The Brewers were generally viewed as the top challenger to the Dodgers when the Tigers were shopping Tarik Skubal. Milwaukee has the sport’s best record and arguably its top farm system, and ownership was willing to assume the remainder of Skubal’s $32MM salary.
Skubal is on the mound in Dodger blue tonight after Detroit dealt him to L.A. for three prospects: outfielder Zyhir Hope and right-handers River Ryan and Brady Smith. Adam McCalvy of MLB.com sheds some light on Milwaukee’s conversations with the Tigers. McCalvy reports that the Brewers also offered a three-prospect package which would’ve been led by 19-year-old shortstop Luis Peña.
According to the MLB.com report, all three prospects (at least in Milwaukee’s initial offer) were position players. The identity of the other two players isn’t reported, though McCalvy writes that at least one more was a Top 100 caliber prospect.
The Brewers were never going to give up the sport’s top minor league talent, Double-A shortstop Jesús Made. They’ve signed shortstop Cooper Pratt and outfielder Luis Lara, both of whom are on the MLB roster, to extensions. That technically doesn’t rule out a trade, but dealing either within a couple months of signing them to long-term deals would’ve been unprecedented.
Josh Adamczewski, Braylon Payne, Jett Williams, Brady Ebel, Alexander Frias and Jeferson Quero are the other Milwaukee hitters who appeared among the Top 100 prospects on a list from at least one of Baseball America, FanGraphs, The Athletic and MLB Pipeline. The Brewers wound up trading Frias to St. Louis as one of two prospects for starter Dustin May and lefty reliever JoJo Romero. They clearly considered him expendable in the right deal, though that doesn’t necessarily mean they included him in the Skubal offer.
Peña would’ve been a compelling headliner. The aforementioned lists all have him as one of the 25 best prospects in the sport. He lands above Hope on all those lists and ahead of Ryan on each aside from the FanGraphs rankings.
It’s not worth overrating the specificity of those placements. Most prospect rankers don’t have a huge division between, for example, prospects 25 and 75. They could all be in the same tier and will be ranked differently on public lists and internally by teams. That’s especially true for a player like Peña who has yet to advance beyond High-A, where evaluations are still heavily weighted toward more subjective scouting reports instead of a huge statistical résumé.
The broader point is that Peña would’ve been a perfectly reasonable starting point, though he has missed some time with physical issues this year. He collapsed in the dugout in a game in April due to dehydration and lost a month. He also missed a couple weeks in June with a hamstring strain. Peña has hit .297/.382/.407 with two homers and 20 steals in 42 games in High-A.
Detroit evidently preferred the Dodgers’ offer, which included a big league ready starter in Ryan who could step into the rotation later this month. Peña wouldn’t have been a factor for a couple seasons. We don’t know the identity of the secondary pieces Milwaukee put on the table. The Tigers also have their franchise shortstop in Kevin McGonigle, though teams can never have enough shortstop talent in the farm system. Those players can easily bounce to another infield position and typically are athletic enough to play the outfield if needed.
It’ll make for an interesting footnote as the careers of Hope, Ryan and Peña play out. Milwaukee’s interest in Skubal was well known, and there’s a decent chance they’ll find themselves in an NLCS rematch with the Dodgers. The teams will meet next week in a four-game set at Dodger Stadium, where the top seed in the National League could be on the line.
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