Brewers history: Milwaukee sends Cy Young ace to Orioles in late-winter blockbuster

In each of the last three offseasons, the Milwaukee Brewers have traded away an All-Star pitcher entering their final season before free agency. Just weeks ago, the Brewers turned one season of Freddy Peralta (and five seasons of Tobias Myers) into top prospects Jett Williams and Brandon Sproat. Last December, Devin Williams was sent to the New York Yankees in exchange for 2025 NL Rookie of the Year finalist Caleb Durbin and Nestor Cortes, whom the team traded at the deadline for Brandon Lockridge. Two years ago, on this date, Milwaukee sent 2021 NL Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes to the Baltimore Orioles in exchange for Joey Ortiz, DL Hall, and the 33rd overall pick in the 2024 MLB Draft.

This strategy of turning the final season of team control of their stars into controllable assets, born out of necessity given Milwaukee's inability to compete with large market teams on the free agent market, has extended the Brewers' window of contention, which opened eight years ago and doesn't appear to be closing anytime soon.

With a payroll one-third of the size of the teams they often run into during the postseason, the Brewers are forced to operate in the world of "surplus value." To remain competitive year after year in the smallest TV market in baseball, the Brewers are forced to prioritize maximizing the surplus value that they receive from their roster. The easiest place to find surplus value in MLB is by having a roster filled with players who are in the first six years of their MLB careers. These players, despite often being in the physical peak of their careers, earn salaries that are a fraction of the size of the ones handed out on the free agent market, thus making pretty much all of their production on the field fall into the category of "surplus value."

Take, for example, a player like Durbin. The rookie third baseman was worth 2.8 bWAR last season. On the free agent market, where most people assume one Win Above Replacement (WAR) is worth roughly $10 million, Durbin would have been valued at roughly $28 million last year. The dollar/WAR model is by no means perfect, but regardless, Durbin, who made just under $760,000 last season, offered a ton of surplus value to the Brewers. These are the types of players that the Brewers must prioritize, and it explains why they continue to turn soon-to-be-departing stars into players who are at the beginning of their MLB careers.

As a result, though many might be quick to criticize the return that the Brewers got for Burnes on this day two years ago, seeing as both Ortiz and Hall have had inconsistent starts to their tenures in Milwaukee, a closer look at how each of the three players involved (four if you count the draft pick) has performed in regard to surplus value since the trade went down is warranted.

Revisiting the Brewers' Corbin Burnes blockbuster two years after the deal went down

Let's stick with the assumption that one bWAR is worth $10 million -- the actual number fluctuates year by year, and many argue over whether the statistic is even fair given the vast discrepancy in salaries that currently exists in MLB today.

In 2024, Burnes put together an All-Star campaign and was worth 3.5 bWAR, but he also earned a decently sized salary of $15.637 million in what was his final year of arbitration eligibility. So he was worth roughly $35 million on the field, but in terms of surplus value, Burnes' 2024 season, the lone season of control that the Brewers traded away, was worth $20 million.

Meanwhile, since the trade, Ortiz, in large part thanks to an excellent rookie season, has been worth 3.0 bWAR. During that time, he's earned roughly $1.5 million, making the league minimum in each of the last two seasons. So, on his own, even with his rough 2025 campaign, Ortiz has been worth roughly $28.5 million in surplus value -- that number looks even better if you use FanGraph's WAR model, but to be fair to the Orioles, we'll stick with Baseball Reference's, which paints a better picture for Baltimore.

DL Hall's Brewers tenure has been plagued with injury, and as a result, he's been worth just 0.4 bWAR since the trade (-0.2 bWAR in 2024 and 0.6 bWAR in 2025), meaning his value on the field has been worth $4 million. Like Ortiz, Hall has made the league minimum in each of the last two seasons ($1.5 million total), meaning he's been worth a surplus value of just $2.5 million during his time in Milwaukee.

Therefore, as a whole, the Brewers have received roughly $31 million in surplus value from the Burnes trade, while giving up just $20 million, netting them an $11 million advantage as things currently stand. Again, the number changes depending on the dollar/WAR estimate and which WAR projection model is used, but the fact remains that even with a somewhat underwhelming start to their Brewers careers, Milwaukee's return -- in terms of surplus value -- has been more valuable than what they gave up.

But the full story is far from complete. For starters, the draft pick that the Brewers received hasn't even been taken into consideration yet. That said, Baltimore did get a compensation pick for losing Burnes to free agency following the 2024 season -- something the Brewers would have gained had they elected not to trade the All-Star pitcher -- so the values of that aspect of the trade roughly cancel out and are dependent on each organization's draft strategy, which has nothing to do with the trade itself. However, the Brewers will presumably continue to compile surplus value from Ortiz and Hall over the next four seasons, which means that the trade will only continue to look better and better from their end.

Overall, even though the Brewers' return for Burnes may feel light right now, with Ortiz and Hall coming off disappointing 2025 seasons, Milwaukee's strategy of turning their departing assets into controllable talent still paid off and will continue to pay off for the next few years. So while it's certainly difficult to watch the Brewers' star players be traded away before their final year of team control while fans wait for the organization's first World Series title, Milwaukee's front office knows what they're doing, and you can't knock a strategy that has led to seven postseason appearances in eight years and the best farm system in all of baseball.