Advertisement

Brewers’ decision to trade Devin Williams is being vindicated down at spring training

Eric Cole
Eric Cole

Reviewing The Brew

Wild Card Series - New York Mets v Milwaukee Brewers - Game 3 / Patrick McDermott/GettyImages

Of all the decisions the Milwaukee Brewers made this offseason, trading Devin Williams was probably the most polarizing. Losing Willy Adames was extremely painful to be sure, but it was also widely expected to happen given how much he was going to command on the open market. The Brewers had Williams at a very reasonable rate for the 2025 season and the team still opted to cash in their chips and move one from him anyways.

There is merit to trading Williams when Milwaukee did. Relievers are an extremely volatile commodity and with the team unlikely to keep him beyond the 2025 season, the Brewers perhaps correctly saw that holding Williams wasn't going to move the needle all that much compared to other options and trading him at peak value was the best course of action.

It doesn't hurt that based on what we are hearing early on in spring training, it appears as though the Brewers' bullpen is in good hands with Trevor Megill poised to get first crack at closing in 2025.

Brewers' 2025 bullpen seems to be in surprisingly good shape even without Devin Williams

While Megill's track record since getting to the big leagues in 2021 is a little spotty, it is hard to argue with the results he got last season. In 48 appearances for Milwaukee in 2024, Megill finished with a 2.72 ERA while striking out better than a batter an inning. He has all the hallmarks of a power arm to bring in at the end of games and his knuckle curve is borderline unhittable when he is on.

Given his stuff, Megill is an ideal starting point for the Brewers' bullpen. Abner Uribe may end up being Milwaukee's guy at the end of games some day, but he is coming off a knee injury and needs to prove that he can find the strike zone consistently before he is given more responsbility. Don't sleep on Aaron Ashby and/or Jacob Misiorowski as bullpen options as well assuming that starting in 2025 doesn't work out for them.

That is four arms that have the stuff to be high leverage relievers and that doesn't include talented role players like Joel Payamps and Jared Koenig being very solid as well. Were the Brewers right to trade Williams? That is a bit unclear, although strong debuts from Nestor Cortes and Caleb Durbin would help answer that question. However, it does feel like Milwaukee gave up Williams without giving up much in the way of bullpen depth based on who they have at their disposal heading into the 2025 season.

More Brewers News from Reviewing the Brew

Eric Cole

Eric Cole

I started my career writing about baseball covering the Atlanta Braves for SB Nation's Talking Chop back in 2015 which has since been renamed Battery Power. After years of writing for those fine folks, I made the decision to take over as Site Expert at House That Hank Built before becoming a full-time MLB Staff Writer for FanSided in 2023. Along the way, I have been a guest on multiple ESPN radio affiliates as well as 680 The Fan and 92.9 The Game to discuss Braves baseball and especially Braves prospects and was a long-time host on the Battery Power podcast. These days, I continue to write about the Braves as well as covering the Astros, Padres, and Angels with particular expertise with minor league coverage, the MLB Draft, and bashing Anthony Rendon when possible. When I am not writing about or talking about baseball (which is seldom), I am an avid baseball card collector (Maddux and Soroka being my primary personal collections) and I also collect shark teeth. All other sports are mostly dead to me as my Bills have broken my heart too many times.