With the Milwaukee Brewers starting to turn things around over the past few weeks,their recent performance brings up an interesting question: Will the Brewers be buyers or sellers at the trade deadline?
The worst part about their turnaround is the fact that they are still nine and a half games back of the first place Cincinnati Reds and nine games back of the wild-card leading-Mets.
Unless the Reds or Mets have a two-week collapse, it looks like the Brewers will almost certainly be sellers at the trade deadline.
The other question is who will they put on the trade block? Rumors say that teams have inquired about Carlos Villanueva and Todd Coffey, but will they put big trading chips like Corey Hart and Prince Fielder on the block?
With the way Prince Fielder has swung the bat lately (11 homers since the beginning of June), now might be the best time to trade Prince. He has given little indication that he will re-sign with the team after next year and teams like the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and San Francisco Giants would almost certainly be interested.
The Giants have enough pitching that they could afford to deal a Madison Bumgarner or Jonathan Sanchez.
With the way the Brewers pitching staff has performed this season (4.83 ERA, fourth worst in the majors), they would have to accept a deal with one of the young, up and coming starting pitchers.
Fielder would definitely bring in more than Corey Hart in a trade and if they trade Prince, they could move Corey Hart back to his natural position of first base or bring up Matt Gamel to man first.
Either way, it looks like guys like Hart, Fielder, Jim Edmonds, Coffey, Trevor Hoffman and Villanueva are movable trading pieces. If they get an offer with some young starting pitching, they have to take the deal.
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