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Dealing Braun increasingly makes sense for Brewers
- Updated: December 1, 2016
The notion of the Milwaukee Brewers trading Ryan Braun was once unthinkable. Now, it seems much closer to completely plausible.
Yes as both the Brewers’ organizational direction and the market have changed, the concept of trading Braun has progressed all the way from “Why?” to “Why not?”
The Brewers will be entering their second full season of a full-scale rebuilding process in 2017. Braun hit .305 in 2016 and had an OPS of .903, ranking him ninth in the National League in that category, thus demonstrating that he could regain significant production after back surgery. But he is 33 and he is not the long-term future for Milwaukee.
Would the Brewers’ competitive situation be diminished in the immediate future if Braun were to be traded? Probably. But Milwaukee is not geared toward immediate gratification in the rebuilding process.
Conventional wisdom earlier favored the concept that Braun could not or would not be traded. First there was the stigma of his 65-game suspension in 2013 related to the use of performance-enhancing substances. That sort of thing is never totally forgotten, but the passage of time would make Braun more palatable as an employee for another organization. And so would the 30 home runs he hit in 2016.
Then there was Braun’s substantial contract with the Brewers that ran through 2020. But with the continued escalation of salaries, his deal looks more like a middle-of-the-road proposition. Braun is owed $76 million over the next four years. Yoenis Cespedes just signed a new contract with the Mets …
