The Milwaukee Brewers—Yes, the Brewers—Hold All the Cards at the Trade Deadline

With the trade deadline just a leg kick and a lunge away, it's time to make a bold proclamation: the Milwaukee Brewers are the most interesting team in baseball.

That title can mean a number of things to a number of people: the team with the most talent, most wins, most oddballs, whatever. The Brewers, as you probably guessed based on their 39-52 record, are not fascinating due to their on-the-field achievements (and haven't been since their 2011 run to the National League Championship Series). Rather, what makes these Brewers captivating is their potential to run the trade market, both now and later. By virtue of having potential playoff-hunt determinants like Jonathan Lucroy and Will Smith, the Brewers hold in their hands the keys to half the league's futures.

Generally, rebuilding teams can be arranged into two neat bins: you have the super old and the super young; the teams who need prospects and those who have 'em; those riding the pendulum down and those on the way up. That binary makes life easy. But the Brewers eschew convention by having more good big-league players, more good prospects, and more time than the usual seller. Put another way, the Brewers can justify doing darn near anything they please at the deadline.

You might've noticed the seeming contradiction there―if the Brewers are in such a great position, then why is their record so poor?

Largely because of an unbalanced roster. Using 90-something games of WAR to write a song is silly (and makes for a bad song), but consider that the Brewers rank top-five at two positions, catcher and left field, where Lucroy and Ryan Braun play, and within the top half of the league at two others: shortstop and second base. (They also rank 16th at first base.) That's more than halfway to an acceptable lineup. Alas, the rest of Milwaukee's roster hasn't flourished: the Brewers rank 22nd at third base, 28th in center, and 30th in right field―the non-Braun outfielders could be replaced by chickens without a huge drop-off. Both parts of their pitching staff grade as below-average as well. Add it all together, and you have a sub-.500 team.

If the presence of four or five solid-to-good starters isn't compelling enough―lots of bad teams have a few bright spots, right?―then there's always the farm system, which is already good. Baseball Prospectus recently released its midseason top-50 list, and three Brewers made the cut: shortstop Orlando Arcia, left-hander Josh Hader, and center fielder Brett Phillips. Each of those three could conceivably reach the majors by this time next year, and fill an area of need. Arcia would bump incumbent shortstop Jonathan Villar to second or third base. Ask random front-office types around the league for their opinion on the Brewers system, and they're likely to tell you it's a well-kept secret. Well, that secret is about to be exposed.

"This is a system that not only features potential impact talent, as well as depth, but does so despite having a moribund look to it not a couple seasons ago," said Craig Goldstein, Baseball Prospectus' minor-league editor (and an occasional VICE Sports contributor). "They've really revitalized their farm system over the last couple drafts, bringing in guys like Trent Clark and Corey Ray, not to mention gambling on high-upside talents like Jacob Gatewood, Monte Harrison, Demi Orimoloye, Lucas Erceg, Cody Ponce … the list goes on."

Credit some of those additions to former general manager Doug Melvin, who landed Hader and Phillips in the Carlos Gomez trade, and to highly regarded scouting director Ray Montgomery, whose latest draft class is already receiving praise. Current GM-cum-wunderkind David Stearns deserves shine as well. Stearns spent the winter beefing up his front office―he hired Matt Arnold and Dan Turkenkopf, both previously of the Tampa Bay Rays―unloading excess pieces (Francisco Rodriguez here, Khris Davis there, Adam Lind way yonder), and unearthing seeming hidden gems, namely Villar and 31-year-old rookie Junior Guerra. Heady stuff.

Stearns' savviness will come in handy during the coming weeks, because he has more leverage than the typical first-time GM navigating the trade deadline. The Brewers' most marketable players are Lucroy, Braun, and bullpen arms like Jeremy Jeffress and Smith. There's no rush to move any of them, however, because none of the four will enter free agency after this season. Lucroy happens to be the closest, and his super-cheap club option ought to help offset any potential value loss. Stearns' countdown clock isn't at weeks, then―it remains at months.

As a result, the Brewers don't have to take the best offer on August 1―they can approach the deadline like a disciplined hitter in a 3-1 count: taking advantage of a meatball; spitting on jamballs; and walking if nothing good comes their way. Heck, if Stearns wanted to get silly about the whole mess, he could bluff that he was going to hold onto all his pieces not only until the winter, but until next summer, at which point the Brewers could conceivably have started hot and positioned themselves for a postseason run. He might even try extending Lucroy―you know, for goodwill and all that R&B. Is that realistic? Probably not―extending a catcher into his mid-30s is always risky business, even when they're as good as Lucroy is, and relievers depreciate quicker than Q-tips―but it's not as inconceivable here as it is in 99 percent of rebuilding cases.

So, Stearns probably won't take a wacky route this deadline. He'll probably move Lucroy, Smith, and maybe someone else. Provided he does his job well―and he's heretofore provided ample reason to think he has a handle on things, even if he looks like a boy-band member―then he might just accomplish the unthinkable: he might make the Brewers an interesting team for their on-the-field exploits.

Then? Who knows. Stearns might run the trade market from the buyer's side.

Want to read more stories like this from VICE Sports? Subscribe to our daily newsletter.