Milwaukee Brewers Rumors: Monitoring Noah Syndergaard Once Again

It’s July once again and that means we’re right in the middle of trade rumor season. And the first set of Milwaukee Brewers rumors are a doozy.

According to Jon Morosi, the latest Milwaukee Brewers rumors have them monitoring the market for New York Mets righty Noah Syndergaard.

This does make plenty of sense given the Brewers lack of an established frontline starting pitcher and general need for better starting pitching as we head into the dog days of summer.

Plus, the rumors last season surrounding the Brewers also included interest in Syndergaard before the Mets decided they would not trade any of their starting pitchers that summer. There was more interest in the offseason, but clearly nothing came to fruition as the Mets decided they would try to compete with new GM and former player agent Brodie Van Wagenen. Currently, the Mets have the second worst record in the NL.

With the Mets looking like clear sellers, Brewers GM David Stearns might as well express his interest in the available pitchers. But we’ll see if Thor is actually available as the Mets are known to make bad baseball decisions quite frequently.

How Is Syndergaard pitching this year?

In 2019, Noah Syndergaard has a 4.68 ERA through 17 starts, which is uncharacteristically high for him as he’s never posted an ERA above 3.24 prior to this season. However, Syndergaard has a 3.98 FIP, which indicates he’s pitching much better than his ERA would show.

There’s also been a slight increase in his hard hit rate, up to 28.6% from 21.9% last year, but he’s still not at a career high for it yet.

Syndergaard, 26, been burned by an increase in fly-ball percentage and a spike in his HR/FB ratio. However, some of that might be attributed to the alleged changed baseballs this year that’s causing a spike in home runs across the board in MLB. Nevertheless, it is worrisome, especially when thinking about putting Syndergaard in Miller Park.

Syndergaard is a nasty pitcher that has a questionable injury history, but so do most of the players who have been with the Mets for several years. Perhaps just simply getting him out of New York will do him some good.

What Could Syndergaard Cost?

This is the big question that’s up in the air. Mets GM Brodie Van Wagenen is a front office rookie, and has made some questionable trade package decisions through his first offseason. Namely what he gave up for Keon Broxton and making the Robinson Cano–Edwin Diaz trade are laughable. So it’s possibly a savvy GM like David Stearns could swindle Van Wagenen again.

The owners of the Mets, the Wilpons, won’t want to part with a franchise player like Syndergaard for just anything, and they could rear their ugly heads just as a trade is nearing completion. Never forget July 2015 when the Brewers sent Carlos Gomez to New York for Zack Wheeler and Wilmer Flores and all of a sudden the Wilpons came in to scuttle the deal.

So it’s hard to judge what it’ll cost. The Milwaukee Brewers won’t give up Keston Hiura, so a trade will need to be worked around that. Perhaps a headliner of Corey Ray could work, but the Mets will also want some top end pitching talent. Two candidates for that are Freddy Peralta and Zack Brown.

Brandon Woodruff has established himself in the Brewers rotation so it won’t be him. Corbin Burnes‘ value is way down right now, but I believe and the Brewers still believe he has the potential to be great and won’t want to give up on him. Peralta has a lower ceiling than Woodruff and Burnes but still a ton of potential. He might entice New York and so could Zack Brown if Stearns doesn’t want to deal from his big league staff.

A package with Ray and either Peralta or Brown as headliners with at least one other piece might be enough to land Syndergaard in Milwaukee.

It’s going to be a fun month of July for Brewers rumors as the team searches for a second straight NL Central title.