major League club, whereas building the farm system was the main focus of Stearns’s first two winters at the helm. This is an exciting time to be a Brewers’ fan, as the team has resources aplenty in terms of both payroll space and prospect capital to work with while searching for upgrades.

Starting pitching depth is said to be the main point of emphasis for the Brewers this winter, and it’s easy to see why. With Jimmy Nelson set to miss significant time in 2018 after shoulder surgery (and his return to 2017 form in question), Chase Anderson and Zach Davies represent the only proven starters on hand. The team needs innings, and Brewers have already been linked to names like Jake Arrieta and Lance Lynn in the early going this winter. Stearns has been quick to downplay those rumors, as he is with just about any transaction his team is rumored to be considering, but he has acknowledged that he and his team have had exploratory free agent and trade discussions. He has also discussed how as a small market team, it is difficult for the Brewers to build their team through free agency and make significant commitments to players over the age of 30. The goal, once again, is to “acquire, develop, and retain young talent.”

With that in mind, it may not be surprising then to see the Brewers turn to the trade market in search of addition arms to fortify their pitching staff for 2018. While Dan Straily and Jake Odorizzi are two players who figure to be available that could be of interest, there have also been rumblings about more premium arms like 29 year old Chris Archer and 26 year old Marcus Stroman potentially being available in the right deal. Acquiring one of those frontline caliber starters will require giving up quite a nifty package of players, but the Brewers have the prospects to entice other organizations and the depth in their farm system such that brokering a deal for a multiyear asset like Archer or Stroman won’t “mortgage the future.”

If Stearns and company do decide to turn their attention towards the trade market, there are a couple of prospects within the system that it may be wise to try and build a deal around. The first is Monte Harrison. Harrison was finally able to stay healthy for a full season for the first time in his career and posted a breakout year across the Class A and Class-A Advanced levels – a .306 TAv, 21 home runs, and 27 steals in 513 plate appearances between the two stops. Evaluators have been drooling over the tools he was finally able to display, and he garnered praise as a true “five-tool talent” with a 70 OFP – future All-Star caliber center fielder in BP’s recent top prospects update for the Brewers.

Though Harrison may very well have a bright future ahead of him, he’s has yet to reach the AA level and is a few years away from making an impact at the Major League level. There are also questions that could limit his ceiling, namely the rawness of his baseball skills and the utility of his hit tool. Reports indicate that his swing-and-miss tendencies were trending in the right direction by season’s end, but he whiffed 139 times in 122 games in 2017, a rate of more than 27 percent of his plate appearances. Without further adjustments, that rate figures to only increase as Harrison continues to climb the ladder to face (and potentially be exploited by) more advanced pitching. There’s also the obvious questions about his durability, as well, after he missed significant chunks of time in 2015 and 2016.

The other player is right-hander Corbin Burnes. The former 4th-rounder won Milwaukee’s minor league pitcher of the year after tossing 145.2 innings with an astonishing 1.67 ERA in 2017, compiling 140 strikeouts against just 36 walks between Class-A Advanced and Double-A this past season. His DRA- at the lower level was 40 and it was 56 after his promotion, further exhibiting the dominance that he displayed over his minor league competition in 2017.

Burnes came in at #4 on Milwaukee’s updated top prospect list and certainly has an enticing profile. Namely, the righty has the ideal build (6’3″, 205 lbs) and advanced command of four solid pitches. The stuff doesn’t quite match up with the dominating results he posted in 2017, though. Corbin Burnes doesn’t appear to be the “future ace” that fans are always pining for. His changeup needs some work to reach an average grade and his curveball is inconsistent will likely settle in as a below-average offering. At present he lacks a true plus offering, which will make it difficult for him to consistently miss bats at the big league level. Craig Goldstein noted that without some further growth, the ultimate package is probably “an inconsistent back-end starter, or a candidate to shift to the bullpen and focus on his heater and best secondary.”

The Brewers have a plethora of young, advanced outfield depth (Domingo Santana, Keon Broxton, Lewis Brinson, Brett Phillips, Troy Stokes) as well as right-handed pitchers (Brandon Woodruff, Freddy Peralta, Luis Ortiz, Adrian Houser, Cody Ponce, Jon Perrin, Aaron Wilkerson), which helps make the idea of a trade more palatable. Monte Harrison and Corbin Burnes both enjoyed excellent performances in 2017 and scouts believe that they may eventually be destined for big things in the MLB. But there are reasons to be wary of each player’s continued development, and with Milwaukee shifting the focus towards winning at the big league level, now may be the ideal time to sell high on Harrison and Burnes if the right deal comes along and let another franchise worry about developing them. Certainly, if the Brewers are planning on playing that segment of the market it’s worth at least exploring if a package for an Archer or Stroman could be built around those two players rather than two would-be MLB contributors in 2018 like, say, Lewis Brinson and Brandon Woodruff.