The Brewers and Orioles shook the baseball world this week with a piece of highway robbery that shipped one of the best pitchers on the planet, 2021 NL Cy Young winner Corbin Burnes, to Baltimore in exchange for two prospects.
The prospects are good; infielder Joey Ortiz comes in at No. 63 on MLB Pipeline’s Top 100, while lefty DL Hall is highly regarded and has MLB experience. But for a full year of a proven great like Burnes, it’s next to nothing.
There are many possible implications for the Philadelphia Phillies, ranging from how the deal shapes the starting pitcher landscape for the rest of the offseason to what it tells us about the Phillies’ future plans. Here’s a look at five major implications from the deal for the Fightins’.
Are other major Brewers pieces on the market?
It remains unclear if Milwaukee is in the midst of a fire sale or a retooling, as the actions of the ownership and the front office are in contradiction with one another.
First, longtime manager and lifelong Brewers fan Craig Counsell left to lead their biggest rival in Chicago. There are whisperings that he wouldn’t have done so unless he perceived a lack of commitment from ownership in Milwaukee toward building a winner.
Then, Milwaukee was absent from the free agent market and trade circuit all winter until last week, when they signed beloved Phillie Rhys Hoskins. Quietly, against the prevailing media chatter lending inertia to the Cubs and the Cardinals, it seemed as if the perennially underrated Brewers could again take home the NL Central title.
Then, the Burnes deal; a Cy Young winner in exchange for two non-blue chip prospects. Do the Brewers simply want to to recoup any value they can from their talent, knowing it’s all leaving, anyway?
If that’s the case, major players like shortstop Wiley Adames, closer Devin Williams, and even newly signed Rhys Hoskins (who has an opt-out after year one of his deal) could be on the market at the trade deadline. In the case of Adames and Williams, they could be on the market now.
Williams is particularly interesting, as after former Milwaukee reliever Josh Hader, who many Phillies fans had their eye on before he signed a record deal with Houston earlier this winter, Williams is perhaps the game’s next most dominant reliever. He has a ridiculous 1.89 ERA in 214 big league innings the past five years, and the right-hander would form perhaps the game’s best late-inning duo with lefty fireballer José Alvarado.
