Trade Reaction: Brewers Get SP Depth
The Brewers rotation gets deeper, but not better
The Theory
Over the last week, the Brewers have gotten some unsettling news on Kyle Harrison and Jacob Misiorowski. Harrison hit the IL with a forearm injury, and Misiorowski was scratched on Sunday and missed the All-Star Game due to fatigue. In both cases, there was no reason for total panic. It made a lot of sense to be super careful with both young arms as they headed for an extra four-day window of free rest. And being 22 games over .500, there’s not a huge sense of urgency in the short term. Both pitchers are throwing and making “progress” over the break.
But this move does make you wonder if one or both of these injuries might be kind of serious.
The Brewers rotation out of the blocks looks like some combination of Logan Henderson, Shane Drohan, Brandon Sproat, and Robert Gasser - and then big Mizz whenever he’s able to take the mound again. Not exactly a group of five aces, but still a rotation more than capable of finishing out the regular season well enough to take home the division crown.
It’s a good organization to get moved to if you’re a pitcher. Milwaukee churns out surprisingly good arms regularly.
To me, this is a depth move for the Brewers just to cover some innings while they try to finish this regular season slog and get to the postseason with the best possible 3-4 SPs. They’re hoping, I’m sure, for a healthy trio of Misiorowski, Harrison, and Woodruff in October.
The Acquisition - Brewers
McCullers is probably a lost cause. The Astros have tried it a bunch of times and he can never throw strikes or stay healthy. If the Brewers do manage to fix him, it’s not going to happen overnight. McCullers last outing was in AAA as he made his third rehab appearance after suffering a rotator cuff impingement. He’ll either continue that rehab with Milwaukee or possibly enter the rotation right away to help with their depth. But the bullpen is going to get plenty of work right away as none of these guys are the 6+ inning type right now.
McCullers hasn’t thrown more than 55 big league innings in a season since 2021, and he was a pretty big disaster in his 39 innings this year with another very high walk rate (nearly 13%) and a 6.86 ERA. The strikeouts are fine (25%), but not nearly enough to make up for the wildness.
The other guy is Colton Gordon, a strike-throwing but soft-tossing and less than nasty left-hander. Over 24 appearances since last year, Gordon has a very nice 5.1% BB%, but it comes with a 19.3% K% and a lot of runs given up (5.95 ERA) driven by a home run problem (2.55 HR/9).
Gordon throws a 91mph fastball with pretty horrifying grades this year and then a sweeper/sinker/change/slider/curve mix to try keep hitters from sitting on that bad fastball.
It can work to some extent, but Gordon isn’t going to be a fixture in anybody’s rotation and he’s nothing more than a deeper league streamer type in fantasy leagues.
The Acquisition - Astros
They weren’t going to get much for McCullers and Gordon, and they didn’t. It’s Jadyn Fielder. And yes, he’s the son of Brewers legend Prince Fielder. The younger Fielder was undrafted in 2024, and he’s been playing in A ball this year, hitting .233/.415/.398 in 176 PAs.
Hopefully Prince loves his children for more than their baseball performance, because a 1.7% home run rate isn’t filling those big shoes.
I have no idea what I’m talking about in this paragraph, but doesn’t the Brewers signing Prince Fielder’s son as an undrafted player just sound like some sort of gimicky nepotism? I don’t know, maybe they saw something. But when Prince Fielder’s kid is available in the draft, you’d think all 30 organizations would find the time to give him a look.
Crazier things have happened, and maybe the Astros are seeing something now with the .813 OPS and 19% BB% that the 21-year-old has posted so far, but it looks to me like there won’t be a third generation of Fielder hitting bombs in the Major Leagues. Although Prince does have another son still in high school, but let’s stop the high school baseball talk right there.
The Fantasy Impact
Basically nothing? I guess it wouldn’t be a shock if McCullers has a good run of things with the Brewers before the inevitable further injury.
Maybe the Brewers will just be like, “Hey Lance, have you tried throwing the ball in that little rectangle-looking thing?”
But no, there’s nothing to do in fantasy leagues about this trade. Maybe we can get a short little run of good strikeout performance from McCullers before another injury happens, and maybe they can work some magic with Colton Gordon. I doubt that happens, and if they do, it would be something that happens next year rather than in the final two months of this season.
But hey, I thought it was interesting enough to react to. We’ll do our best to get some fantasy analysis on all of the trades that will be ripping off in the next three weeks. The deadline is August 3rd this year, a Monday, so we have a few extra days this time.
What’s your opinion on Drohan? My pitchers have been dropping like flies (including Miz and Harrison) and Drohan is available