Brewers insider reveals team's shocking plan for top prospect's addition to the starting rotation

The Jacob Misiorowski promotion saga is over after nearly a year of fans calling for the Milwaukee Brewers to add their top pitching prospect to the big league roster. Last year, the Brewers converted Misiorowski to a reliever, thinking he could help them out of the bullpen down the stretch, but his number was never called. The offseason brought hope that Miz would be included on the Opening Day roster, especially once several Brewers' starting pitchers went down with injuries in spring training, but still he remained in the minor leagues. Now, with an already crowded Brewers starting pitching group, the team has elected to call up their prized prospect, forcing them to make a difficult roster decision.

For the time being, the Brewers are electing to move starter Aaron Civale to the bullpen for what will presumably be a long relief role. The plan comes right from manager Pat Murphy's mouth and was reported by several Brewers insiders, including MLB.com's Adam McCalvy.

As McCalvy notes, the news could not have been easy to swallow for Aaron Civale, who hasn't made an appearance out of the bullpen since playing for the Hyannis Harbor Hawks in the Cape Cod Baseball League back in 2015. Not only that, but his value in free agency could take a huge hit if he is relegated to a long relief role for an extended period of time. The move has to be frustrating for Civale, who was essentially passed over for younger pitchers in the Brewers rotation who could have been optioned or re-assigned to the bullpen to make room for Misiorowski. However, this could be the first sign of the team searching for ways to move on from Civale, and with the trade deadline ever-nearing, a trade is not out of the question.

The Brewers decision to relegate Aaron Civale to the bullpen could foreshadow an upcoming trade

For a few weeks now, Brewers fans could anticipate the roster crunch that the team is currently experiencing. As players, particularly starting pitchers, started returning from the injured list, it quickly became clear that the Brewers were going to have some difficult decisions to make — a problem they could only dream of earlier in the season when their staff was decimated by injuries.

The combination of adding several veteran pitchers in the offseason and developing young pitchers for the future is a delicate line to toe, especially when the team is in the thick of a competitive NL Central division. Already, the team has been forced to part ways with swingman Tyler Anderson, who was having a rough season, but is still a proven major league arm who can cover multiple roles. They alleviated some overcrowding by converting Aaron Ashby and DL Hall to long relievers, after the plan had been for them to start games this year.

The promotion of Misiorowski, while it is an exciting development and will be sure to inject some life back into the streaky Brewers, doesn't help the roster crunch, and the result is a reliable big league starter being moved to the bullpen despite having no experience there. But perhaps this is just a temporary assignment as the team searches for a viable trade partner for Civale.

With José Quintana being too valuable to part ways with, and Nestor Cortes likely not having enough time to prove himself before the trade deadline, Civale looks like the prime trade candidate should the Brewers elect to move a starter. He's a consistent, proven arm that can offer value to nearly any starting rotation.

Where this theory breaks down is the negative impact that moving Civale to the bullpen will have on his trade value. Had the team elected to allow Civale to make a few more starts prior to changing his role or trading him, he would have had the opportunity to further boost his trade value.

Again, these are all good problems to have. Just like having Tobias Myers and Logan Henderson still in the Triple-A starting rotation is a good problem to have. But even still, the timing of Miz's long-awaited promotion seems a little strange, but the decision proves that he is simply too good to keep down in Triple-A any longer, and even if the timing isn't perfect, his talent is worthy of the tricky situation that resulted from his promotion.