Milwaukee Brewers: 5 Transactions We Wish Were April Fools Jokes

Every organization has trades and free agent signings that didn’t work out, and the Milwaukee Brewers are no different. Moves that were so bad, they’re laughable when you look back on them.

On this April Fool’s Day, we take a look at some Milwaukee Brewers transactions that we wish were pranks for this holiday about practical jokes.

Over the years, the Brewers have made some bad moves that did not work out in the team’s favor. While we could include pretty much every move in the entirety of 1990-2005 as laughably bad transactions given how bad those teams were, we can’t go through that many transactions.

We had to narrow the list down to five. Here are five transactions the Brewers made that we wish were April Fool’s jokes.

5. The Will Smith Trade

Back in August 2016, the Brewers traded lefty Will Smith to the San Francisco Giants for their top prospect Phil Bickford and backup catcher Andrew Susac.

Bickford had a big arm and MLB Pipeline ranked him as their #54 overall prospect in the minor leagues. Susac, many also felt he could be a quality big league starting catcher, but was blocked by Buster Posey in San Francisco.

It all started to derail that winter as Bickford was suspended 50 games for a drug of abuse and was also dealing with a hand injury. He was limited to just six games in 2017.

In 2018, Bickford was moved to the bullpen full-time and posted a 4.67 ERA for the Carolina Mudcats in just 21 appearances.

Susac also struggled mightily. He played in nine games in 2016, and there was nothing special there. After suffering a concussion during spring training in 2017, he played in only eight big league games that year, spending most of his year at Triple-A. He was traded to Baltimore for cash in early 2018.

It’s been a pretty disappointing return package for Smith.

Meanwhile, Smith has pitched well in the big leagues for the Giants, posting a 2.61 ERA in three seasons with the club. He missed all of 2017 with Tommy John surgery, but has since come back strong.

Smith had three more years of arbitration ahead of him when the Brewers traded him to the Giants. A quality, young left handed reliever with that much control should’ve brought back a nice return. Instead, it’s a failed catcher and an overhyped pitching prospect that has since come crashing down to earth.

Plus, it broke up the dynamic duo of Smith and Jeremy Jeffress. Their friendship is another reason why it’d be nice to have Smith still around.

3. The Jonathan Schoop Trade

This one never made sense from the start. Heading into the 2018 July Trade Deadline, the Milwaukee Brewers had two big needs: Middle infield, and the starting rotation. GM David Stearns filled the first need when he acquired Mike Moustakas from the Royals and pushed Travis Shaw to second base. It was an odd idea to most of us, but we rolled with it.

Then came Deadline Day. Rumors had it the Brewers were in the market for Chris Archer and Kevin Gausman, exhaustively searching for a frontline starting pitcher for their rotation. Archer then got sent to Pittsburgh and Gausman went to Atlanta. The deadline was in just a few minutes and Stearns was left empty-handed.

But he needed to do something, so he got back on the phone with Baltimore and sent Luis Ortiz, Jonathan Villar, and Jean Carmona to the Orioles for second baseman Jonathan Schoop.

But the team just got Moustakas, there was no need for Schoop. What would they do now? They settled on a plan for some kind of rotation between the three guys at third base and second base. That was ditched after Schoop couldn’t find his footing in Milwaukee.

The dude was hot in July, hitting .360 with nine home runs. But he struggled in August and did even worse in September, hitting just .202 during the regular season with the Crew, getting benched along the way. He struck out over 30% of the time.

Schoop was also hitless in eight at-bats in the postseason, and was just overall useless during his time in Milwaukee. He never seemed to mesh with the clubhouse culture that was warm and inviting and a big part of the team’s winning ways.

Stearns decided to non-tender Schoop last winter instead of paying nearly $10 million in arbitration for him after his poor season. The original plan was for Schoop to be the bridge to top prospect Keston Hiura at the position, but Schoop just couldn’t do it. Stearns had no choice but to cut him loose and even admitted he made “a bad deal” which is something you never hear a GM admit.

The Brewers gave up those players with the plan of solidifying the second base position until Hiura was ready. After the Moose trade, the Schoop addition was just redundant and unnecessary. It’s almost laughable how bad that trade turned out to be, and the Brewers were probably close to not keeping Schoop on the postseason rosters.

2. Signing Jeff Suppan As A Free Agent

We all knew this would have to be on the list somewhere. Back in 2006, Doug Melvin decided to sign Jeff Suppan to a four year, $42 million contract. He gave this to a pitcher who had one sub-4.00 ERA season in his entire career to that point.

Suppan pitched extremely well in the 2006 postseason, earning the NLCS MVP award for the Cardinals. That’s the only reason he got this contract heading into his age-32 season.

Predictably, this signing went terribly. In his first season, Suppan posted a 4.62 ERA, and it never got better than that. In 2008, his ERA went up to 4.96. He made one start in the NLDS, going three innings and allowing five runs. In 2009, he had a 5.29 ERA. In 2010, he had an atrocious 7.84 ERA before the Brewers finally released him that June.

I wish I could say that these were injury-riddled seasons and that played a role in his poor numbers. But he was perfectly healthy, making 30+ starts in each of his three full seasons with the club.

Overall in Milwaukee, Suppan had a 5.08 ERA in 97 starts with a 1.59 WHIP. I don’t think there has ever been a bigger waste of $42 million in baseball than the $42 million the Brewers wasted on Suppan.

Frankly, the Suppan signing has made a huge impact on Milwaukee Brewers fans because ever since then, fans have been wary of signing any free agent pitcher to a 4+ year contract, because this one turned out so poorly. Our history in free agency with starting pitchers has not been pretty, and this deal was the ugliest of them all.

1. Selecting Wei-Chung Wang In The Rule 5 Draft

As much fun as Wei-Chung Wednesdays were, I wish they never happened. The Wei-Chung Wang story is a cautionary tale for anyone looking to select a young pitcher in the Rule 5 Draft.

The Milwaukee Brewers selected the then-22 year old lefty back in the 2013 Rule 5 Draft, with the idea of keeping him on the roster long enough to retain his rights and then continue to develop him in the minors. At that point, Wang had never pitched above Rookie ball, and he was about to get promoted to the big leagues immediately.

How could that plan possibly go wrong?

Unsurprisingly, Wang struggled out of the Crew’s bullpen in 2014. He didn’t make his first appearance until April 14th, and regularly went more than a week in between appearances, never pitching in more than four games in a month. Ron Roenicke was (rightfully) scared to put him out there.

More from Brewers News

• Brewers: 4 Players Who Must Step Up for the Crew to Make the Playoffs
• Brewers: Yet Another Huge Promotion For Top Prospect Jackson Chourio
• Brewers Making Colossal Mistake With Corbin Burnes’ Contract
• Which Players May Be In The Final Month Of Their Brewers Careers?
• Brewers: Where Does Devin Williams Stand In NL Reliever Of The Year Race?

By not wanting to pitch him, the Brewers were effectively a man down in their bullpen for a whole season, wasting a roster spot on a pitcher that they could only use in blowout situations where it didn’t matter how bad he did. That meant the rest of the bullpen had to pick up the slack.

In July, after another poor outing, Wang was diagnosed with “shoulder tightness” after meeting the minimum amount of time required to stay on the active roster to retain his rights, and spent pretty much the rest of the season on the DL, making only one appearance in September. The team could finally replace Wang with a big league ready pitcher, but the damage had already been done.

By the end of that season, the bullpen was worn out, and the team that had spent so many days in first place in that fateful 2014 season faded down the stretch and completely missed the playoffs, leading to a rebuild that started the next season.

One could argue that Wang’s acquisition was the lynchpin to that process. If it weren’t for Wang, that bullpen would’ve been at full strength, and they would’ve likely been able to perform better in August and September, and perhaps still make the playoffs. That was one of the most disappointing seasons I’ve ever been a part of.

The Crew retained his rights and sent him to the minors the next season. He worked his way back to the big leagues three years later in 2017 as a 25 year old that was supposedly big league ready. Wang once again struggled, allowing two runs in 1.1 innings spread across eight appearances. He was only allowed to face more than one batter on one occasion, and he allowed a home run in that instance. Only in half of his appearances did he get someone out. He still couldn’t be trusted to pitch in the big leagues.

He was released the following winter. Wei-Chung Wang was a failed experiment that never should’ve happened in the first place. This acquisition backfired more than the Brewers bargained for, and it cost them in more ways than one.

I wish I was joking when I say that the Brewers chose to bring in a pitcher that had never pitched above Rookie-Ball and moved him immediately up to the big leagues and forced a first-place team into having a short-handed bullpen, and indirectly caused that team to crumble towards the end of the season, kickstarting a rebuilding process. I wish that was a joke. But nope, that’s what the Milwaukee Brewers did.

The Brewers didn’t select Wang on April Fools Day, nor did they make any other transaction on this list on April 1st, but they might as well have, because the moves were jokes anyways.