Milwaukee Brewers: Could Grandal or Moustakas be traded?

With the trade deadline quickly approaching, would the Milwaukee Brewers be willing to part ways with Grandal or Moustakas in order to land a starting pitcher?

After a rough month or so of baseball, the Milwaukee Brewers have won seven out of their last ten games including series victories over the Atlanta Braves, the Arizona Diamondbacks and they will go for the sweep today against the Chicago Cubs.

While during this stretch the bullpen has performed much better as has the offense, with a number of injuries hitting the starting rotation it is evident that if they hope to make another playoff push, the Brewers will need to add a starting pitcher prior to the trade deadline.

After making a number of trades in 2018 that included landing Christian Yelich and Mike Moustakas, along with the arrival of Keston Hiura to the big leagues, the Milwaukee Brewers minor league system doesn’t have the same high-end talent that it did in previous years.

In fact, Baseball America recently ranked the Brewers’ minor league system as the worst in all of baseball. Which is going to make landing a game-changer on the trade market much more difficult.

However, there is another avenue for the Milwaukee Brewers to land a high-caliber starter. And that would be trading either Moustakas or Yasmani Grandal, both of which are here on just one-year deals.

While this may not seem like an ideal scenario considering that both have been a big part of the Brewers’ offense this season – according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, this idea has been kicked around internally:

"“The Brewers, arguably the most creative team at last year’s deadline, have kicked around the idea of bolstering their injury-depleted rotation by trading one of their potential free agents, catcher Yasmani Grandal or infielder Mike Moustakas. It’s unclear whether the concept has advanced beyond internal discussions.”"

If the Brewers were to trade one of these players, it would make more sense that it would be Moustakas given Milwaukee’s already crowded infield, especially with the return of Travis Shaw.

Behind Grandal at catcher is Manny Pina who has given the Brewers a few pinch-hit home runs this season, but his overall numbers at the plate are quite pedestrian. In 94 at-bats this season, Pina has a batting average of just .202 with a .725 OPS.

The backup catcher would then likely become Jacob Nottingham who is currently in Triple-A San Antonio and he is quite streaky at the plate.

With that said, moving on from Moose who is batting .261 with 26 home runs for Travis Shaw is a bit of a risky move based on what we have seen from Shaw this season. The hope would be that he would return to the player we saw in 2017 and 2018 but that is yet to be seen on a consistent basis.

The Milwaukee Brewers find themselves in a difficult situation, but something has to be done with the starting rotation. It is going to be an interesting few days leading up to the trade deadline and I will be curious to see how GM David Stearns works his magic.