Brewers rival makes a couple surprising moves ahead of MLB trade deadline

A couple days ago, the Milwaukee Brewers began their quest to be buyers at this year's MLB trade deadline. One of their NL Central rivals put themselves in that category as well, though few were probably expecting that to be the case.

The Chicago Cubs have now made two deadline moves to acquire major league players over the last two days. This comes after the team's president, Jed Hoyer, made it seem as though they would be pretty clear sellers just last week.

The first move came yesterday when the Cubs acquired pitcher Nate Pearson from the Blue Jays. The 27-year-old was a former top prospect in Toronto's system but has struggled to a 5.21 ERA in 93 career appearances, a majority of which coming out of the bullpen.

In return, the Blue Jays received outfield prospect Yohendrick Pinango, who now slots in as Toronto's No. 25 prospect according to MLB Pipeline. Pinango has a career .272 batting average and .730 OPS in the minors but is Rule 5 eligible this offseason which could be why Chicago was willing to part with him.

Then today, the Cubs struck again when they acquired Isaac Paredes from the Tampa Bay Rays. A first time All-Star this season, the 25-year-old doesn't provide much for batting average (.234 for career) but has been a run producer with 69 homers and 209 RBIs in 411 career MLB games.

Chicago had to give up a lot more this time in comparison to the Pearson deal. The Rays an MLB player in third baseman Christopher Morel and two prospects in pitchers Ty Johnson and Hunter Bigge.

Morel has struggled in 2024 but is just one year removed from a season in which he had an OPS of .821 with 26 homers and 70 RBIs in 107 games. Johnson was a 15th round pick of the Cubs just last year while Bigge was selected in the 12th round by Chicago back in 2019 and appeared in the first four games of his MLB career this year, giving up a run in 3.1 innings.

On one hand, the two players acquired by the Cubs, even being current MLB players, can be considered as help for the future. Pearson has two of his arbitration years remaining while Paredes has three. Both can obviously also be extended if they do well.

But on the other hand, they gave away a lot of potential future contributors in the process. Morel is still plenty young himself at 25 and has plenty of time to develop, plus he actually has four years of team control remaining. He joins three prospects in exiting the Cubs organization.

The Cubs are only five games back of a Wild Card spot, so who knows, maybe they are actually trying to push for a playoff spot in 2024. It seems more likely, though, that these moves are to set the team up for being competitive over the next 2-3 years, potentially making them a thorn in the Brewers' side once again.