Brewers should get starting pitcher in Lucroy trade

If and when the Milwaukee Brewers trade catcher Jonathan Lucroy, they should make sure they get a starting pitching prospect in return.

The Milwaukee Brewers made an interesting trade over the weekend, of which the ramifications were obvious: When the Brewers sent shortstop Jean Segura to the Diamondbacks, they were making the road for top prospect Orlando Arcia much smoother. He’ll still start the season in Triple-A, but once the Brewers are in the safe zone for Arcia’s service time, he’ll be called up to the majors.

The Brewers are among the teams going into full rebuild mode, and of those teams—the Reds, Braves, Phillies and (probably) the Rockies are the others—the Brewers have one of the longer remodels ahead of them, which has their owner espousing patience.

The prevailing thought around baseball is that the team’s last bit of unfinished business is to flip catcher Jonathan Lucroy, which makes a lot of sense. Lucroy is going to be a free agent after the season and his services would be more beneficial for a team that is ready to contend. He’s said so himself.

Multiple scenarios have been posed as Lucroy-centric trades and the Rangers have emerged as the most likely landing spot. The Rangers have the prospects to make a trade work, although they may be less willing to part with farmhands after shipping several to the Phillies in the Cole Hamels trade.

Regardless of where the Brewers send Lucroy, there is one thing they must make sure they get in return: a quality starting pitcher prospect.

There are three main reasons why: (1) Arcia, (2) the Brewers’ previous acquisitions of talent and (3) recent bullpen construction trends.

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Arcia could win the 2016 National League Rookie of the Year award and will be the centerpiece of the rebuild. He is also going to be one of the first pieces to arrive, which wasn’t the case with 2015’s shortstop phenoms Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor and Addison Russell. All of them were upgrades at a key position for teams that already had lots of talent on their rosters. Arcia won’t have nearly as much talent around him in 2016, but the Brewers need to make sure they maximize Arcia’s upside, especially on defense, as quickly as possible.

Arcia’s reputation as a defensive virtuoso is second only to Lindor’s. He will make a substantial impact gobbling ground balls and stealing base hits behind a very young pitching staff: The Brewers were ninth in the majors in innings pitched by rookies, and there are more young arms on the way. Essentially, he would have the same impact Lindor had for the Indians, who suffered from one of the worst defensive infields in history before Lindor took over. The Indians were 29-32 before Lindor’s promotion and 52-48 afterwards. The combination of young talented arms on the mound with a young, talented shortstop behind them would be a great foundation on which to build and would relieve some of the burden on those young pitchers.

Point number two: The Brewers have already acquired a significant amount of position player talent, so it would be more beneficial for them to acquire a quality arm with starter potential. Domingo Santana, Brett Phillips and Isan Diaz are among the players the Brewers have added since the 2015 trade deadline. Phillips is the highest rated newcomer, coming in at No. 32 in MLB.com’s 2016 preseason prospect rankings. Phillips was part of the Carlos Gomez trade to Houston, which netted the Brewers a pretty decent haul. That last link featured a few big leaguers who are good comparisons to Phillips, and here is a more detailed breakdown of some of those comparisons. (Note: Arizona Fall League stats are included.)

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Diaz sort of flew under the radar as part of the Segura deal, which looks to be very one-sided in favor of the Brewers. Diaz was not included when I discussed players who had breakout performances in the Pioneer League, but perhaps he should have been. He led the league in slugging (.620), was second in home runs (13), isolated power (.279) and weighted runs created plus (169) and was third in batting average and on base percentage.

Next: Phillies, Braves have shortest rebuilds ahead of them

The last point works off the second one. While the Brewers have added arms in the form of Chase Anderson, Zach Davies and Josh Hader, having another arm that will grow into a quality starter would be more valuable than another bat or a young arm to bolster the bullpen. Teams such as the Royals, Astros, Cubs and Pirates have shown that successful bullpens can be pieced together relatively cheaply on the free agent and trade markets. And with starting pitchers commanding hundreds of millions of dollars, a small market club like the Brewers won’t be able to buy pricey free agents. A young arm—for example, the Rangers’ Dillon Tate or the Rays’ Brent Honeywell—by comparison would cost almost nothing.

All stats from Baseball-Reference.com, FanGraphs.com and The Baseball Cube.

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