When the Brewers’ front office starts discussions with other organizations at this week’s Winter Meetings, it won’t take them long to recap what’s new. The Brewers’ offseason news to date could be covered in depth on one side of an index card. To date, the best things that can be said about the Brewers this fall would be that things have been quiet and they could have been much worse.
Milwaukee and three other National League Central clubs dodged their first bullet late last week when Japanese sensation Shohei Ohtani announced he would sign with the Angels, selecting Anaheim over a group of six other finalists that also included the Cubs. There had been discussion earlier in the offseason that Chicago may attempt to sign both Ohtani and fellow Japanese transplant and top free agent Yu Darvish this winter, but at least half of that scenario will no longer occur.
Over the weekend the Brewers got even more good news as former Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton announced that he would not waive the no-trade clause in his contract and accept a move to the Cardinals. Within hours of that announcement reports began to surface that the Marlins had a new deal in place to ship Stanton and most of the nearly $300 million remaining on his contract to the Yankees.
Adding both Stanton and Ohtani to American League clubs will only widen the talent gap between the two leagues. The AL went 160-140 in interleague games in 2017 and has a .546 winning percentage in such contests since 2014, meaning an average American League team would have won roughly 88 games in a full season facing National League opponents over that time. The NL hasn’t had a winning record against the AL over a full season since 2003, and seeing both their league MVP and the winter’s top international import join AL clubs likely won’t help them turn those tables.
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Playing in an increasingly weaker league makes every NL team look a little better, of course, but the Cubs and Cardinals’ missed opportunities likely help Milwaukee even more. At the outset of this offseason the Brewers’ odds of winning the 2018 World Series were around 30 to 33-to-1, depending on the sports book used. Bovada has since downgraded the Brewers to 40-to-1, as compared to 12-to-1 for the Cubs and 18-to-1 for the Cardinals. The gap between the Brewers and their rivals would almost certainly have gotten much larger if Ohtani, Darvish and Stanton had joined other division contenders while the Brewers largely stood pat.
Of course, just because the Cubs and Cardinals missed out on major acquisitions doesn’t mean they’ve been sitting on their hands. The Cubs recently added former Rockies starting pitcher Tyler Chatwood and reliever Brandon Morrow via free agency and the Cardinals have also added to their rotation and bullpen by signing Japanese import Miles Mikolas and Luke Gregerson, respectively. So far the only rumor circulating on the Brewers has been regarding the trade market: Late last week Ken Rosenthal reported that the Giants were among teams interested in Domingo Santana. A year ago the Brewers made a big splash at the Winter Meetings when they sent Tyler Thornburg to the Red Sox for Travis Shaw and minor leaguers Mauricio Dubon, Josh Pennington and Yeison Coca, so the precedent is certainly there for pulling off a big move this time of year.
The Brewers still have time to catch up, but they’re clearly lagging behind two of their biggest rivals in the efforts to improve their rosters for 2018. The fact that things could be much worse is some consolation, but David Stearns and company have work to do this week and beyond if they hope to contend in the NL Central.
